The one singer Stevie Nicks called the most fun to work with: “We built up a little relationship”
It was going to be a cold day in hell before Stevie Nicks ever turned her back on Fleetwood Mac.
Even if she wanted to be anywhere else other than the studio half the time she was singing songs with Lindsey Buckingham, there was no chance she was giving up her dream because of a few petty fights. She wanted to do everything that she could to become one of the biggest stars in the world, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a few friends around to help her along the way once she did have the idea to go solo.
But, really, more bands should follow the lead of what ‘The Gold Dust Woman’ did when she first had the idea to go out on her own. Any other band would have been pissed to see one of their members leave the rest of them, but by turning to them and saying that she was going to venture off on her own, there was a perfect back-and-forth between her focusing on her solo records like Bella Donna and then coming back to make absolute juggernauts like ‘Gypsy’ when they hit the 1980s.
Because what Nicks was doing on her own was a completely different animal compared to what ‘The Mac’ had been used to. None of them would have probably understood how to get the same feeling out of a song like ‘Edge of Seventeen’, and when she worked with Tom Petty for the first time, it was love at first sound when she first heard him singing ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ with her.
Petty seemed to know Nicks better than anyone else, but it was never at the expense of the song, either. Every musician needs that wise sage helping them throughout their career, and while Mick Fleetwood fit that bill perfectly, it was also easy to see Petty adopting that role whenever Nicks was wondering about where she should go next. But if Petty was the one to remind her who she was, Sheryl Crow was the one helping her fit into the next generation perfectly.
Nicks’s spectral persona was never going to go out of style, but Crow’s rootsy approach to rock and roll wasn’t all that different from what she was doing. She was approaching her craft with the same kind of reference points that Nicks did, but after going through rehab, Nicks finally had a confidante who could help her through making Trouble in Shangri-La. She was still steering the ship, but there was a magic that she hadn’t heard before when she was singing along with Buckingham or Petty.
The way they sang together was perfect, and Nicks felt that no one else could have done what Crow did when helping her on the record, saying, “We built up a little relationship where people take us seriously as singing partners. The Don and Phil Everly of 2001. I wanted her to produce the whole record. As it turns out, she really produced half of the record, which is what’s the most fun of all. It’s much more fun to have these successes when you have something to share it with.”
And compared to their other successes, this one didn’t even come with that much heartache. Not every part of the record was going to be easy to make, but considering all that went into making Street Angel when she was still strung out on Klonopin, there’s nothing but respect between Nicks and Crow when their voices blend on tunes like ‘Sorcerer’.
Nicks may have had to go through a lot of hell before she was able to paint a lot of her masterpieces, but when the clouds parted, she had the wisdom to play the role that Petty played for her back in the day. She had understood the pitfalls of rock and roll a lot better, and having someone like Crow to teach her some new tricks as well was the perfect foil she could have asked for.
