Credit: Alamy

The reoccurring Stevie Nicks character in Fleetwood Mac

Thu 3 November 2022 19:30, UK

Major Fleetwood Mac fans know the whims of Stevie Nicks. With a certain bedevilled edge to her lyrics and image, Nicks crafted a unique persona that incorporated elements from both the occult and the glamorous. That image was solidified in classic tracks like ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Gold Dust Woman’, and ‘Gypsy’, the likes of which would continue to define the public’s perception of Nicks up to the modern day.

But there’s another side to Nicks’s writing that was revealed in the 1980s – one of a trusted friend who needed protection and love. For Nicks, the embodiment of that friend was revealed in the song ‘Sara’, where the titular character becomes the “poet in [Nicks’] heart” that calls her home.

Both Nicks and Mick Fleetwood have confirmed that there was a real-life Sara, one of Nicks’ closest friends who later married Fleetwood. Sara Recor is most likely the eponymous ‘Sara’, although there appears to be some confusion as to whether the ‘Sara’ in the song is referring to Recor or an unborn child that Nicks almost had with Don Henley.

“Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara,” Nicks confirmed to Billboard in 2017. “It’s accurate, but not the entirety of it.” Nicks had previously stated as far back as 1979 that she had wanted to name a daughter Sara had she gotten pregnant, but it seems more logical that Recor would be the root of Nicks’ infatuation with the name Sara.

It wasn’t the final time that the name would come up in a Fleetwood Mac song, either. Nearly a decade after recording ‘Sara’, Nicks once again used the name in the Tango in the Night song ‘Welcome to the Room… Sara’. In that track, Nicks transferred the Sara persona to herself, having previously used the pseudonym Sara Anderson during her stay at the Betty Ford Clinic in the mid-1980s. “Sara” was still a beacon of hope and solidarity, but this time Nicks herself had to be the one to do the heavy lifting.

Check out both ‘Sara’ and ‘Welcome to the Room… Sara’ down below.