“The crew were screaming at me”: The song that almost killed Stevie Nicks
The entertainment industry has never been known as the safest business in the world. As much people like the idea of carrying on as one of the best entertainers in the world through their sheer talent, it takes a lot more muscle to brave through gruelling tours or have to go through studio sessions where you have to come up with the greatest music that you can on the spot. Compared to that, the promotion cycle should be easy, but Stevie Nicks remembered that this song nearly cost her her life when it came time to give it to MTV.
Granted, most of the best aspects of Nicks’ career didn’t come without some hardship. She had already been through emotional hell trying to get away from Lindsey Buckingham when making Rumours, and the whole reason why she ended up going on a solo career in the first place was to get out all of the songs that she had been working on that Fleetwood Mac didn’t have time for.
And it’s not like she was that far off the mark. No matter how many immaculate songs Christine McVie or Buckingham wrote, Bella Donna is good enough to stand among any of Fleetwood Mac’s classics, especially when she managed to capture that magical spirit again on tunes like ‘After the Glitter Fades’ and her duet with Don Henley, ‘Leather and Lace’.
While every sophomore album is in danger of being too scattershot, ‘Stand Back’ proved that what Nicks had wasn’t a fluke. Despite being heavily inspired by Prince, this is the kind of rebuke to every artist who said that she couldn’t write a hit on her own while also featuring one of the most magical videos that she ever put out.
Then again, the version that you see today isn’t what Nicks had in mind. When she first started drafting the concept for the video, she had initially envisioned a period piece ripped straight out of the American Civil War, complete with actors riding on horses. Tom Petty had started to stretch the concept of what a video could do with his cowboy-tinged ‘You Got Lucky’, but Nicks admitted that one take was far too close for her to continue on with the shoot.
As it turns out, she was not cut out to be on horseback throughout the tune, with her explaining that she nearly died trying to film everything, saying, “I almost got killed riding that horse. He bolted into a grove of trees, and the crew in the car driving alongside were screaming at me to jump off.” While that action movie shot could have worked well, the video actually works a lot better in the minimalist setting.
After all, the track is about capturing the moment when Nicks felt betrayed and needed some space away from her other half, so seeing her with various dancers in front of a dark backdrop makes everything focus a little bit more. Because if they had kept going with the Civil War theme, it would have probably ended up looking like some forgotten movie that would be put up on Lifetime in the middle of the day.
Nicks did eventually get her wish to shoot on location later in her career, though, spending a few days working on the video for ‘Little Lies’ with Fleetwood Mac on Tango in the Night. For a song that was this tortured, though, ‘Stand Back’ was something that needed to be expressed by Nicks rather than be the reason why she ended up in intensive care.
