“The beginning”: The song that started Stevie Nicks’ solo career
It’s never easy trying to distance one’s self from an iconic band. Even though you might have a lot more to give as a solo artist, there’s a chance that more than a few people are looking at your work with a bit of a side eye, wondering if you will ever manage to recapture the same spirit with the rest of the band beside you. Although Stevie Nicks was more than capable of holding her own in Fleetwood Mac, one particular tune helped give her the confidence she needed when striking out on her own.
Then again, anyone who had been in Fleetwood Mac at that point probably needed a break from the band. Outside of having to go through the rock and roll equivalent of a soap opera in Rumours, Tusk felt like the album that Lindsey Buckingham wanted to make and everyone else suffered through, coming out as disjointed as The Beatles sounded when making The White Album.
Considering her history with Buckingham, Nicks was already looking for an outlet, and there was no way a three or four song quota was going to satisfy her in the band. What she needed was a group of her own, and after getting the blessing from her bandmates, she ended up working with Jimmy Iovine to create magic.
At the same time, what would a solo Stevie Nicks album even sound like? After all, she had been the starlet of Fleetwood Mac, and even when she was singing some of their classic tunes, half the reason they worked was due to everyone working off each other. Even though she did get a few pointers from people like Tom Petty, Nicks didn’t need to worry about a damn thing the minute that she performed ‘Blue Lamp.’
Although the tune had been kicking around for a while when Nicks decided to use it for the soundtrack to the film Heavy Metal, it was a completely different vocabulary when she entered the studio. After spending years trying to finetune everything so it would sound perfect, this was about as natural a session as they come, with every member working off each other to create a raw performance.
Since this predated anything that turned up on Bella Donna, Nicks remembered this setting the tone apart from Fleetwood Mac, saying, “ It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I’d ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I’d ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing. Fleetwood Mac doesn’t record that way. They record from a more technical standpoint. When I’m recording, I like to imagine that I’m at a concert singing in front of thousands of people. I record for feeling.”
And it’s easy to feel the whole band working off each other during the tune. Since Fleetwood Mac often took on a different identity whenever they played live, this was the first time since ‘Gold Dust Woman’ that Nicks’s witchy persona made an appearance on record, along with her breathtaking high notes on the tune.
But Nicks wasn’t looking to outdo Fleetwood Mac when making ‘Blue Lamp’. She wanted to establish an identity of her own, and by the time the final notes rang out on the tune, she knew that there was something else waiting for her beyond singing about her reflections in the snow-covered hills.
