The Stevie Nicks song that was definitely not about Don Henley: “He wishes”
Throughout her stellar career, Stevie Nicks has always been an open book regarding the lyrics to her songs. Nicks has used songwriting as a tool to deal with the challenges that life has thrown in her face and the moments that have been worthy of celebration.
One topic that has popped up consistently has been the men in her life. Most notably, Lindsey Buckingham was her most significant muse, and despite parting ways romantically in the 1970s, their stories will forever be intertwined because of the heavenly music their relationship inspired.
Before the duo joined Fleetwood Mac, they met at high school and played music together in Fritz. After their initial band parted ways, Buckingham and Nicks continued to work in a new capacity as a duo.
While they secured a major record deal as Buckingham Nicks, releasing one album, it failed to be a commercial success. However, it famously caught the attention of Mick Fleetwood, who recruited the pair to join Fleetwood Mac, and the crumbling of their relationship inspired a host of material on the band’s most revered album, Rumours.
Another individual who inspired Nicks and was romantically linked to her was Eagles’ Don Henley. The duo were only a couple for a brief period at the end of the 1970s but have remained close friends ever since despite not being soulmates in the traditional sense.
Henley influenced her beloved track, ‘Leather and Lace’, which he also appears on. Nicks once admitted of the Bella Donna composition: “I have to tell you now that Mr Don Henley was pretty much responsible for this song because he came over every day and told me to either start over or that I was on the right track, and he made me finish it.”
Although they were about to break up once the song was nearing completion, Henley still performed his duty as a collaborator on ‘Leather and Lace‘.
It’s often been presumed that Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Sara’, from Tusk, was also written about Henley. However, Nicks denied this assumption and claimed the track was inspired by a myriad of different people in her life.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Fleetwood Mac singer said that although the title came from Mick Fleetwood’s ex-wife, it also wasn’t inspired by her, stating, “I used her name because I love the name so much, but it was really about what was going on with all of us at that time. It was about Mick’s and my relationship, and it was about one I went into after Mick.”
While the song contains many lines taken from Nicks’ personal life, she also used her artistic license to flesh out ‘Sara’ with smatterings of fiction. She explained, “You’re just making a movie, writing a story around this one paragraph, that little kernel of life.”
The song also includes the line, ‘When you build your house’, which Henley interpreted about him because he was building a house at the time. “I was building my house at the time, and there’s a line in the song that says, And when you build your house, call me,” he told GQ in 1991.
However, Nicks denied this to Entertainment Weekly, stating, “He wishes! If Don wants to think the ‘house’ was one of the 90 houses he built—and he did build house after beautiful house, and once they were done, he would move because he wasn’t interested in them anymore [laughs]… No. He is one of my best friends in the world. If anything happened to me, he would be there, always. But if someone said that, they’re so full of shit!”
Furthermore, on the line about the house, Nicks elaborated on its meaning, saying, “It was about when you get your act together, then let me know, because until you get your act together, I really can’t be around you.”
While Henley inspired Nicks on ‘Leather and Lace,’ the Fleetwood Mac singer maintains the same can’t be said for ‘Sara’. Although Henley may have previously believed otherwise, Nicks’ rebuttal is definitive.
