The “terrible” Stevie Nicks album she never wanted to release
It would be impossible to be a songwriter in Fleetwood Mac and not feel you’re getting overshadowed. For as many great songs as Stevie Nicks could create from scratch, it was always going to be difficult getting all of them on a record when she had to compete with Lindsey Buckingham’s pop marvels and the stirring ballads of Christine McVie. Although Nicks got the best of both worlds when she decided to go solo, Street Angel was far from the massive smash she envisioned it being.
When looking at how her career has played out, though, Nicks has never been one to write traditionally. Rather than work things out on any instrument, many of her early Fleetwood Mac songs involved Buckingham helping her through most of the recording sessions, spending time fleshing out songs aimed at the failures of their romantic relationship.
Buckingham had become increasingly frustrated when trying to help Nicks complete the song. Though much of Tusk featured Buckingham at arm’s length for many of Nicks’s songs, she had already become a rock and roll tour de force.
Throughout her solo career, Nicks would make albums that tapped into her mystical side, with Bella Donna introducing her to the world as an independent hitmaker on songs like ‘The Edge of Seventeen’. Even though Nicks had escaped the constant tension of Fleetwood Mac recording sessions, she had also picked up a nefarious habit behind the scenes.
Becoming dependent on cocaine, Nicks would spend the first half of her solo career strung out half the time, later saying she didn’t recognise herself performing in the video for ‘Talk To Me’. While Nicks would eventually get sober after her doctor said that she might lose her singing voice, she came out on the other side only to find ‘The Mac’ disintegrating again.
After a physical altercation, Buckingham, the band’s longtime guitarist, would be let go for the next album, Behind the Mask. While Nicks wouldn’t be far behind him when moving on to her solo career, her experiences with various prescription pills spelt disaster for Street Angel.
From start to finish, Nicks was unhappy trying to get the album done, sobering up halfway through the sessions and not liking anything they had worked on. Since it’s commonly not a good idea to throw away thousands of dollars worth of studio time, Nicks would put most of the album out regardless, only touring for a little while before Bill Clinton’s inauguration led to the classic lineup of Fleetwood Mac getting back together.
All the good vibes amongst the band did nothing to sway Nicks’s opinion on Street Angel, saying in Gold Dust Woman, “I’d been taking Klonopin for almost eight years. Street Angel was done in the last two years of that when it kicked in to the point where I lost my soul and creativity…I listened to the record, and I knew it was terrible. It has cost a fortune”.
Nicks didn’t have to spend time moping for long, with The Dance sparking a new interest in her era of Fleetwood Mac and launching them into the next generation the right way with a worldwide tour. Although she may have a close relationship with all of her songs, there’s a good chance that not many of Street Angel’s songs will see the light of day in a concert setting soon.
