Stevie Nicks turned 73 in May this year. Just let that sink in. I can't come to terms with it.
Known primarily for her work with Fleetwood Mac, there are more strings to Stevie's bow than that. I first heard of her in 1974 when I moved to New Zealand. A friend had the album "Buckingham Nicks" which, obviously, was a release by Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. They'd met in High School and sang together at school functions. A couple of years later when Lindsay was playing guitar for a band called Fritz he called Stevie and asked her to join. They ended up doing openings for some of the legendary groups of the time, Big Brother and the Holding Company (think Janis Joplin), Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane and the man himself, Jimi Hendrix.
In 1973 they recorded and released their eponymous album and it pretty much sank like a stone. A couple of radio stations picked it up but generally it was ignored and deleted from the record label catalogue. To this day, it's only ever been available on vinyl, no CD re-releases have been issued. There are however bootleg CD versions available (of which I have one) and as well as tracks from the original album they include some live recordings from concerts they did trying to promote the LP. One of those live recordings is Stevie singing a very early version of her song 'Rhiannon'.
Due to the failure of the album their manager released them from their contract and they both went back to "ordinary" jobs. Despite that, the album became a lifeline for them.
As happens sometimes, serendipity steps in. Mick Fleetwood was in the Sound City studios in Los Angeles when he heard one of their tracks being played, 'Frozen Love'. He got John and Christine McVie and together they arranged to meet Lindsay and Stevie at a restaurant. Lindsay turned up but they had to wait for Stevie, she was finishing her shift as a waitress at another theme restaurant and when she arrived for the meeting she was still wearing a flapper costume.
The pair of them were invited to join Fleetwood Mac in 1974. When Mac released their 1975 album 'Fleetwood Mac' (the second eponymous album after the 1968 album of the same name so this one is referred to as The White Album) 6 of the 11 tracks were written or co-written by Buckingham and/or Nicks. The aforementioned 'Rhiannon' written by Stevie became one of the stand out songs and another Stevie composition 'Crystal' was also included. 'Crystal' had been one of the songs released on the Buckinham Nicks album.
And so to 'Bella Donna'. This was Stevie's first solo album but she certainly gathered some talented friends around her. There are two duets on the album, 'Stop Draggin' My Heart Around' written by Tom Petty and performed with him and 'Leather and Lace' a Stevie song recorded with Don Henley of Eagles fame. Those two tracks along with the 'Edge of Seventeen' and 'After the Glitter Fades' were all released as singles between 1981/2. Playing acoustic guitar on 6 of the 10 tracks was none other than our old Vinyl Vault friend Davey Johnstone. Apart from being the long time guitarist for Elton John I've previously mentioned Davey's work with Joan Armatrading (Vinyl Vault 20 July 2021) and as part of the Harrogate linked 70's group Magna Carta (Vinyl Vault 29 July 2021).
'Edge of Seventeen' is a bit like 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida' - not in any musical sense, but in it's title. Due to mishearing 'In a Garden of Eden' we got the Iron Butterfly song (Vinyl Vault 6 June 2021). Likewise, when talking to Tom Petty's wife Jane, Jane said that her and Tom met 'at the age of seventeen'. Because of Jane's strong accent, Stevie heard it as 'edge of seventeen' and the phrase stuck. She used it as the title of a song inspired by the death of both John Lennon and shortly after, the death of her uncle.
'Leather and Lace' started as a song Waylon Jennings asked Stevie to write, to be a duet for Waylon and his wife Jessi Colter. Stevie's ex lover and friend Don Henley helped her with the song and after finding out that Waylon and Jessi were splitting up, Stevie and Don recorded the album version.
'Think About It' is one of those personal songs that happen along the way. Christine McVie was going through a break-up with hubby and fellow Fleetwood Mac member John McVie at the same time as Stevie and Lindsay were splitting up, so the song became some sort of therapy for the two women. Fortunately it also ended up being a great song.
Stevie has released 8 solo albums to date, we had to wait until 1994's 'Street Angel' before we got the inevitable Bob Dylan cover. She does a creditable version of 'Just Like a Woman'.
One of Fleetwood Macs biggest fans, and in particular a devotee of Stevie's, is Lorde (Vinyl Vault 31 July 2020, 21 August 2021). Perhaps the best compliment that Lorde could have hoped to get was when Stevie said, in front of an Auckland crowd "if she had been my age, and lived our age, she probably would have been the third girl in Fleetwood Mac".
'Rhiannon' was about an old Welsh witch. Despite the rumours, her fashion and her stage presence, Stephanie Lynn Nicks is NOT a witch. But there's still time.
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