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In 1981, Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album Bella Donna reached No 1 on the US Billboard 200. The album also yielded three huge hit singles, including one of her signature songs, Edge Of Seventeen. But as Nicks would later reveal, she never really wanted to have a solo career – and she made Bella Donna out of pure frustration.
By the time Nicks set about recording Bella Donna in Los Angeles with producer Jimmy Iovine, she was firmly established as one of three principal singers and songwriters in Fleetwood Mac alongside Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham.
Nicks had provided the band with hit songs including Rhiannon, Dreams and Sara, as well as classic albums tracks such as Landslide (from the self-titled 1975 album), Gold Dust Woman (from the 1977 masterpiece Rumours) and Beautiful Child (from 1979’s experimental double album Tusk).
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But for Nicks, all of this was not quite enough.
As she stated in a 2001 interview with Q magazine: “I never wanted to be a solo artist. I like being in a band. I only became a solo artist because a band, unfortunately, doesn’t give you more than three or four songs per record. So if you want to write a lot of songs, like I do, you need another outlet.”
She added pointedly: “Bella Donna was all the songs that were turned down by Fleetwood Mac between 1975 and 1980.”
This was not entirely accurate. The album’s biggest hit song was Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, a duet with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, written by Petty and his lead guitarist Mike Campbell.
Nicks also co-wrote the song Kind Of Woman with The Heartbreakers’ keyboard player Benmont Tench, and teamed up with Roy Bittan, pianist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, to write Think About It.
But the other seven tracks on Bella Donna were written by Nicks alone – and these included Edge Of Seventeen (famously sampled for Destiny Child’s Bootylicious) and Leather And Lace, another duet, this one featuring Eagles star Don Henley.
Discussing her songwriting process, Nicks told Q: “I am not the kind of person who can set up a day of writing with people. ‘Okay, I’m gonna write at 2.30 and I’ll come to your house and write with you at seven.’ I don’t write like that.
“I write when the spirit hits me. I also don’t make up songs. Really, all my songs have to come from something. It doesn’t have to be about me, just something that touches me somehow.”
Nicks was speaking to Q in 2001 to promote her sixth solo album, Trouble In Shangri-La. And as she explained, this album featured two songs she wrote before she and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac, when they were operating as the duo Buckingham Nicks.
“Sorcerer and Candlebright, are old songs from the very beginning of the ’70s,” she said. “Sorcerer is from 1974, the year before [she and Buckingham joined] Fleetwood Mac.”
She confirmed that Sorcerer “nearly went on Tusk.”
In fact, the first version of the song to be released was performed by American singer Marilyn Martin for the soundtrack to the 1984 movie Streets Of Fire. Martin’s version of Sorcerer had Nicks on backing vocals.
Candlebright was originally titled Nomad and was briefly considered for the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album before being sidelined in favour of Rhiannon.
The versions of Sorcerer and Candlebright featured on the Trouble In Shangri-La album both featured Sheryl Crow playing guitar and sharing lead vocals with Nicks.
The basic tracks were recorded two years before Crow added her parts, and Nicks admitted: “I never planned to have her sing.”
Another guest vocalist on the album was Natalie Maines of The Chicks, who duetted with Nicks on Too Far From Texas.
“Natalie sang on the record because Sheryl knew Natalie,” Nicks said. “I mentioned I had a song, Too Far From Texas, and I thought my country voice and her country voice would work great together.”
However, Nicks confessed: “I would never start out to gather a group of women together. I don’t like being one among a group of girls. I would prefer to be in a group of men. But I’m sharing a lot of these songs, and that goes back to the feeling of being in a band.”
Trouble In Shangri-La included one other song that Nicks had written in the ’70s – Planets Of The Universe, composed during the Rumours sessions.
But she said that the impetus for Trouble In Shangri-La came from a song named Love Is, which she wrote in 1994.
“I was delighted when I wrote that song, because I knew it was the first song for this record. And then a year later I wrote the song Trouble In Shangri-La, and I knew that was the title for the record.”
She continued: “When I knew the concept was Trouble In Shangri-La, I started feeding the songs in, and suddenly everything I was writing was fitting into my concept.
“Trouble In Shangri-La is about being a star – a star in your world, and how difficult it is to stay there. How hard it is for all of us to find paradise and to stay there.
“All these songs about love and friendship and problems all seemed to just fall right in to my little plan. The two or three songs that didn’t fit the concept, they were pulled from the record.
“I love the fact that it ends with Love Is, which was the first song written, and at the end of Love Is it says: ‘Am I happy? Yes I am. Do I know you love me now? Yes I do. Do I know you cannot stay? I know. All about love.’ I love the idea of saying that.”
Nicks revealed to Q that another song from this album, I Miss You, was a deeply personal statement.
“I Miss You is written about the same person that Beautiful Child is written about,” she said. “The person died and I wrote the poem of I Miss You Now when I found out that he had passed away. And months ago I put it to music.”
The person in question is believed to be Derek Taylor, the former road manager for The Beatles.
Nicks said of Trouble In Shangri-La: “It wasn’t that much fun to make because it was so long. 15 months, every day, five days a week. But I love it now.”
She also said that for her, retirement would never be an option.
“If you want to be an entertainer, you can never stop,” she smiled. “You get old with everybody. As long as you’re out there every couple of years, people don’t mind that you’re getting old. They mind it when they don’t see you since they were 14 and you come back and you’re 60!
She concluded: “Even if I didn’t sell records I would continue to be an entertainer. I’d go to Las Vegas and figure out a big, fabulous show and not have to travel.”
