When releasing a record, no artist is immune from feeling uninspired. Believing in a song while playing your guitar or piano at home is one thing, but once you get into the studio, you might spend hours tweaking it until it sounds even remotely as good as it did in your head. Even with a few hits under their resume, it’s easy to think that feeling goes away. However, Stevie Nicks was still afraid to release Bella Donna in the early 1980s.
However, we must first examine how Nicks fits into her position with Fleetwood Mac before discussing her solo career. While performing as a duo with Lindsey Buckingham, she had already shown promise. However, half the time, her compositions—which started out as gentle songs like “Rhiannon“—became spiritual exercises with a full band backing her.
Above all, there appeared to be a certain aura around Nicks each time she performed. There were even rumours that she might have been a witch behind the scenes because a lot of her songs dealt with spiritual themes.
Could a witch really have created something as human as “Dreams“? Even though she had a strong spiritual presence on stage, the majority of her songs dealt with darker aspects of human nature. For example, in songs like “Sara,” she explored the sadness associated with losing a foetus. In “Silver Springs,” a B-side, she dedicated the song to her mother.
Nicks was aware that she needed to find a different outlet outside of Fleetwood Mac. Even though their style of music was perfect for them. Ultimately, if she followed everyone else’s lead and limited the number of songs on each album to two or three, she would inevitably accumulate her catalogue of songs, much like other underappreciated luminaries like George Harrison did when their turn came to steal the show.
But when Nicks finally had the chance to shine on her own, she was first afraid to publish anything at all. He said to NPR, “No one [was] self-indulgent at all.” I was concerned because it was my first record as a solo artist. I thought that was going to collapse. Thus, we didn’t waste any time. We were therefore eager to start recording that record when we entered the studio with Jimmy Iovine. The same as when we had Fleetwood Mac. Thus, it merely serves to illustrate your options if you so choose.
Though it would be easy to dismiss Nicks’s solo debut as merely a continuation of her work with Fleetwood Mac, that would be a grave understatement. Many songs on the album, besides her voice, didn’t fit her other group’s sound. In her previous group, “Leather and Lace” might have been a passable duet. But Buckingham could never pull off a performance akin to “Edge of Seventeen.”
This was the first opportunity Nicks had to establish her songwriter credentials without the support of her bandmates. She had spent the previous half of her career doing so with their assistance. When she performed live, she might have portrayed an elderly Welsh witch. However, as soon as she wrote songs like “Beauty and the Beast,” a different spiritual energy emerged.
