(Credits: Far Out / Atlantic Catalog Group)
Sun 12 October 2025 12:00, UK
By the arrival of the 1980s, Stevie Nicks was at an artistic and professional crossroads.
Joining the former blues band turned soft rock arena filler on the last day of 1974, along with then partner and musical collaborator Lindsey Buckingham, Nicks would sail to gargantuan levels of Billboard domination with the Fleetwood Mac soap opera, 1977’s Rumours, a monster of a record still standing as the eighth biggest-selling album of all time.
But, amid the commercial fortunes yielded from canonical cuts like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’, Fleetwood Mac lapsed into a maelstrom of mutual relationship strains and infidelity, fraught further with mountainous levels of cocaine. Such febrile atmospheres clung to the studio for 1979’s follow-up, Tusk. Hooked on the post-punk belligerence simmering in the musical underground, Buckingham’s eagerness to pursue similarly pointed arrangements caused creative tensions within the band, not least Nicks, fatigued by the months of idle hours in Los Angeles’ The Village studio.
“They record from a more technical standpoint,” Nicks confessed to Bay Area Music in 1981, comparing the differing approach between Fleetwood Mac and solo material. “When I’m recording, I like to imagine that I’m at a concert singing in front of thousands of people. I record for feeling. I’m not good at the technical stuff. I don’t like standing there in a room, after the tracks have been done, and singing the same song 50 times in a row. I hate it”.
She added, “I want to sing a song once, maybe twice, and if it isn’t working, maybe go on to another song. Fleetwood Mac is the opposite. They labour over every detail. I care about the final feeling when you hear it on a car radio or at home on your stereo”.
Nicks was eager to create very different recording conditions for 1981’s Bella Donna. Corralling the likes of Tom Petty, Don Henley, and a host of acclaimed session musicians, Nicks sought to ensure that the atmosphere was charged with the live band set-up over fastidious tech tinkering. Counting her signature ‘Edge of Seventeen’, Nicks forged a solo record that rivalled her day job in chart success that year, topping the Billboard 200 album sales. Yet, the song first cut from the Bella Donna sessions was ‘Blue Lamp’, later to appear on the Heavy Metal soundtrack.
“It was very important that it found a place for itself,” Nicks remarked. “I love that song. It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I’d ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I’d ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing”.
Inspired by the dark blue Tiffany lamp gifted by her mother on the night she joined Fleetwood Mac, Nicks’ ode to the mysterious light that breaks the dark didn’t just shine a glow for her and Buckingham to flock to the soft rock juggernaut like insects in the (Tango) night, but also guided Nicks down a secondary path toward solo stardom and closing the decade as one of the world’s biggest stars.
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