(Credits: Far Out / Stevie Nicks)
Tue 2 December 2025 17:30, UK
From the outside, we see music as a jovial thing. Surely tours are joyous, and rehearsal rooms are exciting, the process of writing or learning a song must just feel like play, being in a band must just be like messing around with mates. Stevie Nicks would likely say otherwise.
The immediate example that comes to mind here is obviously Fleetwood Mac. No one would ever be under any impression that the atmosphere in the room while making Rumours was fun or social. Instead, it was simply a mission to make it through for the music. Suddenly, the band became slaves to the sound – when it calls, they have to answer, and so they made an album through the pain all for the sake of the songs.
It was a hard-won victory when the album became a hit, born out of months of painful confrontations and even a dedicated plan of survival, keeping the women in one apartment and the men in another so they wouldn’t have to cross paths anywhere other than the studio, where any sort of bust-up could be channelled through the music, not through fists.
So Nicks is a pro at the grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it method of making music. However, the strife in her own band was usually emotional carnage. With another artist, she discovered the other side of the coin, meeting a pure perfectionist and seeing how hellish that can be, too.
The history of music is hectic with stories about this particular archetype. They’re artists who cannot let a single detail go unpolished, staying in the studio for days upon end simply to smooth out one time, almost inaudible thing, or, worse, bullying the band around them because humans themselves can never really compete with an uncheck need for total perfection.
For Nicks, Kenny Loggins fit that archetype, as when the pair collaborated, he pushed her hard, demanding everything be absolutely spot on.
At least he’s aware of it, as he said, “I was afraid it might be my only shot with her, so I pushed pretty hard.”
When the pair were collaborating on ‘Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’’ for Loggins’ 1978 second album, he called in Nicks to duet with him but was a demanding song partner.
“I called him Slave Driver Loggins. He cracked the whip on me for two days to get that particular performance,” Nicks recalled as what was supposed to be a simple and fun project between friends became a high-intensity experience as she was forced to sing it over and over and over again until the song was perfect.
“To her credit, she was a total pro who also didn’t want to give up until it was perfect,” Loggins said, suggesting that perhaps Nicks is actually just as much of a stickler for detail as he is, as she remained light-hearted or at least, to some degree, understanding. “The process was difficult and exhilarating; we probably laughed as much as we sang that night,” he said, even if that might not quite be Nicks’ remembrances of the song’s creation.
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