![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Stevie-Nicks-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n
Sat 27 June 2026 18:37, UK <\/p>\n
Going solo after being in a band is still one of the most terrifying things any artist could ask for. There\u2019s a certain degree of safety in being in a group, so to have someone deliberately kneecap themselves and force everyone to pay attention to them runs the risk of looking like they have some gigantic ego behind them. <\/p>\n
As long as they have the tunes to back it up, there\u2019s usually no problem, and Stevie Nicks<\/a> knew that she could become a fine solo artist when she put out the song \u2018Blue Lamp\u2019.<\/p>\n Because, as scary as going solo was, it was probably a lot better than having to put up with three different songwriters in Fleetwood Mac. There had been chances for Nicks to contribute to every album she worked on, but Tusk was a bit of a departure, where the group almost turned into \u2018The Lindsey Buckingham Show\u2019, with most of the songs focusing on his strange fascination with punk and new wave.<\/p>\n Nicks\u2019 tracks like \u2018Sara\u2019 were still the highlights of the project, but she didn\u2019t sign on to be a member of the group if she would only get a handful of songs on their double album\u2019s worth of material. There had to be a shortcut to get her works out, and \u2018Blue Lamp\u2019 was just a humble start that she submitted to the soundtrack of the film Heavy Metal.\u00a0<\/p>\n The soundtrack also offered Nicks a rare opportunity to step outside Fleetwood Mac\u2019s established identity. Free from the expectations that came with the band\u2019s internal dynamics, she was able to experiment with a different group of musicians and begin discovering what a Stevie Nicks record could sound like on its own terms.<\/p>\n The film itself is one of the more dated pieces of rock and roll pop culture, but the soundtrack is still one of the most eclectic. It\u2019s not often that people get to hear Nicks and Black Sabbath on the same record, but \u2018Blue Lamp\u2019 still has a lot of punch behind it, almost like Nicks didn\u2019t have to care about Fleetwood Mac if she didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n The idea of releasing an album like Bella Donna would still be scary, but Nicks thought that the success of \u2018Blue Lamp\u2019 helped her push forward as an artist, saying<\/a>, \u201cIt was very important that it found a place for itself. I love that song. It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I\u2019d ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I\u2019d ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n That live approach became one of the defining characteristics of Bella Donna. Rather than chasing endless perfection through overdubs, Nicks embraced the chemistry that comes from musicians responding to one another in real time, giving the album a warmth and spontaneity that contrasted with Fleetwood Mac\u2019s increasingly painstaking recording process.<\/p>\n That kind of internal chemistry comes across a lot more once Bella Donna was finished. There was still a lot to be done with tracks like \u2018Stop Draggin\u2019 My Heart Around\u2019 and \u2018Leather and Lace\u2019, but when you look at the deeper cuts like \u2018Beauty and the Beast\u2019, Nicks was channelling a lot of her emotion onto the tape that couldn\u2019t be translated by just punching in her vocal on a track that the rest of the group recorded a few weeks before.<\/p>\n For all of the great success that came from the album, it would be a lie to say that there wasn\u2019t a little bit of bad blood. Fleetwood Mac still managed to continue on, but the raw wounds of having to work around each other started to get to Buckingham, eventually culminating in him having a huge argument with Nicks years later that forced him out of the group<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the personal tensions, Nicks\u2019 flourishing solo career ultimately benefited Fleetwood Mac as well. Her success outside the band demonstrated that its members could pursue individual creative ambitions without immediately bringing the group\u2019s story to an end, even if maintaining that balance proved difficult over the following decades.<\/p>\n Then again, Nicks probably needs this kind of production style a lot more than Buckingham\u2019s need to make everything perfect. Rumours may have risen to the upper echelons of rock stardom because of how airtight it is, but there\u2019s something about capturing a raw performance amongst an entire group that\u2019s never going to be solved by working at it for seven hours at a time. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"Stevie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Stevie-Nicks-Bella-Donna-1981-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>Credit: Album Cover<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\")
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