CWW: Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks is an inspiration to many famous women singers, including Taylor Swift, Sarah McLachlan, Michelle Branch, and Kelly Clarkson—just to name a few.  Writing songs and singing has always been a natural talent for Stevie.  She wrote her first song called “I’ve Loved and I’m Lost (and I’m Sad but Not Blue) on the day of her sixteenth birthday after she received her first guitar.  She also began her first band in high school called “Changing Times”.  After she moved to Chicago, however, she started a new band with her old friend Lindsey Buckingham.  He became a major part in her life after this, and they formed a band called “Fritz” with two other men.  Stevie was the only girl, and she is quoted in an interview saying “Living in a world with all these guys, I was really not relating too well to any of them because I was working and they were all practicing their guitars.”  “I was the Mom, the Camp Director.”  I think these are good quotes that show how Stevie took on such a huge responsibility in her band, being the only female.  Fritz ended in 1972, and Stevie and Lindsey decided to go on as a duo.

On New Years Eve, their manager calls Stevie and Lindey's home and tells them that Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac wants the two of them to join the band. "I [Stevie] said, 'Right Keith, they want Lindsey to join the band, right?' And he said, 'Well, maybe, but they know they're not going to get him without you anyway, so you're invited at least.'  This shows Stevie’s insecurities of Fleetwood Mac not wanting her in the band. Keith responds by making it seem that Stevie is not as significant as Lindsey, that she just an add-on that “comes with Lindsey.”  She joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, and quickly became the group’s main songwriter.   When Fleetwood Mac's tour ended in 1981, Stevie composed her first solo album titled Bella Donna. However, she didn’t originally want to be a solo artist. She wanted to work with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but they didn’t want a woman on their album. Stevie’s persistence led her to composing a few songs with Tom. 

I took some quotes of Stevie Nicks from various sources, ones that express her vulnerability as a woman and also of her strong-willingness as a woman. 

She says she was treated in Fleetwood Mac in the beginning as “a spoiled-rotten princess” but that soon changed.  “Now I don’t feel like a princess anymore.  I feel like a hard-working princess.”

 “If I was going to be a writer, I was going to write down the truth, and I wasn’t going to name names, be unkind, but I was going to tell the truth.”  This reminded me of Virginia Woolf in "A Room of Her Own", who refused to write fiction when she got the opportunity to write.

 “Between my lines, no one knows unless you really look, but that’s the people I write for.  The people that need someone to write down what’s happening to all of us.”  Since her lyrics are so deep, they can be interpreted so many different ways.  Almost anyone can relate to her music depending on the way one reads it.  Stevie did this for a reason, so her lyrics can reach a wide range of people.  She is able to admit her vulnerability and indecisiveness that a man often brings out in a woman through her lyrics, but she is also able to speak how she doesn’t need to depend on a man. 

Dreams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9EDUClEyo

Now here you go again
You say you want your freedom                 
Well who am I to keep you down
It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering
What you had, And what you lost
And what you had, And what you lost

Chorus:
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
They say, women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know
You'll know

http://www.last.fm/music/Stevie+Nicks/+images/4982348
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/fleetwood+mac/dreams_20054239.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuPCUMoDc6M

http://www.fmlegacy.com/Bios/biostevie.html