Stevie Nicks has sold millions of records in a legendary career as singer for Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. But as she once revealed, it took a pep talk from a friendly rock star to give her the confidence to make one of her best solo albums.
When Nicks’ album Trouble In Shangri-La was released in 2001, she spoke to Q magazine about the all-star guest list on that album, her friendships with other artists, and her romances with fellow Fleetwood Mac star Lindsey Buckingham and Eagles drummer and vocalist Don Henley.
She began by revealing that it was Tom Petty, her most trusted rock star friend, who inspired her to make Trouble In Shangri-La.
20 years earlier, she and Petty had scored a top three US hit with their duet Stop Draggin' My Heart Around.
“I had dinner with Tom in ’95,” Nicks said. “We're close like a brother and sister, so Tom can say stuff to me that nobody else can. I said, ‘Will you help me get started on this —help me write some songs?’ And he got angry with me. He said, ‘You're one of the best songwriters I know! You don't need help.’ I went home that night and told everyone, ‘This is it — I'm starting a new record.’”
Sheryl Crow sang and played guitar on some of the key tracks on Trouble In Shangri-La, including Sorcerer, written by Nicks in 1974 and rejected for Fleetwood Mac's 1979 album Tusk.
“She's like the little sister I never had,” Nicks said. “I can't pull anything with Sheryl, nor her with me. Also, I can give her advice because I've already gone through everything she could possibly think of going through.”
Another guest on the album was Macy Gray on the song Bombay Sapphires - although Nicks admitted that she actually wanted Sting to sing that tune with her instead.
“The only reason that Macy is on the record is because we're managed by the same people,” she said. “Originally I wanted Sting to sing that little high part on Bombay Sapphires, but I chickened out on calling him and I asked Macy to do it.”
One friend of Nicks’ who did not appear on Trouble In Shangri-La was Prince. It had been reported that The Purple One had previously urged her to write sexier songs, of which she said: “Prince is overtly sexual. I am very quietly sexual. That's the difference. Prince always wants to be outrageous and flamboyant. I told him, ‘I do write about sex — you're just not hearing it because you're looking for this overt thing, a girl in a window, and that's not what I'm about.’”
Nicks also commented on her relationship with her former partner Lindsey Buckingham, and recalled how he had once admitted to undervaluing her songs.
“On TV one time he [Buckingham] came right out and said it: ‘Sometimes, because of what had happened between us, I really didn't want to help her.’ I was very aware of that. I would be thinking, ‘I know you like this song — you're just not doing anything with it because you're mad at me.’”
She qualified what she had said a few years earlier about Fleetwood Mac's reunion tour in 1997: that when she and Buckingham sang those songs again on stage, she felt in love again...
“That's the power of the music,” she said. “It doesn't matter what happens offstage — when we're up there it's like the old days because our spirits never really change. It really is wonderful. It's just not wonderful when the affair comes off the stage. That screws up the band more than anything. You can be in love on stage and that's fine, but as soon as you mess up and take it offstage, you don't want to talk to people, you don't want to stand next to them and you don't want them to put their arm around you.”
And she spoke about another high-profile romance with Don Henley. Their relationship began in 1976 - when Henley was working with the Eagles on Hotel California and Nicks was recording Rumours with Fleetwood Mac. Later, for Nicks' debut solo album Bella Donna, she and Henley performed a duet on the ballad Leather And Lace.
“My relationship with Don was really nice but precisely because we were both really famous rock stars, it didn't last,” Nicks said. “It was too hard. But we really did care about each other and we still do.”
And did Henley really have her whisked to his side in a Learjet, prompting him to quip, “Love 'em and Lear ‘em”?
Nicks laughed: “I never heard him say that - but that's something he would have said. He sent a little cranberry-red Learjet to pick me up from a Fleetwood Mac gig somewhere and fly me to New York. It waited on the ground for me to fly back the next day so I could make my gig. That was one of the first things that had me thinking, ‘Being a rock star really is wild!’”
