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Fleetwood Mac · S6 E1
Bella Donna
Stevie goes solo. Tom Petty, Don Henley, and an album that sells four million copies before Mirage even starts
Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, California, early 1981. Stevie Nicks stands behind a microphone in someone else's studio, recording an album that has nothing to do with Fleetwood Mac, and for the first time in six years she doesn't have to ask anyone's permission.
"Edge of Seventeen" (Stevie Nicks, 1981). The guitar riff that launched a solo career. Written after John Lennon's murder and the death of her uncle Jonathan, this is Stevie at her most fierce, her most wounded, and her most untouchable. The white-winged dove takes flight.
The Solo Bet
Stevie Nicks signed a solo deal with Modern Records in 1980, while Fleetwood Mac was still touring Tusk. She brought a stack of songs the band had rejected or that she'd been saving, and paired them with producer Jimmy Iovine, who'd just finished working with Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. The rest of the band watched nervously. If Bella Donna flopped, it was an expensive vanity project. If it succeeded, it might be the beginning of the end.
Sources
Davis, Stephen. "Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks." St. Martin's Press, 2017.
Fleetwood, Mick. "Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac." William Morrow, 1990.
“In Fleetwood Mac I usually get two or three songs on an album, but here I got to do ten. Bella Donna represents ten years worth of songs.”
— Stevie Nicks, on the Bella Donna sessions, from multiple interviews 1981
TAP TO REVEAL: What tragedy inspired "Edge of Seventeen"?
Edge of Seventeen, Stevie Nicks (1981)
"Edge of Seventeen" is built on a repeating sixteenth-note guitar figure from Waddy Wachtel that sounds like a hummingbird's wings, relentless and hypnotic. Jimmy Iovine's production layers Stevie's vocal in a way that Fleetwood Mac's records never did: she's front and center, with the band serving the voice rather than competing with it. Listen for how the drums are mixed unusually high, almost tribal, giving the song a urgency that most 1981 radio pop deliberately avoided. It doesn't sound like a solo debut. It sounds like a declaration of independence.
Sources
Davis, Stephen. "Gold Dust Woman." St. Martin's Press, 2017.
Sound City Studios
15456 Cabrito Road, Van Nuys, California. The legendary studio where Bella Donna was recorded, and where Fleetwood Mac had made their self-titled album and parts of Rumours just a few years earlier. Stevie returned to the same rooms, but this time the name on the tape boxes was hers alone.
Bella Donna: The Numbers
Leather and Lace, Stevie Nicks feat. Don Henley (1981)
"Leather and Lace" was originally written for Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter, but Stevie kept it for herself and sang it with Eagles vocalist Don Henley instead. The duet is tender and vulnerable in a way that none of Bella Donna's bigger singles are. For an episode about Stevie stepping out alone, this song shows the other side of independence: the late-night phone calls, the need for someone to catch you. She could sell four million records, but she still wanted someone to sing the harmony.
Leather and Lace, Stevie Nicks feat. Don Henley (1981)
"Give to me your leather, take from me my lace." The title is a metaphor for the exchange between toughness and softness in a relationship, and Stevie sings it like someone who's spent years being the strong one and is tired of it. Don Henley's voice is the perfect counterweight: warm, steady, grounding. The song was a top-ten hit, but it works best late at night with the volume low, which is probably how it was written.
Where did the title "Edge of Seventeen" actually come from?
Bella Donna is a smash, but now Stevie has to come back to the band that watched her leave. The Mirage sessions need a hit single, and Christine McVie has one ready. Next: "Hold Me," a duet that sounds like everything is fine, and an album made by a band pretending the cracks aren't showing.
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