I imagine it will be one of those too-cheerful-by-half doctors who seem to run their surgeries from the studios of breakfast television that will write it. Probably launched in time for Valentine’s Day next year, “Your Guide To Maintaining A Partnership For Life”. Something like that, only with a sexier title, obviously.
There will be two people in this world who will definitely not be consulted as expert contributors to this no doubt great work. Stevie Nicks, and me.
As my haphazard history of relationships with women is of little interest beyond my world of memories of “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I hope we can still stay friends”, the reader may be pleased to know that we are instead going to try and unravel a period in the life of Stevie Nicks, when overlapping relationships, torrid break-ups and splintered friendships led to her spilling a million dollars on cocaine.
There’s a book and a movie to be written about that period in the lives of the members of Fleetwood Mac; the four years from when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined, through to the disintegration following the recording of the ‘Tusk’ album.
An entanglement that would tie Pete Frame in knots.
There will be errors here as even Stevie herself says that she can’t quite recall the order of what happened when, and to whom.
In a way, the detail is the least important aspect of our quest, for this imbroglio of romance led to the construction and recording of one of the finest, most evocative, and emotionally draining songs in the history of pop music.
Stevie Nicks was the partner of Lindsey Buckingham. Their relationship was hitting turbulence.
Stevie began an affair with Don Henley, who, using his newly acquired riches, sent his Lear jet around the world to pick up Nicks, bring her to his house, and then ‘deliver’ her back to the Fleetwood Mac tour. Stevie Nicks was not the only dalliance that benefitted from this luxurious commute. The practice became so commonplace that Eagles’ roadies referred to the process as “Love ‘em and Lear ‘em”
At this time, Nicks was also seeing J.D. Souther, so when she became pregnant there was an understandable confusion; but Henley and Nicks both knew that he was the father, and together they decided an abortion was the answer. Stevie called the unborn child ‘Sara’ after her closest friend, Sara Recor.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Henley/Nicks alliance didn’t survive, and Stevie began a relationship with a member of the Fleetwood Mac road crew.
Mick Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd and over a short period of time they were to divorce, remarry, and divorce again. Whilst Fleetwood and Boyd were still married but not too comfortably, he began a clandestine affair with Nicks. However, Fleetwood simultaneously started a relationship with Sara Recor (who was also married at the time).
Stevie found out, and naturally was deeply upset; yet she blamed Fleetwood, and for a time at least, her friendship with Recor survived, to the extent that Nicks wrote the song that encapsulates this era, with Sara Recor sitting beside her at the piano.
The original demo for ‘Sara’ ran to sixteen minutes and is an unburdening of the soul. There are verses alluding to each individual member of Fleetwood Mac and the song includes references to this extraordinary entanglement of lives, love, and pain.
Over the years reviewers have seized on the obvious but misleading conclusion that the song is wholly based on Stevie’s relationship with Recor, but researching many interviews and snippets from news sources and magazines reveals a wider panorama.
The 6:27 version of the song leaves the multiple references behind and brings a zoom lens towards the Henley, Nicks, Fleetwood, Recor quadrangle. Although the four sides are criss-crossed with overlapping triangles of love and regret.
Only those with a soul hewn from the toughest flint can fail to feel their heart flutter and a misting of the eyes as Stevie Nicks sets out an almost unbearable sadness of Janov proportions.
Fleetwood is a ‘great dark wing’; Recor is the poet in Nicks’ heart, and it is almost too much to hear her calling out to Henley, “When you build your house.... call me....”
There is no other performance of a song that attempts to unburden the writer and help find some peace as the operatic drama Stevie Nicks brings to ‘Sara’.
Yet the most poignant references are almost impossible to hear for the casual listener. In the fade, Stevie (and it is heart breaking) pleads to her terminated baby:
“All I ever wanted was to know you were dreaming; there’s a heartbeat. No it never really died; you never really died.”
Stevie and I share a problem. It is so much easier to build a house than build a relationship.
“When you build your house, call me.”
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
Sources:
Marc Eliot - To The Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles
Barney Hoskyns – Hotel California
Michael Walker – Laurel Canyon
MTV archives
VH1 Storytellers
US magazine
Interview with Tommy Vance, 1994
Daily Telegraph interview, 2007
There will be two people in this world who will definitely not be consulted as expert contributors to this no doubt great work. Stevie Nicks, and me.
As my haphazard history of relationships with women is of little interest beyond my world of memories of “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I hope we can still stay friends”, the reader may be pleased to know that we are instead going to try and unravel a period in the life of Stevie Nicks, when overlapping relationships, torrid break-ups and splintered friendships led to her spilling a million dollars on cocaine.
There’s a book and a movie to be written about that period in the lives of the members of Fleetwood Mac; the four years from when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined, through to the disintegration following the recording of the ‘Tusk’ album.
An entanglement that would tie Pete Frame in knots.
There will be errors here as even Stevie herself says that she can’t quite recall the order of what happened when, and to whom.
In a way, the detail is the least important aspect of our quest, for this imbroglio of romance led to the construction and recording of one of the finest, most evocative, and emotionally draining songs in the history of pop music.
Stevie Nicks was the partner of Lindsey Buckingham. Their relationship was hitting turbulence.
Stevie began an affair with Don Henley, who, using his newly acquired riches, sent his Lear jet around the world to pick up Nicks, bring her to his house, and then ‘deliver’ her back to the Fleetwood Mac tour. Stevie Nicks was not the only dalliance that benefitted from this luxurious commute. The practice became so commonplace that Eagles’ roadies referred to the process as “Love ‘em and Lear ‘em”
At this time, Nicks was also seeing J.D. Souther, so when she became pregnant there was an understandable confusion; but Henley and Nicks both knew that he was the father, and together they decided an abortion was the answer. Stevie called the unborn child ‘Sara’ after her closest friend, Sara Recor.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Henley/Nicks alliance didn’t survive, and Stevie began a relationship with a member of the Fleetwood Mac road crew.
Mick Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd and over a short period of time they were to divorce, remarry, and divorce again. Whilst Fleetwood and Boyd were still married but not too comfortably, he began a clandestine affair with Nicks. However, Fleetwood simultaneously started a relationship with Sara Recor (who was also married at the time).
Stevie found out, and naturally was deeply upset; yet she blamed Fleetwood, and for a time at least, her friendship with Recor survived, to the extent that Nicks wrote the song that encapsulates this era, with Sara Recor sitting beside her at the piano.
The original demo for ‘Sara’ ran to sixteen minutes and is an unburdening of the soul. There are verses alluding to each individual member of Fleetwood Mac and the song includes references to this extraordinary entanglement of lives, love, and pain.
Over the years reviewers have seized on the obvious but misleading conclusion that the song is wholly based on Stevie’s relationship with Recor, but researching many interviews and snippets from news sources and magazines reveals a wider panorama.
The 6:27 version of the song leaves the multiple references behind and brings a zoom lens towards the Henley, Nicks, Fleetwood, Recor quadrangle. Although the four sides are criss-crossed with overlapping triangles of love and regret.
Only those with a soul hewn from the toughest flint can fail to feel their heart flutter and a misting of the eyes as Stevie Nicks sets out an almost unbearable sadness of Janov proportions.
Fleetwood is a ‘great dark wing’; Recor is the poet in Nicks’ heart, and it is almost too much to hear her calling out to Henley, “When you build your house.... call me....”
There is no other performance of a song that attempts to unburden the writer and help find some peace as the operatic drama Stevie Nicks brings to ‘Sara’.
Yet the most poignant references are almost impossible to hear for the casual listener. In the fade, Stevie (and it is heart breaking) pleads to her terminated baby:
“All I ever wanted was to know you were dreaming; there’s a heartbeat. No it never really died; you never really died.”
Stevie and I share a problem. It is so much easier to build a house than build a relationship.
“When you build your house, call me.”
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
Sources:
Marc Eliot - To The Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles
Barney Hoskyns – Hotel California
Michael Walker – Laurel Canyon
MTV archives
VH1 Storytellers
US magazine
Interview with Tommy Vance, 1994
Daily Telegraph interview, 2007
