Stevie Nicks already had a dream profession in movement with Fleetwood Mac. That a lot is true, simply trying on the mammoth worldwide success they loved with 1977’s blockbuster Rumours album alone.
However the singer would finally develop stressed and really feel considerably creatively restricted throughout the confines of the group, which isn’t stunning, since Fleetwood Mac featured quite a few songwriters inside its ranks. Nicks discovered increasingly that she had a rising quantity of unreleased materials in want of a house.
Taking the prospect to embark on a solo profession appeared just like the pure path to take, irrespective of how a lot threat there may be. However how nicely would she fare exterior of the Fleetwood Mac mothership? Would it not trigger battle? 1981’s Bella Donna arrived on July 27, 1981 and offered a definitive affirmation that there was room for each. In reality, it opened up a complete new world creatively for Nicks, a path she continues to journey to today.
New York Instances bestselling writer Annie Zaleski (who has additionally written for UCR) takes inventory of the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame legend’s total profession together with her e-book, Stevie Nicks in 50 Songs. It presents a complete and closely researched take a look at her work with the Mac, Buckingham Nicks, plus her in depth solo work and collaborations alongside the best way.
In an unique excerpt that you would be able to learn under, we study the fascinating backstory behind one in every of her most enduring solo hits, Bella Donna’s “Fringe of Seventeen.”
Though Stevie Nicks wrote lots of her songs about particular moments or occasions in her life, others are extra like a photograph scrapbook of reminiscences. That’s actually the case together with her pop and rock radio hit “Fringe of Seventeen,” a galvanizing track with impressionistic lyrics and imagery drawn from a number of strands of her life which turned a large hit in 1982. For instance, the immortal white-winged dove talked about within the track got here to Nicks in a moderately pedestrian method: a menu she acquired whereas on an airplane talked about the hen being protected by a saguaro cactus. As “Fringe of Seventeen” advanced, the dove got here to represent a number of folks in her orbit who had died or had been sick when she wrote the track.
“It was a time period that I simply didn’t know what to do, so I simply sat down and wrote about it,” she stated in a 1981 WLIR radio interview. “I spent a whole lot of time excited about how I’d write this track.”
“Fringe of Seventeen” began coalescing in 1980, when she was residing together with her then-boyfriend, producer Jimmy Iovine. He was wrapping up a Tom Petty album and she or he was getting stressed being at house. “I used to be beginning to get very edgy to do one thing,” she stated within the Timespace liner notes. “I used to be additionally beginning to really feel very unimportant and really sorry for myself. I used to be prepared to start Bella Donna, and it appeared like it will simply by no means occur.”
Round this time, John Lennon was shot and killed. Iovine was devastated, as he and Lennon had this “unbelievable friendship,” Nicks recalled in the identical liner notes. “John had taken Jimmy in and taught him to file. He was his instructor.” Lower than two months later, Nicks’s uncle Jonathan turned very ailing with colon most cancers; she noticed him the day earlier than he died. “He was house, and my aunt had some music softly taking part in, and it was an ideal place for the spirit to go away,” she informed Rolling Stone in 1981. “The ‘white-winged dove’ within the track is a spirit that’s leaving a physique, and I felt an excellent loss at how each Johns had been taken.” Sadly, Nicks then additionally later got here to affiliate “Fringe of Seventeen” together with her expensive pal Robin Anderson, who turned sick as Bella Donna turned successful.
After which there’s the track’s title, which took place after Nicks requested Tom Petty’s first spouse, Jane, when the couple met. “She stated, ‘I met him in some unspecified time in the future through the age of 17,’” Nicks informed Billboard. “However I believed she stated, ‘The sting of 17.’ I stated, ‘Jane, can I take advantage of that? Can I write a track known as “Fringe of Seventeen”?’” Consequently, at the very least a few of the track was “Jane speaking about Tom,” Nicks added. “I wager lots of people thought I used to be speaking about me, however I used to be chronicling their relationship as she informed it to me.”
READ MORE: Hear 10 Songs Stevie Nicks Left Off of ‘Bella Donna’
Given this backdrop, “Fringe of Seventeen” is emotionally cathartic—a sense captured by the music, which is highlighted by glassy piano from Roy Bittan, jagged electrical guitars from Waddy Wachtel, and a cascading refrain of harmonies from Nicks and her backup singers Sharon Celani and Lori Perry. Nicks herself seems like a fire-and-brimstone preacher howling by her grief and love.
The track was additionally a blast to file, Nicks stated. “Recording it was probably the most thrilling factor I’ve ever finished, as a result of all people felt that there was {an electrical} cost going by this white-winged dove during that track,” Nicks informed WLIR in 1981. “And for the three days that we labored on recording the observe of it, and we had the girl singers and myself and all 10 of the blokes out in a single room recording.”
Years later, nonetheless, Wachtel admitted that his inimitable guitar half all through the track was uncomfortably near the Police’s 1979 track “Convey On the Evening”—and it apparently wasn’t precisely an accident. “At that session they informed me they had been going to do that track based mostly on this really feel,” he informed Musician in 1999. “I heard one thing concerning the Police, however I didn’t know what they had been speaking about. Then about two years in the past, I had the radio on, and on comes what seems like “Fringe of Seventeen”—and abruptly, there’s Sting’s voice! I believed, ‘We ripped them off utterly!’”
Watch Stevie Nicks’ ‘Fringe of Seventeen’ Video
Excerpted from Stevie Nicks in 50 Songs by Annie Zaleski. Copyright © 2026. Obtainable from Operating Press, an imprint of Hachette Ebook Group, Inc.
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There have been greater than 45 of those exterior initiatives, which deepen and add to the band’s legacy.
Gallery Credit score: Nick DeRiso
