Donna fleetwood realtor websites3/1/2024 Doing my solo album was the only step I could take to show I still had control.” ![]() For so long you’re not allowed to make your own decisions that suddenly you don’t want to any more. “It’s difficult to be a girl in a big rock’n’roll group for six years,” Nicks told US Magazine in 1981. Photograph: Clayton Call/Redfernsīut she soon determined that stepping out on her own, and making Bella Donna was the key to ditching that golden albatross of being in a superstar band. Nicks at Oakland Coliseum, California, in 1981. (The film was never made, although it was far enough along in development to have the screenwriter for David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, Paul Mayersberg, attached to the project.) She also sang on several hit singles, including Kenny Loggins’ Whenever I Call You Friend and Walter Egan’s Magnet and Steel. In a nod to her fascination with things mystical, she had written a batch of songs inspired by the Welsh mythological goddess Rhiannon that were earmarked for a future movie. The break was a long time coming, as by the late 70s Nicks was looking for creative outlets outside the band. You can call in sick to a job, a boyfriend, even a husband, but you cannot call in sick to Fleetwood Mac – ever.” ![]() “My life was completely wrapped up in Fleetwood Mac. In a 1981 Rolling Stone interview, she described how being in the band had become a suffocating experience by the end of the previous year’s tour supporting their 1979 album Tusk. This was a hard-fought victory, judging by how difficult it was for her to extricate herself from Fleetwood Mac’s orbit, even temporarily. That Bella Donna turned out as it did is a testament to Nicks’s tenacious belief in her musical vision and songs. Bella Donna is decidedly a separate entity from Fleetwood Mac, free of that band’s musical tension and sonic restlessness. On How Still My Love and Outside the Rain, the music channels the easygoing blues rock of her beloved Heartbreakers. The pedal steel-dipped After the Glitter Fades hints at the country music Nicks grew up on, thanks to her grandfather. Waddy Wachtel (and, on occasion, Mike Campbell) tosses off searing guitar licks, while Russ Kunkel’s reassuring drums, Tench’s lush organ and Roy Bittan’s introspective piano adds depth. Producer Jimmy Iovine recruited a gaggle of hotshot male musicians for the studio sessions, including members of the Heartbreakers, the E Street Band and Eagles. ![]() ![]() Photograph: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Stevie Nicks being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in March. In the liner notes of a deluxe 2016 reissue, Nicks recalled that the Bella Donna sessions started with her, Celani and Perry in the living room of a rented oceanside home, working out harmonies and singing together while the album’s musical director, Benmont Tench (keyboardist with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), added accompaniment. It’s a reflection of the striking feminine energy underpinning the music on the 1981 disc, which topped the US and Australian album charts and launched the Fleetwood Mac member’s solo career. The sisterhood evident in the photo and on the sleeve info (the vocalists are prominently credited, directly below Nicks) isn’t merely an aesthetic choice. The former sits stiffly on a formal antique couch, studiously looking at the floor the latter perches on piece of ridiculously ornate wooden furniture, her arm slung over one knee. Next to Nicks are her two co-vocalists on the album, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry. Wearing a black dress with sheer lace sleeves, she peers over her right shoulder squarely at the camera, with a look that’s defiant yet a tad bashful. The original vinyl insert of Bella Donna features just one photo of Stevie Nicks.
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