Stevie Nicks ‘Latched’ on to 1 Joni Mitchell Song When She Felt Her Music Career Was Failing

When Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up, she found solace in a Joni Mitchell song. Their split was tumultuous; many of the hits from the Rumours album were a product of their messy relationship dynamics. Nicks said that at the end of her relationship with Buckingham, at a time when she thought her career was on thin ice, she laid on the floor for days and listened to Mitchell’s album Court and Spark. Here’s the song that brought her comfort. 

Stevie Nicks kept listening to a Joni Mitchell song

Nicks and Buckingham dated for several years before they were in Fleetwood Mac. Their music career struggled to gain ground, to the detriment of their relationship. They had been fighting, and Nicks was tired of supporting the both of them, but she was happy to stay in the relationship for the sake of their music careers. 

While they remained together into their time with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks felt their relationship was reaching an endpoint by the early 1970s. She met another person and was ready to move on. She also felt that her music career was becoming increasingly less viable. For years, she and Buckingham had struggled to make their careers work. Nicks turned to one of Mitchell’s albums as a source of comfort.

“[Court and Spark] was one of those albums that I lay on the floor and listened to for three days straight,” she told The Guardian. “Lindsey and I were coming to the end of our relationship, and I’d met someone else. So I latched on to the title track, which is about a new relationship that doesn’t last. This was a year after Buckingham Nicks came out, which had gotten critical acclaim but Polydor dropped us like a rock. So we were back to square one. It was the only time I ever felt music might not work out.”

“Court and Spark” came as a comfort to her, but she found solace in the album as a whole.

“We were really poor,” she explained. “At the same time, we were already living in the world that Joni Mitchell was writing about because our producer, Keith Olsen, had introduced us to a lot of people in the industry. So I related to a song like ‘The Same Situation’ whenever I’d go to a party and music business sharks were everywhere. They would look at me as the blonde who could sing.”

The Fleetwood Mac singer said Mitchell was an inspiration to her

Nicks is a prolific songwriter, and Mitchell was an early inspiration to her.

“Well, I’ve written for years and been influenced by lots of people, but I guess the stuff that really got me was Joni Mitchell’s early songs,” she told BAM Magazine in 1981 (via The Nicks Fix). “I learned so much from listening to her. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be doing this if it hadn’t been for her. It was her music that showed me I could say everything I wanted to and push it into one sentence and sing it well. Ladies of the Canyon taught me a lot. I remember lying on the floor, listening to Joni’s records, studying every single word. When she came out with a new album I’d go crazy — ‘Don’t bother me this week. I’m listening to Joni Mitchell.'”

Stevie Nicks let Joni Mitchell’s music guide her through the pandemic

Decades later, Nicks is still a fan of Mitchell’s music. She explained that during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, she saw Mitchell’s music as a source of comfort. 

“I love Neil Young. I’ve been listening to a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and Joni Mitchell and just that whole era of people,” she told Forbes. “Buffalo Springfield in the last seven, eight months. I’ve been listening to a lot of their music on my Sonos and it makes me happy.”