Stevie Nicks Once Explained Why She Needed to Embark on a Solo Career

While Stevie Nicks is primarily known for her work in the band Fleetwood Mac, she also launched a successful solo career of her own. Nicks made her solo debut in 1981 with her album Bella Donna. In an interview with BAM Magazine, Nicks revealed why she decided to start a solo career.

Stevie Nicks felt like she needed a solo career

In 1979, Fleetwood Mac launched the Tusk Tour to promote the album Tusk. There were several factors that went into Nicks’ decision to go solo with her 1981 album.

For starters, Tusk was a double album and took a great deal of work to create. The album’s lengthy tour also caused Nicks to have realizations about her career.

“I just decided when I came off the yearlong Tusk tour that I wasn’t going to give up my life and die a lonely, overdone, overused rock star,” she told BAM magazine in 1981 according to Music Spotlight Magazine.

She continued, “I didn’t want to be written up in 50 years as a miserable old woman who never got to do anything but tour and be famous for 10 years and then everything was over.”

Stevie Nicks worked with Tom Petty and Jimmy Iovine

Nicks was encouraged to start a solo career by her former boyfriend Paul Fishkin. Together, Nicks, Fishkin, and Danny Goldberg created Modern Records.

For her first album, Nicks wanted to emulate the sound of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. She asked Petty to produce the album, but he turned her down. Instead, Petty introduced her to Jimmy Iovine.

“And so after a track I went, ‘Look I can’t do this. I don’t have the time. I’m too busy and I don’t think that I’m going to be a big help to you. But I know a guy who might be good for you named Jimmy Iovine,’” Petty said in an interview with American Songwriter.

He continued, “So she did meet Jimmy, and he agreed that he would produce [Stevie’s album, Bella Donna].“

The singer matured with her solo debut

While Iovine agreed to produce Bella Donna, he had strict rules for working with Nicks due to her past with Fleetwood Mac.

The producer did not want Nicks to use drugs while making music, and he did not want her to take more than three months to make the album.

“[He said,] ‘I know that you’re really used to being like the midnight cat queen that comes in whenever you feel like it,’” Stevie said in Music Spotlight Magazine. “This is not how we’re gonna do this album. First of all, you only have three months. And second, I don’t want to waste my time with a cartoon.”

Nicks used Iovine’s words to look at her life in a more mature way and move past the interpersonal nature of working in Fleetwood Mac.