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Stevie Nicks on the importance of being a romantic
The Creative Independent
Do people often ask about your songwriting process?
I can be sitting in a parking lot waiting for my assistant to come to the car and I see a couple walk by and I can see their fingers gently touch and see him open the door for her and look at her and her look at him and for a moment they just stand still in time… and then I can go home and write a song about them. Or I can see a movie—say, it’s a movie with Michael Fassbender called The Light Between Oceans—and I can’t get this movie out of my head. The tragedy of this movie is so intense and so beautiful you can hardly stand it and you go home and think about it for days afterwards. It’s everything I can do to not just say “Stop everything I have to go and write a song about this movie because I need to write a song about this fictional relationship that I can’t stop thinking about.”
The Creative Independent
Do people often ask about your songwriting process?
They do. You know, they say, “Do you write about people? Do you write about love affairs? Do you write about what’s happening now? Do you write about what happened to you a long time ago in the past? How do you summon those memories up?” I always say to them, as a writer you don’t have any one way. You write about what inspires you right now. If what inspires you right now is that song “Missing You” by John Waite because you just happened to hear it on the radio, then so be it. That was my song back when I was with Joe Walsh and whenever it comes on I just have to sit down. My mind races back to that time in my life and if I let myself I could run right to the piano and write another song. I don’t always let myself do that anymore, but that’s what it inspires.
As a writer you don’t have any one way. You write about what inspires you right now.
I can be sitting in a parking lot waiting for my assistant to come to the car and I see a couple walk by and I can see their fingers gently touch and see him open the door for her and look at her and her look at him and for a moment they just stand still in time… and then I can go home and write a song about them. Or I can see a movie—say, it’s a movie with Michael Fassbender called The Light Between Oceans—and I can’t get this movie out of my head. The tragedy of this movie is so intense and so beautiful you can hardly stand it and you go home and think about it for days afterwards. It’s everything I can do to not just say “Stop everything I have to go and write a song about this movie because I need to write a song about this fictional relationship that I can’t stop thinking about.”
When people ask me about songwriting, that’s what I tell them. Pay attention to your feelings. It can be anything. Everything. And yes, I can write a really super romantic song today even though I’m not really in a relationship nor have I been in one for a long time. I can take ideas right out of the air, but I have to be really inspired. It has to be something truly inspiring that pushes me to go and write a poem, and then that poem is something that, when I have the time, I will take to the piano. That has always been my process since I was 15 years old.
You’ve spoken about the connection between poetry and songwriting. Is writing poems and songs your way of making sense of the world?
