Sometimes, it takes a good collaborator to push an artist to their full potential. Even Stevie Nicks, someone you’d expect to have very few issues achieving greatness, needs that one magical push from time to time.
But then again, Nicks has understood the power of collaboration since day one. Even when she and Lindsey Buckingham struggled to make ends meet, and she stayed home to write her own stories and build her own worlds, Nicks appreciated having someone else to bounce ideas off of, even if that someone was also informing her own words, her own approach to art, for better or worse.
After all, Nicks and Buckingham’s story is well-documented, and so are the ongoing fallings-out, make-ups, and explosive disagreements they each painted on the walls of their own soundscapes. One of the reasons Rumours remains one of the greatest rock records ever is its raw honesty and the raw heartache the pair poured into their work, often collaborating to create such authenticity despite being each other’s main subject.
But that’s because Nicks has always truly understood the realities of creating good art through collaboration. In the rock space, especially, it can be easy for musicians to get their backs up and choose to work solo because they believe it brings out the best in them. Sometimes, this rings true, especially when an artist has a specific or distinctive vision that only they can pull off.
However, others might have that same sense of individualism with their artistic vision but understand that it flourishes even further whenever they open it up to the ideas and opinions of others. There have been several times in Nicks’ career where other artists have pushed her to greatness or shaped her sound or stylistic direction, and each time, she proves that working with others isn’t something to avoid; often, it simply enhances what’s already there.
This was the case with ‘Talk To Me’, from her 1985 record, Rock a Little. While working on material for the album, producer Jimmy Iovine brought her the Chas Sandford-penned song, feeling that it’d be an instant hit – something he was constantly on the lookout for.
At first, Nicks wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t that she felt the song was bad. In fact, she actually thought it was herself getting in the way of a good tune, and the fact that she struggled to deliver a good enough vocal to get it to sound good enough. Iovine pushed her to keep going, and she did, but it wasn’t until some divine intervention in the form of Jim Keltner that something finally shifted.
“[It] was a hard song to sing, but I had loved ‘Missing You’ [co-written by Sandford], and I loved the words to ‘Talk to Me’,” said Nicks. “It took a long time to finish it, though, because I couldn’t quite get the right feeling on it…until one night. Jim Keltner came in to do some drum overdubs, and then he stayed to be an audience to push me a little, to make me get a great vocal. So I had someone to sing to, and I got the vocal.”
It’s easy to interpret many of Nicks’ best performances and arrangements the same way. A lot of the time, she’ll recall having specific ideas but not feeling confident enough to execute them alone, or facing the kinds of challenges that usually require only a few words of wisdom to overcome. By which point, the magic is fully there, waiting to be shared with the rest of the world.
Taken from Far Out Magazine By Kelly Murphy
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