Yesterday (July 27), the solo debut album Bella Donna of Stevie Nicks turned 40 years old, it was released on July 27, 1981. To commemorate the date, Stevie Nicks shared some of her thoughts about the album.
She posted an excerpt of her journal on her Instagram account going through different things about the album and its creation/inspiration.
She explained that she had teamed up with her backing vocalists Lori Perry-Nicks and Sharon Celani to create this record, with the idea of being the “girl version” of Crosby, Stills and Nash and to sound quite different from Fleetwood Mac.
She also comes back on the title track and the inspiration behind it, saying that it was written “about my boyfriend’s mother who was involved with a man in Chile during the coup that happened there in 1973“. She explained that afterwards, this man was banished to France and her boyfriend’s mother never saw him again.
She was so touched by this love story that she wrote “Bella Donna” and knew that she had just created the basis for her first solo album, that took the same title. “Bella Donna” is a song that went on to the top of the US Charts and according to Nicks that “open the doors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Stevie Nicks entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2019 and was already present there as a member of Fleetwood Mac since 1998. She was the first woman to have been inducted twice.
About this album, Stevie Nicks shared: “I could not have been more proud of those songs or the three months it took me, the girls and [producer] Jimmy Iovine to craft it. It did not break up Fleetwood Mac. If anything, it kept us together.”
After Bella Donna, Nicks recorded seven other solo albums, the latest being her 2014 LP 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault.
Read her full journal entry here.
#Peace.Love.StevieNicks
