“Why do you love somebody?” said Stevie Nicks, recalling the first time she met Joe Walsh in 1983 at the Mansions Hotel in Dallas. “Why do you love them so much that when they walk in the room, your heart jumps out of your chest? I don’t know. But I fell in love with Joe at first sight from across the room, in the bar at the Mansions Hotel in Dallas.”
Nicks added, “I looked at him [Walsh] and I walked across the room and I sat on the bar stool next to him, and two seconds later I crawled into his lap, and that was it.”
During their three-year relationship, the two also collaborated. Nicks worked with Walsh on his 1985 album, The Confessor, and later wrote the “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?” for him and his late daughter.
The closing track on her third solo album, Rock a Little, released in 1985, Nicks called “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You” the “most committed song I ever wrote.”
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“She Loves Him Still”
Around this time, Nicks may have also written another song about Walsh during their relationship, “She Loves Him Still.” Initially, the ballad was intended for Nicks’ third solo album, Rock a Little (1985), but was shelved indefinitely, before she released it nearly 30 years later on 24 Karat Gold — Songs from the Vault, in 2014.
Written by Nicks and Dire Straits‘ Mark Knopfler, who also set the music to the song “She Loves Him Still,” tells the story of a passionate love that comes with its troubles. For Nicks and Walsh, it was their substance abuse that got in the way of their relationship.
No one heard her call his name
No one heard the sound she made
They wouldn’t have liked it much anyway
To know that she still loves him
No one understands this love
No one ever will
‘Til his dying day
Not even he himself can change this
She loves him still
Well, I miss my friend
I miss the sound of his laughter
She remembers him sayin’
Well, where are you goin’…oh
And just what is it that you are after
“I would probably have changed my life around for [him].”
Nicks described their union as the “perfect, complete, crazy pair,” and revealed that she was even ready to marry the Eagles guitarist.”I would probably have changed my life around for [him],” shared Nicks, who added that Walsh went to Australia “to get away from me, basically,” which was the end of their relationship.
“He thought, or so I’m told by my friends that Joe told, that one of us was going to die, and the other person would not be able to save them,” said Nicks. “And I did think I was going to die, absolutely. It took me a long, long time to get over it — if I ever got over it. Because there was no other man in the world for me.”
Though Nicks didn’t reveal who “She Loves Him Still” was about, it was likely a song for Walsh, whom she referred to as the love of her life. “I fell in love with Joe in kind of the same way that Lindsey fell in love with me,” Nicks told Q in 2008. “Joe and I only went out, off and on, for about two years. When Joe and I broke up, I was very devastated for a long, long time.”
When asked, “Who was the love of your life?” Nicks responded, “Joe Walsh.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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