Stevie Nicks’ Last Top 40 Hit Burned With the Passion of an Artist-Producer Tryst

It’s hard to say how many people would have bet on Stevie Nicks having the most commercially successful career out of the members of Fleetwood Mac. But that’s exactly what Nicks did. She periodically arrived with solo records in the 80s in between Mac projects. And they all came packed with hit singles.

Her Top 40 solo success came to an end, perhaps fittingly, as the 80s ended. It came with a 1989 single that slyly referenced a romantic entanglement with the guy producing the record.

Stevie’s Success

Maybe some folks thought that Stevie Nicks needed a boost from male singers at the start of her career. Her first two hit singles stepping out from the Fleetwood Mac shell were “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Leather And Lace”. They were duets with Tom Petty and Don Henley, respectively.

But Nicks soon put paid to the notion that she needed to piggyback off anybody else for solo success. Her 1981 debut album Bella Donna went double platinum. That set the stage for her to become one of the most successful solo acts of the 80s.

This was on top of the fact that she occasionally beamed back into the Mac mothership to score with them. Despite serious turmoil before and directly after its creation, the 1987 band album Tango In The Night featured a passel of hits. That album put Mac back in the pop spotlight as if it were 1977 all over again. The timing was perfect for Nicks to strike again as a solo artist.

‘Mirror’ Momentum

Unfortunately, these successful years also coincided with personal struggles for Nicks. She dealt with addiction issues that, as she admitted years down the road, made that era something of a blur for her. In addition, the Tango In The Night cycle ended up with a severe blowup between Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. It contributed to Buckingham briefly leaving the group.

Nicks dove back into her solo work with the 1989 album The Other Side Of The Mirror. She worked with producer Rupert Hine. And, as she explained in the liner notes to Timespace: The Best Of Stevie Nicks, her romantic rendezvous with Hine played into the creation of the album’s first single.

“It seemed that we had made a spiritual agreement to do a magic album…in a fabulous Dutch castle, at the top of the mountain. We recorded it in the formal dining room…where, upon the walls hung all these very old and expensive pieces of art…looking at us…we were never alone.”

“It always seemed to me that whenever Rupert walked into one of these old, dark castle rooms, that the rooms were on fire.”

“Fire” Starter

Nicks titled the song, written with longtime collaborator Rick Nowels, “Rooms On Fire”. And it scored on US radio, making it to No. 16. On top of that, after Tango In The Night had done very well in the UK, Nicks enjoyed her first solo success in the UK. “Rooms On Fire” also made it to No. 16 on those charts.

Unfortunately, the follow-up singles from The Other Side Of The Mirror failed to reach the Top 40. Nicks had a couple of close calls with songs in the 90s. But she never again hit that level of success on the singles charts anyway, that she so regularly achieved in the 80s.

Photo by Rob Verhorst/Redferns