When Stevie Nicks broke away from Fleetwood Mac to record her 1980 solo debut, Bella Donna, she put her career on a tumultuously delicate line. Nicks had only been in the British-American rock band for half a decade by the time she started looking at solo pursuits. Before that, she had a relatively unsuccessful run as one-half of the folk duo Buckingham Nicks with her ex-partner and Mac bandmate, Lindsey Buckingham.
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Some people, including her bandmates, might have soured at her decision to go solo. Nicks’ decision to leave Fleetwood Mac might have made it harder to transition back into the group. Nicks and the band could co-exist as their own unique successes. Both could crash and burn. Simply put, Nicks was playing a dangerous game in 1980, and her solo album title perfectly reflects that.
Stevie Nicks Named Her Solo Album ‘Bella Donna’ For Multiple Reasons
If Stevie Nicks ever wielded a double-edged sword in her musical career, it would have been in the late 1970s. Fleetwood Mac had just released Tusk, an album that confounded Nicks more than it inspired her. With a growing collection of songs that her bandmates passed on, Nicks was itching to start on something new. But doing so in an industry where the spotlight can go dark in an instant was a risky move. Moreover, Fleetwood Mac seemed to operate in a constant state of emotional tension. Would Nicks leaving the band, however briefly, be the straw that broke the camel’s back?
Nicks would have to administer the appropriate dose of creative freedom that would burgeon her solo career without killing her past. When it came time to name her official frontwoman debut, Nicks took this delicate balance into consideration. In a stroke of poetic genius, Nicks named her album after the belladonna plant, also known as deadly nightshade. “[Bella donna] meant beautiful woman but also poisonous root,” Nicks told Classic Rock in 2003. “People use it for healing, but if you take too much, you can die. I thought, ‘This is the perfect double-edged sword title for the record.’”
“There was another double-edged sword,” she continued. “Would I have a successful solo career and would that make Fleetwood Mac look good, or would I have an unsuccessful solo career and would that make them look bad? Or would they be petty enough to want it to not go well so they’d know they’d always have me?”
Aesthetically Speaking, The Singer Wanted To Lean Into Opposites
By the time Stevie Nicks got around to releasing her solo debut, Bella Donna, Fleetwood Mac had already enjoyed tremendous success with their seminal album, Rumours. Songs like “Dreams” and “Gold Dust Woman” solidified Nicks’ reputation as a whimsical, witchy woman draped in flowy fabrics. While she certainly continued this aesthetic into her solo career (a stylistic choice she maintains to this day), Nicks wanted to emphasize the contrast between her work with the British-American rock band and her solo music.
The singer hired Herbert Worthington III, the photographer who shot the now-iconic Rumours album cover, to do her solo debut’s cover. “What I’m wearing is the exact opposite of my black outfit on Rumours,” Nicks later explained. “Over that, it says: ‘Come in from the darkness…’ which is the dark side of anyone, the side that isn’t optimistic, that isn’t strong.”
Photo by MPIRock/MediaPunch via Getty Images
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