In 2005, Stevie Nicks spent seven hours visiting wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and Bethseda Naval Hospital in Maryland where she saw first-hand the detriments faced by U.S. military. As she was leaving, she witnessed the emergency team bringing in another group of wounded. “I went in a girl and came out a changed woman,” Nicks said before performing the song at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles on May 26, 2011.
Nicks continued visiting wounded soldiers in the years that followed, and the experience also led her to write “Soldier’s Angel,” released on her 2011 album In Your Dreams.
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Buckingham Nicks
As Nicks was working on the song in 2010, she called on then-Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham to help her finish it. The song features Nicks with Buckingham, who joins on backing vocals and guitar, and no other musicians.
The song is told through from the eyes of someone looking over the soldiers and the deeper impact of their wounds.
I am a soldier’s angel through the eyes of a soldier
Through the eyes of a soldier
I am a soldier’s mother
Through the eyes of an angel, I am a soldier myself
And no one walks away from this battle
I’m a soldier myself in the presence of angels
I am a soldier’s widow in the background at night
I am a ghostly shadow as I follow close behind them
I try to push them gently
Back into the light
I am a soldier’s angel
Four years later
In a war of words between world, mm
About what is wrong
About what is righteous
I am a soldier’s girl
I am a soldier’s memory
As I write down these words
I try to write their stories
And explain them to the world
I float through the halls of the hospitals
I am a soldier’s nurse
I keep the tears inside
And put them down in verse
[RELATED: The Country Ballad Stevie Nicks Wrote for Dolly Parton]
Stevie Nicks’ Ongoing Service
Nicks called “Soldier’s Angel” “truly my most sacred and revered song.”
She added, “We recorded it live and did some harmonies, and then he did some little lead guitar things and it was perfect. There’s no other players, just me and him. Not only did we create something that’s probably as Buckingham Nicks as we have been since 1973, but… I think that song really brought Lindsey and I back together. He said to me as he was leaving on that second day, ‘I feel like we’re closer than we’ve been in 30 years.’ It certainly opens a lot of doors.”
Though “Solider’s Angel” was a poignant stop for Nicks, it wasn’t the first song she wrote in honor of the military. In 1991, she wrote “Desert Angel,” released on her 1998 box set Enchanted, for U.S. service members who served in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.
In 2015, Nicks was also honored at a USO awards banquet in Arlington, Virginia, for holding the record for the most hours spent over a five-year period visiting combat-wounded service members.
“I am more proud of this than Fleetwood Mac, or any of the other things I’ve done,” said Nicks at the ceremony. “Doing this gives me something that the rest of my world does not give me and could not possibly give me.”
Photo: Lindsey Buckingham (r) and Stevie Nicks at the NBC Studios April 18, 2003 in Rockefeller Center in New York City. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)
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