This Fleetwood Mac Song From ‘Tusk’ Has a Surprising Connection to The Beatles

Stevie Nicks wrote five songs for Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album, which came out on October 12, 1979. One of them, “Beautiful Child” was a song that she would later describe to Circus Weekly Magazine as “her most special song.”

“Beautiful Child” is very much a lullaby, backed by Nicks’ strong vocals and a simple piano track from the beginning. It starts to feel more melancholy as the song goes on, expressing deep longing but also acceptance of what is.

In 2013, Nicks actually revealed that the song was about Derek Taylor, who worked closely with The Beatles. The two of them had a fling while Taylor was married to his wife, Joan Doughty.

“‘Beautiful Child’ was about a relationship I had with the Royal road manager of the Beatles, whose name was Derek Taylor,” Nicks revealed in a Q and A. “It didn’t last very long, because he was married, but it affected me very much, because he told me so many stories about The Beatles.”

In “Beautiful Child”, Nicks sings about the age difference between her and Taylor. She even says, “You fell in love when I was only ten,” referencing his marriage to Doughty in 1958.

Nicks goes from calling the listener a child to accepting that she herself is no longer a child. You see her realize that she has to let Taylor go as the song progresses.

“I’m not a child anymore / I’m tall enough / To reach for the stars / I’m old enough / To love you from afar.”

Who Was Derek Taylor?

Taylor started covering The Beatles as a journalist after being assigned to write a piece on them in 1963. At one point, he was even the ghostwriter for a column that was “written” by George Harrison, with Harrison’s approval. This became a joint effort between him and Harrison, who would give Taylor the stories that he would use for his pieces. Eventually, Taylor was appointed by Brian Epstein to oversee The Beatles’ press releases, which he did for a while.

In the Q and A, Nicks described Taylor as being The Beatles’ “royal road manager,” who knew a lot about the “whole world of The Beatles.”

“Everybody has your road manager,” Nicks explained of Taylor. “We had JC, crazy JC (John Courage) Led Zeppelin had Peter Grant. The road managers are the ones who know everything. And so I learned so much about [Taylor] about the whole world of The Beatles that it was stunning.”

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