Stevie Nicks’ Song ‘Belle Fleur’ Predicted Her Life as a Rock Star: ‘I Lived That Song so Many Times’
Stevie Nicks must be clairvoyant. She’s had a remarkable knack for predicting her future in her songs over the years, to the point where we’re questioning whether she is, in fact, a witch. She’s not, of course, but it’s still strange. Everything that Nicks sang about in songs like “Silver Springs,” “After the Glitter Fades,” and “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” has mostly come to fruition.
However, Nicks wrote another “premonition” song. One that ended up predicting how her life would look like as a rock star years down the line.
Stevie Nicks has written many songs that predicted her future
In “Silver Springs,” Nicks spoke of Lindsey Buckingham, following their split, singing, “I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you… You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you.” Twenty years later, Nicks got to look Buckingham straight in the eyes and sing those exact words to him during The Dance. He has and will continue to be haunted by the sound of Nicks’ voice.
There are plenty of other songs that have predicted Nicks’ future as well, including “After the Glitter Fades,” which talks about how Nicks has all these fancy things but no “small gold band” on her left finger. Nicks did get all those fancy things, and she still doesn’t have that small gold band.
“The real premonition songs were I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and After the Glitter Fades, which starts with the line ‘I never thought I’d make it here in Hollywood.’ They were poems I wrote before I joined Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks told MacLean’s.
Stevie Nicks’ ‘Belle Fleur’ predicted how her life would look as a rock star
In 2014, Nicks released her eighth solo album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. The album consists of new versions of demos recorded between 1969 and 1987 and two songs from 1994 and 1995, including “Belle Fleur.”
MacLean’s writes that the song “mines the memories” of people Nicks called “canyon ladies.” They asked Nicks if her song has any connection with Joni Mitchell’s “Ladies of the Canyon.”
“This song wasn’t about that,” Nicks explained. “Belle Fleur was about not being able to have a relationship because you were a rock ’n’ roll star. Those women are me, [my sister] Lori … and friends I had from 1975 to 1978.
“The [lyric] ‘When you come to the door of the long black car’—that’s the limousine that’s coming to take you away. Then your boyfriend is standing on the porch waving at you, like, ‘When are you going to be back?’ And you’re like, ‘I don’t know, maybe three months?’ But then we would add shows to a tour and I could end up not being back for six months. It was difficult for the men in my life. I lived that song so many times.”
Like “After the Glitter Fades,” “Belle Fleur” was written before Nicks was famous–before she had those limousines and those relationships with men, which were doomed to fail because of her career choice.
Being a rock star has ruined Nicks love life
Nicks told MacLean’s she could split all the men in her life into two categories. There are the men who were her great loves, who tragically didn’t understand her or were jealous of her. Then there were those who weren’t resentful and completely trusted her but couldn’t be with her, mostly because of her line of work.
“If I look back over all the men in my life, there’s the first category: those are the great loves,” Nicks explained. “They didn’t understand. Even if they were in the business, they were jealous and they were resentful and had a hard time with my life and they didn’t like all my friends. They didn’t like the fact that the witches of the canyon were around all the time.
“The next category were men who really liked me, guys who trusted me—they were not the least bit resentful of what I did when I was on tour. They would say, ‘Bye, keep in touch, have a good time, be great on stage and maybe I’ll fly out and see you some weekend,’ but we didn’t connect in other ways because my life, my career, just got bigger.”
Nicks told the Guardian that it was easy finding love early in her career. “In ’75, ’76, we were beautiful, fast, sexy, love was everywhere and we were moving from person to person. That’s it. Love was around every corner,” she said.
However, she quickly learned that being a rock star was more of a hindrance to her love life than anything else. “I find it nearly impossible,” Nicks told High Times in 1982. “Anyone that you meet is going to be in some way in the business. I don’t meet people who aren’t in the business. I don’t go anywhere to meet them. What am I going to do, sit in a bar?
“At some point or another, my job gets to them. It’s easy to understand,” Nicks continued. “‘No, I can’t have dinner, I have interviews.’ ‘But we were in New York all week and we didn’t get to have dinner once.’ ‘I’m sorry, what do you want me to do, call everybody and cancel?'”
Nicks likes having freedom to follow her art wherever it takes her
Being a rock star might have ruined Nicks’ love life, but she’s happy she put her music first. She decided not to put a man first, decided not to get married and have kids. “I want to always be free to follow my art wherever it takes me,” she told the Guardian.
Nicks speaks about that freedom in “Belle Fleur,” too. “The [experience] causes you to become one with the road,” Nicks told MacLean’s. “I’m comparing it to the witches in the mountains. That’s just my metaphor with the [lyric] ‘Mountain women live in the canyon / dancing all night long.’ That’s just us coming back from shows and taking Polaroids all night long.”
It’s weird how Nicks knew that she’d never get married and that she’d enjoy her freedom as a rock star before she really was one. “Belle Fleur” was written before she became famous, yet she knew what her life would become. Nicks is truly magical.
