The Stevie Nicks Song That Subtly Told Mick Fleetwood to Get His ‘Act Together’
When Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood met, they were both in long-term relationships. They eventually began a relationship, but they didn’t wait until they were single. As a result, the affair was messy and caused a good deal of drama. Nicks wrote several songs about the relationship. In one, she included a line telling Fleetwood to pull himself together.
Stevie Nicks wrote the song ‘Sara’ about her relationship with Mick Fleetwood
Fans have interpreted Nicks’ 1979 song “Sara” as being about a number of people. Some wonder if it’s about her friend, Sara, who began a relationship with Fleetwood. Others wonder if she wrote it about Don Henley. In 2009, Nicks cleared things up and revealed the song was about her relationship with Fleetwood.
“It’s not about Mick’s Fleetwood’s ex-wife, who was also one of my best friends, even though everybody thinks it is,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I used her name because I love the name so much, but it was really about what was going on with all of us at that time. It was about Mick’s and my relationship, and it was about one I went into after Mick.”
During her relationship with Fleetwood, the drummer was married with children. The guilt Nicks felt about this put a strain on their relationship. She explained that she included a line telling Fleetwood that she couldn’t be with him until he got his act together.
“Some songs are about a lot of things, some songs only have one or two lines that are that main thing, and then the rest of it, you’re just making a movie, writing a story around this one paragraph, that little kernel of life,” she said. “‘When you build your house’ was about when you get your act together, then let me know, because until you get your act together, I really can’t be around you.”
Stevie Nicks would have named her daughter Sara
Another reason fans have thought the song was about Henley was because Nicks would have named their child Sara. While in a relationship with Henley, Nicks became pregnant. She had an abortion, but she had decided on a name.
“Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara,” she told Billboard.
Still, Nicks said that just because she liked the name didn’t mean the song was about Henley or her pregnancy.
Stevie Nicks wrote another song about Mick Fleetwood
Given that Fleetwood was one of the great loves of her life, it makes sense that Nicks wrote more than one song about him. She released the song “Beauty and the Beast” in 1983 about him.
“It was definitely about Mick, but it’s also based on the 1946 Jean Cocteau movie,” she said. “I first saw it on TV one night when Mick and I were first together, and I always thought of Mick as being sort of Beauty and the Beast-esque, because he’s so tall and he had beautiful coats down to here, and clothes made by little fairies up in the attic, I always thought [laughs], so he was that character in a lot of ways. And also, it matched our story because Mick and I could never be. A, because Mick was married, and then divorced and that was not good, and B, because of Fleetwood Mac.”
While their romantic relationship was messy, the former couple remains close friends.
