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Fleetwood Mac – “Sara”

TOP 40 DEBUT: December 22, 1979

PEAK POSITION: #7 (February 2, 1980)


For three straight albums, Stevie Nicks became the clutch player for Fleetwood Mac. Between 1975 (the year she joined) and 1981 (the year she began to shift focus to her solo career), the five-piece outfit transitioned from British blues also-rans to the biggest band on the planet. Without Stevie, they never reach that pinnacle. On 1975’s self-titled Fleetwood Mac, she penned both the record’s breakout hit (the #11Rhiannon,” a 9) and its most lasting one. (That would be “Landslide.” Sorry, Christine McVie fans.) For 1977’s Rumours, itself a murderer’s row of classic song after classic song (plus “Oh Daddy,” sorry again, Christine fans), Nicks came through with the most classic one of all. (On June 18, 1977, “Dreams” became the group’s first, and only, #1 single. It’s a hard 10.)


Finally, with 1979’s Tusk, Stevie did more than just deliver the album’s biggest single for the third time in a row (although she did that, too). She also found its emotional center. Tusk is notoriously one of the more prickly multi-platinum albums of all time, full of harsh sonics and purposely knotty detours. But all those frayed ends intertwine with “Sara,” a legend-making epic edited down to essentials and the song that provides Tusk with its beating, bleeding heart.


Stevie Nicks was undervalued in Fleetwood Mac right from the jump. Famously, drummer and founder Mick Fleetwood wanted to hire just the “Buckingham” part of Buckingham Nicks, the California duo Stevie formed in 1972 with her musical and romantic partner, Lindsey Buckingham. By the time the Mac offer came along, Stevie and Lindsey were already fraying as a couple. But to his credit, Buckingham insisted the pair came as a “package deal,” thereby convincing the struggling British combo (then approaching five years without a charting single on either side of the Atlantic) to bring both musicians into the new lineup. Christine McVie, the Mac’s sole songwriter at the time, was promised “veto power” if she didn’t take to the new girl. Fortunately, she found Nicks to be a “very humorous, very direct, tough little thing,” and the tenth lineup of Fleetwood Mac was born.


The band that coalesced around 1975’s Fleetwood Mac included three distinctive songwriters—Buckingham, McVie, and Nicks—with three equally distinctive vocal styles. Album space was limited; competition was fierce. Stevie wound up only singing lead on two of the album’s ten tracks. Of course, those tracks turned out to be “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” which is the musical equivalent of getting two at-bats and knocking in two homers. (To reiterate, Nicks was clutch.)


Two years later, the mega-selling Rumours again found Stevie with fewer songwriting and vocal credits than either McVie or Buckingham. That would’ve changed had her standout composition “Silver Springs” been included; instead, the gorgeously seething ballad wound up being excised from the final running order by the rest of the group. In a particularly backhanded move, it eventually appeared as the B-side of “Go Your Own Way,” the song where Lindsey tells his ex-girlfriend that “packing up [and] shacking up is all you wanna do.” Twenty years later, The Dance reunion special gave Stevie her revenge. A live “Silver Springs,” highlighted by Nicks spitting the lyric “You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you” back in Buckingham’s face, earned a Grammy nomination.


Nicks got shortchanged once more on Tusk, composing and singing lead on just five of the double album’s twenty tracks. She made them count. Four of the five rank among the best songs Stevie ever wrote, including “Beautiful Child” (one of her more underrated ballads) and “Sisters Of The Moon” (basically the starting point for 75% of Nicks’ solo output in the Eighties). “Storms” might just be the saddest five- minute stretch of any Fleetwood Mac album; some days, it’s my favorite stretch as well. And still, “Sara” towers over them all.


No other song so clearly defines Stevie Nicks, one of rock’s most unapologetically mystical songwriters, more than “Sara.” It’s at once wide open and incredibly dense, beautifully structured while draped in the gauzy remnants of some half-remembered dream. Nicks has called it her most personal song on numerous occasions, even as every lyric in the song resists a literal interpretation. The original version ran nearly sixteen minutes and contained nine additional verses. A longer demo version officially released in 2004 (and again for the 2015 Tusk box set) only begins to scrape the surface.


Several competing backstories for “Sara” have emerged in the forty years since its release. Some were confirmed by Nicks immediately; some were denied, only to be confirmed decades later. Much as I enjoy delving into each of them, I’m also of the opinion that the specifics barely matter. They were just the kindling Stevie needed to spark. In a time when her whole life was in turmoil, Stevie Nicks poured every last shard of it into one song, then blurred the details just enough to make the personal feel universal. The mystery surrounding “Sara” isn’t a barrier to entry. The mystery is what makes “Sara” a masterpiece.


Sara Recor was one of Stevie’s best friends during the early years of Fleetwood Mac. Her nickname for Mick Fleetwood—who, at 6’6”, stood nearly a foot and a half taller than the diminutive Stevie—was “the great dark wing.” On the 1977 tour supporting Rumours, Nicks and Fleetwood began carrying on a covert affair, despite the drummer’s still-active marriage to his first wife, Jenny Boyd. Within a year, Mick was divorced, and his relationship with Stevie was also over—because he was now dating Recor. Who was still married herself. The resulting tensions played out over the next year of sessions for Tusk. Stevie didn’t speak to her former best friend or her fellow bandmate for months.


Next time you pull out your copy of Rumours, pay attention to the cover—specifically, the lace-up vest Fleetwood is wearing. Mick wore similar attire on many nights of the accompanying tour, where his affair with Nicks first began. Two minutes into “Sara”, the most sensual moment of the entire song arrives: “He was singing… And undoing… And undoing… The laces.” Stevie sings nine words total. It takes her thirty-five seconds.


(And yet: Sara Recor swears most of that verse is really about J.D. Souther, whose acclaimed skills as a singer-songwriter would've been more than a "match" for Nicks. Her espadrille shoe laces are supposedly the ones he's undoing. Is Recor reliable? Do I still prefer my interpretation? And again, do the specifics matter? Those lines give me chills regardless of which musician provided the initial inspiration.)

Prior to her affair with Fleetwood (and the fling with Souther), Nicks had become romantically involved with an even-bigger rock star: Don Henley, singer and drummer for the Eagles. Their breakup was still fresh when the writing process for “Sara” began. Over the course of the relationship, Henley was in the process of building his dream home; Stevie found a way to turn this mundane fact into high drama: “When you build your house/ Then call me/ Home.” That lyric recurs, with minor variations, at four separate points in “Sara.” It’s devastating every single time.


Of course, there’s another Don Henley detail that, for better or worse, has since become inescapably woven into the layers of “Sara.” In a 1991 GQ interview, Henley revealed that Nicks became pregnant while they were dating, before ultimately deciding to have an abortion—and then he claimed “Sara” was written for the child she terminated. Stevie, naturally, was livid. (I won’t even get into how deeply shitty it was for Henley to make any of this public without his ex’s knowledge or consent.) For years, she denied everything. But in a 2014 interview with Billboard, Nicks finally confirmed the pregnancy, if not the rest of the speculation: “Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara.”


Unlike Henley, I won’t presume that Nicks wrote an entire song simply to honor the spirit of her unborn daughter. But I still think the idea of Sara—as a lifelong muse, perhaps, or just the imagining of a future that almost happened—carries some weight. In the years following Tusk, Nicks often referred to Sara as her “alter ego.” She used the name when checking into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986, later writing the Tango In The Night track “Welcome To The Room, Sara” about the experience. And towards the end of “Sara” itself are additional lines not included in the copyrighted lyrics, buried just under the surface: “There’s a heartbeat/ And it never really dies.” Nicks would have numerous relationships over the next four decades. She would never have a child.


Stevie composed “Sara” by herself, on piano, and you can hear elements of that embryonic version in the song’s intro, performed by Christine McVie (and probably not Nicks) on a treated keyboard. The antiquated sound, coupled with Stevie’s enigmatic lyrics, draw you into another world: “Wait a minute baby/ Stay with me awhile/ Said you’d give me light/ But you never told me about the fire.” When the entire band enters, it feels like a curtain drop.


The next six minutes might be one of the most fully-realized arrangements Fleetwood Mac ever gave to a Stevie composition. Mick plays the entire kit using brushes, letting John McVie’s supple bass provide the pulse while forgoing his usual force in favor of the delicacy the song requires. Piano and guitar dance on opposite channels, Christine and Lindsey weaving their respective instruments into delicate tapestry even as both their singing voices swirl wordlessly in the background. The entire track shimmers like a mirage on the horizon, gentle and natural as breathing.


There’s no traditional chorus on “Sara.” There’s not even verses, per se, as much as a series of lyrical snapshots bubbling to the surface like memories. But there is a structure, and it’s a disarmingly simple one. “Sara” comprises two distinct sections, each repeating as often as needed before the other takes over. There’s a gauzy, dreamy one—arriving first with the “great dark wing” lyrics, later with “the night is coming” lines—where the entire song feels like floating. And then there’s a second section where everything snaps into focus. You can hear the shift in the mix, each instrument now rendered in sharp detail, as Stevie’s vocals gain power and purpose: “Drowning in the sea of love/ Where everyone would love to drown.” Or, more crucially: “Said Sara, you’re the poet in my heart/ Never change/ Never stop.”


Fleetwood Mac never got enough credit for how well they played together, organically and creatively, as a band. Which is a shame, because they absolutely shine here. They adjust to Nicks’ rhythms, supporting her, building momentum in the tiniest of increments while never allowing the tension to dissipate. I’m always struck by the near crescendo that occurs around the fifth minute, when Stevie leans into the line “please call me” before adding just the tiniest ache to that final word: “Home…” A lesser band would’ve drowned the moment in brute force. Fleetwood Mac add only the slightest hint of additional propulsion, implicitly acknowledging that the emotion of the vocal itself is enough. They’re right. It is.


Nearly six minutes in, all three vocalists—Lindsey and Christine and Stevie—finally harmonize for the first time. They only sing one single word: “Saaa-raaaa.” Over and over, like a mantra. And again, it’s enough. The track begins its slow, epic fade shortly thereafter—not because the song wants to end, but because the record has to. Here on Earth, Stevie Nicks’ masterpiece was bound by the limitations of vinyl sides and CD lengths. In a perfect world, “Sara” is playing forever.


GRADE: 10/10


I WANT MY MTV: Fleetwood Mac released a lot of live footage in the ‘70s and early ‘80s in lieu of proper “videos.” I suppose it’s better than attaching cheeseball visuals to a song like “Sara,” but losing an entire section (around 2:30) just to match the length of the radio edit is... a choice.


BONUS BITS: Speaking of the radio edit: I ran out of space in the article proper, so I’ll address the controversy here. Look, I understand Warner’s dilemma. A moody slow-builder like “Sara” was always gonna be a tricky sell to radio, even before the 6:22 running time. Chopping out two minutes in the middle to get the song into heavy rotation was the sort of necessary evil that happened constantly back in the day. But putting that same bastardized edit on the first compact-disc edition of Tusk (released in 1987), instead of the uncut original? And not rectifying the mistake for seventeen years? Unforgivable.


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