Stevie Nicks has enjoyed a more successful career than most. Joining Fleetwood Mac alongside then-partner Lindsey Buckingham not only revived a floundering band, but ushered in their most successful and culturally significant era — giving us Rumours, Tusk, and later, Tango in the Night.
That success, however, came at considerable personal cost. During the Rumours period, the band recorded against a torrid backdrop of collapsing relationships and excess. Remarkably, they pressed on regardless, and their collective talent carried them through.
Nicks became the symbol of that resilience. Reeling from her split with Buckingham, she channelled her heartbreak directly into Rumours, producing some of its most resonant moments. But the Buckingham breakup was only the beginning. The years that followed brought a string of other prominent, and equally ill-fated, romances.
The most talked-about was her relationship with Eagles drummer Don Henley. It came in the aftermath of Rumours and, though it lasted only around two years, it was complicated — not least because neither party was necessarily exclusive during that time.
Henley would later claim that Tusk track ‘Sara’ was written by Nicks about an abortion following a pregnancy he believed was his. “I believe, to the best of my knowledge, she became pregnant by me,” he told GQ in 1991. “And she named the kid Sara, and she had an abortion and then wrote the song of the same name to the spirit of the aborted baby. I was building my house at the time, and there’s a line in the song that says, ‘And when you build your house, call me.'”
Nicks has confirmed that she did become pregnant and would almost certainly have named the baby Sara. But she has firmly rejected the rest of Henley’s account.
“It’s not about Mick Fleetwood’s ex-wife, who was also one of my best friends, even though everybody thinks it is,” she told journalist Leah Greenblatt in 2009. “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.”
Nicks has long maintained that her songs carry multiple meanings, with only select lines speaking directly to their subject. The line “When you build your house”, she explained, was about a lover who needed to get their life in order — and her unwillingness to be with them until they did.
When Greenblatt pressed her on Henley’s long-standing claim, Nicks was characteristically blunt.
“He wishes! If Don wants to think the ‘house’ was one of the 90 houses he built — and he did build house after beautiful house, and once they were done, he would move because he wasn’t interested in them anymore [laughs]. No. He is one of my best friends in the world. If anything happened to me, he would be there, always. But if someone said that, they’re so full of shit!”
