Stevie Nicks Bella Donna, Ooh ooh ooh.
There is something that both attracts and repels me about that supra-strata of hyper successful killer hippies that swirled up and out of the canyons of L.A in the seventies like pot smoke. Tanned capitalist apex predators in fringed jackets, professing the archaic values of peace, love and shifting units.
That the apexiest of these guys and girls were formerly a British blues band is an interesting quirk, but pretty irrelevant by 1981 by which time they had completed an 11-month tour supporting Tusk, recorded a live LP and paused just long enough for three of the band to release solo LPs; even big bands used to work hard for a living back then.
For Bella Donna producer Jimmy Iovine and Stevie Nicks pulled in a great cast of seasoned sessioneers and friends, precisely the sort of guesting chums affair that would prove such a blight for the rest of the decade, but I’m not here to blame. It works brilliantly here.
Nicks is in prime voice throughout, that trademark smoky raunch with undertones of purity, elevating a very good LP into orbit. Hell she sounds like she’s dressed on the cover, floating chiffon and just a hint of curves; much like me.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers contribute the best track on Bella Donna, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ written by Mike Campbell the band had demoed the track earlier but decided it needed a female voice, a female perspective – they got it in spades.
It is just perfection, a restrained intro that hints at how powerfully it could all rock out at any moment, that it never does just adds to it. The spaces in the music just give Nicks’ sublime, dignified vocal room to breathe and grow, Petty’s own vocals are the icing on the cake. It gives me goosebumps.
In other news, I really like the regretful melodies of the title track, Nicks’ velveteen vocals scaling the heights, controlling the tempo. As an opener it just brooks no argument whatsoever, a lush baring of the soul and a statement of questing intent. Not uncommonly for Ms Nicks the lyrics, if read and divorced from the music make literally almost no sense at all; that’s the power of song.
Despite myself I do have a real thing for the countryfied ‘After The Glitter Fades’, illuminated by Roy Bittan’s piano part and Dan Dugmore’s pedal steel. Somewhere in the 1537 Metaverse* it plays in the background of a backwoods bar in New Mexico as I drown my sorrows over the one that got away.
Waddy Wachtel’s awesome guitaring is every bit the equal of Nicks’ impassioned vocal on ‘Edge Of Seventeen’, no mean feat. I love it unreservedly in an utterly superficial way and wish I had the DJ skills to mash it up with Survivor’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, which surely must be the destiny for both tunes.
I’ve never cared much for the Don Henley collaboration ‘Leather And Lace’** which errs on the side of utterly moribund. Better by far is the smooth sophistication of ‘How Still My Love’ where Nicks’ voice does things to my corroded libido that I shrink from confronting publicly.
And I will leave it all there, without even mentioning the wonderfully filigreed portentousness of ‘Kind Of Woman’, or the comparatively crap closing track.
Bella Donna is an absolute monster of an album, relentlessly melodic and catchy. The kind of LPs that proper rock stars used to make, dealing with all manner of symbolism^ and overriding spiritual concerns, rather than anything more relevant to us little people. I love it all the more for that, as a marauding Goth might stop momentarily to admire a particularly fine Roman fresco during the sack of Rome, despite himself.
Whenever you have the urge to dress in shimmering samite, hoisting a parrot aloft, seemingly unaware of the rose bedecked tambourine behind you, Bella Donna is the only album to reach for. Trust me. Ooh ooh ooh.
My copy of Bella Donna came courtesy of my membership of Vinyl Me Please and it is a wonderfully satisfying object. Complete with all manner of essentials such as an obi strip containing the recipe for a Kind Of Woman cocktail, an art print, blue and black ‘galaxy’ vinyl, extra thick tip-on sleeve, a galaxy pattern inside the sleeve … oh and a remastered sound for those freaks out there who insist that vinyl ownership is about music.
As always VMP have produced a quality item to both ogle and play, the remastering sounds bright and clear to my tired old ears, but without the artificial qualities and need to alter that can so often curdle remastering jobs.
1171 Down.
PS: How was I ever going to resist an artist who’s publishing company was Welsh Witch Music?
*shortly to become a major 26 movie series clogging up a multiplex near you.
**surely a pale rip off of Saxon’s ‘Denim And Leather’? despite being released 2 months earlier, members of Fleetwood Mac would undoubtedly have been able to afford time travel in 1981. We demand answers!
^and occasionally even symbollocks.
