“Tusk” was the long-awaited sequel to the iconic best-selling multi-million dollar album “Rumors.” Several songs went from “Tusk” to the charts, but none rose as high as Stevie Nicks’ “Sara,” reaching # 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts. So how did this gentle and mystical masterpiece come to be?
Fortunately, we have the answer in Nick’s own words. In several interviews she explained that she wrote this song in 1978, assisted by singer / model Sara Recor, after whom the song is named. When the song was written, Nicks was quietly dating recently divorced Mick Fleetwood, the band’s drummer. A few months later, Fleetwood left Nicks after falling in love with Recor (they would later marry, then divorce).
So what is this song about? Fleetwood Mac? Sara Recor? Or someone else?
Eagle Don Henley, who dated Nicks for about 2 years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, believed it was an abortion that Nicks had after getting her pregnant. Henley thinks it’s a tribute to the fetus. He said he was building a house at the time, and the lyric “When you build your house, call me home” was intended for him. Nicks has not contradicted this. In an interview with US Magazine in 1990, he said: “That’s true. He did. [build the house]. And I was in it before he finished it. “
However, Nicks once said that the song was about Fleetwood. “Sara it was more or less about Mick. So, he was the ‘great dark wing’. And, ah, it was also about everything that was happening at that particular moment, but he was the, the reason for the, you know, the beginning, “he stated on MTV Fanatic in 1996.
But in an interview on The Tommy Vance Show in 1994, Nicks said, “It’s about me, her. [Sara], about Mick, about Fleetwood Mac. It’s about all of us at the time. There are little details about each of us in that song and when it had all the other verses, it really covered a vast group of people. “
Other verses?
It appears that the original song was 16 minutes long. But the original vinyl version of Canine it was only 6:27. However, when Canine was originally released as a compact disc single in 1987, this latest version was just 4:37, with the middle verse and musical bridge of the vinyl version omitted. Later, the original 6:27 vinyl version appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s 1988 “Greatest Hits”, released in 1988. But none of these was the “real version”, which according to Nicks has about 9 more verses.
And there is even another version! When Tusks was remastered and re-released in March 2004, there was a remake known as the ‘cleaning lady’ version (because Nicks is clearly audible at the beginning of the demo recording ‘I don’t want to be a cleaning lady! ! ‘). This particular version is almost nine minutes long and contains lyrics that had previously only been performed live, such as “and the wind went crazy”, “no pity for Sara, you can’t have more” and “swallow all your pride , don’t ever change, never change. “
All of that downsizing eventually got to Nicks because, as he said in the Tommy Vance interview, “the original Sara it was 16 minutes long. Like nine more verses than you hear on the record. It was modified to 14 minutes, 11 minutes, 9 minutes, 7 minutes, 4 minutes and 40 seconds. I got to the point where I went, ‘Is the word Sara is he even going to stay in the song? “
And then there was the demand.
In 1980, a year after the song’s release, Stevie Nicks was sued for plagiarism by Carol Hinton of Rockford, Michigan. By the end of 1978, Hinton had written a song called “Sara,” which he had sent to Warner Brothers, which is Fleetwood Mac’s record label. Hinton’s song lyrics and Stevie Nicks’ lyrics were similar. They both shared the lines, “Drowning in the sea of love” and “When you build your house, call me.” The lawsuit lasted for months, despite the fact that Nicks had multiple witnesses (including Kenny Loggins). Nicks refused to settle, defending himself against the lawsuit by showing that he had written and recorded a demo version of the song in producer Gordon Perry’s Dallas studio in July 1978, months before Hinton sent his lyrics to Warner. . Eventually, Hinton gave up and accepted that Nicks hadn’t stolen the song from him.
“There were great similarities in the lyrics,” Stevie said later, “and I never said that she didn’t write the words that she wrote. Just don’t tell me that I didn’t write the words that I wrote. Most people think the other party he will fix himself out of court, but he chose the wrong songwriter. Calling me a thief for my first love, my songs, is going too far. “
So how does Nicks feel about his own songwriting? In 1986, Nicks checked into the Betty Ford Clinic for cocaine addiction. When she signed up, she used the name “Sara.” He wrote “Welcome To The Room, Sara” about his experience there, which ended on Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 album “Tango In The Night.”
But give Nicks the last word. In an interview with Jim Ladd in 1979, he said: “If I ever have a girl, I will call her Sara. It is a very special name for me. I love to sing it on stage. It is the absolute pleasure of my night. Sara. And he’s the poet in my heart, for sure. “