Fleetwood Mac – “Sara”

"Sara" Words & Music by Stevie Nicks, Copyright 1979 Welsh Witch Music (administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing)

Following the unprecedented success of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac found themselves at a crossroads: deliver a safe sequel or redefine their sound. Driven by Lindsey Buckingham’s obsession with the burgeoning punk and New Wave scenes, the band spent a then-unheard-of $1.4 million to create Tusk, a lo-fi, experimental double album recorded in upgraded studios and tiled bathrooms alike. While the industry initially labeled the project a failure compared to its predecessor, time has vindicated the record as a brave artistic pivot. At the heart of this transition stands “Sara.”

We’ll peel back the layers of the track’s amalgamation of inspirations. The episode investigates the delicate, sweeping drum patterns of Mick Fleetwood, the “Ice Cream Changes” chord structure, and the deeply private stories buried in the mix—including Stevie Nicks’ complicated fallout with her best friend and her secret history with the Eagles’ Don Henley. By isolating vocal tracks and exploring the instrumental performances, this episode demonstrates how Fleetwood Mac turned personal turmoil into a song that continues to strike a heartbeat in millions of listeners.

“Sara” (Words & Music by Stevie Nicks, Copyright 1979 Welsh Witch Music, administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing)

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, hey, welcome back to the I’m in Love with that Song podcast. We are part of the Pantheon Media Network; this is where fans belong. My name is Brad Page, I’m the host of this show, and each episode here, I pick one of my favorite songs and we dig into it together to try to understand why it’s such a great song. You don’t have to be a musician or know anything about music theory to enjoy this show. We don’t get super technical; all you need is a little curiosity about what makes a song work.

This episode, we’re exploring a song by one of the biggest bands in history, a song from their most polarizing album. Some people love this record, some don’t, but this song was a top ten hit for them back in 1979, 1980, and it has quite an interesting backstory. So, let’s get into it. This is Fleetwood Mac and “Sara.”

[“Sara” excerpt]

The history of Fleetwood Mac is long and pretty convoluted. We told that story on this podcast a while back on episode 122, where we examined the song “You Make Loving Fun” and the career of the late Christine McVie. You can re-listen to that episode on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or find it back in our feed in your podcast app.

That episode catches you up on the band right up to the Rumours album. This time, we’re picking up with the album that followed: Tusk. Rumours was, of course, one of the most commercially successful albums of all time. It sold tens of millions of copies and generated a bunch of massive hits. The album was a cultural phenomenon. It also shone a spotlight on the messy interpersonal relationships within the band; everybody knew their business now.

And I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said that that kind of success brings a lot of pressure. The fans, the music business, radio, and especially the band’s record label, Warner Brothers, were all waiting for the band to produce a sequel—Rumours 2, if you will. But the driving force behind the new album was guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham. And Lindsey was determined to pivot away from the breezy California rock of their last two albums. He was inspired by the burgeoning punk and New Wave sounds, and he was afraid that the band would become artistically irrelevant if they didn’t change.

To Warner Brothers, Fleetwood Mac was a cash cow, a revenue machine, and they wanted more of the same. But to Lindsey, that path led to stagnation. And as the architect of this new album, he wasn’t having it. This led to a lot of push and pull with the record’s producers, Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat, and with the other band members, too. Lindsey wanted to strip away the lush harmonies, the polished reverbs and EQs of the previous albums and capture more of a raw, DIY sound and feel.

And it’s always seemed pretty funny to me that in search of this raw, stripped-down, lo-fi sound, the band would end up spending $1.4 million to make this record. At the time, it was the most expensive record ever made. That’s the equivalent of spending like $6 million today. Not exactly a DIY budget.

The album was primarily recorded at the Village Recorder studios in LA. They spent a lot of that budget on modifying and upgrading Studio D at Village Recorders, including installing a new SSL 4000 series console. But Lindsey also did a lot of recording at home using his tiled bathroom, which he affectionately referred to as “Studio B.” He would speed up or slow down the tapes. He had a microphone placed on the tiled floor, then he positioned himself over it like he was doing push-ups and belted out the vocals for the song “Not That Funny.”

[“Not That Funny” excerpt]

There’s even a story that he had the band slap around some raw pork chops for a percussion effect. At this point, I think it’s fair to acknowledge that there was an ungodly amount of cocaine consumed by everyone making this record. But I think it’s unfair to laugh off this creativity and sometimes crazy experimentation as just drug-fueled madness. Regardless of how successful you think this experimentation was, there’s no question Lindsey Buckingham is a creative genius, with or without the drugs.

But let’s not forget that there were three songwriters in Fleetwood Mac. Of the 20 songs on the Tusk album, nine were written by Lindsey Buckingham, six were written by Christine McVie, and five were by Stevie Nicks. Stevie was the breakout star of Fleetwood Mac. People were beginning to cotton on to the fact that Lindsey was the creative architect of the band, and Christine wrote many of their biggest hits—and I still think she was the most under-appreciated member of the band. But it was Stevie Nicks who captured the public’s imagination. People weren’t showing up to Fleetwood Mac’s concerts dressed like Christine or Lindsey, but women were coming to shows in droves in Stevie’s image.

Of the three songwriters in the band, Stevie was always the most enigmatic lyricist. She had described the song “Sara” as her most personal song, but even here, her lyrics are not a straight narrative and they’re not exactly telling a story. And this is where it gets tricky for this show, because the whole purpose of this podcast is to get a better understanding of the song: how it came to be, what it’s about, and what it’s trying to tell us about the world outside and the artists themselves. But some songwriters cloak their songs in mystery; some leave it up to us to decide what the song is about. We get to decide. And some songwriters leave the specifics vague because they want to express their pain, but they want to keep some private things private.

So, I don’t want to put words in any artist’s mouth, and I don’t want to misinterpret the writer’s intention. So, here with “Sara,” we’re going to try to tread softly. There are facts that we can consider and make some connections, but in a case like this, we can never be 100% sure of the artist’s intentions. So let’s try to keep that in mind as we move forward.

The Tusk album is a sprawling double album: 20 songs across four sides, a total of almost 74 minutes long. “Sara” was nestled as the last song on side one. There were six songs from the album released as singles around the world, including the title track, but “Sara” was the most successful. The album version of the song runs 6 minutes and 26 seconds; it’s the longest song on the album. For the single release, the song was edited down to 4 minutes and 37 seconds.

6.5 minutes may seem long, but when Stevie Nicks originally wrote and demoed the song, it ran 16 minutes. As I understand it—and I could be wrong—the original 16-minute version was just Stevie’s vocal and piano. I’ve been trying to find a copy of that demo to play a little bit of it here, but no luck yet. Maybe somebody out there has it; it’s never been officially released. I’m sure somebody out there has a copy.

When Tusk was remastered and reissued, they did include a longer version of “Sara,” clocking in at over eight minutes. But that is still only half the length of the original demo. Here’s a bit of that eight-minute version, sometimes referred to as the “Cleaning Lady” version because of a bit at the beginning where Stevie mentions that.

[“Sara” (Long Version) plays]

In the end, they would cut out nine verses from the original version to get the song down to 6 minutes and 26 seconds. And as I said before, for the single, they cut it down even further to 4 minutes and 37 seconds, which frankly, I think takes some of the heart and soul right out of the song. It just cuts too much. For this episode, we’re going to be listening to the original album version, the one that runs 6 minutes and 26 seconds.

[“Sara” intro plays]

The recording started with a basic track of Stevie singing and playing piano. Stevie was playing what they call a tack piano. That’s a regular piano with thumb tacks—literally tacks stuck into the felt hammers—which produces a sharp metallic attack when each note is struck. It’s the sound you think of when you picture a honky-tonk piano.

Now, Stevie insisted on recording her vocal while she was playing the piano, which immediately caused a problem because the piano sound bled into the vocal mic, and her vocals were also picked up by the piano mic. That meant that you couldn’t separate the two. And also, Stevie wasn’t playing to a click track, so her timing would naturally waver, speed up or slow down a bit. And that meant that overdubbing the other instruments, that was going to be a challenge too, because they had to match up to Stevie’s inconsistent timing. In the intro, you can hear two piano parts: one panned right, one left. One is played by Stevie, the other by Christine McVie.

[“Sara” plays]

Now, with current technology, we can do something that they could not do then: we can isolate her vocal from the piano and all the other instruments. So, let’s listen to her vocal here, and notice how much echo is on this vocal track.

[Isolated Vocals: “Wait a minute, baby / Stay with me a while / Said you’d give me light / But you never told me about the fire.”]

That’s where the rest of the band comes in, led by Mick Fleetwood’s sensitive drumming. He knew he had to do something delicate that would ebb and flow with Stevie’s timing variations. Story goes that he spent 24 hours in the studio working with the track, dropping in phrases that gelled perfectly with Stevie’s tracks, creating the groove for the rest of the band to follow. Rather than use typical drumsticks, Fleetwood used wire brushes playing a continuous sweeping pattern on the snare drum.

[“Sara” plays]

“Drowning in a sea of love where everyone would love to drown.” That line seems pretty simple, almost like a throwaway line really, maybe even a little clunky. But let’s think about that for a minute. Drowning is death, right? And it doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant way to go. But drowning in love where everyone would love to drown speaks to the irresistible call of love. You’re drawn to it, sometimes against your better judgment; you just can’t help it. Like one of those horror movie scenes where someone steps willingly into death because they’re hypnotized or whatever. I’m not going to go so far as to say that this line is profound, but it articulates a deep idea in just a few words, and that… that’s great songwriting. It also speaks to Stevie’s emotional state at the time and sets the stage for the rest of the song.

[“Sara” plays]

Mick Fleetwood comes in here with a more driving drumbeat, adding in some toms. Let’s listen to what he’s playing along with John McVie’s bass part.

[Isolated Drums and Bass plays]

Stevie and Lindsey Buckingham broke up at the start of making the Rumours album, and many of their songs on that album are about that—pretty much everybody knows that, it was common knowledge at the time. But what most people didn’t know was that Stevie and drummer Mick Fleetwood started an affair during the Rumours tour in 1977. Fleetwood was married at the time and Stevie was in an emotional place; this was just a bad idea at the time. And while I don’t think the affair lasted long, it could have easily destroyed the band. So they ended it, but the fallout can be felt here. The next line in this song, “He was just like a great dark wing,” that is about Mick Fleetwood.

[“Sara”: “And he was just like a great dark wing / Within the wings of a storm / I think I had met my match.”]

This next bit, I think is the most sensuous line in the song: “He was singing and undoing, and undoing the laces, undoing the laces.” The way she sings that, she stretches just those few words out over half a minute. That is an eternity in a pop song. Listen to how she works that line for all it’s worth.

[“Sara”: “He was singing / And undoing / And undoing the laces / Undoing the laces…”]

There’s also some great backing vocal work in there by Lindsey, along with Christine McVie. Let’s keep rolling.

[“Sara” continues]

Here we have our first mention of Sara. Who is Sara? What’s her place in this song? Sara Recor was one of Stevie Nicks’ best friends. According to one story, she was actually present in the room when Stevie recorded that original 16-minute demo of this song. They were very close. But after Stevie and Mick Fleetwood ended their affair, Sara started seeing Fleetwood. He was still married, of course, and Sara was married too. She left her husband and moved in with Mick, and they eventually got married in 1988. But back in 1978, the wounds were still fresh. And for Stevie, the fact that her best friend was having a fling with her former lover and bandmate, it was devastating. Stevie wouldn’t speak to Mick for months, and her relationship with Sara was never the same.

[“Sara”: “Said Sara / You’re the poet in my heart / Never change / Never stop.”]

Those lines, “Now it’s gone, it doesn’t matter what for, but when you build your house, then call me home.” That appears four times in this song; we’ve already heard it once before. As it appears here, it could relate to the turn of her relationship with Sara, but there’s another person who plays a part in this story.

After the end of her affair with Fleetwood, Stevie started a relationship with Don Henley of the Eagles. They met when the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac toured together in 1976. And think about that bill for a minute. That’s like the ultimate ’70s classic rock tour. Can you imagine how much tickets to that show would go for today? Anyway, I think that relationship had ended by this time, but those emotions were still raw. At the time, Don Henley was building a big mansion on Mulholland Drive in LA. So when Stevie refers to “when you build your house,” that could very easily be directed at Henley.

[“Sara”: “But now it’s gone / It doesn’t matter what for / But when you build your house / Then please call me home.”]

I think, though, that it’s not meant literally, more like she’s speaking metaphorically. Not so much about a physical house, but the idea that when you’re settled, when you’ve got yourself together, then I’ll come to you. And so that could be Henley, it could be Sara Recor, it could be anybody, really. It’s the idea of something being painfully lost but having some hope for the future.

[“Sara” continues]

One of the great things about this song is the way the intensity of it rises up and falls back throughout the song, all of it in support of Stevie’s vocal performance. It kind of reminds me of sitting on the shore watching the waves roll in and then pulling back out; there’s something very hypnotic about this song. And that arrangement is a big part of it. Let’s just go back and listen to that section again, just the instruments without the vocals, to hear those dynamics, that rise and fall. And pay particular note to all the little stuff that Lindsey Buckingham is adding in there, overdubbing multiple guitars. None of that is a core part of the song; it’s all filigree, ornamentation, but that’s a big part of what makes the song sparkle.

[“Sara” instrumental section plays]

This song doesn’t really have fixed verses or choruses. There are a few different musical motifs, sets of chord changes that appear throughout the song. This next section is the most simple of them. It’s just switching between F and G chords. But with all the flourishes from the guitars and piano, plus Stevie’s free-flowing vocal, you’d think there’s a lot more going on. Beneath it all, it’s the bass guitar that holds it all together by not straying far from the basic F and G notes.

[“Sara” F to G section plays]

Next, the song returns to its main musical refrain. This is a common chord progression that’s been used literally thousands of times. It’s the 1-6-4-5 chord change. That’s often referred to as the “fifties progression,” the “ice cream changes,” or the “doo-wop progression.” You hear it in tons of songs, like “Stand by Me” or “Earth Angel.”

[Snippet of“Earth Angel” plays]

What Fleetwood Mac has done here is take a familiar chord change and do their own thing with it. With the arrangement and especially with Stevie’s vocal melody on top that takes it to someplace completely different. They’ve created a part that sounds natural, lived-in, but also fresh and unique. Here, Stevie brings back a line from earlier in the song before returning to Sara.

[“Sara” continues]

In 1986, when Stevie checked into the Betty Ford Clinic to deal with her cocaine addiction, she signed in using the alias “Sara.” She would later write a song called “Welcome to the Room Sara” about that experience. That song’s on the Tango in the Night album. Sara was an alter ego for Stevie. This song is as much about Stevie as it is about Sara Recor or anyone else. She’s singing about herself, to herself.

[“Sara” continues]

There is one more part to this story, an uncomfortable one, so I’m going to try to tread lightly. Back in 1991, Don Henley did an interview with GQ magazine where he revealed that he had gotten Stevie pregnant back in the ’70s and that she decided not to have that baby. And that this song was written for the child that never was.

Of course, Stevie was furious that Henley would share this without her permission. It’s an incredibly private thing and it really is a violation. She denied it for a while, but eventually she did confirm it in a 2014 interview with Billboard magazine. She said if she had married Don Henley and if they had the baby and if it had been a girl, she would have named it Sara.

There’s a line right at the end of this song, buried in the mix, where she sings, “There’s a heartbeat and it never really dies.” Is that about the pregnancy that she terminated? That is not for me to say. It may be part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. “Sara” is an amalgamation. It’s not about one person or one experience. In one sense, this is an extremely personal song, yet it has struck a chord with literally millions of people. It’s connected with people in a really meaningful way. For many people, this is their favorite Stevie Nicks song, it’s their favorite Fleetwood Mac song. As I’ve often said on this show, this is the magic of music.

[“Sara” outro plays]

Fleetwood Mac. “Sara.” I imagine by now even the casual fan knows the story of the Tusk album. The record was released in October of 1979. It reached number four on the Billboard chart and number one in the UK. But for the industry and for Warner Brothers, it was considered a failure. It sold four million copies, but Rumours had sold ten times as many.

There was plenty of blame to spread around, including Warner Brothers themselves, who had decided to price the album at $15.98. That was a high price at the time, three bucks more than the usual price for a double album. But Lindsey Buckingham took the brunt of the criticism. But as things often do over time, opinions on this album have changed and it’s now considered as a brave, brilliant move. It set a precedent for indie bands and lo-fi artists to follow in the decades to come.

I will admit that personally I don’t love this album. There are some great songs on it, but I don’t love all of it. But that’s okay. I appreciate more what this record represents: that a band that’s at the peak of their success can take chances, can go out on a limb and not play it safe.

Thanks for listening to this edition of the I’m in Love with that Song podcast. I just want to take a minute to talk about this show. I’ve been doing this podcast for almost nine years now. In that time, it seems like everybody started a podcast: every celebrity, every wannabe celebrity, every has-been celebrity. They all have a show; every influencer. Of course, they have whole teams: they have marketing people, they have agents, they have producers and editors. Well, this show is just me. It’s always been just me: writing, recording, editing, it’s all me.

And most importantly, I choose all the music and topics for this show. Yes, we’re part of a network, Pantheon Media, but the guys at Pantheon have always been hands-off; nobody tells me what to do and what not to do. I’m just saying this because this show, it’s a lot of work for one person to do, and I really appreciate everyone who listens, because you all make it worth it.

Unlike a lot of podcasts, this show has never been about making money. I don’t get paid here; whatever little bit of money comes in goes right back into the show. This show has always been about the mission—if I can be pretentious enough to say that—the mission, which is to keep these songs alive. To document the creativity and the genius behind this music. To remind some people of these great songs and to expose some new listeners, maybe even some young people, to this incredible music for the first time. Nothing makes me happier than to get an email or a message from someone saying that they discovered a song or went out and bought an album because they heard it on this podcast.

So, that is a long-winded way of me saying thank you for listening. And if you love these songs, if you believe in the mission to keep this music around, then please support this show by spreading the word. Share it with your friends and family, email it to your friends, share the link on social media, make your kids listen to it when you’re in the car. Let’s grow this audience and keep this music—real music, not AI-generated crap—let’s keep these great songs alive.

Alright, I will be back in two weeks with another new episode. You can catch up on all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. You can send an email to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com, or find the I’m in Love with that Song podcast on Facebook and post there. Thank you once again for listening to this episode on Fleetwood Mac and “Sara.”

RESOURCES:

Artists & Bands:

Record Labels & Studios:

References & Publications:

Podcast Information: