Fleetwood Mac – Landslide (Live)

“Landslide” – Song by Fleetwood Mac from the album Fleetwood Mac
Released July 1975
Label Reprise
Songwriter Stevie Nicks
Producer Fleetwood Mac, Keith Olsen

Video:Fleetwood Mac perform Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA in May 1997.

Stevie Nicks has said that she wrote the song while contemplating either going back to school or continuing on professionally with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks wrote “Landslide” while she was financially supporting both herself and Buckingham by taking up jobs as both a waitress and a cleaning lady.

This song is about a father-daughter relationship. Stevie Nicks wrote it on the guitar in about five minutes in Aspen, Colorado. She was surrounded by mountains and thinking, “Wow, all this snow could just come tumbling down around me and there is nothing I can do about it.” When she feels like this she just goes to a room and writes her thoughts down so she can read it and ponder what she has written.

The song is one of Fleetwood Mac’s most frequently performed during tours. Nicks has sung it on every Fleetwood Mac tour since joining the band, with the exception of the Shake the Cage Tour, and has performed it on all of her own solo tours from 2005’s Two Voices Tour onwards. A live performance of “Landslide” recorded on 27 June 1980 at the London Wembley Arena was included on Live.

While “Landslide” was never issued as a single on its initial release in 1975, Fleetwood Mac did release a live version from Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 album The Dance; it peaked at number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s 24th entry on the chart. “Landslide” also reached the top 30 on both the US and Canadian adult contemporary charts.

When Fleetwood Mac regrouped for The Dance tour in 1997, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham performed the song alone on stage, often getting teary-eyed toward the end. These emotional performances were repeated on subsequent tours, as fans were always eager to see the ex-lovers share a poignant moment, which could range in intensity to anodyne hand-holding to passionate soul-gazing. Nicks insists those are real emotions on display.

Stevie Nicks – vocals
Lindsey Buckingham – guitars