Landslide

By Stevie Nicks (1983)

Took my love and I took it down                                  
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life? 

I don't know

Well, I've been afraid of changing 'cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
and I'm getting older, too
oh I'm getting older too

Take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well maybe, the landslide will bring it down

Oh, the landslide will bring it down

Stevie Nicks...In her own words...

I wrote it (Landslide) for Lindsey - for him, about him. It's dear to both of us because it's about us. We're out there singing about our lives.
~Stevie Nicks Q Magazine, January 2004   

It was written in 1973 at a point where Lindsey and I had driven to Aspen for him to rehearse for two weeks with Don Everly. Lindsey was going to take Phil's place. So they rehearsed and left, and I made a choice to stay in Aspen. I figured I'd stay there and one of my girlfriends was there. We stayed there for almost three months while Lindsey was on the road, and this is right after the Buckingham Nicks record had been dropped. And it was horrifying to Lindsey and I because we had a taste of the big time, we recorded in a big studio, we met famous people, we made what we consider to be a brilliant record and nobody liked it (laughs). I had been a waitress and a cleaning lady,and I didn't mind any of this. I was perfectly delighted to work and support us so that Lindsey could produce and work and fix our songs and make our music.

But I had gotten to a point where it was like, "I'm not happy. I am tired. But I don't know if we can do any better than this. If nobody likes this, then what are we going to do?" So during that two months I made a decision to continue. "Landslide" was the decision. [Sings] "When you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills" - it's the only time in my life that I've lived in the snow. But looking up at those Rocky Mountains and going, "Okay, we can do it. I'm sure we can do it." In one of my journal entries, it says, "I took Lindsey and said, 'We're going to the top!'" And that's what we did. Within a year, Mick Fleetwood called us, and we were in Fleetwood Mac making $800 a week apiece (laughs). Washing $100 bills through the laundry. It was hysterical. It was like we were rich overnight.
~Stevie Nicks, Performing Songwriter magazine, 2003   

I realized then that everything could tumble, and when you're in Colorado, and you're surrounded by these incredible mountains, you think avalanche. It meant the whole world could tumble around us and the landslide would bring you down. And a landslide in the snow is like, deadly. And when you're in that kind of a snow-covered, surrounding place, you don't just go out and yell, because the whole mountain could come down on you.  Landslide I wrote on the guitar, and it's another one that I wrote in about five minutes. But see, when I'm really thinking about something ~ I mean when something's really bothering me ~ again, the best thing that I can do is go to the music room, or to the office, where I can write. Because once I put it down and I can read it back, and I can think about what I'm saying, then it makes sense to me. When I'm just thinking it in my head, it's going around and around, and I feel like a little child unable to make a real, substantial decision. And we were talking about our lives... the rest of our lives.
~Stevie Nicks, In the Studio with Red Beard, May 1992

    Click the tambourine to hear Stevie talk about Landslide

 

    The story of Landslide... everybody seems to think that I wrote this song about them. Everybody in my family,all my friends, everybody... and my Dad, my Dad did have something to do with it, but he absolutely thinks that he was the whole complete reason it was ever written. I guess it was about September 1974, I was home at my Dad and Mom's house in Phoenix, and my father said, 'you know, I think that maybe... you really put a lot of time into this [her singing career], maybe you should give this six more months, and if you want to go back to school, we'll pay for it and uh, basically you can do whatever you want and we'll pay for it ~ I have wonderful parents ~ and I went, 'cool, I can do that.'  [Then] Lindsey and I went up to Aspen, and we went to somebody's incredible house, and they had a piano, and I had my guitar with me, and I went into their living room, looking out over the incredible, like, Aspen skyway, and I wrote Landslide...three months later, Mick Fleetwood called. On New Year's Eve, 1974, called and asked us to join Fleetwood Mac. So it was three months, I still had three more months to go to beat my six month goal that my dad gave me. So that's what Landslide is about.
~Stevie Nicks, VH1 Storytellers, 1998  

[On her take of the Smashing Pumpkins version of Landslide] I was very honored to have Billy Corgan pick out that song on his own. There's nothing more pleasing to a songwriter than [someone] doing one of their songs. It also led to me being friends with Billy Corgan, and the possibility that we'll work together. Over this song, there's been this incredible connection...he reached out.
~Yahoo Chat with Stevie Nicks, April  28, 1998