Stevie Nicks’ relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, and the magic and drama it created during their time in Fleetwood Mac, is well documented. Her brief romance with Joe Walsh, however, is discussed far less often. For the Eagles guitarist, though, the relationship had a lasting impact — particularly on his approach to songwriting.
The pair dated in the mid-1980s, when both were deep into their respective solo careers. It was also a period when Walsh was still struggling with the drug and alcohol addictions that had already left their mark on the Eagles in the previous decade.
“She was special,” Walsh told Howard Stern in 2024. “We were seeking refuge in each other’s presence. There was [the drug] part of it, but we were both on the road, we had careers, and we were both lonely.”
Stern focused on the power-couple dynamic, and on the fact that Nicks seemed to have the complete package. Walsh, however, was less interested in romanticizing the relationship.
“The relationship came and ran its course, as rock and roll relationships do,” he said. “I don’t think either of us could have committed to a lasting relationship in this state that we were in. What made it possible was that we toured and spent all that time together.”
Eventually, they drifted apart. But before they did, Nicks played a role in Walsh’s 1985 solo album The Confessor.
“She rode shotgun with me on that album, and gave me some direction,” Walsh said. “She’s really good at the craft of songwriting. Left to my own devices, I will have 85 pieces of paper with a couple of words on each.”
Walsh’s approach to songwriting has always been somewhat ad hoc. At a spoken-word event in West Hollywood in 2012, he described the process this way:
“There’s a room in my head where I have all these bits and pieces, and when it’s time to write a song, I take them and put them on a table like a jigsaw puzzle and see what fits.”
His most popular and enduring songs often emerged from that unconventional process. “Life’s Been Good,” for example, was assembled from seemingly unrelated ideas, while “Life in the Fast Lane” grew out of a coordination exercise Walsh played on electric guitar to help him warm up before shows.
The lyrics to “Rocky Mountain Way,” meanwhile, came to him as he was mowing the lawn. He was so excited that he left the mower running while he wrote them down and inadvertently cut down his neighbor’s rose bushes.
There was spontaneity in Walsh’s process, and an element of discovery. Nicks, by contrast, was far more deliberate. Her songs began as stories, with the music coming later.
“It starts with a little inspiration; something will happen to me,” she told CBS of her approach to songwriting. “If a man walks by and smiles at me, and I go, ‘What a beautiful smile,’ I might write ‘The smile is the only thing I saw…’, then the poem is begun. If it gets finished and I think it’s good, then I’ll sit down at the piano.”
Walsh would eventually come to realize that his addictions had to be addressed before it was too late. His substance abuse was beginning to hurt the people around him.
“The hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and ask for help,” he said. “But there’s life after addiction, and it’s good.”
Today, Walsh is focused on making sure the Eagles go out in style, as their record-breaking Las Vegas Sphere residency looks set to be their final curtain call.
