“I’m like, OK, because I’m so poor that just sitting in this house when you’re looking out at this view is so fantastic, I’m going to write a fantastic song”: Stevie Nicks talks about what inspired her to write Landslide

Stevie Nicks has been reflecting on Landslide, her song that, despite being over 50 years old, seems to grow in stature with every passing year.

Nicks wrote it at a liminal time in her life. Lindsey Buckingham was at that point her creative and romantic partner, but the duo’s 1973 debut album Buckingham Nicks had flopped. They had been dropped by their label and Buckingham was away on tour with the Everly Brothers, while Nicks remained in Colorado awaiting his return, pondering her future.

Appearing at the City of Hope 2026 Music, Film and Entertainment Industry (MFEI) Spirit of Life Gala last week, Nicks introduced the song by explaining about its original inspiration.

“I wrote this song in Aspen, Colorado, when I was deciding whether or not Lindsey and I should continue,” she said. “Well, it was a long time ago and 930,000 years later, we still continued.”

The singer came up with the idea of the song while she “was looking out over the snow-covered hills in this beautiful house” up in the mountains. The couple she was staying with were out and without anything else much to do, she turned to her guitar.

“I’m like, OK, because I’m so poor that just sitting in this house when you’re looking out at this view is so fantastic, I’m going to write a fantastic song,” Nicks said.

Fleetwood Mac - Landslide (Live) (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube

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“I just happened to bring my Goya, which I could hardly play, but I thought it looked good, so I wrote this song,” she added, before breaking into the song.

Just weeks after writing Landslide, Nicks and Buckingham were invited to join Fleetwood Mac and their lives changed forever. The Apple TV documentary about the band is coming out early next year, and Nicks’ ex-partner has credited it with healing much of the bad feeling between the two ex-partners and between him and the various other members.

Speaking to E!News in August, Buckingham said: “Fleetwood Mac has been working on a documentary. I think the process of making that has been a very circular healing process for all of us.”

“What it has done,” he explained, “which is the most important thing… we had left things in 2019, maybe as far as I was concerned, not in a very good place for all the wrong reasons. No one was happy about it, and all of that has been healed and worked out.”