Friday Song: “Gypsy”
“I was a child, and the child was enough” — a song about how to be fearless
This is a song with more angles and depth behind it than you might expect.
Written for Stevie Nicks’ 1980 album Bella Donna, there wasn’t room for it, so she shelved it for the next Fleetwood Mac album, 1982’s Mirage. It was a song written about Nicks’ early relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, when they were so poor they only had a king-sized mattress on the floor with fancy lace bedskirts surrounded by paper flowers, with a single lamp nearby. Nicks for years would recreate this motif when the pace and scale of her fame made her feel a little lost and crazed, yanking her mattress off her bedframe and putting it on the floor.
- Velvet Underground was a second-hand clothing store near the couple at the time.
The day before Bella Donna was released, her good friend from high school, Robin Snyder, called to tell her that she had been diagnosed with leukemia. Pregnant at the time and married to Kim Anderson, Snyder decided to see the pregnancy through, even though having an abortion would have allowed her to possibly live for another year. The baby, Matthew, was born premature, and his mother died three days later. As Snyder was dying, Nicks dedicated “Gypsy” to her. She subsequnetly found it extremely difficult to sing in concert.
After Snyder died and with a new baby between them, Nicks married Anderson in a bout of shared grief. The marriage didn’t last, but Nicks stayed close to Matthew, putting him through college and helping him learn about his mother via recordings, photos, and scrapbooks.
Fleetwood Mac was an early adopter of music videos. The director of “Gypsy” wasn’t familiar with the tribulations of the band’s love lives, so he paired up Buckingham and Nicks in some scenes. They’d broken up six years earlier and were not on good terms. Still, they danced together for the video.
To some, this is a song about finding the fearless side of yourself, realizing that who you were as a child was enough, and that how others attempt to define you is meaningless. That child was enough.
And so is a king-sized mattress on the floor decorated in lace and paper flowers.
Enjoy!