The Ledge - My review of Bella Donna (about damn time...)

Hello once more,
I recently posted my review of Bella Donna on Epinions.com. Back on the 13th I said I'd have it ready "within the week", but it took longer to get my thoughts together than I'd like. Epinions is a pay-per-hit website, so I thought I'd be nice and post it here verbatim. Again, I'm writing for a general audience, not die-hards, so a lot of this seems kind of redundant. I'd appreciate your feedback. :)

Quote:

Let’s go back to late 1979. Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s new double-album extravaganza, has finally hit store shelves. Unfortunately, it came at bad time for the record industry, inflation was in the double-digits, and the entire album was broadcast on AM radio before its release. Most had expected Rumours II. What they got was The Beatles meets Pet Sounds. Tusk was something of a disjointed mess, and was the most expensive album ever made at the time. While I love Tusk in its own special way, I can understand the confused reaction.

Tusk cost $20,000 a week to produce. The 10-month long, 110-concert tour to support it cost $20,000 a night. While the tour drew packed crowds, it left Fleetwood Mac completely exhausted, increasingly irritated, and not a whole lot richer. Oh yeah, and there were the usual bilious soap opera shenanigans, but let’s not go there again…

Which brings me to Bella Donna. Critics at the time weren’t initially receptive to the idea of Stevie Nicks going her own way (Creem Magazine sneered in it’s review of Tusk "Guess who’s got a solo career now? Bring out the fog machines!). At first glance, Bella Donna looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Only three of the ten songs were written specifically for the album, and five were written the year and year before Stevie joined Fleetwood Mac. The credits list a seemingly random assortment of members from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, The Eagles, and Bruce Springsteen’s E. Street Band; Friends of Stevie, even a pianist on leave from Elton John. The cover, iconic as it is, screams "early 80s!"

Thankfully, Bella Donna was a very fine start for Stevie’s solo career. A couple of the songs aren’t that great, keeping me from labeling it the flawless masterpiece that some consider it to be. Still, I imagine 90% of up-and-coming singers would kill to have a first solo album this good. I should point out now that I don’t own any of her other solo albums. Some have said it’s all downhill from here, but at least she gave herself a comfortable height to fall from.

Personnel

Vocals: Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Sharon Celani, Lori Perry.
Guitar: Don Felder, Waddy Watchel, Mike Campbell, Davey Johnstone, Dan Dugmore.
Bass: Bob Glaub, Donald Dunn, Tom Montcrieff, Richard Bowden.
Piano: Benmont Tench, Bill Elliot, Roy Bittan, Billy Payne.
Drums: Russ Kunkel, Stan Lynch, Don Henley
Percussion: Bobbye Hall, Phil Jones
Whipping Boy: Lindsey Buckingham
Terrifying Platform Boots: Mardinos Vartanian-Maia
Cockatoo: Max
Produced by Jimmy Iovine and Tom Petty

Track Listing
Bella Donna 5:18
Kind of Woman 3:08
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around 4:02 (Written by Tom Petty & Mike Campbell)
Think About It 3:33
After The Glitter Fades 3:27
Edge of Seventeen 5:28
How Still My Love 3:51
Leather And Lace 3:55 (w/ Don Henley)
Outside the Rain 4:17
The Highwayman 4:49

Packaging
Big whoop here. The booklet amounts to two pages. Track listing and album credits. Couldn’t they have included a decent lyric sheet? Didn’t they people at Modern Records know how hard it can be to properly understand Stevie’s lyrics? Thump her oily hairpins when it’s rainin’…

The Songs

Bella Donna opens with it’s epic title track. If this isn’t a Stevie Nicks song, I don’t know what is! Who else would sing about a "lady that feels like the Moon that she loves"? Not Britney Spears! I know some find it ridiculously silly, but I love the opening verse:

You can ride high atop your pony
I know you won't fall...
'Cause the whole thing's phony
You can fly swinging from your trapeze
Scaring all the people...
But you'll never scare me

All I can imagine Lindsey riding in on a mechanical pony, the pony belching smoke and catching fire, Lindsey jumping off and letting loose with a wailing rendition of Go Your Own Way, while Stevie just stands there sipping coffee, bored out of her mind. God, I gotta stop listening to so much Fleetwood Mac!

Ah heck, I love the whole song. Sorta captures your soul, ‘ya know. "Bella Donna" actually has a triple meaning. It’s Italian for "beautiful woman", but it’s also a deadly poison and an addictive drug. In this case, I imagine she’s using it as a metaphor for the whole rock-and-roll lifestyle.

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Kind of Woman is downright growly and intimidating sounding, half intoxicating, half "God, I hope Stevie never corners me in a dark alley!" It’s the shortest song on the album, and the simplest musically, but to paraphrase Bob Welch, "she’s got me hypnotized…"

Temptation falls in your path
No hesitation; why, you ask
You have another waiting at home
And yes, she matters to you
Kind of woman that'll haunt you
She matters to you…

Sorry to sound juvenile, but this song is hot! :)

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Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around was written by Tom Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell. Apparently, Petty never intended for it to be a duet with Stevie, but obviously something worked out. At the very least, it proves that Stevie can sing passionately a song she didn’t even write. A classic song, but you’ve probably heard it 100 times already. I sort of get the feeling the two were terrified of each other, though. I’d be scared of Tom Petty circa 1980 too. Give that man a cheeseburger!

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Think About It is a fairly upbeat pop song, not really what I expected from Stevie. It was written in 1974 and was optioned for Rumours. In the liner notes she dedicates it "For Christine," doubtless referring to Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie. A nice gesture and all, but I can imagine Christine singing easier than I could Stevie. Probably my least favorite song on Bella Donna, and what’s with that The heart says…Danger!…and the heart says…Whatever! line, anyway? Not a bad song, not even Skip-worthy, but I don’t see myself popping in the album just to listen to it.

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Stevie goes country, sort of, in After the Glitter Fades. She wrote it in 1975 after the "good god, she’s naked!" Buckingham/Nicks album was pretty much rejected by Polydor. The lyrics are shockingly prophetic, at least from the standpoint of an ex-cleaning lady. I never thought I'd make it/ Here in Hollywood/ I never thought I'd ever/ Want to stay… The timeless face of a rock and roll/ Woman while her heart breaks/ Oh, you know...the dream keeps coming/ Even when you forget to feel. Like many of Nick’s songs, it’s rather downbeat in tone, but no point in hiding how you feel, right? Being a dumb Yank, I’m not sure if this qualifies as a "real" country song, but it was a minor hit at the time.

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Edge of Seventeen. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard it. It’s long, angry, loud, feisty, and completely incomprehensible unless you happen to be Stevie’s muse. Allow me to try. It’s about the time Lindsey killed John Lennon's uncle per Jimmy Iovine's order when Stevie was seventeen. Duh!

Sorry. Stevie’s uncle Jonathan died in 1980, and only she and her uncle’s son were in the house at the time. When Stevie first met Jane Petty and asked her how old she was when she met Tom, Stevie thought she said "at the edge of seventeen", not "at the age." Stevie herself met Lindsey when she was sixteen. Jimmy Iovine was a good friend of John Lennon, and was devastated by his death. And of course, 60% of the song is probably about Lindsey. As for the white winged dove? You figure it out.

There isn’t much to say about this song that hasn’t been said, beyond the fact that it’s really, really, awesome. Really. Though I imagine Waddy Watchel probably has nightmares about that guitar riff.

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How Still My Love could probably be interpreted as a response to Go Your Own Way. A pretty good song, but not really one of my favorites. In places it approaches the down-low growliness of Kind of Woman, but as a whole it’s a bit too repetitive. But when Stevie lets loose with a furious

Standin’!
In the doorway!
Watching out to sea
Calling out to me
YOU go! YOUR way!
Go on! go on!
But you don't forget me…

All the listener can really do is recoil and mutter "Ouch! Ice Burn!"

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Stevie wrote Leather and Lace back in 1975 for country star Waylon Jennings and his then-wife Jessi. Even though it’s a rather sappy love song, it’s one of the few I can tolerate on a regular basis. Unfortunately, for the last three weeks, every radio station in Connecticut has been playing it as if it was the only song she ever wrote.

As for Don Henley, I can take him or leave him. My Mother over-exposed me to The Eagles when I was younger, and now I find much of their work rather "blah." Rather amusingly, Don is one of Stevie’s former lovers, and has to sing the most cloying verse of the song by himself. Don and Stevie recently toured together proving that, just like Lindsey Buckingham, you can check out any time, but you can never leave!

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Imagine Tom Petty covering Dreams (ya know, "players only love you when they’re playing", etcetera…) and you’ve got Outside the Rain. OTR’s drum and bass lines are identical to that song (or so I’ve been told. I should have caught on to it by now). Everyone gushes about how great it is live, though it probably took the longest of the ten songs to really grow on me. The vocals here are very strong and passionate, so much so I considered them "nagging" the first few times I heard it. A driving drumbeat keeps this song moving along, which ends with the classic line Love is a word that some entertain. If you find it, you have won the game!

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Bella Donna’s final song, The Highwayman, works wonderfully as poem, but not as well as an actual song. While it may be one of the best-written songs she’s ever done (well, of the one’s I’ve heard), it isn’t that interesting musically, and Stevie sounds a little tired and miserable. Don Henley provides rather nonexistent backup vocals, though I could have done without him.

But something about The Highwayman really gets me. Flawed as it may be, it’s still truly heartbreaking, and I’m going to rather ashamedly admit to crying the first few times I heard it:

A dream as the thunder wakes her
And her highwayman disappears
For a life already lived before
In eyes welled with tears…

So I’m going to defend this one, even though so many fans think it’s the worst song on Bella Donna. I’m afraid Think About It has to take that "honor," even though it’s really not that bad.

In Conclusion
Bella Donna was released on July 27, 1981, and was certified Platinum by the RIAA on October 7th that same year. Less than two years after Tusk, it was Stevie laughing all the way back to the bank. There were no marching bands, no crazy experimental rubber-band guitar solos, no tissue-box drumming, no over-production, and the album was produced at a fraction of the time and cost. Bella Donna sold three million copies in three years while Tusk populated bargain bins.

Having accumulated a large back-log of unrecorded songs, and having devoted two frustrating years to Fleetwood Mac’s grandiose experiment, it’s easy to see Stevie’s reasoning behind Bella Donna. This album finds her angry, tired, and heartbroken, but bizarrely enough, at the top of her game. As I see it, there are three Stevie. The fey, diaphanous Stevie, the mystical Stevie, and the "I’m gonna bash you across the face with my Platform Boots of Death if you don’t knock it off" Stevie. Bella Donna is all three Stevies at once. As she sings in the title track, it was time to "come in out of the darkness." Oh yeah, and to fling lots of venom at a certain curly-haired guitarist.

Producer Jimmy Iovine keeps thing from becoming over-produced. While it may be quintessentially early 80s, Bella Donna came before everyone decided to smother their songs in drum machines and synthesizers. Jimmy (or perhaps Stevie) assembled a very talented group of musicians who support the vocals, rather than drown them out. Sharon Celani and Lori Perry provide backup vocals on all of the songs, as if to say "I am woman. Here are two more!" At times, the production feels a little too sparse; a couple of the songs feel like slightly polished rough takes.

If you weren’t a fan of Stevie, well, Bella Donna isn’t going to make you one. If you aren’t fond of her occasionally rambling poetry, mysticisms-as-metaphor, and her less-than-angelic voice, well, here’s more of it for you. If you are a fan, than buy this album. Now. Or steal it. It’s so Stevie it hurts at times, but you’ll wonder what you did without it.

Just as a side note, this album could really use a good remastering. Most of the songs sound somewhat hollow and lots of tape his. And if I’m feeling self-indulgent, why not throw in a second disk of demos, out-takes, and live performances, too?