The Nightmare

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by cbBen

I did the same, and concur. Tom Petty was right when he told her at this time she was making synthesized pop music, not rock and roll.

I looked up the musician credits on Wikipedia:*

Stevie: lead vocal, synths (the only song on the album on which she plays an instrument)
Rick Nowels: synths, backing vocals
Charles Judge: synths
Michael Landau: guitars
George Black: drums, synth bass, backing vocals
Andy Newmark: drums
Lori Perry-Nicks, Maria Vidal: backing vocals

*Especially in the case of the synth players, of which there are three, I'm dubious as to whether each player credited with "synths" or "guitars" in fact plays multiple synthesizers or guitars.

That is an interesting fact that I forgot about which is another reason a deep dive of this song is needed. Very rare for her to be credited with an instrument on an album in addition to giving her brother a writing credit. If you decode the lyrics it's probably the only song on the album that gave a glimpse into her life at the time of the mid 80s. Was it Rolling Stone that said that Stevie was becoming a parody of herself with RAL? Its songs like this that sort of highlight that. Speaking of all the synths, what about No Spoken Word. Its completely destroyed by programed synth bass and other parts. Clearly it was her favorite song from the album being one of the few she completely wrote herself and she performed it on so many tours while never touching the other RAL songs. But its drowning in so many synths on the album. The live version freed it from the chains of the mid 1980s. All of her Tusk references in the song are clues (Storms, Sara, Sisters).

The sisters (moon) reference is another clue about Robin and Kim. Hernan Rojas, who served as the audio engineer for Tusk, recalled that Nicks dubbed her friend group of Sara Recor, Sharon Celani, and Robin Anderson as "members of the sisterhood", all of whom were bestowed golden half-moon pendants.

BTW
There was a ledge deep dive into this song in 2010
From the ledge archives:
https://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/archi...p/t-43627.html