Let's Talk About...BELLA DONNA

[skuncles]

First off let me say that when I first got into Stevie's music (around '82 or so), I was not a big fan of the "Bella Donna" album at all. It took awhile, but it soon became my favorite album of hers, not a song on there I ever skip. One album that I have never gotten tired of listening to from start to finish.
Anyhow, as for the title track, the song is all about Stevie herself. As is often the case with Stevie's lyrics whenever she says "She" or "the woman" in her songs, it's her she's referring to. The term "bella donna" has a double meaning in the song, it means both the "beautiful woman" as well as the deadly poison. But the song is about her experience up to that point in the rock and roll lifestyle. The song continues the theme she first wrote about in "Sisters Of The Moon" (which is about the same subject). In "Bella Donna" she says "And your face becomes thin, and you never thought it would...." She has said that during that period she was losing a LOT of weight, at one point her father told her she was getting way too skinny. "No speed limit, this is the fast lane, it's just the way that it is here..." again it's the rock lifestyle. Stevie has said she felt that things were getting very big very fast and it was hard to keep up with everything. Go back and reread the lyrics and you'll see how it all falls in together.
By the way the song was written specifically for the album. It's not one of her songs that was ever offered to Fleetwood Mac. As for the album's artwork, the two photos (front and back) go together. There were several ideas for the front cover, but in all of them there was the tambourine and roses, the idea for the back cover is that "the woman" has picked up the tambourine and is looking thru to the other side, "coming in out of the darkness". It was very important to Stevie that it say "come in out of the darkness" in her own handwriting above the photo, so people would know it was Stevie herself that was saying this.