Nicks first read about Rhiannon in 1973’s Triad: A Novel of the Spiritual by Mary Leader.
Straightaway, this evokes the mystical folk tradition in which this character originates. “This is a song about a Welsh witch,” is how Stevie Nicks prefaces “Rhiannon” in live performances. Therefore, it was about time that Nicks hit the charts in 1976 with “Rhiannon” which reached #11. Through Don Henley’s voice, we only hear the woman’s physical description and rumours surrounding her love life, but we do not get to hear from the Witchy Woman directly.
In 1972, the Eagles released their #9 hit “Witchy Woman”, encapsulating the essence of the archetypal New Age woman and perpetuating the feminine association with the occult. However, most of the musical figures displaying this occult persona in the ‘70s were men (e.g., Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath). Fascinations about the New Age have remained popular in the forms of reading tarot, crystal healing, and moon rituals, each of which is notoriously feminine rites. In the 1970s, a spiritual and philosophical movement synthesized occult influences, medieval medicine, and indigenous traditions, often referred to as “The New Age”. Nicks has become associated with a “witchy” aesthetic through the song “Rhiannon”, and she has built upon this image. Popular music performers are “involved in a process of double enactment,” “writes socio-musicologist and critic Simon Frith, “they enact both a star personality (their image) and a song personality, the role that each lyric requires, and the pop star’s art is to keep both acts in play at once.” In the case of Fleetwood Mac‘s Stevie Nicks, her astrological star personality and song personality have become intrinsically fused.
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