Rooms on Fire

I guess the single [Rooms on Fire] is about when you're in a crowded room and you see a kind of person and your heart goes, 'Wow!' The whole world seems to be ablaze at that particular moment. ~ Stevie Nicks, Record Mirror, May 20, 1989

Rooms on Fire is about me. Rooms on Fire is about ~ um ~ a girl who is a rock'n'roll star who has pretty much accepted the fact that she will never ever be able to be married or have those children that she wanted or the husband that she wanted or that deep, deep love that she wanted and she's accepted it.

And then one night at one of those everlasting parties that we all have to go to that we really don't want to go to, and we go make an appearance and leave as quickly as possible ~ um ~ a man comes into the room and there is a certain sort of a ~ see I don't see very well so I have a sixth sense that there is an eye contact thing that even though I can't see him very well I feel something and I close my eyes for a second and he walks over to me and I look up and he's there. And he asks me to dance, and we end up getting married and I end up having a little baby girl and we live together for twenty ~ twenty-five years and the sad thing is that I waited for him all my life and then he dies before me and I wait for him for the rest of my life and he comes back after I am very, very old and gets me. And takes me with him back to where ever he comes from. ~Stevie Nicks, BBC Interview 1989

The night I met Rupert Hine was a dangerous one. He was different from anyone else I had ever known...He was older, and he was smarter, and we both knew it. I hired him to do the album before we even started talking about music. It seemed that we had made a spiritual agreement to do a magic album...in a fabulous Dutch castle, at the top of the mountain. We recorded it in the formal dining room...where, upon the walls hung all these very old and expensive pieces of art...looking at us...we were never alone.

It always seemed to me that whenever Rupert walked into one of these old, dark castle rooms, that the rooms were on fire. There was a connection between us that everyone around us instantly picked up on, and everyone was very careful to respect our space...our TIMESPACE, so we all lived at the castle for about four-and-a-half months. I went home with him to England to mix the album at his studio...he left in December. I joined him there in London in January. We left immediately for his studio, Farmyard Studios, somewhere outside London. It was like being in a cottage in Wales, it was a little spooky...the atmosphere was like nothing I had ever experienced. Then something happened to him that simply made it impossible for us to ever be together again. I left him there...the rooms were still burning, but the fire had been stolen from us. It wasn't over love, in fact...it had nothing to do with love. It was just a bad situation. I came back to Los Angeles, a very changed woman. And now, long nets of white...cloud my memory...Now I remember the rooms, the music, and how truly magic the whole think was... ~Stevie Nicks, TimeSpace Liner notes 1992

It is very hard to be the one that's left and it's hard to be the one that leaves too. But it's much harder to be the one that stands in the driveway going 'I'll see you in four to six months.' And to drag him out on the road is like pride-killing. It's not good for a man's pride. And I learned that a long time ago that you don't drag a man around ~ you know ~ he ~ either you have such a solid relationship that he can stay home and so what he does and that he can understand what you do. But it takes ~ this takes a saint ~ this takes a very saint-like man.

[Not many saints about] Very few. I mean I couldn't take it.

[So why should anyone else.] Why should anybody else? I mean it does get to the point where someone finally says to you 'I really love you and I would love to spend the rest of my life with you and I would love to have ~ you know ~ two or three children with you and I would love for you to be the mother of my children and I would love for all these things to happen but the fact is Stevie, it will never happen because you are always going to be on call to your work.' Until that specific man walks into your life like in Rooms on Fire ~ that you are willing to give up at least 50 percent of what you do. ~Stevie Nicks, BBC Interview 1989

One of the best of Stevie nicks. She sings it with so much passion and emotion, it's almost irrisistable. And I love the lyrics... it's like a poem to me. "She had trusted many...But been unfamiliar with...Almost everyone but you".........."Well maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire, Everytime that you walk in the room".........it's so well and elgantly expressed. I love it. a bit of surprise finding not many people commented on this one.

i dont believe only two of us left comments!

My Goodness. Not a comment since 2010. Well I have one on this composition. After I lost my dear mother, Adella, in 1984, I adopted (not literally) a Swedish woman named Corinne as my second mother. Her favorite Stevie song was this one, Rooms On Fire. I lost her too in 1999 and everytime I hear this song I so think about her and what a beautiful and well traveled person she was.

this song reminds me of one of the most metaphysically powerful men I have ever known....

I have read that an inspiration for that song was Stevie's decision not have kids and even permanent relationship with a man - her aim was to become musician and create music for mothers and daughters - that's what she said in an interview. And that's what this song is about. About a woman who sacrifices her personal life for music. She also refers to Rupert Hine and their relationship as lovers and workers on the album. She added that they shared a common concept for this record and they both enjoyed working on it.

I grew up and in my twenties or even as a teenager realised I’m just so sensitive or full of emotions that marriage and looking after children would be a disaster. I, therefore, purposed not to go this way and so set out on life alone. Many years later, turning fifty, I thought about it again and asked the spirits around is there a chance for me even now. It took something like four more years before she came along but we’ve been happily married now for almost ten years.

I heard this song this morning for the first time in several years and was stuck by the depth and beauty of the lyrics and the powerful way Stevie sings it.

It also made me realize how much I missed the shear mature talent of the singer songwriters of her generation. Talylor swift and Arianna couldn't write a song like this if their lives depended on it.