Fall From Grace

This song is definetely a rocker! Especially live..Stevie really gets into this one, she's awesome as always

Stevie Nicks has said this song is about Fleetwood Mac and how crazy everything is when they tour.

To me, the first verse is about Mick Fleetwood, not Lindsey Buckingham. She had to try to keep her affair with Fleetwood a secret because she was already in a tenuous situation working with her ex-boyfriend in a band/dysfunctional family. The last line leading to the first chorus is almost a warning, both to Fleetwood and herself: "You could easily wake up with a stranger."

As for that first chorus, she realizes that her dalliances for a fleeting moment of gratification could all fall apart on her, hence her "one night in a world of pain." She also realizes that if her affair's found out, "not all the king's horses, not all the king's men could put it back together."

In the second verse, she seemingly turns her eye toward Christine McVie with the line, "You say you wouldn't do this for very long," almost suggesting that Christine has a subtle longing for approval by adding, "the applause from it all is so defining."

She references herself by saying, "high priestess, she's the keeper of the peace in this," harkening back to her comment on Fleetwood Mac's Behind The Music episode that she was the peacekeeper in the band. She also realizes that the vagaries of success are a powerful drug in themselves by singing, "what people will do to get this high."

She again refers to herself when she realizes she's "alone in my room as it all begins again," by realizing how intense she and her emotions are, "was I so wrong, why am I always so intense." She likely refers to Buckingham's abrupt 1987 departure from Fleetwood Mac, but she could also refer to Christine McVie's 1998 retirement when she says, "well I came all the way here just to watch you walk out that door!"

She realizes at one point that fame -- or someone -- isn't all they're cracked up to be, hence her lines, "I didn't ask when you shook your head/I always accepted what you said as the truth/And the truth only." She turns her eye back to Buckingham, now assured of her own success as a solo artist and her place in Fleetwood Mac and all but snarls, "well it's not enough that you depend on me and it's not enough that you say you love me/it's not enough to just save face." Even so, she could also be thinking from Buckingham's perspective just a little bit and almost directing that line at herself.

"Because sometimes, you just fall from grace." Nicks realizes, as she's said before "you could be the darling one minute and you could be nobody the next." And she realizes it could be her fault or nobody's fault.

In the final coda, Nicks seemingly saves her parting shot for the doctor who prescribed Klonopin. "Maybe I am calmer now/Maybe things are fine/Maybe I made the whole thing up/Maybe that isn't a lie." But also, maybe she needs to be in that intense place to be the kind of rock star she wants to be.

"Maybe the reason I say these things is to bring you back alive," could be a reference to someone -- Buckingham? staging an intervention with her -- or her staging one for Fleetwood to get him to kick his drug habit. "Maybe I fought this long and this hard just to make sure you survive." To me, that's directing it at herself -- she had a long, hard fight to make sure she survived her drug addictions.

Ok right. There are some speculations about this track so maybe I'll give Stevie's all comments about this song: "Fall From Grace is really about Fleetwood Mac onstage— that’s always mostly going to be about me and Lindsey, just about our energy and what a trip it is to be in Fleetwood Mac and walk up there onstage. It’s just, it’s grand, you know? It’s a very grand thing. It’s nothing like your solo career." "Six of the songs from Shangri-la were written on the road. Among them were Love Changes and Fall From Grace, both of which, Nicks says, are “pretty much about” the band itself." "“Fall from Grace,” I wrote on the Fleetwood Mac reunion tour. Because that’s a great place to write, when you’re on tour and everything’s going really well, it’s very exciting; it’s like a big date. You know, it’s like very romantic, very, and you know you’re traveling. And of course, when you’re in Fleetwood Mac it’s a very big deal, so you get the best of everything in Fleetwood Mac. When we go to my solo career, it’s a little cut down, it’s a little cut down.

It’s a little discounted, you know. But the Fleetwood Mac thing is very big, so it’s a very fun place to write. And “Fall from Grace,” was really about um when, Lindsey and Mick and I go up on stage, and how, just how intense it is, you know. And how we do kinda feel like, you know, Queen Elisabeth, Prince Phillip, and Queen Edward, King Edward; oh man, he’s gonna kill me for Queen Edward. Um, it’s such a powerful thing, and when you get up there it’s just so magical and so strong. And so, somehow the poem for “Fall from Grace,” just came outta that." "Fall From Grace was a formal full-on poem…you know ‘maybe I worked this hard just to make sure you survive’…this was something.. and it doesn’t really matter, of course, I wrote that poem about Lindsey and Lindsey knows that and he doesn’t care. He loves being inspirational and he is and I am to him. So we laugh about that. So I write these really, really heavy poems. I think I wrote most of that when we were out on the road on The Dance." "Angry song. Probably my angriest song ever. But, it has…it’s angry like ‘don’t jump off that cliff, don’t be an idiot.’ But, at the same time it’s like ‘because I don’t want you to be hurt.’ [Interviewer’s blah, blah, blah]

No, that song’s about Lindsey. Oh yeah. That’s after the Dance. I wrote that in 1998, 1998-99 that’s right after the Dance. [Interviewer: So, he still knows the buttons to push.] Oh yeah, definitely. And he tries not to push them so much now because I really don’t like it and I don’t want to be angry with him now. But he knows how to get to me. But, I’m only saving him in that song. [Stevie quotes song, forgetting some words]

But it basically says, you know as angry as I am at you, I’m really only trying to help you. So at the end when it comes to the end it basically turns the whole thing around. Almost like he does on Never Going Back Again. when he says you know, “I”m never going back again” and blah blah blah but then he says ‘but come around and see me again.’ So Fall From Grace is kinda like that."

So her comments show that it is about both Lindlsey and the band. But as Stevie also said - when she sings about Lindlsey she sings also about the band and when she sings about the band she sings also about Lindsley and the circle goes on - maybe not always (for example Fireflies are only about the band) but Fall From Grace prooves that that struggles between her and Lindlsey are also band's struggles (well it's certainly because of that that she and Lindsley were two "energy bosses" of FM, let alone they were ex lovers and then just bandmates that had different visions about the band's music etc.).