Blue Lamp

[On her mother's gift of the blue lamp] It's a dark blue Tiffany lamp. It will be in the songbook so people will be able to see it . It's a beautiful lamp; it's very mystical. And uh, it just became my very favorite thing and it sort of symbolized to me the light that shines through the night ~ you know. Cause when Fleetwood Mac ~ we found them or they found us or whatever you know ~ it was a definite light at the end of the tunnel for both Lindsey and I. And this blue lamp really became that light ~ of which I have always, wherever I live, on and I keep it on all the time. ~Stevie Nicks, The Source, 1981

[Well you managed to get Blue Lamp on the Heavy Metal soundtrack.] It was very important that it found a place for itself. I love that song. It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I'd ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I'd ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing. Fleetwood Mac doesn't record that way. They record from a more technical standpoint. ~ Stevie Nicks, BAM, September 11, 1981

The Blue Lamp is a real Tiffany Lamp that uh, it was the first, right after I joined Fleetwood Mac, my Mom bought that lamp for me. So it was the first really beautiful thing that I got. And it was from her. And I ended up carrying it back from, from Phoenix to Los Angeles on the, on the plane and they didn't want to let me on with this Blue Lamp, and I said, 'Well, well then you're gonna have to run over me, 'cause we're not going without the lamp.'

So the Blue Lamp became like this, you know it, it uh, it still sits right in my living room in Phoenix. It's like, it's a beautiful lamp and people write songs about it and people walk in the house and say, 'Oh, that's the Blue Lamp,' like you just said, you know. So yeah, it really exists, it's really a lamp. ~Stevie Nicks, Storytellers, 1998

The Blue Lamp is one of my very favorite songs. Blue Lamp was written about a blue lamp that my mother gave me when I first joined Fleetwood Mac. [A] very heavy leaded glass lamp that I carried on an airplane home with a friend of mine, she carried the base and I carried the shade, home to L.A. And we were really afraid it was going to get broken because it was this, you know, leaded glass lamp. They didn't want us to take it on the plane cause it was too big. Well, we got it on the plane, by screaming and yelling and crying. So that is the lamp that I carried from my mother's home. And it became and has remained my favorite possesion. It is the one thing that never changes. It is without a doubt the only light that shines through the shining night much of the time for me.

And the blue lamp was supposed to be on the cover [of Bella Donna], the picture of the blue lamp. And I decided to change the cover so there are some very, very wonderful pictures of this group of women and this room and stuff around this blue lamp. So someday those pictures will come out and you'll get to really see the blue lamp. Cause it really is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, it looks like a huge blue mushroom. And it's a wonderful thing for my mom, too, because it's all so real, even though it sounds like sort of a gothic fairy tale song, you know, it's totally real, every line in it is real." ~Stevie Nicks, WLIR interview, 1981

[On her bedroom] Yes, it is. It's fabulous, not because there's a lot of expensive stuff in it but because of all the neat stuff I've collected since I was in high school. There's a lamp that my mom bought for me when I first joined Fleetwood Mac. It's a blue Tiffany lamp, dark blue, and it's called the Blue Lamp. ~Stevie Nicks, Rolling Stone, September 22, 1994

That's true that this song is often referenced as being based on a very concrete object, but that does not do justice to the mystical quality of this beautiful song, with like in a dream the feeling that the true meaning somehow eludes us.