Angel (Nicks)

This is a great song..can be found on Fleetwood Mac's TUSK 1979 double album, for those of you who don't know.

This is a very good song..I love Stevie's writing. "Like a ghost through a fog..like a charmed hour and a haunted song."

I agree, it is a really good song. I love the chorus's harmonies and the ending is great.

"I STILL LOOK UP...WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM...I'VE THE SAME WIDE EYES" SHE'S EITHER TALKING ABOUT LINDSEY OR MICK. SHE'S A BRILLIANT WRITER.

I still look up When you walk in the room I've the same wide eyes They tell the story Try not to reach out When you turn 'round And you say hello And we both pretend No great pretender

The first use of Nick's "ghost through a fog" line, which is used in the song "Sweet Girl" on "The Dance" and also in "Ghosts are Gone" in Nicks's own "In Your Dreams." Moreover, the song parallel's the Welsh myth of the goddess Rhiannon, who was courted by a king as she was out riding her horses, who teased him by running away from him. Yet, in the end, they did marry and had a child. The child was either kidnapped or killed as part of a plot to frame Rhiannon and she was given some bizarre punishment. But eventually, the true culprit is revealed and Rhiannon is exonerated, and takes her rightful place on the throne. I think that Nicks was using this story as a kind of parallel to her own life and her trying to overcome her own struggles.

The first use of Nick's "ghost through a fog" line, which is used in the song "Sweet Girl" on "The Dance" and also in "Ghosts are Gone" in Nicks's own "In Your Dreams." Moreover, the song parallel's the Welsh myth of the goddess Rhiannon, who was courted by a king as she was out riding her horses, who teased him by running away from him. Yet, in the end, they did marry and had a child. The child was either kidnapped or killed as part of a plot to frame Rhiannon and she was given some bizarre punishment. But eventually, the true culprit is revealed and Rhiannon is exonerated, and takes her rightful place on the throne. I think that Nicks was using this story as a kind of parallel to her own life and her trying to overcome her own struggles.

Here are all Stevie's comments about "Angel":

Stevie: “A song about Mick. Not so much my love affair with him. I was always taken with his style, and in those days he would walk in the room and I would just look up. ‘I still look up when you walk in the room… I try not to reach out.’ It’s all about him and his crazy fob watch and his really beautiful clothes. He’s a very stylish individual and I was just this little California girl who’d never really known anybody like him.”

https://stevienicks.info/music/fleetwood-mac-tusk-1979/angel/

And on another site I have found the rest of her comments in which she's explaining that this song is in general a kind of continuation of "Rhiannon" but in this case it's based on real mythology of that Goddess. She's also suggesting that some lines are about Fleetwood Mac and how they all enjoy performing: [On Angel] I wanted to write a rock 'n' roll song. And so it started out being much sillier than it came out . It didn't end up being silly at all. It ended up being very serious actually. But when I started it I was just ~ I thought this is good for me since I write so many like intense, serious, dark songs that I wanted to write something that was up but...and it starts out that way and it is up but there is a definite eerieness that goes through that song that I didn't even know was there, until just the other night ~ when you were filming that. ~ Stevie Nicks, Tusk Documentary, 1980

[On the line 'So I close my eyes softly/Till I become that part of the wind'] That's from uh, the story of Rhiannon... there's a man, in the story of Rhiannon and his name is Arawn... who is the great lord of darkness ~ who is the man who possesses the power to take or give life, but he only takes life... because of pain. And so I wrote something at some point... because Aaron is my father's name, and Aaron is also my brother's name. And Aaron is also my grandfather's name. So Arawn is many things to me.

And it says, 'So I close my eyes softly/Till I become that part of the wind that we all long for sometime.' And so Arawn touched the twins with his hand so that they would sleep. And in that sleep there will be no pain. And in that nonexistence of pain there will be happiness. Because it was only given with great love. And this was in a haunted song, and a charmed hour, and this was the angel... of my dreams. ~Stevie Nicks, Jim Ladd Innerview, 1979

[On what the definition of a "charmed hour" is] The best hour. The best of all your life....It always will remain in your memory and always ring through your dreams, and be there when any people hurt you or bring you down, or you suffer, maybe. That haunted song will be there for you, because that's the Birds of Rhiannon. And that's what that was written about, is the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which always are there if you need them. And you may black out ~ and that's what they do ~ they just take the pain from you, and you wake up and it's all right. And that's the haunted song of Rhiannon... you have to know the story. ~Stevie Nicks, Jim Ladd Innerview, 1979

Angel is a song that I love doing on stage because it makes me feel like an old-time dancehall girl. I love it. I love it. ~Stevie Nicks, Tusk Documentary, 1980

[On whether Angel is an example of her love for Fleetwood Mac] Oh yeah. 'I still look up.' That goes out on stage now. The uh 'I knew you would.' It's like, we all knew we would. Nobody questions that. ~Stevie Nicks, Jim Ladd Innerview, 1979

http://www.inherownwords.com/angel.htm

And the other sources say that this song refers also to Nicks's family - her father, brother and grandfather because their names were Aaron (those were their second names or something like that) and Aaron also apears in the mythology of Rhiannon. But that's what she's also saying in those comments above. Another Nicks's song that includes many different threads.

[Edit: Grammar]