Bella Donna (album)


Bella Donna is the debut solo studio album by American singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks. Released on July 27, 1981, the album reached number one on the US Billboard 200 in September of that year. Bella Donna was awarded platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America on October 7, 1981, less than three months after its release, and in 2004 was certified quadruple-platinum. Bella Donna spent nearly three years on the Billboard 200 from July 1981 to June 1984. The album has sold over 4 million copies in the US alone with approximately a million copies since 1991 in the US according to Nielsen Soundscan. It is Nicks' best-selling album to date.
The album spawned four substantial hit singles during 1981 and 1982: the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-penned duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", the Don Henley duet "Leather and Lace", her signature song "Edge of Seventeen" and country-tinged "After the Glitter Fades". Nicks was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the second time in 2019 on the strength of this album.
Bella Donna would mark the beginning of Nicks' trend of calling upon her many musician friends and connections to fully realize her sparse demo recordings. Along with friends Tom Petty and Don Henley, Nicks brought in session musician Waddy Wachtel, Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band pianist Roy Bittan, and Stax session man Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. & the MGs. Though Bella Donnas personnel list includes some 20 musicians, the album is very much Nicks' own work, with all but one of the songs on the record written by her. The album also marked the first recording featuring Nicks' backing vocalists, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, who still record and tour with Nicks today.
The album was also included in the "Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums" chart.

History

Nicks began work on Bella Donna in 1979, in between sessions for her third album as part of Fleetwood Mac, Tusk, released in October that year. Nicks recorded various demo versions of songs early and mid-1980 but these recordings were not used on the album. Following the end of the Tusk tour on September 1, 1980, work with a full band of other musicians commenced under producer Jimmy Iovine.
Recording sessions continued until the spring of 1981 when the final songs for the album were completed: "Edge of Seventeen" and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around". The 10-song, 42-minute album Bella Donna was released in the summer of 1981. A number of finished songs did not make it on the album, including "Blue Lamp", which was released instead on the Heavy Metal soundtrack later in 1981, and "Sleeping Angel", released on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack in 1982. These two songs were included on Nicks' Enchanted boxed set in 1998, along with another unused Bella Donna session song, "Gold and Braid". Three more songs from these sessions, "If You Were My Love", "Belle Fleur" and "The Dealer," were finally released on Nicks' 2014 album .
On her Enchanted boxed set release in 1998, remastered versions of some Bella Donna tracks ran noticeably longer in some instances, notably "Leather And Lace".
Video footage of the album sessions can be found on the DVD portion of Nicks' 2007 retrospective release Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks.
Rhino released an expanded version of Bella Donna on November 4, 2016. This includes three discs. The first disc is the remastered original album. The second disc includes outtakes, alternative versions, demos and more. The third disc consists of live tracks from Nicks' "White Wing Dove" tour 1981, recorded at the Fox Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 13, 1981.

Track listing

denotes previously unreleased

Personnel

Band
Additional musicians
Tour Band
Photography
Production
Nicks underwent a short national tour in support of the album, starting on November 28, 1981 and finishing on December 13, 1981. The final night at The Wilshire Fox Theatre in Beverly Hills was recorded by HBO for a television special and later released on VHS and Laser Disc video in many territories by CBS/Fox in 1982 as White Wing Dove – Stevie Nicks in Concert. The whole show was recorded, but only 9 tracks were shown on the TV special and released to video.
The live performance of "Leather And Lace" was, however, used as a video promo for the single release, and did surface on the 1986 VHS collection I Can't Wait, which featured six of Nicks' promo-clips between 1981 and 1985. These six promos were released on DVD as a special feature to the Australian issue of Fleetwood Mac – Mirage Tour in 2007.
On the 2016 Bella Donna Deluxe Edition, 14 tracks from the show - the ten aforementioned songs as well as "Angel", "After the Glitter Fades", "Bella Donna", and "How Still My Love" - were remastered and released, with "Outside the Rain" being restored to its full version. Previously, only two tracks were found on the 1998 boxset The Enchanted Works of Stevie Nicks. "Blue Lamp" and "Think About It" were recorded and received audio broadcast on radio but were not televised, and as such have never been officially released.
Nicks' 2007 retrospective Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks included the full live 1981 clip of "Edge of Seventeen" on the DVD supplement, with optional commentary from Nicks. She admits that her tears at the end of the song were due to her thoughts of having to join Fleetwood Mac in France the following day to begin recording the Mirage album, one of the key reasons why the 1981 tour was so short.
The White Wing Dove performance remains unreleased in its entirety, although it has been circulating for many years amongst fans as a bootleg.
Tour set list
  1. "Gold Dust Woman"
  2. "Think About It"
  3. "Outside The Rain"
  4. "Dreams"
  5. "Angel"
  6. "After The Glitter Fades"
  7. "Gold and Braid"
  8. "I Need to Know"
  9. "Sara"
  10. "Bella Donna"
  11. "Blue Lamp"
  12. "Leather And Lace"
  13. "How Still My Love"
  14. "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"
  15. "Edge of Seventeen"
  16. "Rhiannon"
Tour dates

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Chart Position
Canadian Albums Chart64
US Billboard 2008

Singles

Certifications