Stevie Nicks Bella Donna – Mofi Hybrid SACD

Sourced from the original analog master tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD of the 1981 benchmark plays with superb transparency, dynamics, and detail. Benefitting from extraordinary clarity, openness, and separation, it captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism and presence.

Teaming with simpatico producer Jimmy Iovine and fellow rock ’n’ roll icon Tom Petty, Nicks asserted control over the creative process for the first time in her career. She allowed the material to develop spontaneously — a characteristic you readily experience via the natural, balanced sonics and raw emotionalism. Nicks’ organic methods owed to both her desire to collaborate with the studio musicians as well as necessity.

Because the personnel who played on the record had demanding schedules, no one had time to sit around and get take after take in pursuit of perfectionist goals or technical aims. The extended, tonally rich soundscapes you hear — instrumentation that feels live, vocals that float and yet sound altogether innate, synergy between the players that places them in the same room together — remain as integral to Bella Donna as its personalized songs.

About those songs. Nicks recorded 16 tracks and picked from material she wrote as far back as a decade prior. Though she deemed Bella Donna a “sort of chronology of [her] life,” she felt proudest about its songs’ ability to speak to issues to which everyone could relate. Her intuition proved prophetic. The public embraced her solo debut en masse, sending the album to No. 1 on its way to selling more than four million copies  — numbers that make Bella Donna more successful in the U.S. than any Fleetwood Mac effort apart from Rumours.

The enthusiastic commercial and critical reception was well deserved. From a musical perspective, the playing on Bella Donnaalone warrants the highest praise. The makeshift band on a majority of the fare consists of guitarist Waddy Watchel, drummer Russ Kunkel, organist Benmont Tench, bassist Bob Glaub, percussionist Bobbye Hall, and guitarist Davey Johnstone — all of whom claim sterling resumes and tackle their parts with utmost professionalism, restraint, and chemistry. Nicks also wrangled E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan to sit in on five songs, and started the beginning of a long relationship with backing vocalists Sharon Celani and Lori Perry.

For the first single, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” Nicks duetted with its author, Tom Petty, and nearly all the Heartbreakers, with legendary bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn filling in for Ron Blair. The sweeping, sassy tune reached No. 3 on the Billboardcharts and captures the fiercely independent mood Nicks embraces throughout the record. She, Petty, and the Heartbreakers hit upon similar aural gold on the shivering “Outside the Rain,” which echoes toughness, sinew, and determination.

On the follow-up single, “Leather and Lace,” Nicks turns to another famous luminary in the form of Eagles vocalist-drummer and former romantic interest, Don Henley. Filled with disparate images, the acoustic-based ballad climbed to No. 6 and remains notable for its lack of embellishment. Reflective, conversational, and pure, the song blooms with heartfelt emotion and honesty. When Nicks sings, “I am stronger than you know,” it doubles as the mantra for Bella Donna.

Indeed, Nicks’ gritty and glam-kissed vocals on this set rank among the finest performances of her career. She invests in every word, summons her trademark rasp on cue, and explores a wide range with seeming effortlessness. Nicks weaves magical spells and haunting breathiness amid ghostly webs of notes on “Kind of Woman”; conveys heavy caution, contemplation, and consequence on the slow-building title track; and throws herself with abandon into “After the Glitter Fades,” a Top 40 lamentation framed by piano motifs, pedal-steel fills, and country accents.

As for the record’s signature moment, the contagious favorite Rolling Stone ranks the 217th Greatest Song of All Time? Nicks finds rare air on “Edge of Seventeen,” its helicopter-chop riffs and chugging rhythms corresponding with her ascending and descending vocal flights, call-and-response harmonies, and throaty timbre. The definition of cool, she remains poised throughout, probing grief in an inimitable fashion that sounds more pertinent now than four decades ago.

Long may that white dove soar.