{"id":396105,"date":"2025-09-04T02:26:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T02:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396105\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T02:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T02:26:15","slug":"the-hidden-beatles-link-in-a-classic-fleetwood-mac-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396105\/","title":{"rendered":"The hidden Beatles link in a classic Fleetwood Mac song"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fleetwood<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Wed 3 September 2025 20:30, UK <\/p>\n

Now, any fan of Fleetwood Mac<\/a> knows that Stevie Nicks spent much of her career\u00a0writing songs about her own bandmates.\u00a0It\u2019s part of their charm and certainly a part of their enduring allure. <\/p>\n

Like Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood, she used the internal backstabbings, affairs and betrayals, which very nearly destroyed the band, as a source of new material. In truth, it is part of what almost every single songwriter in history has done. Just that those songwriters usually don\u2019t have to sing the songs they wrote about their jilted lovers in the face of said jilted lover. <\/p>\n

But there are occasions in which Nicks\u2019 scope was a little wider than the romantic misdeeds of her own bandmates. Take \u2018Beautiful Child\u2019 for example \u2013 a song written about a brief fling Stevie Nicks had with The Beatles\u2019 road manager, Derek Taylor. <\/p>\n

The track comes from Fleetwood Mac\u2019s 1979 album, Tusk. It is a tender coming-of-age ballad featuring mellow piano and guitar arrangements. Nicks\u2019 densely layered vocals add a velvety warmth to lyrics that speak of love\u2019s dependence on good timing. When she sings: \u201cYou fell in love when I was only ten. The years disappeared. Much has gone by since then,\u201d she seems to evoke the inevitable heartbreak which must surely follow the love between two people of vastly different ages, who have had vastly different life experiences.<\/p>\n

For a long time, people assumed the song was about Mick Fleetwood. It had been rumoured that Stevie Nicks had a secret relationship with Fleetwood (who is older than Nicks) when she was young. However, in a\u00a0Q&A<\/a>\u00a0back in 2013, Nicks stated that the song was actually written in response to her relationship with Derek Taylor: \u201cIt didn\u2019t last very long, because he was married,\u201d Nicks says, \u201cbut it affected me very much, because he told me so many stories about the Beatles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Stevie<\/a>(Credits: Ralph Arvesen)<\/p>\n

A former music journalist, Taylor had worked with some of the biggest names of the 1960s, including The Byrds, Harry Nilsson, and The Beach Boys. When Nicks met him, however, he was working as road manager to the fab four. <\/a><\/p>\n

Known as \u2018The Fifth Beatle\u2019, Taylor became such an integral part of the group\u2019s dynamic that he ended up being name check in two famous songs written by Beatles members. Indeed, Taylor was one of the \u201cfriends\u201d who George Harrison waits for in \u2018Blue Jay Way\u2019. He is also mentioned in The Plastic Ono Band\u2019s \u2018Give Peace A Chance\u2019, alongside Timmy Leary, Rosemary, Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper, Norman Mailer Alan Ginsberg, and Hare Krishna.<\/p>\n

For Nicks, Derek Taylor was an escape from the chaotic web of toxic relationships within Fleetwood Mac. He had a maturity and worldliness, which Nicks found deeply attractive, and on meeting him, the singer quickly became infatuated. Her relationship with Taylor is a testament to how surprisingly small the music world was at that time. I<\/p>\n

n the Q&A, Nicks goes on to say: \u201cEverybody has your road manager. We had JC, crazy JC (John Courage, who also worked with Savoy Brown.) Led Zeppelin had Peter Grant. The road managers are the ones who know everything. And so I learned so much about him about the whole world of the Beatles that it was stunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although their romance didn\u2019t last, the tone of \u2018Beautiful Child\u2019 and lyrical content would seem to imply that Nicks learnt a lot from Derek Taylor. Nick seems to use the song to express her growth as a result of the relationship, repeating the line \u201cI am not a child anymore\u201d repeatedly. <\/p>\n

Then again, perhaps Taylor, being 16 years her senior, made Nicks feel infantilised, and this song is, in fact, a rejection of his power over her. Nicks has only ever offered small kernels of information about the song\u2019s meaning, so we may never know. What we do know, however, is that Nicks sure knows how to write a love song.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Wed 3 September 2025 20:30, UK Now, any fan of Fleetwood Mac knows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,43282,8345,269,44868,4162,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-396105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-fleetwood-mac","10":"tag-john-lennon","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-stevie-nicks","13":"tag-the-beatles","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115143664276947991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}