For years, Stevie Nicks left the meaning of “Beautiful Child” largely unexplained. The haunting Fleetwood Mac song appeared on Tusk in 1979, but it wasn’t until decades later that Nicks revealed the track was inspired by her brief relationship with Derek Taylor.
Among the five songs Nicks wrote for the album, “Beautiful Child” leans into a softer, more vulnerable side of her songwriting. The piano and vocals make it sound like a lullaby, but the lyrics are about wanting someone despite the age gap and knowing the relationship won’t last.
Nicks eventually explained the story behind the song during a 2013 Q&A. “‘Beautiful Child’ was about a relationship I had with the Royal road manager of the Beatles, whose name was Derek Taylor,” she said. “It didn’t last very long, because he was married, but it affected me very much, because he told me so many stories about the Beatles.”
Taylor was married to Joan Doughty when he and Nicks became involved, and their relationship was brief. What really drew Nicks in was Taylor’s connection to the Beatles. She was fascinated by the stories he had from his time around the legendary band.
He began covering the group as a journalist in 1963 and later worked on a newspaper column “written” by George Harrison with Harrison’s approval. Brian Epstein eventually put Taylor in charge of the band’s press releases, giving him a front-row view of the Beatles and the people around them.
Nicks referred to him as the Beatles’ “royal road manager,” explaining just how much she learned from him.
“Everybody has your road manager,” Nicks said. “We had JC, crazy JC (John Courage), Led Zeppelin had Peter Grant. The road managers are the ones who know everything. And so I learned so much about [Taylor] about the whole world of the Beatles that it was stunning.”
Taylor left more than stories behind, he also ended up giving the song its title. In the 2015 Tusk liner notes, Nicks remembered him reciting poetry to her “in his beautiful English voice” and calling her a beautiful child, a phrase that annoyed her at the time.
However, that phrase stuck with her. Nicks wrote “Beautiful Child” in a single night. She started around midnight on a Sunday and had finished it by dawn.
She later said that her Fleetwood Mac bandmates and the album’s producers didn’t ask what it was about because they understood that it was such a personal song.
Nicks didn’t keep “Beautiful Child” just for herself, though. During the 1979 International Year of the Child, she donated the song and all of its royalties to a United Nations fundraising campaign.
Related: 1964 Folk Song, Written by Bob Dylan, Launched a 19-Year-Old Singer’s Solo Career
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