Fleetwood Mac are one of the most legendary bands of all time, but they were of course influenced by other artists just like everyone else.
Throughout the 1970s, one of the band’s founding members, Stevie Nicks, looked back on the Fab Four as one of the most powerful inspirations behind her work.
The Beatles released countless songs over the years, but Stevie was adamant that one stood above all the rest: Yesterday.
The track, which was penned by Paul McCartney, is still one of the band’s biggest and best-known songs of all time, but Stevie explained that the emotional core to the crooner is what makes it so profound and special.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, she explained: “I think Yesterday was very much a premonition of Paul of what was to come with Linda.”
Stevie followed up by saying: “It’s the perfect song.”
The singer of The Chain went on to praise The Beatles and their powerful songwriting prowess.
“I was first starting to play the guitar,” she recalled, looking back on starting Fleetwood Mac. “But I already knew I was going to be a songwriter. I would sit on my bed and learn all these songs – not the incredible chords they used, but I could get through them.”
Stevie – who has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards – went on to say she was initially surprised by The Beatles’ style of intimate songwriting.
She said: “These guys truly wrote about the intricacies of relationships. It was going deeper, and that’s what we were surprised by.”
Stevie later went on to have a powerful friendship with George Harrison. She once said of her relationship with him: “We spent some time just hanging out, and not really writing, but like pretending, trying.”
