# Angel (Fleetwood Mac song)

"Angel" is a song written by singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks of the British-American band Fleetwood Mac. It first appeared on the band's 1979 double album Tusk and was released as a single in the Netherlands the following year. The song was performed on the 1979-1980 Tusk Tour and has since been issued on a few deluxe editions of albums, starting with the 2015 super deluxe edition of Tusk, which included a live recording from the band's performance in St. Louis on 5 November 1979. A 5 May 1980 live recording from the Richfield Coliseum in Ohio was included on the deluxe edition of the band's Live album.
A different song of the name was written by Bob Welch and included on Fleetwood Mac's Heroes are Hard to Find album in 1974. In the liner notes for Welch's Greatest Hits & More – Revisited, he said that the lyrics were about "want[ing] to see an angel" and "understanding whether the angel is a human being".

## Composition

Nicks wrote "Angel" about Mick Fleetwood, but focused more on his fashion choices than her affair with him. "It's about his crazy fob watch and his really beautiful clothes. He's a very stylish individual and I was just this little California girl who never really knew anybody like him." She said in a 1980 documentary on the making of Tusk that "Angel" was her first attempt at writing a "silly" rock n roll song, but she later identified an "eeriness" to the composition that she initially overlooked.
Hernan Rojas, who served as an engineer for Tusk, described the lyrics as incorporating aspects of Ovid's Metamorphosis, the stories of Mabinogion, Gothic fiction, and personal diary entries. Nicks said that the "charmed hour" lyric referred to "the best hour", which also tied into the three birds of Rhiannon. While writing the song, she also gravitated toward a figure in Welsh mythology named Arawn, partially because several of her family members were named Aaron. She said that the lyric 'So I close my eyes softly/Till I become that part of the wind' related to some of Arawn's powers as the king of the underworld. In a 1981 interview with Blair Jackson of BAM magazine, Nicks identified "Angel" as one of her favorite compositions on Tusk.

## Recording

"Angel" was a late addition to Tusk, with initial tracking taking place on 1 April 1979. Take six was selected as the master and overdubbing continued into the month of August. A decision was made to increase the tempo of the song after a few passes, which according to Rojas, allowed for the rhythm section to become more lively. The structure of "Angel" consisted of a verse, bridge, two pre choruses, and two choruses. Rojas said that the song relied on a "powerful groove and dynamic lyrics" to compensate for the simple chord progression.
The song was set in 4/4 time, with Mick Fleetwood playing a Tama drum kit with AKG overhead microphones, an AKG 451 on the bottom resonant head of a snare drum, and a D12 on the kick drum. John McVie's bass guitar was connected directly into a Neve mixing console, Christine McVie played a Yamaha electric piano in an isolation room, and Lindsey Buckingham played a Fender Stratocaster through a Marshall stack in a different isolation room. The electric piano was situated in a room known as the "Hawaiian room", which the band named due the Hawaiian lava rocks that decorated the space.
A recording session in May was filmed by a crew led by Randall Hagadorn, and compiled footage for a Tusk documentary released in 1980. During this session, Buckingham recorded various lead guitar licks and a solo during the song's vamp. Nicks and Buckingham also worked on vocal harmonies around a grand piano with the intention of singing the song as a duet. Buckingham instead settled on singing his vocals in tandem with Nicks for only certain lyrics. His vocals also supplanted a few lines recorded by Nicks, who recorded some of her lead vocals while dancing in platform shoes and pink leg warmers.

## Critical reception

Stephen Holden called the song "an especially risky flirtation with hard rock" in his Rolling Stone review for Tusk. In his book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks, Stephen Davis characterised Nicks' vocals on "Angel" as "strong, passionate, and more mature than the voice on Rumours. Terry Jordan of the St. Joseph News-Press discussed "Angel" in their review of the band's 1980 performance in Kansas City, saying that the song was "bright" and "bouncy" and "outshined" all of Buckingham's material onstage.

## Personnel

* Stevie Nicks – lead and backing vocals
* Lindsey Buckingham – guitars, backing vocals
* Christine McVie – keyboards, backing vocals
* John McVie – bass guitar
* Mick Fleetwood – drums, percussion