“Landslide” Was About an Ice Cream Sundae I Was Eating
“Landslide” Was About an Ice Cream Sundae I Was Eating
By Stevie Nicks
I’d like to set the record straight. Often in the history of rock and roll, folk lore turns to fact if you give it enough time. Jimi Hendrix never set his guitar on fire at Monterey, the Beatles never sang on the roof of Apple Corps, and my song “Landslide” is not about me contemplating my life while starring up at the Rockie Mountains. That song is about a particularly messy hot fudge sundae I ate in 1975.
I wrote that song while me, Lindsey, and the rest of the band were touring around the United States, playing small venues and trying to drum up interest in our self-titled LP. We stopped into an ice cream parlor in St. Paul, and I ordered a hot fudge sundae. A pick-me-up, after a long bus ride from Cleveland.
The song is not about me thinking that I “wasn’t going to make it as a singer.” I knew I was good. That song is about the aforementioned sundae. The server plopped two scoops of vanilla and one scoop of chocolate into a small dish. Then, she added whipped cream, nuts, cherries, more whipped cream, and a mason jar worth of hot fudge. Enough for five sundaes, easily. So much fudge that it created a landslide. Hence the name. Simple as that, nothing more to it.
Fudge and whipped cream and toasted nuts spilled out onto the table. “I took my love and I took it down.” That opening line is about scooping ice cream into my mouth as quickly as I could, so more didn’t get onto the table. Anytime I use the word love, just replace it with ice cream to get the accurate meaning.
Sure there is some filler in the song, I had to make up some garbage about a relationship going sour to get it past the record executives, but I cannot make it any clearer, that song is about ice cream. I mean, for god’s sake, I go “mmm, mmm” during the first chorus. Because it was a really delicious sundae. How did you all miss that?
I just don’t want any falsities written in some future biography or worked into some VH1 special after I’m dead. It’s important to get the truth out there.
Also my real name is Steven Knicks. My parents were the founders of the New York Knicks basketball team.
