The Joe Walsh Album Stevie Nicks Wrote “Shotgun” With Him On

Rock and roll icons Joe Walsh and Stevie Nicks shared a tumultuous, short-lived, and drug-fueled relationship in the mid-1980s before splitting ways for their own safety—but not before Stevie Nicks wrote “shotgun” on the album Joe Walsh put out in 1985.

Critics might have given ‘Confessor’ lukewarm reviews, but the album serves as a meaningful time capsule into the brief romance and collaborative relationship between the two musical superstars.

The Joe Walsh Album Stevie Nicks Wrote “Shotgun” On

In a 2023 interview with Howard Stern, Joe Walsh discussed his brief relationship with Stevie Nicks in the early to mid-1980s. Although he was hesitant to return Nicks’ claims that Walsh was the “great love of her life,” the “Rocky Mountain Way” singer gave the former Fleetwood Mac frontwoman plenty of props when it came to her craft.

“She helped me do the ‘Confessor’ album,” Walsh told Stern. “She wrote shotgun with me on that one and gave me some direction. She’s really good at the craft of songwriting. Left to my own devices, I will have 85 pieces of paper with a couple words on each.”

Despite Nicks and Walsh’s star power, critics had lackluster reviews of the 1985 release. Guitar World’s Bruce Malamut described the record as “the apologia of a strictly raised midwestern Episcopalian after living in rock and roll sin for ‘Fifteen Years’ on the road” (via Encyclopedia). While that’s not necessarily the rave reviews of his previous works, Malamut’s summarization appropriately described Walsh’s mindset at the time.

Why The Two Rockstars Had To Part Ways

The rock and roll lifestyle that brought Stevie Nicks and Joe Walsh together would ultimately lead to their demise when their rampant drug use became too problematic. “Joe and I broke up because of the coke,” Nicks later recalled to Q Magazine (via CheatSheet).

“He told my friend and [backing] singer Sharon, ‘I’m leaving Stevie because I’m afraid that one of us is going to die, and the other one won’t be able to save the other person because our cocaine habit has become so over the top now that neither one of us can live through this. So, the only way to save both of us is for me to leave.’”

When Walsh spoke to Interview Magazine in 2012, he said, “We spent about a year together, and she helped me write a bunch of music, and I helped her write her music. We had a great relationship. Romantically, it shifted, but in terms of friends and respect for each other, that’s all still there. She’s a really great person.”

Walsh and Nicks’ romance might have been short-lived, but the musical works that came out of their bond, including Walsh’s ‘Confessor’ and Nicks’ “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You,” which she wrote after an unforgettable car ride with Walsh.

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