One of the biggest hits by the band, “Gypsy” is both a nostalgic reflection on Stevie Nicks’s free-spirited life before joining Fleetwood Mac and a tribute to her late friend, Robin Snyder Anderson.

Written between 1978 and 1979, the ballad was going to be on Stevie Nicks’s solo album, Bella Donna. When Nicks’s childhood friend Anderson, who was also pregnant at the time, told her she’d been diagnosed with terminal leukemia, Nicks saw the song in a new light. She then decided to save the song for Fleetwood Mac’s next album.

In regards to the song’s ideas about going back to your roots, Stevie Nicks has stated:

“In the old days, before Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey [Buckingham] and I had no money, so we had a king-size mattress, but we just had it on the floor. I had old vintage coverlets on it, and even though we had no money it was still really pretty… Just that and a lamp on the floor, and that was it—there was a certain calmness about it. To this day, when I’m feeling cluttered, I will take my mattress off of my beautiful bed, wherever that may be, and put it outside my bedroom, with a table and a little lamp.”

Nicks has also spoken about the more somber inspiration for the song:

“The song Gypsy isn’t a real happy story. Gypsy is a lot about returning to San Francisco. And Gypsy was written when my best friend [Robin] died of Leukemia and uh …about the fact that she wasn’t going to see the rest of this: I still see your bright eyes, it was like she wasn’t …going to make it. And uh, I was like the lone gypsy ~ this was my best friend from when I was 15 and so I was a solo gypsy all of a sudden and it was very sad for me and that’s sometimes when I write my very best songs.”