Emma Kristen Walsh loved one park in Boulder, Colorado, more than any other. The only thing about it she ever complained about was the drinking fountain. It was too high for her. After Emma died, her father, Joe Walsh, made sure the next little girl would not have that problem. And nearly a decade later, that small fountain became the reason Stevie Nicks wrote one of the most personal songs of her career, “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You.”
A little girl and her favorite park
Joe Walsh moved to Colorado in 1971, the year Emma was born, settling in the mountains above Boulder with his wife, Stefany. Emma’s favorite place to play was North Boulder Park.
On April 1, 1974, Stefany was driving Emma in Boulder when another driver failed to stop at a stop sign and hit their car. Emma suffered severe head injuries and did not survive. She was four weeks away from her third birthday.
Joe poured the loss into “Song for Emma,” which closed his album So What later that year. He has said even the album’s title came from that time, when nothing else seemed to matter much.
He and Stefany also had a child-sized drinking fountain installed at North Boulder Park. The plaque on it reads, in part, “This fountain is given in loving memory of Emma Walsh.”
The drive into the snow
In 1983, Joe Walsh met Stevie Nicks at a party after one of her shows. She later wrote that she had never believed in love at first sight until that night, when she spotted him across the room and walked straight to him.
A few days later, with her tour stopped in Denver, Joe rented a jeep and drove her up into the snow-covered Colorado hills. The trip took about two hours, and he would not tell her where they were headed.
Stevie had been complaining about things going wrong on the road. Joe, she wrote, wanted her to see how small those troubles looked next to a real sorrow. So on the way, he told her about Emma. He described her as more than a child to him, someone who truly understood him. He told her how he took Emma to a magical park whenever he could, and how the only thing she ever grumbled about was that she couldn’t reach the drinking fountain.
It was snowing lightly when they arrived. Joe walked around to open her door and help her down. Stevie looked up, saw the park, and understood before anything was said. She burst into tears and asked him:
“You built a drinking fountain here for her, didn’t you?”
She was right. Under a huge hanging tree stood a tiny silver fountain. Stevie left Joe and walked to it by herself. As she remembered it, the dedication honored Emma and every other child too small to get a drink.
Five minutes at the piano
When Stevie Nicks got back to her home in Phoenix, she sat down at her Bösendorfer grand piano and wrote the song in roughly five minutes, according to biographer Zoë Howe.
Producer Keith Olsen later helped shape it during the sessions for her 1985 album Rock a Little. He suggested adding a bridge and a key change, worked them out on a keyboard at her house, and Stevie wrote a new vocal melody to go over it. Olsen received a co-writing credit.
“Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You” became the closing track of Rock a Little. Released as a single in May 1986, it reached No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 31 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It was never a big hit. She has called it the most committed song she ever wrote.
The song that always belonged to Joe
Stevie told the full story in the liner notes of her 1991 collection Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks. When she sang it in concert, she said, she would tell the crowd the song was theirs. But it always belonged to Joe. She thanked him there for inspiring her and wrote that nothing in her life had seemed quite as dark since the day they took that drive.
Their relationship did not last past 1986. But the feeling stayed. Asked in a 2008 interview who the love of her life was, Stevie Nicks named Joe Walsh. Joe, for his part, confirmed to Howard Stern that “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You” was written for him.
The fountain is still in North Boulder Park, with Emma’s name on the plaque and her dates beneath it: April 29, 1971, to April 1, 1974. It is still low enough for a small child to reach.