On March 25, 2009, during a show in Montreal on Fleetwood Mac's Unleashed Tour, Nicks gave a short history of the inspiration behind "Gypsy". She explained it was written sometime in 1978-1979 when the band had become "very famous, very fast," and it was a song that brought her back to an earlier time, to an apartment in San Francisco where she had taken the mattress off her bed and put it on the floor. To contextualize, she voiced the lyrics: "So I'm back, to the velvet underground. Back to the floor, that I love. To a room with some lace and paper flowers. Back to the gypsy that I was." Those are the words: 'So I'm back to the velvet underground'—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane. It was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—'back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was.'"