Drugs, love, devastating failures and triumphs
who never made it. When he realized his little granddaughter could handle complex harmonies, he imagined taking her to the Grand Ole Opry. After decades of toiling in anonymity, he figured the gimmick he needed was singing with the adorable girl.
Stevie’s idea.
Her parents encouraged her but became worried when Nicks, in her 20s, was broke, sick all the time and exhausted. Nicks considered becoming a speech therapist but stuck with singing and writing songs.
She kept filling journals as she went through romances and a brief marriage to her best friend’s mother nixed that widower.
When Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles were touring, Nicks walked into her dressing room one night to find a huge bouquet of roses with a card: “To Stevie: The best of my love - tonight? Love, Don.”
Turns out the ham-handed move was a practical joke from her own bandmates, teasing her about Don Henley.
When she and Henley did hook up, he was far smoother and sent over a stereo, records and beautiful flowers.
Among her other lovers was record executive Paul Fishkin, who helped propel her career.
Fishkin considered Nicks the key to Fleetwood Mac. The band had been kicking around for years. They only hit it big once Nicks and Buckingham joined the band. Still, she held onto her waitressing job - just in case.
Though now the one bringing in the crowds, Nicks had no real sway in the band. Getting the songs that she wanted on the albums became a struggle, according to Davis.
Initially, Nicks lacked the courage that she could go it alone. Fishkin assured her she could.
Around this time, her New Agey side blossomed. Nicks had also started using a lot of cocaine, landing in rehab for the first time in 1982.
A few years later, when in Australia and unable to get her hands on any coke, she started drinking heavily and fell off stages. Her friends staged an intervention and Nicks went off to the Betty Ford Center.
Then, while on the anti-panic attack drug Klonopin, life turned really scary. Nicks began taking too much and often felt completely out of it. Always petite at 5-foot-1 and very slight, Nicks ballooned up to 175 pounds and was smoking three packs of menthol cigarettes a day.
She checked herself into a hospital and detoxed for 47 days. When clean, she went back to work, touring behind her 1994 “Street Angel” album. She was brutally honest about her own work.
“I listened to the record — I’m off all the drugs — and I knew it was terrible,” she said. “It had cost a fortune.”
Nicks finished the tour and took stock of herself. She had the breast implants removed, started exercising, quit smoking and worked hard to create music.
She took the stage again with her old pals in Fleetwood Mac, and on her own. She kept moving forward.
Were Nicks to write an autobiography, it could easily be called “Don’t Stop.”