“Eight years out of my life”: The era Stevie Nicks regrets the most
Every musician experiences moments of reflection, realising they could have done something better—even if it’s just a minor adjustment to a vocal line. No one is perfect, and looking back on certain performances or creative choices can sometimes feel cringeworthy or fall short of personal standards. Stevie Nicks was no exception. While crafting Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits, she endured more than just the emotional toll of her relationships; she also faced the weight of artistic regret.
Throughout every piece of her career, Nicks was always going to come from a personal place when making her songs. If she was mad at Lindsey Buckingham, it didn’t take too much time for her to channel it into one of her songs, and by the time she started working out the basics for her solo career, it was finally an excuse for her to be unchained from the standard practises that people expected out of her in the band.
Then again, that didn’t mean that she was safe from a little bit of excess. While the common consensus is that those who could still remember the rock and roll lifestyle weren’t really there, Nicks always maintained that cocaine was practically an honourary member of the group during the making of Rumours, especially considering a song like ‘Gold Dust Woman’ was shaped around their excesses.
Although her solo outings may have helped keep her head on straight in some respects, she ended up trading in her vices for a new one once she reached the mid-1990s. She had not touched cocaine for the longest time, but after the strain of singing and having to deal with Buckingham being sacked from the group, her dependence on Klonopin was starting to affect her better judgement.
And listening to Street Angel from around that time, you can tell that there’s something wrong. While none of the tunes are necessarily bad from back to front, it feels like listening to Nicks through some sort of haze, as if she’s trying to channel some of her innermost thoughts but has to let her vices do the talking for her half the time.
Even for all of the raw heartache that came to light during her glory years, Nicks felt that the mid-1990s was one of her biggest regrets, saying, “That took eight years out of my life. Those were my prime years, my 40s when a lot of my heavy, creative activity was really happening. Klonopin grabbed hold of you and made you sit down on your couch and not get up. I just watched TV for eight years in a daze. I’m sorry I didn’t have a car crash on the way to seeing that doctor.”
It would have been difficult for anyone to deal with a second addiction, but the fact that Nicks is around to tell the tale is the best that she could have hoped for. And considering what great music she released afterwards like Say You Will and even her most recent solo songs, she’s always willing to be open and honest whenever it comes time to talk about things that most other people would consider dangerous.
Because when you think about it, Nicks’s legacy isn’t the story of a musical soap opera like so many people think it is. It’s a tale of survival, and no matter how many times her heart may have been broken or the drugs had ahold of her, she was the musical phoenix from the ashes that was going to leave everyone in awe.
