The singer that Stevie Nicks always wanted to be: “That’s what I want to do”
Stevie Nicks was never meant to be a frontwoman in the traditional sense.
Many people like their singers to be the epitome of rock and roll excess whenever they take to the stage, but Nicks always felt like a mystical being whenever she worked with Fleetwood Mac, often throwing every piece of energy she could back to the crowd when singing her material. But for being one of the rare instances of a frontwoman in a rock and roll outfit, Nicks had a lot of people to teach her how to perform like that.
Then again, there’s no real way of teaching what Nicks is able to do. The number one rule of every frontman is for everyone to be themselves, or at least a heightened version of what a rock star should be. Freddie Mercury didn’t always wake up being the most engaging stage presence, but there’s no doubt that everyone going to a Queen concert would have a story to tell once they went through that first show with the vocal legend.
But when Nicks first settled in as a singer in Buckingham Nicks, the track record for women in the rock industry was still abundantly low. There were people like Heart that were around to bust down the doors for females being able to rock as hard as anyone else, but it was far more likely that people would gravitate towards a band like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd over The Wilson sisters whenever they bought a new record.
For all of the internal bias, there was a lot of room for Nicks to grow as a rock and roller. She had been one of the lucky few to see what Janis Joplin was like up close, but when she and Lindsey Buckingham settled in Los Angeles, the focus was shifting towards rootsy rock and roll. Everyone from The Byrds to the Eagles had already made waves on the scene, but Linda Ronstadt didn’t have to be as cutthroat to command every room she played.
Despite thinking of herself as a ballad singer throughout her career, Ronstadt could hang with the best of them whenever she performed. ‘You’re No Good’ was the boozy rocker that every single rocker wishes they could sing to their ex, and even when she was dipping her toes back into the old days of rock and roll, ‘When Will I Be Loved’ is still one of the greatest barnburners to come out of the Troubadour-era of country rock.
And when listening to tracks like ‘Different Drum’, Nicks was convinced that Ronstadt’s model was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, saying, “I heard Linda Ronstadt and I just said, ‘That’s it! That’s what I want to do’… although I didn’t look as good as her in cut-offs.” But the real magic behind Nicks’s performances was actually a combination of both of her musical inspirations.
She could be gentle when she wanted to, but Nicks was looking to have everyone sit back and relax when she was singing. The audience needed to be grabbed by the throat every now and again, and the kind of energy that she had when she was singing tunes like ‘Rhiannon’ was like watching a singer like Ronstadt if she were born with the same kind of musical fire that Joplin had during the days of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Not every tune had to have that level of intensity, but Nicks had a model with Ronstadt of what a softer version of rock and roll could sound like. She had the potential to rock as hard as anyone else, but the true test to judge whether a song is good is if it sounds great when played with as little adornment as possible, like Ronstadt used to do.
