The song Stevie Nicks “ripped off” from The Police: “Don’t ever do that again!”
While we commonly associate the singing of Stevie Nicks most closely with Fleetwood Mac, it is sometimes easy to forget the exploits of her respectable solo career.
In fact, it is a solo career that not only established her more firmly as a commendable songwriter and wondrous singer but also helped to earn her a second spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, becoming the first woman to hold the position of double hall of famer.
Nicks’ biggest hit remains ‘Edge of Seventeen’, a track which arrived as the third single taken from her debut album Bella Donna, released in early 1982. The track has long been held up as the perfect reason for Nicks to have taken a break from Fleetwood Mac and find her own voice away from the group. In reality, though, Nicks always preferred collaboration and found herself a new band with which to work.
The inspiration for the song came by way of a conversation Nicks held with the first wife of Tom Petty, who said that she met Petty “at the age of seventeen”. However, Jane Petty had a particularly strong southern accent, so Nicks misheard the line “at the edge of seventeen”, which pricked her ears and would inform her later tune.
Nicks had also intended to write the song about Tom and Jane Petty’s first meeting; however, a tragedy in her own life, as well as one in the world of popular culture, gave the potential song a new line. In 1980, during the same week that John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman, Nicks also lost her uncle Jonathan.
Nicks’ lover and producer, Jimmy Iovine, had been good friends with Lennon and was naturally distraught by his passing. Nicks felt that she couldn’t help him out of his depression. Around the same time, Nicks flew to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with her uncle Jonathan, who had been suffering from cancer until he passed over into the afterlife.
While the lyrical inspiration for the song came from two deaths of people linked to Nicks, the music came from elsewhere, and her Bella Donna guitarist, Waddy Wachtel, explained in 1999 that, by his account, Nicks actually “ripped off” a song by The Police from 1979.
The track in question was ‘Bring on the Night’ from the Regatta de Blanc album. Wachtel said: “I had never heard ‘Bring On the Night’, and at that session, they told me they were going to do this song based on this feel. I had heard something about the Police, but I didn’t know what they were talking about.”
After ‘Edge of Seventeen’ was recorded, Watchel never fully understood the similarities of the two songs until he heard what he thought was ‘Edge of Seventeen’ on the radio. “I had the radio on, and on comes what sounds like ‘Edge of Seventeen’ – and all of a sudden, there’s Sting’s voice!” he said. “I thought, ‘We ripped them off completely!’ I called Stevie that night and said, ‘Listen to me: Don’t ever do that again!'”
When Nicks’ band played the song live, it led to two things: a breather for Nicks and a strength-forming exercise for Watchel. He added: “Onstage, the beginning of that song is like a break for Stevie. I’d be standing there, playing that riff for around three minutes, before she’d even start singing! By the end of the tour, I was able to break walnuts with my right hand!”
Despite the similarities, The Police have never taken any legal routes to dissuade Nicks from playing the track live and giving Watchel the nut-cracking workout. Instead, ‘Edge of Seventeen’ remains one of her most beloved songs, and a representation of why Stevie Nicks is rightly considered one of the leading songwriters of her generation.
