Stevie Nicks on the one person who “pulled me out of the depths of darkness”
“That was soft rock cocaine enthusiasts, Fleetwood Mac,” Alan Partridge said on the fictional North Norfolk Digital radio station introducing the band. This line indeed sought a chuckle, but it is far from inaccurate. Besides their chart-storming music and famous infidelities, the Anglo-American band was famous for partying particularly hard in the 1970s.
Thanks to Pablo Escobar and his fellow cartel leaders in Latin America, the US was absolutely inundated with cocaine in the 1970s. Thus, most artists enjoyed a dabble with the devil’s dandruff, and a smaller contingent developed somewhat troublesome addictions. Among those famously plagued by the perils of overuse were pop icons like Elton John, David Bowie and Stevie Nicks, who later spoke openly about their cocaine-related nadirs.
In Fleetwood Mac’s case, cocaine helped keep the band energised during long tours. Although the hard-partying lifestyle only seemed to augment the group’s creative productivity, it wreaked havoc behind closed doors as Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham endured their infamous path of romantic turmoil. The band’s 1977 masterpiece album reflected much of the strain within the band, especially in songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Second Hand News’ and ‘Never Going Back Again’.
Speaking to The Mirror, Nicks once reflected on her addiction woes, considering the tragic consumption-related deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix: “I saw how they went down, and a part of me wanted to go down with them,” she said. “But then another part of me thought, I would be very sad if some 25-year-old lady rock and roll singer ten years from now said, ‘I wish Stevie Nicks would have thought about it a little more.’ That’s kind of what stopped me and made me really look at the world through clear eyes.”
One of the few people who had an intimate view of the Nicks/Buckingham debacle from their pre-Fleetwood Mac days through the heady late 1970s to the 16th studio album, Time, was record producer Richard Dashut. Dashut befriended Buckingham during his pre-fame days. At the time, he swept the floors in a California studio but had ambitions behind the desk. A future manifested when Buckingham employed Dashut as a sound engineer on the 1973 album Buckingham Nicks.
As a close friend of Nicks and Buckingham, Dashut tagged along when the pair joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974. Although he didn’t produce the eponymous 1975 album, he soon became the band’s go-to producer, with Rumours, Tusk, Live, Mirage, Tango in the Night, and Time in his impressive production portfolio.
Following the release of Tusk in 1979, Fleetwood Mac entered a tentative hiatus, during which some of the members began work on solo projects. The most successful of these was Nicks’ Bella Donna, which featured ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘After the Glitter Fades’. At around the same time, Mick Fleetwood released The Visitor, and Buckingham released Law and Order. While Dashut produced these two records, Nicks opted to work with Jimmy Iovine and Tom Petty, the latter collaborating on ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’.
Despite Dashut’s early friendship with Buckingham, he became close friends with Nicks, too. He stood by the pair throughout their romantic turmoil and offered his counsel to both. “They were both very much in love,” he reflected on the couple’s early relationship in a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone. “They saw things in a very serious way. I can’t say either one of them had a real sense of humour together. For the first two or three years, they were very, very happy and very close. In fact, I think that was one of the happiest times in his life.”
At around the same time, Nicks discussed her decision to work with Jimmy Iovine on Bella Donna instead of her longtime friend and colleague Dashut. “I already drove Richard completely crazy, so…[laughs] now I’m working on Jimmy,” she said, suggesting that her fractious relationship with both Buckingham and drugs had taken its toll on the mediatory confidante. “But he is my dear friend, and I love him. He pulled me out of the depths of darkness, and I’m loyal to him.”
At the time of the interview, Nicks wasn’t yet clean from her cocaine addiction. However, she had begun to address her personal demons and was soon to seek help for her addiction struggle. Sadly, some friends with good intentions recommended that she try a Klonopin prescription to combat the cocaine urges. “Klonopin was worse than the cocaine,” she reflected a decade later. “I lost those eight years of my life. I didn’t write, and I had gained so much weight.”
Thankfully, Nicks is living a clean life today and remains active in her ongoing solo endeavours. However, she recently revealed that, after Christine McVie’s death in 2022, it is highly unlikely that Fleetwood Mac will perform again.
