The defiant song Stevie Nicks wrote about John Lennon’s death
Once in a generation, seismic world-shattering events make the entire population come to a standstill. Everybody remembers precisely where they were when they heard the news, as was the case with the shocking death of John Lennon in 1980.
Although Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks never crossed paths with Lennon in a professional or personal capacity, like millions of others, she was left reeling from his passing. Nicks was overcome with a solemn sense of loss after she heard that Lennon’s life had been brought to a premature end by crazed gunman Mark Chapman.
While Lennon had achieved more in his career than most could ever imagine, he was still only 40 when he was killed. In addition to having much more to give the world musically, the singer was also a loving father and husband. Everybody who’d ever formed a connection with Lennon’s work was unified in shared agony. As an artist, Nicks channelled her grief into music, writing 1981’s momentous ‘Edge Of Seventeen’, a song which would announce Nicks as a solo star.
While she was already one of rock’s most iconic figures, Nicks’ debut solo album, Bella Donna, proved that the vocalist could stand up on her own two feet. The creative freedom that came with answering to nobody but herself was liberating for Nicks, who duly rose to the occasion on the release.
The story of ‘Edge Of Seventeen’ dates back to late 1980, when Nicks was making Bella Donna. This process significantly coincided with the loss of a close family member and Lennon in close proximity. Nicks was hurting and left with no place to hide from her feelings when in the recording studio.
“I was in Australia when John Lennon was shot,” Nicks later said on her reaction to Lennon’s death. “Everybody was devastated. I didn’t know John Lennon, but I knew Jimmy Iovine, who worked with John quite a bit in the ’70s and heard all the loving stories that Jimmy told about him. When I came back to Phoenix, I started to write this song.”
To add to the misery in her life, Nicks discovered upon returning to America that her Uncle Bill had been diagnosed with cancer. He sadly died within a couple of weeks of falling ill, which was heartbreaking for the Fleetwood Mac singer.
She recalled: “My cousin John Nicks and I were in the room when he died. There was just John and I there. That was part of the song when I went running down the hallways looking for somebody – I thought where’s my mom? Where’s his wife and the rest of the family? At that point, I went back to the piano and finished the song.”
Furthermore, when speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Nicks shared: “This was written right after John Lennon was assassinated. That was a very scary and sad moment for all of us in the rock and roll business, it scared us all to death that some idiot could be so deranged that he would wait outside your apartment building, never having known you, and shoot you dead.”
Expanding on Lennon’s connection to ‘Edge Of Seventeen’, she revealed: “That was so unacceptable to all of us in our community. So the white dove was John Lennon, and peace.”
Additionally, on another occasion, Nicks stated that the dark memories of losing her Uncle Bill and Lennon flood back to her whenever the song is performed, remarking, “I have to deal with it every single night when I sing it. That’s why I can [sing it]. When that song starts, I go back to that week. And it’s not like I try.”
She added: “I don’t make a physical effort to do it. In my mind, my little time-space, I’m back in the house at Encino finding out that news, and when I sing it to everybody, I try to make them understand in a way that I was talking about without actually telling them. That’s why I can sing ‘Edge Of Seventeen’ just like I wrote it yesterday. Because it will never, ever lose the intensity. I will never forget how I felt when that happened to me.”
‘Edge Of Seventeen’ may have been born out of Nicks’ grief-stricken state; however, the song is a euphoric moment of celebration despite its dark backstory. Although it originated from a heartbreaking place in her soul, rather than allow herself to be beaten, she resiliently fought back with love, which wholly aligns with her positive outlook.
