“I was hiding”: The artist that scared Stevie Nicks to death
Rock and roll has never been known as the safest genre in the world. As much as some artists like the idea of playing to adoring fans by quoting their own heart, many choose to go for the throat and leave the audience on their asses, wondering what the hell they had even witnessed. Although Stevie Nicks did play up that kind of theatricality when joining Fleetwood Mac, one of her first idols had the performance to instil real fear in her the moment she saw her onstage.
Then again, no rock and roll frontman was going out to the front of the stage to sing a song everyone liked. There was a confrontational nature to every great rock and roll frontman, and whether it was David Bowie bending what traditional gender roles were supposed to be or Mick Jagger playing up the sexual angle of the blues, everyone wanted to push the envelope to see what they could get away with.
And that all comes back to what the blues brought to rock and roll. No matter how neat and tidy the charts sounded before rock and roll took over, the main allure of playing the blues was about covering topics that most people were afraid to touch and screaming as loud as they could, regardless of how much it disturbed some people.
For most artists, that kind of music was a more visceral experience, and no one better exemplified that than Janis Joplin. While Big Brother and the Holding Company already put her in solid company with the blues greats, hearing her take country-style songs like ‘Piece of My Heart’ and putting her signature rasp behind it was like trying to assault the audience every time she performed.
That’s not to say that she didn’t have her sensitive side as well. Despite never playing it live before her death, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ is still one of the foundational ballads from that time, but when Nicks first saw her in action, she was not going to be getting the prim and proper vocalist that she would turn into.
Despite being a fan, Nicks did not catch her at the right moment, saying, “When I first saw Janis she was very angry. The first band had run over time and she came on stage screaming, scared me to death. I was hiding behind the amps. She was not a beautiful woman, but very attractive. I was very taken with her.”
Although Nicks may not have struck the best first impression watching Joplin perform, her stage performances prove what she took from her. Whereas Joplin got her way through the traditional rock and roll club through the sheer power of her voice, Nicks seemed to be channelling some greater force whenever she sang, making her look like she could levitate off the ground at any moment.
Even though Fleetwood Mac was much more mellow onstage than they were off it, the lessons Nicks learned from Joplin taught her how to leave all her anger out in front of the fans. Because if Joplin was singing from her heart, Nicks may as well have been conducting emotional exorcisms onstage.
