The poignant advice Stevie Nicks would give to her younger self
Throughout her life, Stevie Nicks has trusted her intuition and reaped the rewards for following her instincts. When many people in her position would have given up on artistic ambitions after being dropped by a major record label, Nicks kept dreaming. However, within months of hitting rock bottom, everything she’d ever wanted had fallen into place.
In the span of a year, Nicks went from weighing up the possibility of joining college as a mature student to recording the seminal album Rumours with Fleetwood Mac. The sensible decision would have been to take the trusted path, but Nicks’ heart told her otherwise, and she stayed loyal to the music. From that moment, she continued to follow the same method whenever a tough decision needed to be made.
Looking back on that transformative period in her life in 2020, she said: “When Lindsey and I first joined Fleetwood Mac, we had no money. I cleaned our producer’s house twice a week, and he paid me $250 a month, which paid our rent on a really cool little Spanish apartment [in Los Angeles]. Then later that year, we got back from [our first] tour, and we signed serious contracts, making Lindsey and I each one-fifth of the band. Together we were almost a millionaire.”
Nicks added: “So we went from never having to file taxes — because we didn’t make enough money to file taxes — to having to hire a business firm because we had way too much money.”
At the time, Nicks was 28, and her life unexpectedly entered became more lavish than she ever perceived possible. However, despite her riches, her life has been far from straightforward. Along the way, the singer navigated many incredibly testing road bumps, such as addiction.
If she constantly played it safe, some of her most cherished memories would never have occurred, but instead, Nicks followed her heart. When asked by Bustle about the advice she’d give to her 28-year-old self, Nicks revealed she’d do it all over again and explained why she holds no regrets about her life choices.
She wisely remarked: “I would just say, ‘Follow your heart.’ Because that’s exactly what I did. I followed my heart, and I had amazing love affairs — maybe that I shouldn’t have had — but my heart said, ‘Do it,’ and I did. I’m not sorry for anything. Everything that was done was meant to be done in order for us to be sitting here today with the life that we have.”
Nicks added: “So that I can be sitting here talking to you at 72 years old, praying that the pandemic will go away so that we can all go back out and I can have the last 10 to 15 years of my rock-and-roll life. That’s really it.”
Thankfully, the pandemic has now ended, allowing Nicks to be back to doing what she’s spent her whole adult life doing, rocking out and staying true to her heart.
