The women who turned Stevie Nicks into a rock star
“If you believe in destiny, which I do, it seems like my life was pretty mapped out,” Stevie Nicks once declared in 1990, “It seems almost like there was somebody up there moving the chess players. And I was the white queen, and I just went where I was moved…”
In her own, unique way, Nicks was fated to become a star. The granddaughter of a country-and-western singer, raised with an enviable collection of records to consult for inspiration, she understood the strength that could be harnessed in poetry and melody from an early age. Her individuality came naturally, too: self-assured in her pen’s ability to write her stories, as well as those of other people, taking elements from literature, history and folklore and weaving them with reality. Still, as all great artists do, Nicks was constantly learning, absorbing inspiration from the powerful women, in particular, who came before her.
In 2013, Nicks told Mojo the girl groups that soundtracked her childhood, naming The Shirelles and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, largely pushed in their direction by her grandfather, Aaron Jess ‘AJ’ Nicks, who would consistently bring her record singles as gifts. Her childhood love of country shifted into R&B, then rock ‘n’ roll, once she entered her teenage years.
“I was going to keep up with the rock stars of the world that were men, because there weren’t very many women, once,” Nicks explained, speaking on Off The Record. Parsing through the male-dominated spheres of rock, however, Nicks found two pillars of hope in Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, both of whom would remain crucial to her songwriting, persona and strength, as she transitioned from her first band, Fritz (the psychedelic rock group she joined at the invitation of her then-partner, Lindsey Buckingham) to a famous musician, in Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.
“Grace Slick and Janis Joplin were the ones that I loved. I wanted to be like them,” said Nicks. Telling Digital Journal in 2020, she admitted that she was able to “take a few things from Grace Slick“, seeing her as a beautiful force with an “effortless, massive voice”. Nicks sourced a confidence from her that informed how she conducted herself onstage, and a similar origin story is heard in her frequent credits to Joplin’s persona, both onstage and off, the spirited powerhouse that she was.
“I was very influenced by Janis Joplin,” Nicks expressed to the Los Angeles Times in 1997, “the one time I saw Janis in person, and all the times I saw her on television with her feathers and her bell-bottomed pants and her beautiful silky blouse tops.”
The two women met when Fritz was offered the chance to open for Joplin, shortly before the latter’s passing (the night would also see them open for Jimi Hendrix). Not only did Fritz run over their set time, prompting Joplin to yell her off the stage in a moment that Nicks later described as “one of the greatest honours” of her life, but it also introduced Nicks to one of her heroes and gave her a glimpse of what she could become: a performer with an unrivalled strength and emotive quality. “From Janis, I learned that to make it as a female musician in a man’s world is gonna be tough, and you need to keep your head held high,” Nicks told The Telegraph in 2011.
Then, when prompted by Elle Magazine in 2009 to name a record that changed her life, she chose Joni Mitchell’s 1974 album Court and Spark, as another woman in whom Nicks found a kindred spirit. She was at the home of Fleetwood Mac’s producer, Keith Olson and she put on Mitchell’s record, which had just come out, to play on his speakers.
“He went away, it was just me, and I listened to this record for three days,” Nicks enthused, “She was able to stuff so many words into one sentence and not have them sound crowded. She was talking about what it was like to be very famous and to be a woman living in a man’s world. She had been in the world of fame much longer than me, and she had gone out with every famous rock ‘n’ roll star that there was. And she was such an amazing guitarist that they all respected her. That was unheard of. She was in the boy’s club.”
By January of 1974, when Court and Spark was released, Nicks was somewhat in-between worlds: her and Buckingham’s eponymous Buckingham Nicks album had been released the year before to little success, and Nicks proceeded to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, including working as a cleaner at Olsen’s home. Surely, in a voice like Mitchell’s, Nicks heard someone who empathised with the plights of womanhood and expectation, and the strive to succeed in retaining her artistry in a world that had the odds stacked against them.
“She talked about what I saw coming,” Nicks said, “Even though Buckingham Nicks had tanked, I knew that we were going to be very famous, very rich, and it was like a great old premonition just being laid out in front of me. There is a song on it called ‘Same Situation’, and that song just would kill me when I’d hear it. Because I knew it was coming.”
In a beautiful parallel, Mitchell’s songwriting influenced Nicks’ own when it came to the structure of her storytelling. “When I tell people my greatest influences, I say Joni Mitchell for phrasing,” Nicks told Forbes in 2020, “She could fit 50 words in a sentence and have them sound glorious without being rushed or crushed in, so I really learned a lot from her about phrasing.”
Once Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, bringing with her the soon-to-be legendary stories of ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Landslide’, and more, Nicks fully stepped into her own as a rock star. And, it was alongside her compatriot in bandmate Christine McVie that Nicks honed her power to its full potential.
The two women became lifelong companions, and McVie became, in Nicks’ words, a “mentor. Big sister. Best friend”. Where someone may assume that there would be competition between two women in the same band, Nicks and McVie, instead, found common ground as two brilliant musicians, coming together to elevate their talents.
