There’s a reason why her nickname is “The White Witch” — Stevie Nicks can cast a spell. When she was launching a solo career in the ’80s, she set out to “worm my way into [the] good graces” of a stranger she wanted to become to her new musical mentor: Tom Petty. “She basically became an honorary Heartbreaker for the rest of her career,” biographer Stephen Davis tells Closer. “What a woman!”
That sentiment has been shared by many men about Stevie, 69, including two of her Fleetwood Mac bandmates (Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood) and two members of the Eagles (Don Henley and Joe Walsh). Still, “it’s not very much fun being Mr. Stevie Nicks,” she says. “I’m always a phone call away from having to leave in two hours.” Not only that, the icon has dealt with many heartbreaks and regret.
Her single-minded dedication to music has made Stevie a feminist icon but left her with regrets. “Her relationship with Lindsey never healed after she dumped him” for being too controlling in the late ’70s, Davis says of the duo, who stayed in the band. “Stevie thought she still had a chance with him until his first child was born [in 2000]. It’s heartbreaking.”
Stevie and Lindsey.
She did become pregnant by Don in 1979 but chose to have an abortion. “I didn’t want others raising [my children], and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer,” said Stevie, who wrote “Sara” in part for her unborn baby.
Shortly after best friend Robin died tragically of leukemia, Stevie wed Robin’s widower, Kim Anderson, in 1983 and planned to help raise their infant son. “It was so the wrong thing,” Stevie says of the marriage, which ended after only three months. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Later that year, she fell hard for Joe: “There was nothing more important than Joe Walsh — not my music, not my songs, anything.” But “we were a couple on the way to hell” due to their mutual battles with drug addiction, says Stevie. Following their breakup, “it took me a long, long time to get over it,” she says.
Stevie and Kim.
Rehab helped Stevie kick her bad habits, and she remains clean, sober and single. “In the last 10 years, I’ve just said I’m going to follow my muse,” she says. “When I’m 90 years old and sitting in a gloriously beautiful beach house somewhere on this planet with five or six Chinese crested Yorkies, surrounded by all my goddaughters, who at that point will be middle-aged, I’ll be just as happy.”
Even with her 70th birthday coming up next year, says Davis, Stevie “has no intention of retiring.” Guess it’s true what she sings after all: She never stops thinking about tomorrow.
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