Marie Claire Australia - 01.06.2018

184 marieclaire.com.au

S

itting on a lumpy Laura

Ashley cushion on the

floor of her Los Angeles

home, a small white dog

curled at her hip, the

blonde looks up through

the feathered fringe she’s

cut herself, her long lashes slowly beat-

ing below. “From when I was a very

little girl, I was dancing around the

house,” she drawls. “This is nothing new

for me, this is nothing diferent.”

It’s 1977 and Stevie Nicks has been

singled out as the true star of Fleetwood

Mac, a British band that’s exploded

since adding two Americans – Stevie

and her lover Lindsey

Buckingham – to its line-up.

In the rapid two years since

she joined, it’s been all

eyes on Stevie and her

bewitching performances.

Draped in chifon, plat-

forms pounding, a top hat in place, the

five-foot-one-inch singer-songwriter

commands attention whenever she’s on

stage, moving through her self-penned

repertoire of “Landslide” and the

stirring “Rhiannon”.

But right now, during an interview

with Molly Meldrum for ABC Austra-

lia’s Countdown, a 29-year-old Stevie

dismisses the idea that the band’s “very,

very definite image” is down to her.

At this moment she’s blissfully

unaware that the next five decades will

have many highs, but also hand her

many great losses – friends, lovers,

unborn children and almost her life to

the stranglehold of cocaine addiction.

It will be nothing like dancing

around the house as a little girl at all.

Stevie was born Stephanie Lynn

Nicks at Good Samaritan Hospital in

Arizona, on May 26, 1948. She was the

firstborn child to newlyweds Jess Nicks

and his wife Barbara. Her family called

her Stevie after the little girl could only

pronounce her own name “Tee-dee”.

Early on, her grandfather, Aaron

Jess Nicks, a nomadic country and

western singer, saw her as his protégé.

They practised singing and songwriting

from the moment Stevie could speak,

with him urging her to “sing like you

mean it, granddaughter”.

When she was four, they sang their

first duet at a bar close to the family

home in Phoenix. The small crowd was

moved, and Stevie was hooked. Years

later, Mick Fleetwood, one of the found-

ing members of Fleetwood Mac, would

describe her as an “audience addict”.

“By the time I was five, I was a little

diva,” recalls Stevie. Her parents hoped

the arrival of a baby brother,

Christopher, would help

teach Stevie she wasn’t the

only person in the world.

But it did little to repress

the precocious Stevie, who

was then also fascinated with

fairytales and fantasy. She would plunge

into a world of make-believe when the

family relocated every couple of years as

part of her father’s job as an executive

with meat packers Armour & Company.

Later, when she felt unsettled

during tours with Fleetwood Mac, she

would section of a cubbyhole in their

private jet with colourful scarves,

hiding inside and writing in her jour-

nal; one she still writes in every day.

When the family moved to San Ma-

teo, California, in 1965, an 18-year-old

Stevie met Lindsey Buckingham and

their fates were sealed. “I went to a kind

of church meeting that nobody really

went to for church, everybody went to

get out of the house,” she later explained.

“I thought [Lindsey] was absolutely

stunning, so I kind of casually manoeu-

vred my way over.” Lindsey began

playing “California Dreaming” by The

Mamas & the Papas on the guitar and

Stevie joined in.

It marked the start of an entwined

existence with a man she’d love and

loathe in equal measures for the next

five decades. They skipped and tripped

through life together as lovers, musical

partners, starving artists and then,

finally, as stars after the pair joined

Fleetwood Mac in January 1975.

In 1968, the duo had dropped out of

college together to make music, soon

opening as The Fritz Rabyne Memorial

Band for the likes of Jimi Hendrix and

Janis Joplin. On New Year’s Eve in 1974,

Fleetwood Mac – which then consisted

of Mick Fleetwood and married couple

Christine and John McVie –hired Lind-

sey as a guitarist. When he said that he

and Stevie came as a pair, the others

agreed to give her a chance.

The new line-up’s first album, Fleet-

wood Mac, was recorded in a month,

released in early 1975 and reached num-

ber one in the US charts, selling five

million copies worldwide. They toured

90 dates in about 12 months, with Fleet-

wood Mac’s popularity snowballing as

they travelled from state to state.

Overnight, Stevie went from being

a waitress and surviving on a single

slice of pizza she shared with Lindsey

each night, to pinning $100 notes on

“By the

time I was

VF5G1C1

little diva”

Left to right: boho

beauty Stevie Nicks

in 1975; despite

ongoing feuds,

Fleetwood Mac

(pictured in 1977) still

unite semi-regularly

for reunion tours.

Stevie with old flame

Lindsey Buckingham

at the 1998 Grammys.