Stevie Nicks provided a mystical, elusive counterweight to the sweet, frenetic pop and baseline blues of Fleetwood Mac, adding spirituality and spookiness to the group's most tender moments. When she stepped away from the group after Tusk, tensions heightened further within a group already raw from Rumours. Nicks emphasized her tougher side on Bella Donna, singing duets with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ("Stop Draggin' My Heart Around") and Don Henley ("Leather and Lace"), while providing a steely adolescent anthem with "Edge of Seventeen." These smashes ensured that her star shined outside the confines of Fleetwood Mac and she maintained a robust solo career throughout the '80s with such hits as "Stand Back" and "Talk to Me." Nicks left Fleetwood Mac early in the '90s and, like the group, spent much of the next decade in the wilderness before the Rumours-era lineup reconvened in 1997, a reunion that proved to be a reliable touring attraction despite drama behind the scenes. Over the next decades, Nicks released the occasional solo album -- the entirety of her solo career was compiled in a 2023 box -- and eventually emerged as a leader of sorts within the band, becoming the chief attraction during the group's 50th anniversary tour in 2018.
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Born Stephanie Lynn Nicks in Phoenix, Arizona on May 26, 1948, she earned the nickname Stevie when she couldn't quite pronounce her own name as a toddler. The appellation stuck. Gravitating toward dance at an early age, Nicks also became infatuated with music, singing country music with her grandfather at an early age. The daughter of a Greyhound vice president, Nicks moved throughout the Southwest often as a child, so music remained a constant in her life. Upon her 16th birthday, she received a guitar, swiftly writing her first song, "I've Loved and Lost." Not long afterward, she sang in the Changing Times, a folk-rock group based in Arcadia, California. She left the band once her family moved to Palo Alto in 1966.
That year, Nicks met Lindsey Buckingham at a church social, where she sang harmony on his performance of the Mamas & the Papas' "California Dreamin'." Impressed, Buckingham remembered Nicks, eventually inviting her to join Fritz, a psychedelic band that featured him as a guitarist. Despite having recently signed to 20th Century Fox to record country music, Nicks accepted, breaking her contract and staying with Fritz as they played Bay Area bills featuring such heavyweights as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
