STEVIE NICKS
MY LIFE IN PICTURES…
After years of sex, drugs and rock and roll, Stevie Nicks has no shortage of tales to tell. “My mom feels she lost her child for many years,” says Nicks, 60, who battled addictions to cocaine and Klonopin. “I got through difficult times that could have destroyed [my career].” Now back touring with Fleetwood Mac and promoting her Live in Chicago DVD and The Soundstage Sessions album, she sat down with PEOPLE’s Joey Bartolomeo. “I’m excited,” she says, “about the cool things I have yet to do,” like exhibiting her personal drawings and “searching for that perfect pair of suede boots” (lower than her usual seven inches). Says Nicks: “I am never retiring.”:
PHOTO (COLOR): 2009 | A 40-year veteran of the music biz, Nicks (with her Yorkie Chinese crested mix in New York City) calls Fleetwood Mac’s 1998 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction “my greatest honor.”
PHOTO (COLOR): 1976 | A year earlier Nicks (in glasses) and Buckingham, whom she met in high school, joined Fleetwood Mac (John McVie, Christine McVie, Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood). “We hired a business management firm, then partied hard,” she says.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 1950 | “My dad was so handsome,” says Nicks of her late father, Jess (with cat Nickie). After her parents bought her a guitar for her 15th birthday, she told them, “I’m going to be a songwriter, I’m going to be a singer.” They believed her, but insisted on one rule: “You have to go to school.”
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 1966 | Nicks’s mom, Barbara, made this dress for her senior prom in San Francisco, where she was five votes short of being prom queen. Her date, David Young, “was the best boyfriend ever,” says Nicks. “He was gorgeous, he was the quarterback, and I went out with him for almost five years. I broke up with him for Lindsey [Buckingham].”
PHOTO (COLOR): 1983 | “I only wore black with Fleetwood Mac, so I thought, ‘I will only wear white,'” says Nicks of her style during her years as a solo artist.
PHOTO (COLOR): 1993 | Both Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson sang at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in D.C. Before the event Jackson sent Nicks a message asking for a light shade of foundation. “I sent my lightest ivory color,” she says. “He sent it back with a lovely note saying, ‘This is too dark. Thank you.'”
PHOTO (COLOR): 2002 | The legend hasn’t had kids of her own, but is close to her niece Jessi (in Phoenix), whose mom sings backup for Nicks. “Jessi wants to be a hairstylist and makeup artist,” says Nicks. “It would be good to have one in the family-we could all tour together.”
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 1983 | Nicks dated rocker Joe Walsh, “the great, great love of my life,” for about two years. “There was nothing more important than Joe Walsh-not my music, not my songs, not anything,” she says. But cocaine ruined the romance. “We had to break up or we thought we’d die. It took me years to get over it. It’s very sad, but at least we survived.”
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 1973
Joey Bartolomeo / People (Volume 71 Issue 17, p86-88. 3p.) / May 4, 2009
