STEVIE NICKS: ‘I WILL BE RAGING, AND I WILL KEEP DANCING’
THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW

Every second feels like an eternity when you’re hovering four inches from Stevie Nicks, noodling around with her blouse. This is Stevie Nicks, the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice — as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. Stevie Nicks, whose legendary shawl collection resides in its own temperature-controlled vault. Stevie Nicks, who, at 76, has become an obsession of younger generations, from her American Horror Story appearance to the original poem she wrote for Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department to a recent viral TikTok video, where she intensely stares down her ex-boyfriend and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham during a 1997 performance of “Silver Springs.” (Yes, Nicks has seen it.) • This is also Stevie Nicks, who’s somehow gotten a long, spiraled, gold ring she’s wearing stuck in the mesh fabric of her blouse, requiring the up-close-and-personal assistance of an interviewer she met only minutes ago.

She is surprisingly nonchalant as I lean over her, delicately unwinding the thread from each loop of the ring. “It happened [recently] onstage,” she says of the ring tangling. “It was stuck on my ‘Gold Dust Woman’ cape, and the most handsome guy on our entire tour ran out and was down on one knee trying to undo it. I felt like a princess in a Cinderella movie.” She laughs. I loosen up. Miraculously, I free the material from the ring without a single tear. “Thank you, honey,” she says sweetly.

Nicks has been in Philadelphia for the past three days, wrapping up a massive tour and recording a Christmas song with former NFL star Jason Kelce. Tonight, she’s in her signature all-black attire, save for hot-pink hair ties that hold her blond, elegant French braid. Her tiny Chinese crested dog, Lily, saunters in and out of the room, occasionally sitting on Nicks’ lap and staring at the massive charcuterie plate in front of us.

The spread will go untouched over the next three and a half hours while Nicks takes me on a wild ride through her life — and, at one point, into the bedroom to meet her Stevie Nicks Barbies. There’s the prototype, dressed in her beloved “Rhiannon” black dress, and the official Stevie Barbie, released last fall. Nicks didn’t love Barbies as a child, but there’s something special about this doll. “I never in a million years thought this little thing would have such an effect on me,” she says, holding the miniature Gold Dust Woman.

Nicks is more prolific and driven than ever. She’s also unmoored from her famous band. After a successful tour with the classic Fleetwood Mac lineup in 2014 and 2015, Buckingham ran into conflict with his bandmates — and with Nicks in particular — leading to him being fired from the group in 2018. The 2022 death of Christine McVie, whom Nicks calls “my musical soulmate,” truly seems to have ended the band; Nicks says she’s done with Fleetwood Mac for good. Instead, she launched a two-year-long solo tour, which just wrapped a couple of evenings before we talk at the 30,000-seat Hersheypark Stadium.

She’ll perform to millions shortly after our conversation, when she appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 40 years. When she steps onto the stage at Studio 8H, she’ll play her women’s-rights anthem “The Lighthouse,” which Nicks wrote following the demise of Roe v. Wade. Featuring guitar and co-production by Sheryl Crow, it’s a cathartic rocker in which Nicks compares herself to a lighthouse, guiding women and encouraging them to stand up for their power.

“You know what I always think of when I say SNL?” she asks me. “Stevie Nicks Live.”

Where do you prefer that I sit?

You’re good right there, as long as you don’t think you have Covid.

No, I don’t.

Well, thank goodness we’re done [touring] for a while, so I can go home and not have a mask on all the time. As a singer with asthma, I fucking hate the masks, but I wear them. People give you dirty looks. I dare anybody to give me a dirty look. I would just say, “Hey, you know what? I’m Stevie Nicks. And if I get sick, my entire thing goes down. Forty families are out of work. So that’s why I have a mask on, asshole.”

I can’t get [Covid] again. I mean, I’m old, so I’ll only be around for another 15 years. But you guys have another 30 or 40 years, so you should think about it.

Fifteen years sounds pretty exact.

I’ll probably live to be hatefully 95 years old. I have no want to be that old, honestly. I mean, I’ll have an electric scooter, and I will be raging and I will keep dancing. But I’m not looking forward to that, really — I think that’s too old. My mom died at 84, and my dad died at about 80, but I’m a younger person at 76 than they were at 76. So I figured 88, 89.

Are you afraid of death?

I’m not afraid of dying, but what I am afraid of is not getting everything together, because I’m so busy. And that’s why I’m really glad this tour’s over, so that I can go and work on an album. I haven’t been able to do a lot of the creative things that I love in many, many years. I draw, I write songs, and I write poetry. I’d like to make a perfume because I actually have a smell that I love. I like to design blankets. Cashmere blankets are my favorite thing. That is what I buy for my friends if there’s a special occasion. I bought Travis Kelce a blanket.

Don Henley and J.D. Souther took me into a store in Los Angeles called Maxfield Blue, now Maxfield, in 1977. And they took me there, and I got my first cashmere blanket. I always laugh and say, “They taught me how to spend money,” those two guys.

J.D. died recently — I know you briefly dated him back in the day.

It’s been a terrible, terrible tragedy. And then Kris Kristofferson. [My assistant] came in to tell me something today. And she goes, “So, Stevie…” Every time she says “So, Stevie,” I go like, “Please don’t tell me that somebody else died. I wish you would just come in, say my name, and don’t say ‘so’ before, because it’s starting to set me up for tragedy, because we’re old.”

What new music have you been working on?

I have so many ideas for songs that I want to do. There’s some songs that I didn’t write that other people wrote that I’m going to call them on the phone and say, “I’d really like to sing this song with you. How do you feel about that?”

I also have so many poems that are ready to go. I wrote a poem about one of the women stars of one of my favorite crime shows, Chicago P.D. That’s medicine for me, and I can’t wait to go to the piano and sit down with it. I’ve written a song called “The Vampire’s Wife,” which, I think, is one of my best songs I’ve ever written. Because it’s like “Rhiannon,” a story of a character. Who knows, I might call this next album The Vampire’s Wife.

It seems like you’re bursting with all of this creativity.

I got diagnosed with this thing a year and a half ago called wet macular degeneration, and it is not a good thing. I was seeing all these colors, big things of purple. I was having, like, acid trips. And I’m going, “I’m not taking any acid, so I don’t understand what this is.” Now, every six, seven, eight, nine weeks, I have to have a shot in each one of my eyes. That’s going to be for the rest of my life.

There’s dry macular degeneration, which my mom had. Her whole thing was doing the financial books for my dad, because she was a financial little wizard. When she was about 80, it was really hard for her to see. In a way, I think it killed her because she was so brokenhearted that she could no longer do this. So when I got diagnosed with this, all of a sudden, I’m going like, “You know what? You need to finish these drawings, because what if you start to lose your sight?” I haven’t drawn in years … but my drawings are as important to me as my songs.

You just released “The Lighthouse,” which you were working on for two years.

When Roe v. Wade was banished, I turned on Morning Joe and I swear to God, I thought Mika [Brzezinski] was going to crawl over the desk. What she did was remind me what a loss this was. Because I can remember being so happy when it came into being in 1973. It was like we were safe.

It’s not just about not being careful and having an abortion. It’s everything. It’s all the health care. It’s an ectopic pregnancy. It’s all the procedures that need to be done in our bodies that half of us don’t ever have and half of us have a whole lot more than other people. I was just really freaked out after I saw [the news], and that was the inspiration for this song.

I wrote the words in the morning. I never write in the morning, and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee. But I just wrote the whole thing. Then I closed the book and went back to sleep. It sounds like Marvin Gaye walking down a seedy alley and singing about life, and he runs into Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters when he turns the corner. That’s how I hear it.

It’s a really important message, especially in time for the election.

I’m going to reach out to women and say, “You have to vote.” You have to. I never voted until I was 70 years old because I wasn’t at all political. I was incredibly busy, I was having a fitting, and I didn’t want to do jury duty. It’s a big regret.

It’s really hard for women to be open about their own abortions. How have you always found the courage to talk about yours?

Well, mine really wasn’t let out to the public by me — it was let out to the public by Don Henley [who impregnated Nicks when they briefly dated in the late Seventies]. He called me to apologize. I said, “You know what, Don? We did go out for about a year and have remained such good friends. ‘Leather and Lace’ [their 1981 duet] draws us together forever.” So, anyway, he let that one out of the bag. I probably would’ve never. Why would I say anything about it? Everything was totally legal.

It was, like, 1977, or going into 1978. Don was the first guy I actually went out with after Lindsey and I broke up. When this pregnancy happened, it was like, “What the heck happened? I am completely respectful of the world rules here, and all of a sudden this happens to me and I can’t figure it out.” I go to my GYN, and he says, “Well, you’ve been protected by your Copper-7 IUD, but you have a tipped uterus. That IUD is only protecting half of you, and we didn’t know that.”

Now, what the hell am I going to do? I cannot have a child. I am not the kind of woman who would hand my baby over to a nanny, not in a million years. So we would be dragging a baby around the world on tour, and I wouldn’t do that to my baby. I wouldn’t say I just need nine months. I would say I need a couple of years, and that would break up the band, period. So my decision was to have an abortion. If people want to be mad at me about that, I don’t really care, because my life was my life and my plan was my plan and had been since I was in the fourth grade.

So Fleetwood Mac would have been done.

Done. And that would’ve been sad, because I would not have married Don Henley. That was a really fun relationship, but he was in a bigger band than me. Those boys were rock stars, par extraordinaire. Nobody in that band was ready to get married and have children. So I knew it would just be on me, and I wouldn’t have even known what to do with that responsibility.

I have another example of something that was very scary for me. I have a friend who had an ectopic pregnancy. She went on to have a little girl who is my little soulmate goddaughter that I absolutely adore. She would’ve died if this had been the old days. And this little girl that I love so much would not be on this Earth. So right there, there’s two completely different scenarios. Why weren’t we schooled in that? Why were we never told about that in high school or even college?

But now “The Lighthouse” can teach others.

On the plane, I told [bandmate and musical director] Waddy Wachtel, “I don’t know what to call this song,” because we’d been calling it “The Power Song” forever. And he just looked at me and he said, “What about ‘The Lighthouse?’” I used to have a dream that I would buy a lighthouse and it would have that twisty staircase that would go all the way up. I would have a little place at the bottom with a bed and a bathroom, and that would be my place when I wanted to go and record by myself, right on a cliff.

So I said, “OK, ‘The Lighthouse.’ So I am the lighthouse, because I am the wisdom and I have the stories.” We are the women that can tell all these young women from 15 up to 45. We are that light that goes out, and we bring the ships in so they don’t crash. We save lives every day. The way I feel about this upcoming election is that Kamala Harris is the lighthouse, too.

Did you ever look back and wish that you had had children or — Never. Maybe I knew then that I had to be me, in Fleetwood Mac, a huge band that was on its way to being legendary, to be able to be the lighthouse. Not only did it allow me to follow my dream of being this rock & roll woman, but it allowed me to be this person that just wrote this song. I wanted to write something that would be helpful in this situation, because this could be my finest hour. This could be the most important thing I’ve ever done, this song.

I was not looking for this to be like a hit record. I don’t care. I mean, all the people that are my age, we gave up on hit records a long time ago. With everything streaming, it’s like 300,000 plays. It’s like, “What is that?” I don’t know how to maneuver myself around that. And I’m not interested in it anyway, because I’m the only person that isn’t always on a phone.

Is there internet on your iPhone?

It isn’t connected. It’s just a camera.

I’m envious of that.

I hate it. About 10 years ago, Katy Perry was talking to me about the internet armies of all the girl singers, and how cruel and rancid they were. I said, “Well, I wouldn’t know because I’m not on the internet.” She said, “So, who are your rivals?” I just looked at her. It was my steely look. I said, “Katy, I don’t have rivals. I have friends. All the other women singers that I know are friends. Nobody’s competing. Get off the internet and you won’t have rivals either.”

I’m sure you’re glad Fleetwood Mac didn’t have to endure social media.

It would’ve been terrible. We never had terrible paparazzi. Our fans always really honored us and treated us with care. Nobody chased us down. It was all fun. It was never terrorizing. It was never stalking. It was never weird. I couldn’t live like that.

Pop stars are really struggling with that these days, particularly Chappell Roan.

Evidently she likes my music a lot. Me and a friend of mine went and looked at her schedule, and it was outrageous. What she’s already done and then what she’s going into. It’s as bad as any schedule we ever did, and she’s new, and she’s young. I said, “They’ll burn her out if that’s what they want to do, because there’s always somebody to replace you.” It must make them all very fearful. That’s why it’s good that Chappell just said, “Well, go ahead, replace me. I’m canceling because I’m not going to drop dead for all you people.”

Taylor Swift has also been great at setting boundaries.

Do you see my little bracelet? [Points to a friendship bracelet Swift gave her.] I haven’t taken it off for almost a year. She is really smart, but she also went through a lot before. She’s in a good place right now, and I think she has a good man. I hope they fall deeper and deeper in love and ride off into the sunset. He does his thing and she does her thing, and then they come back together and get married and have babies if she wants that. I just want all of that for her.

How do you think Vice President Harris is doing as a candidate?

I think she’s doing great. If [Trump] loses, he’s just going to get in his limo and go back to Mar-a-Lago and probably get another TV show, and have lots of great vacations and play a lot of golf. He’s just going to have fun. Good god, he’s 78. It’s the opposite to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Nobody has to worry about him. He’s just going to go do what he does.

Do you feel optimistic about the election?

I feel very optimistic about it. I love the fact that she laughs. I love the fact that she’s full of joy. I love the fact that she fell in love with somebody later in her life, and has a family and that they call her “Momala.” I love that. I have great respect for her, being willing to take on such a serious job, with so much going on in the Middle East and Ukraine, which is my heart. It’s like, “I won’t have a real life now for a long time, so if I don’t call you, don’t take it personally.”

I loved your “childless dog lady” photo. But people pointed out that you didn’t explicitly endorse Harris. Do you want to do that right now?

I think I’m totally endorsing her by naming her as a lighthouse. I don’t like the word “endorsing,” but what I like is the fact that she is our great hope to save the world.

You played President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Would you perform at Harris’?

I might.

Are you able to understand why so many women see you as an icon?

The word “icon” is difficult for me, because I think of “icon” as a big Greek statue of a girl in a cape. But I’m good with it, because I’ve worked hard to be whatever everybody thinks that I am. I wrote a song once, it’s called “Sweet Girl,” and it says, “I chose to dance across the stages of the world…. Many are the cities that I never saw at all.” That’s what I feel like I’ve done, just dancing across the stages of the world. That’s why I appear to be a lot more youthful than I am, because my spirit is youthful. As long as you can dance, you are youthful. I’m 76, but I’m just incredibly limber. The dancing really comes from that.

[Nicks pauses and wraps her leg around her head to demonstrate.]

What I wanted to do my whole life was affect people. I love telling my stories onstage. That is what makes me happy, and that’s why I’ll never stop touring. Because if I stop touring, then I’ll stop dancing. I go on a summer tour next year, and I [will] do 40 shows. That’s what Fleetwood Mac used to do… And you know there is no more Fleetwood Mac now, because when Christine [McVie] died, Fleetwood Mac died. We cannot replace her.

Would you ever release a formal statement about it?

I kind of released a formal statement about it at the show, the night before last.

When you said it was the last time you’d dedicate “Landslide” to her.

Since the day she died, we made that montage, and we have done that every single night. And I cry every single night. I said, “We have to let her go now. We have to say goodbye to Christine, safe journey.”

What was your last conversation with Christine like?

This is the tragedy of it: I had not talked to Chris for a long time. Fleetwood Mac would be together for two solid years and then we would stop. During that time, when I went to do my own thing and went on tour, we hardly ever talked on the phone. She lived in England. The time difference was screwed up, so it was very hard for us to talk.

We got a phone call from someone. He told us that she was ill. I said, “OK. We’re going to rent a plane right now, and we’re going to come over there.” And then we got a call back. Her family said, “Don’t come until we see how things go here.” Her family is super funny, as was she. They said, “If you and Mick, that tall man, walk into her hospital room, she’ll go, ‘Am I dead?’ ” So anyway, a few hours later they called and said that she’d died. So I did not get to say goodbye to her. My plan was to go and sit on her bed and sing “Touched By an Angel” to her, like I did with my dad, for two or three hours or however long it took to either bring her back or send her off. I didn’t get to do that, and I was angry.

Because this was a different kind of friend. This was my music soulmate, my best girlfriend. We kept that band afloat, the two of us, by keeping the peace, no matter what. By never letting people carry their problems into the studio, by stopping fights before they started, by making sure that our work was stellar. Even when we were doing lots of drugs, we had our eyes on everyone and everything. We were the keepers of Fleetwood Mac, and that is why we cannot replace her. We did replace Lindsey two times, and it was OK. No fighting, super fun. But Christine was different.

To be fair, you did tour without Christine, from 1998 to 2015.

We did. And it was good, because when you took Chris’ six songs out and replaced them with three of Lindsey’s and three of mine, we became a harder rock & roll band. We were like AC/DC, and it was fun.

So when she called and said, “I think I want to come back,” I’m like, “Well, we’ve turned it into a super rock band now since you left. You need to come and see us in London and make sure that you actually want to come back. And if you do, then we have to change back to the original Fleetwood Mac, and we’re fine to do that.” So she came up and did a song, played organ, and she said, “I want to do it.” I’m really glad now, of course, that that happened.

I had her from 1975 until she died, and I miss her every day. And I just finally realized being onstage the night before last, in the rain in front of 30,000 people, that it was time for us to let her go. And stop being so sad, because I cried every single night. It’s like, “Fly. We’re not holding you down anymore.”

Did you see Lindsey at Christine’s celebration of life?

Christine threw down a hurricane on top of Nobu, which is where we had it. Almost blew the whole place away, honest to God. Tore down the entire deck that was all decorated and everything. So it was kind of crazy. We all felt like she was there, because it was really intense. The only time I’ve spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes. I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.

Do you regret not cutting ties even sooner than you did?

No, I think that all just happened the way it should have. It happened one night, not planned, at a MusiCares [benefit concert]. I didn’t even tell anybody it had happened in my head until the whole ceremony was over. I took with me that night a song that I had done with LeAnn Rimes called “Borrowed.” I took it with me to play for him because I thought we could do this song beautifully.

That’s when he wasn’t very nice to anybody; he wasn’t very nice to Harry Styles. I could hear my mom saying, “Are you really going to spend the next 15 years of your life with this man?” I could hear my very pragmatic father — and by the way, my mom and dad liked Lindsey a lot — saying, “It’s time for you guys to get a divorce.” Between those two, I said, “I’m done.”

So you would never even consider a proper farewell tour?

No.

Is there any other development besides his heart attack?

I’m sure that if there was, I would know. There’s so much heart disease in his family that it’s really not a surprise. So, I wish him the best. I hope he lives a long life and continues to go into a studio and work with other people. He’s also an icon, and he can teach people. He’s not stopped in his tracks. He can still make music and have fun.

For what it’s worth, I think you’re a much larger icon in that regard.

Well, that was one of the problems, wasn’t it?

Before Christine died, she told us that John was not in great health. Do you have any updates?

John’s wife passing away [earlier this year] has been very, very hard on him. I actually have not talked to him since Julie passed away, because he made it very clear that he really didn’t want to talk to anybody until he was miles away from it. I was very close to John, so I’m only following his wishes. When I get home after SNL, I’m going to call him — and a lot of other people that I need to speak with that I haven’t been able to talk to in the last two years — and see how he is and go and see him.

You recently spoke about performing “The Chain” at future solo shows. Would it be a different version?

I found a demo of it that I actually must have had on cassette. It was a whole different song that led into the chorus of “The Chain.” And when we were recording “The Chain,” all they had was the part I call “the monsters are coming” [the bridge]. This great end. And Lindsey said, “You have a song. Could we have it?” And I’m like, “Sure. Why not?” So I just gave it to them. They took that part of the song off, that was the verses.

So a friend of mine said, “Did you know that there’s a demo of the first ‘Chain’?” And I said, “No. Can you play it for me?” And I’m going like, “Ooh, that’s a good song. We could do a revised version of ‘The Chain.’ ” I have already sent it off to Greg Kurstin, who’s one of my favorite producers.

Would this new version of “The Chain” be on The Vampire’s Wife?

Mm-hmm. And it will blow people’s minds because it’s a very different song. And yet, it flows right into its chorus, which is “The Chain” chorus. So I’m going like, “Well, I bet the world would love that.” Because I would love that. That’s a song that I wrote when I was really in my “Chain” style of writing songs. It would be great for that to come out. So that’s part of what I call my ghost album.

Have you seen Stereophonic?

What is that?

It’s an insanely successful Broadway play about a band on the cusp of stardom as they record their new album in Sausalito. So it’s basically … about you … and Fleetwood Mac.

Really?

Yes.

How in the world have I gotten this far without knowing about this?

In 1966, during your senior year of high school, you briefly had a recording contract. Your career would have been totally different, a late-Sixties singer like Joni Mitchell or Linda Ronstadt.

It would have. My dad had a good friend, Jackie Mills, that worked for 20th Century Fox. Jackie flew me down to Los Angeles, and I went in there with my guitar and played three songs. He said, “Well, I think that you’re really good, and we’d like to sign you to 20th Century Fox. We’ll be in touch.” I got home, and we got contracts that were sent really soon. My parents were like, “Well, of course you have to finish school.” And my mom’s going, “She’s going to college.” And I’m like, “OK, everybody settle down. It’s not World War V.”

So we signed them, but there was a clause in Jackie’s contract that’s called a key-man clause, which means if he leaves, he takes his artists with him. He left probably the summer after my senior year, before I had even gone back down there. I was released. Had I not been released, it was a five-year contract, so that would’ve been ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70, ’71. So that would’ve aced out Buckingham Nicks, Fleetwood Mac. All of it.

I probably would’ve lived in Ladies of the Canyon, down the street from Joni and Linda and David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Neil Young. I would’ve wanted to be a part of that. That would’ve been super interesting. But I didn’t ever have any doubts that this would be my life. I believe in me. I believe in the Church of Stevie.

Do you have plans to retire, or do you see yourself like Mick Jagger, doing this in your eighties?

Well, if I can stay looking pretty good…. When I think that it’s age-inappropriate, I won’t do it anymore. But then I think I would just bring the shows down. I’d be happy to tour all the beautiful gothic theaters of the United States and Europe, and do two hours and be able to sit in a chair for some of it. Do some songs in my whole catalog that I’ve always wanted to do and never done.

I’d love to see you perform rare ones, like “Kind of Woman.”

Really rare ones. I can go all the way back to [sings “After the Glitter Fades”] “I never thought I’d make it here in Hollywood…. For me, it’s the only life/That I’ve ever known/ And love is only one fine star away/Even though the living/Is sometimes laced with lies.” That’s a really autobiographical song, because that is how I feel. So, I will be able to sing that song for you when I’m 90. If I’m still alive and healthy, there’s no reason for me to stop doing what I do, because I love it and this was my mission.

It’s not that I want to work this hard in another 10 years, but there is stuff that I really want to do. I want to travel. Harry Styles has three houses in Italy — he loves it so much. I want to go there and rent a place and stay for a while, and travel all over. I’ve been to Rome a couple of times, but never been there long enough to see it.

There’s a sequel in the works to Practical Magic, the 1998 film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as sister witches. I’ve always loved that version of “Crystal” included in the soundtrack.

It’s funny, because “Crystal” was recorded three times. It was recorded for Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, and then it was rerecorded for Practical Magic, with me and Sharon [Celani]. Maybe we should record it for a fourth time. I definitely think they should let me be a part of music. As soon as I get home, I’m going to make that phone call and say, “Listen, you have to let me do a song in this, and at least jump off the roof with you guys.”

At this point, how many shawls do you think you own?

I just have the famous shawls, really. I have the “Rhiannon” blouse with sleeves. I have a “Gold Dust Woman” cape. I’ve had two of those over the last 40 years. I had a “Stand Back” cape. I have a white cape that I wore for “Edge of Seventeen” for a long time, but it’s very long. I don’t wear it much anymore. I have a long red one I love. Beautiful fabric. And the blue Bella Donna cape. It’s in perfect shape, like brand-new.

I got freaked out at one point. People were writing about me being a witch, and I stopped wearing black, and I made the girls stop wearing black, too. [Designer] Margi [Kent] made us all-new pale-pastel outfits; it was the Eighties. And then we all looked at each other one day and said, “Why are we wearing these Easter-egg dresses? This is not us.”

But I have all those outfits. That’s silk-chiffon stuff, it just never, ever goes away. That’s why they use it for sails. So it’s all in different storage units and cases, and it’s very cared for. Because someday it’ll go out into the world. I love going through all of it. It’s like being in a magical closet, like Narnia.

When was the last time you wore denim jeans?

A very long time ago. I wore nothing but denim jeans for a million years. I wanted to look a certain way in jeans, and when I didn’t feel like I looked that way anymore, I stopped wearing jeans. As soon as I think something starts to get age-inappropriate, I stop.

What’s something that you’re really proud of in your career that people might not expect?

I’m proud of all the stuff that I’ve done. My drawings are precious to me. I will, maybe next year, do a big art show. I have so much poetry that just doesn’t make it to the piano. Or makes it to the piano and I realize that it’s really just not meant to be a song. It’s a silly thing to say, but I do my own nails. This is the first time they’ve been white in 20 years — I didn’t have time to put the gold on them before the last show. People say, “Who did your nails?” And I go, “Me, because I’m the best manicurist in the world.” Nobody does them as good as me, so why would I let anybody else do them?

ANGIE MARTOCCIO is a senior writer at Rolling Stone. She wrote the Billie Eilish cover story in the May issue.

Angie Martoccio / Rolling Stone / December 2024 (44-45)

The Rolling Stone Interview

In a nearly four-hour interview, the legendary singer goes deep on longevity, Kamala Harris, why Fleetwood Mac are finished, and much more

Every second feels like an ­eternity when you’re hovering four inches from Stevie Nicks, noodling around with her blouse. This is Stevie Nicks, the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice — as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. Stevie Nicks, whose legendary shawl collection resides in its own temperature-controlled vault. Stevie Nicks, who, at 76, has become an obsession of younger generations, from her American Horror Story appearance to the original poem she wrote for Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department to a recent viral TikTok video, where she intensely stares down her ex-boyfriend and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham during a 1997 performance of “Silver Springs.” (Yes, Nicks has seen it.)

This is also Stevie Nicks, who’s somehow gotten a long, spiraled, gold ring she’s wearing stuck in the mesh fabric of her blouse, requiring the up-close-and-personal assistance of an interviewer she met only minutes ago.

She is surprisingly nonchalant as I lean over her, delicately unwinding the thread from each loop of the ring. “It happened [recently] onstage,” she says of the ring tangling. “It was stuck on my ‘Gold Dust Woman’ cape, and the most handsome guy on our entire tour ran out and was down on one knee trying to undo it. I felt like a princess in a Cinderella movie.” She laughs. I loosen up. Miraculously, I free the material from the ring without a single tear. “Thank you, honey,” she says sweetly.

Nicks has been in Philadelphia for the past three days, wrapping up a massive tour and recording a Christmas song with former NFL star Jason Kelce. Tonight, she’s in her signature all-black attire, save for hot-pink hair ties that hold her blond, elegant French braid. Her tiny Chinese crested dog, Lily, saunters in and out of the room, occasionally sitting on her lap and staring at the massive charcuterie plate in front of us.

The spread will go untouched over the next three and a half hours while Nicks takes me on a wild ride through her life — and, at one point, into the bedroom to meet her Stevie Nicks Barbies. There’s the prototype, dressed in her beloved “Rhiannon” black dress, and the official Stevie Barbie, released last fall. Nicks didn’t love Barbies as a child, but there’s something special about this doll. “I never in a million years thought this little thing would have such an effect on me,” she says, holding the miniature Gold Dust Woman.

Nicks is as prolific and driven as ever. She’s also unmoored from her famous band. After a successful tour with the classic Fleetwood Mac lineup in 2014 and 2015, Buckingham ran into conflict with his bandmates — and with Nicks in particular — leading to him being fired from the group in 2018. The 2022 death of Christine McVie, whom Nicks calls “my musical soulmate,” truly seems to have ended the band; Nicks says she’s done with Fleetwood Mac for good. Instead, she launched a two-year-long solo tour, which just wrapped a couple of evenings before we talk at the 30,000-seat Hersheypark Stadium.

She’ll perform to millions shortly after our conversation, when she appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 40 years. When she steps onto the stage at Studio 8H, she’ll play her women’s-rights anthem “The Lighthouse,” which Nicks wrote following the demise of Roe v. Wade. Featuring Sheryl Crow on guitar, it’s a cathartic rocker in which Nicks compares herself to a lighthouse, guiding women and encouraging them to stand up for their power.

“You know what I always think of when I say SNL?” she asks me. “Stevie Nicks Live.”

Rolling Stone: Where do you prefer that I sit?

Stevie Nicks: You’re good right there, as long as you don’t think you have Covid.

No, I don’t.

Well, thank goodness we’re done [touring] for a while, so I can go home and not have a mask on all the time. As a singer with asthma, I fucking hate the masks, but I wear them. People give you dirty looks. I dare anybody to give me a dirty look. I would just say, “Hey, you know what? I’m Stevie Nicks. And if I get sick, my entire thing goes down. Forty families are out of work. So that’s why I have a mask on, asshole.”

I can’t get [Covid] again. I mean, I’m old, so I’ll only be around for another 15 years. But you guys have another 30 or 40 years, so you should think about it.

Fifteen years sounds pretty exact.

I’ll probably live to be hatefully 95 years old. I have no want to be that old, honestly. I mean, I’ll have an electric scooter, and I will be raging and I will keep dancing. But I’m not looking forward to that, really — I think that’s too old. My mom died at 84, and my dad died at about 80, but I’m a younger person at 76 than they were at 76. So I figured 88, 89.

Are you afraid of death?

I’m not afraid of dying, but what I am afraid of is not getting everything together, because I’m so busy. And that’s why I’m really glad this tour’s over, so that I can go and work on an album. I haven’t been able to do a lot of the creative things that I love in many, many years. I draw, I write songs, and I write poetry. I’d like to make a perfume because I actually have a smell that I love. I like to design blankets. Cashmere blankets are my favorite thing. That is what I buy for my friends if there’s a special occasion. I bought Travis Kelce a blanket.

Don Henley and J.D. Souther took me into a store in Los Angeles called Maxfield Blue, now Maxfield, in 1977. And they took me there, and I got my first cashmere blanket. I always laugh and say, “They taught me how to spend money,” those two guys.

J.D. died recently — I know you briefly dated him back in the day.

It’s been a terrible, terrible tragedy. And then Kris Kristofferson. [My assistant] came in to tell me something today. And she goes, “So, Stevie…” Every time she says “So, Stevie,” I go like, “Please don’t tell me that somebody else died. I wish you would just come in, say my name, and don’t say ‘so’ before, because it’s starting to set me up for tragedy, because we’re old.”

What new music have you been working on?

I have so many ideas for songs that I want to do. There’s some songs that I didn’t write that other people wrote that I’m going to call them on the phone and say, “I’d really like to sing this song with you. How do you feel about that?”

I also have so many poems that are ready to go. I wrote a poem about one of the women stars of one of my favorite crime shows, Chicago P.D. That’s medicine for me, and I can’t wait to go to the piano and sit down with it. I’ve written a song called “The Vampire’s Wife,” which, I think, is one of my best songs I’ve ever written. Because it’s like “Rhiannon,” a story of a character. Who knows, I might call this next album The Vampire’s Wife.

It seems like you’re bursting with all of this creativity.

I got diagnosed with this thing a year and a half ago called wet macular degeneration, and it is not a good thing. I was seeing all these colors, big things of purple. I was having, like, acid trips. And I’m going, “I’m not taking any acid, so I don’t understand what this is.” Now, every six, seven, eight, nine weeks, I have to have a shot in each one of my eyes. That’s going to be for the rest of my life.

There’s dry macular degeneration, which my mom had. Her whole thing was doing the financial books for my dad, because she was a financial little wizard. When she was about 80, it was really hard for her to see. In a way, I think it killed her because she was so brokenhearted that she could no longer do this. So when I got diagnosed with this, all of a sudden, I’m going like, “You know what? You need to finish these drawings, because what if you start to lose your sight?” I haven’t drawn in years … but my drawings are as important to me as my songs.

You just released “The Lighthouse,” which you were working on for two years.

When Roe v. Wade was banished, I turned on Morning Joe and I swear to God, I thought Mika [Brzezinski] was going to crawl over the desk. What she did was remind me what a loss this was. Because I can remember being so happy when it came into being in 1973. It was like we were safe.

It’s not just about not being careful and having an abortion. It’s everything. It’s all the health care. It’s an ectopic pregnancy. It’s all the procedures that need to be done in our bodies that half of us don’t ever have and half of us have a whole lot more than other people. I was just really freaked out after I saw [the news], and that was the inspiration for this song.

I wrote the words in the morning. I never write in the morning, and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee. But I just wrote the whole thing. Then I closed the book and went back to sleep. It sounds like Marvin Gaye walking down a seedy alley and singing about life, and he runs into Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters when he turns the corner. That’s how I hear it.

I’ll probably live to be hatefully 95 years old. I will be raging and I will keep dancing.

It’s a really important message, especially in time for the election.

I’m going to reach out to women and say, “You have to vote.” You have to. I never voted until I was 70 years old because I wasn’t at all political. I was incredibly busy, I was having a fitting, and I didn’t want to do jury duty. It’s a big regret.

It’s really hard for women to be open about their own abortions. How have you always found the courage to talk about yours?
Well, mine really wasn’t let out to the public by me — it was let out to the public by Don Henley [who impregnated Nicks when they briefly dated in the late Seventies]. He called me to apologize. I said, “You know what, Don? We did go out for about a year and have remained such good friends. ‘Leather and Lace’ [their 1981 duet] draws us together forever.” So, anyway, he let that one out of the bag. I probably would’ve never. Why would I say anything about it? Everything was totally legal.

It was, like, 1977, or going into 1978. Don was the first guy I actually went out with after Lindsey and I broke up. When this pregnancy happened, it was like, “What the heck happened? I am completely respectful of the world rules here, and all of a sudden this happens to me and I can’t figure it out.” I go to my GYN, and he says, “Well, you’ve been protected by your Copper-7 IUD, but you have a tipped uterus. That IUD is only protecting half of you, and we didn’t know that.”

Now, what the hell am I going to do? I cannot have a child. I am not the kind of woman who would hand my baby over to a nanny, not in a million years. So we would be dragging a baby around the world on tour, and I wouldn’t do that to my baby. I wouldn’t say I just need nine months. I would say I need a couple of years, and that would break up the band, period. So my decision was to have an abortion. If people want to be mad at me about that, I don’t really care, because my life was my life and my plan was my plan and had been since I was in the fourth grade.

So Fleetwood Mac would have been done.

Done. And that would’ve been sad, because I would not have married Don Henley. That was a really fun relationship, but he was in a bigger band than me. Those boys were rock stars, par extraordinaire. Nobody in that band was ready to get married and have children. So I knew it would just be on me, and I wouldn’t have even known what to do with that responsibility.

I have another example of something that was very scary for me. I have a friend who had an ectopic pregnancy. She went on to have a little girl who is my little soulmate goddaughter that I absolutely adore. She would’ve died if this had been the old days. And this little girl that I love so much would not be on this Earth. So right there, there’s two completely different scenarios. Why weren’t we schooled in that? Why were we never told about that in high school or even college?

But now “The Lighthouse” can teach others.

On the plane, I told [bandmate and musical director] Waddy Wachtel, “I don’t know what to call this song,” because we’d been calling it “The Power Song” forever. And he just looked at me and he said, “What about ‘The Lighthouse?’” I used to have a dream that I would buy a lighthouse and it would have that twisty staircase that would go all the way up. I would have a little place at the bottom with a bed and a bathroom, and that would be my place when I wanted to go and record by myself, right on a cliff.

So I said, “OK, ‘The Lighthouse.’ So I am the lighthouse, because I am the wisdom and I have the stories.” We are the women that can tell all these young women from 15 up to 45. We are that light that goes out, and we bring the ships in so they don’t crash. We save lives every day. The way I feel about this upcoming election is that Kamala Harris is the lighthouse, too.

Did you ever look back and wish that you had had children or —

Never. Maybe I knew then that I had to be me, in Fleetwood Mac, a huge band that was on its way to being legendary, to be able to be the lighthouse. Not only did it allow me to follow my dream of being this rock & roll woman, but it allowed me to be this person that just wrote this song. I wanted to write something that would be helpful in this situation, because this could be my finest hour. This could be the most important thing I’ve ever done, this song.

I was not looking for this to be like a hit record. I don’t care. I mean, all the people that are my age, we gave up on hit records a long time ago. With everything streaming, it’s like 300,000 plays. It’s like, “What is that?” I don’t know how to maneuver myself around that. And I’m not interested in it anyway, because I’m the only person that isn’t always on a phone.

Is there internet on your iPhone?

It isn’t connected, it’s just a camera.

I’m envious of that.

I hate it. About 10 years ago, Katy Perry was talking to me about the internet armies of all the girl singers, and how cruel and rancid they were. I said, “Well, I wouldn’t know because I’m not on the internet.” She said, “So, who are your rivals?” I just looked at her. It was my steely look. I said, “Katy, I don’t have rivals. I have friends. All the other women singers that I know are friends. Nobody’s competing. Get off the internet and you won’t have rivals either.”

I’m sure you’re glad Fleetwood Mac didn’t have to endure social media.

It would’ve been terrible. We never had terrible paparazzi. Our fans always really honored us and treated us with care. Nobody chased us down. It was all fun. It was never terrorizing. It was never stalking. It was never weird. I couldn’t live like that.

Pop stars are really struggling with that these days, particularly Chappell Roan.

Evidently she likes my music a lot. Me and a friend of mine went and looked at her schedule, and it was outrageous. What she’s already done and then what she’s going into. It’s as bad as any schedule we ever did, and she’s new, and she’s young. I said, “They’ll burn her out if that’s what they want to do, because there’s always somebody to replace you.” It must make them all very fearful. That’s why it’s good that Chappell just said, “Well, go ahead, replace me. I’m canceling because I’m not going to drop dead for all you people.”

Taylor Swift has also been great at setting boundaries.

Do you see my little bracelet? [Points to a friendship bracelet Swift gave her.] I haven’t taken it off for almost a year. She is really smart, but she also went through a lot before. She’s in a good place right now, and I think she has a good man. I hope they fall deeper and deeper in love and ride off into the sunset. He does his thing and she does her thing, and then they come back together and get married and have babies if she wants that. I just want all of that for her.

How do you think Vice President Harris is doing as a candidate?

I think she’s doing great. If [Trump] loses, he’s just going to get in his limo and go back to Mar-a-Lago and probably get another TV show, and have lots of great vacations and play a lot of golf. He’s just going to have fun. Good god, he’s 78. It’s the opposite to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Nobody has to worry about him. He’s just going to go do what he does.

I am the lighthouse. Kamala is the lighthouse, too.

Do you feel optimistic about the election?

I feel very optimistic about it. I love the fact that she laughs. I love the fact that she’s full of joy. I love the fact that she fell in love with somebody later in her life, and has a family and that they call her “Momala.” I love that. I have great respect for her, being willing to take on such a serious job, with so much going on in the Middle East and Ukraine, which is my heart. It’s like, “I won’t have a real life now for a long time, so if I don’t call you, don’t take it personally.”

I loved your “childless dog lady” photo. But people pointed out that you didn’t explicitly endorse Harris. Do you want to do that right now?

I think I’m totally endorsing her by naming her as a lighthouse. I don’t like the word “endorsing,” but what I like is the fact that she is our great hope to save the world.

You played President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Would you perform at Harris’?

I might.

Are you able to understand why so many women see you as an icon?

The word “icon” is difficult for me, because I think of “icon” as a big Greek statue of a girl in a cape. But I’m good with it, because I’ve worked hard to be whatever everybody thinks that I am. I wrote a song once, it’s called “Sweet Girl,” and it says, “I chose to dance across the stages of the world.… Many are the cities that I never saw at all.” That’s what I feel like I’ve done, just dancing across the stages of the world. That’s why I appear to be a lot more youthful than I am, because my spirit is youthful. As long as you can dance, you are youthful. I’m 76, but I’m just incredibly limber. The dancing really comes from that.

[Nicks pauses and wraps her leg around her head to demonstrate.]

What I wanted to do my whole life was affect people. I love telling my stories onstage. That is what makes me happy, and that’s why I’ll never stop touring. Because if I stop touring, then I’ll stop dancing. I go on a summer tour next year, and I [will] do 40 shows. That’s what Fleetwood Mac used to do.… And you know there is no more Fleetwood Mac now, because when Christine [McVie] died, Fleetwood Mac died. We cannot replace her.

Would you ever release a formal statement about it?

I kind of released a formal statement about it at the show, the night before last.

When you said it was the last time you’d dedicate “Landslide” to her.

Since the day she died, we made that montage and we have done that every single night. And I cry every single night. I said, “We have to let her go now. We have to say goodbye to Christine, safe journey.”

What was your last conversation with Christine like?

This is the tragedy of it: I had not talked to Chris for a long time. Fleetwood Mac would be together for two solid years and then we would stop. During that time, when I went to do my own thing and went on tour, we hardly ever talked on the phone. She lived in England. The time difference was screwed up, so it was very hard for us to talk.

We got a phone call from someone. He told us that she was ill. I said, “OK. We’re going to rent a plane right now, and we’re going to come over there.” And then we got a call back. Her family said, “Don’t come until we see how things go here.” Her family is super funny, as was she. They said, “If you and Mick, that tall man, walk into her hospital room, she’ll go, ‘Am I dead?’” So anyway, a few hours later they called and said that she’d died. So I did not get to say goodbye to her. My plan was to go and sit on her bed and sing “Touched By an Angel” to her, like I did with my dad, for two or three hours or however long it took to either bring her back or send her off. I didn’t get to do that, and I was angry.

Because this was a different kind of friend. This was my music soulmate, my best girlfriend. We kept that band afloat, the two of us, by keeping the peace, no matter what. By never letting people carry their problems into the studio, by stopping fights before they started, by making sure that our work was stellar. Even when we were doing lots of drugs, we had our eyes on everyone and everything. We were the keepers of Fleetwood Mac, and that is why we cannot replace her. We did replace Lindsey two times, and it was OK. No fighting, super fun. But Christine was different.

To be fair, you did tour without Christine, from 1998 to 2015.

We did. And it was good, because when you took Chris’ six songs out and replaced them with three of Lindsey’s and three of mine, we became a harder rock & roll band. We were like AC/DC, and it was fun.

So when she called and said, “I think I want to come back,” I’m like, “Well, we’ve turned it into a super rock band now since you left. You need to come and see us in London and make sure that you actually want to come back. And if you do, then we have to change back to the original Fleetwood Mac, and we’re fine to do that.” So she came up and did a song, played organ, and she said, “I want to do it.” I’m really glad now, of course, that that happened.

I had her from 1975 until she died, and I miss her every day. And I just finally realized being onstage, the night before last, in the rain in front of 30,000 people, that it was time for us to let her go. And stop being so sad, because I cried every single night. It’s like, “Fly. We’re not holding you down anymore.”

Did you see Lindsey at Christine’s celebration of life?

Christine threw down a hurricane on top of Nobu, which is where we had it. Almost blew the whole place away, honest to God. Tore down the entire deck that was all decorated and everything. So it was kind of crazy. We all felt like she was there, because it was really intense. The only time I’ve spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes. I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.

Do you regret not cutting ties even sooner than you did?

No, I think that all just happened the way it should have. It happened one night, not planned, at a MusiCares [benefit concert]. I didn’t even tell anybody it had happened in my head until the whole ceremony was over. I took with me that night a song that I had done with LeAnn Rimes called “Borrowed.” I took it with me to play for him because I thought we could do this song beautifully.

That’s when he wasn’t very nice to anybody; he wasn’t very nice to Harry Styles. I could hear my mom saying, “Are you really going to spend the next 15 years of your life with this man?” I could hear my very pragmatic father — and by the way, my mom and dad liked Lindsey a lot — saying, “It’s time for you guys to get a divorce.” Between those two, I said, “I’m done.”

So you would never even consider a proper farewell tour?

No.

I just always think about when David Crosby died, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young regretted not reconciling.

Well, and that’s true, but they never played near as much as we did. We had lots and lots of time, and lots and lots of tours that could have been the reconciliation tour and “now we’re going to quit” tour. So, I just felt that Christine and I had done everything we could do to make it a happy place. And it wasn’t a happy place anymore.

Is there any other development besides Lindsey’s heart attack?

I’m sure that if there was, I would know. There’s so much heart disease in his family that it’s really not a surprise. So, I wish him the best. I hope he lives a long life and continues to go into a studio and work with other people. He’s also an icon, and he can teach people. He’s not stopped in his tracks. He can still make music and have fun.

For what it’s worth, I think you’re a much larger icon in that regard.

Well, that was one of the problems, wasn’t it?

Before Christine died, she told us that John was not in great health. Do you have any updates?

John’s wife passing away [earlier this year] has been very, very hard on him. I actually have not talked to him since Julie passed away, because he made it very clear that he really didn’t want to talk to anybody until he was miles away from it. I was very close to John, so I’m only following his wishes. When I get home after SNL, I’m going to call him — and a lot of other people that I need to speak with that I haven’t been able to talk to in the last two years — and see how he is and go and see him.

You recently spoke about performing “The Chain” at future solo shows. Would it be a different version?

I found a demo of it that I actually must have had on cassette. It was a whole different song that led into the chorus of “The Chain.” And when we were recording “The Chain,” all they had was the part I call “the monsters are coming” [the bridge]. This great end. And Lindsey said, “You have a song. Could we have it?” And I’m like, “Sure. Why not?” So I just gave it to them. They took that part of the song off, that was the verses.

So a friend of mine said, “Did you know that there’s a demo of the first ‘Chain?’” And I said, “No. Can you play it for me?” And I’m going like, “Ooh, that’s a good song. We could do a revised version of ‘The Chain.’” I have already sent it off to Greg Kurstin, who’s one of my favorite producers.

Would this new version of “The Chain” be on The Vampire’s Wife?

Mm-hmm. And it will blow people’s minds because it’s a very different song. And yet, it flows right into its chorus, which is “The Chain” chorus. So I’m going like, “Well, I bet the world would love that.” Because I would love that. That’s a song that I wrote when I was really in my “Chain” style of writing songs. It would be great for that to come out. So that’s part of what I call my ghost album.

The word ‘icon’ is difficult for me. But I worked hard to be what everybody thinks I am.

When the TV adaptation of Daisy Jones & the Six was released, you said it was like watching your own story.

I didn’t even want to see it, because I thought I was going to hate it so much. I had Covid when I saw it. I was in my condo in Los Angeles, and I can remember saying, “Am I just watching my life go by?”

Riley [Keough] doesn’t look like me. She’s much snappier than me. I couldn’t be as snappy as her in Fleetwood Mac. Christine and I couldn’t do that, because we were the peacemakers. [Keough] could be totally shitty and a smart ass and totally arrogant, because she wasn’t even in the band, and they weren’t even nice to her. So that was the biggest difference. But as far as her character went, it was very similar to me. And I instantly wanted to call her and meet her, and I did.

I thought Suki [Waterhouse] was a great Christine — in her Englishness and just the way that she dressed. And you know what I was really sad about? That Christine didn’t get to see that, because she would’ve been so tickled by her. And I thought Billy [Sam Claflin] was spectacular. I thought he captured so much of Lindsey that it was creepy. He had the curls and that dark handsomeness that Lindsey had. One of my favorites was Camila [Morrone]. I thought that Camila and Daisy were a really good combination of me, the two of them put them together.

I really loved the ending, when a dying Camila encourages Billy to give Daisy a call.

I wish that it could go into what if … had Billy come back after Billy’s wife died and knocked on her door, and they decided to make that last record that I always hoped that Lindsey and I would make. That would make a fantastic second season. I talked to [executive producer] Reese [Witherspoon] and Riley about it, and they loved the idea, but everybody’s so busy. Riley’s on her way to becoming a big movie star. But maybe one of these days, they’ll do it. Until I saw Daisy Jones & The Six, I would have never thought it was even possible to emulate our life.

Have you seen the Stereophonic play?

What is that?

It’s an insanely successful Broadway play about a band on the cusp of stardom as they record their new album in Sausalito. So it’s basically … about you … and Fleetwood Mac.

Really?

Yes.

How in the world have I gotten this far without knowing about this?

In 1966, during your senior year of high school, you briefly had a recording contract. Your career would have been totally different, a late-Sixties singer like Joni Mitchell or Linda Ronstadt.

It would have. My dad had a good friend, Jackie Mills, that worked for 20th Century Fox. Jackie flew me down to Los Angeles, and I went in there with my guitar and played three songs. He said, “Well, I think that you’re really good, and we’d like to sign you to 20th Century Fox. We’ll be in touch.” I got home, and we got contracts that were sent really soon. My parents were like, “Well, of course you have to finish school.” And my mom’s going, “She’s going to college.” And I’m like, “OK, everybody settle down. It’s not World War V.”

So we signed them, but there was a clause in Jackie’s contract that’s called a key-man clause. Which means if he leaves, he takes his artists with him. He left probably the summer after my senior year, before I had even gone back down there. I was released. Had I not been released, it was a five-year contract, so that would’ve been ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70, ’71. So that would’ve aced out Buckingham Nicks, Fleetwood Mac. All of it.

I probably would’ve lived in Ladies of the Canyon, down the street from Joni and Linda and David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Neil Young. I would’ve wanted to be a part of that. That would’ve been super interesting. But I didn’t ever have any doubts that this would be my life. I believe in me. I believe in the Church of Stevie.

Do you have plans to retire, or do you see yourself like Mick Jagger, doing this in your eighties

Well, if I can stay looking pretty good.… When I think that it’s age inappropriate, I won’t do it anymore. But then I think I would just bring the shows down. I’d be happy to tour all the beautiful gothic theaters of the United States and Europe, and do two hours and be able to sit in a chair for some of it. Do some songs in my whole catalog that I’ve always wanted to do and never done.

I’d love to see you perform rare ones, like “Kind of Woman.”

Really rare ones. I can go all the way back to [sings “After the Glitter Fades”] “I never thought I’d make it here in Hollywood.… For me, it’s the only life/That I’ve ever known/And love is only one fine star away/Even though the living/Is sometimes laced with lies.” That’s a really autobiographical song, because that is how I feel. So, I will be able to sing that song for you when I’m 90. If I’m still alive and healthy, there’s no reason for me to stop doing what I do, because I love it and this was my mission.

It’s not that I want to work this hard in another 10 years, but there is stuff that I really want to do. I want to travel. Harry Styles has three houses in Italy — he loves it so much. I want to go there and rent a place and stay for a while, and travel all over. I’ve been to Rome a couple of times, but never been there long enough to see it.

There’s a sequel in the works to Practical Magic, the 1998 film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as sister witches. I’ve always loved that version of “Crystal” included in the soundtrack.

It’s funny, because “Crystal” was recorded three times. It was recorded for Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, and then it was rerecorded for Practical Magic, with me and Sharon [Celani]. Maybe we should record it for a fourth time. I definitely think they should let me be a part of music. As soon as I get home, I’m going to make that phone call and say, “Listen, you have to let me do a song in this, and at least jump off the roof with you guys.”

At this point, how many shawls do you think you own?

I just have the famous shawls, really. I have the “Rhiannon” blouse with sleeves. I have a “Gold Dust Woman” cape. I’ve had two of those over the last 40 years. I had a “Stand Back” cape. I have a white cape that I wore for “Edge of Seventeen” for a long time, but it’s very long. I don’t wear it much anymore. I have a long red one I love. Beautiful fabric. And the blue Bella Donna cape. It’s in perfect shape, like brand new.

I got freaked out at one point. People were writing about me being a witch, and I stopped wearing black and I made the girls stop wearing black, too. [Designer] Margi [Kent] made us all-new pale-pastel outfits; it was the Eighties. And then we all looked at each other one day and said, “Why are we wearing these Easter egg dresses? This is not us.”

But I have all those outfits. That’s silk-chiffon stuff, it just never, ever goes away. That’s why they use it for sails. So it’s all in different storage units and cases, and it’s very cared for. Because someday it’ll go out into the world. I love going through all of it. It’s like it’s being in a magical closet, like Narnia.

When was the last time you wore denim jeans?

A very long time ago. I wore nothing but denim jeans for a million years. I wanted to look a certain way in jeans, and when I didn’t feel like I looked that way anymore, I stopped wearing jeans. As soon as I think something starts to get age inappropriate, I stop.

What’s something that you’re really proud of in your career that people might not expect?

I’m really proud of all the stuff that I’ve done. My drawings are very precious to me. I will, maybe next year, do a big art show. I have so much poetry that just doesn’t make it to the piano. Or makes it to the piano and I realize that it’s really just not meant to be a song. It’s a silly thing to say, but I do my own nails. This is the first time they’ve been white in 20 years — I didn’t have time to put the gold on them before the last show. People say, “Who did your nails?” And I go, “Me, because I’m the best manicurist in the world.” Nobody does them as good as me, so why would I let anybody else do them?

Photograph by Randee St. Nicholas

Angie Martoccio / Rolling Stone / October 24, 2024