(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 15 February 2026 16:00, UK
For Stevie Nicks, finding the right musical partner wasn’t done by accident.
She has always felt that there was some magic that came between two people whenever they started singing together, and even if she hated Lindsey Buckingham with everything she had during the time of Rumours, all of that faded away when you heard how well they could sing together. But once she got out on her own, ‘The Gold Dust Woman’ found that there were a lot more musical partners out there as long as she knew where to look.
Granted, a lot of that has come from the people who have followed in Nicks’ footsteps ever since she got started. She may have been emulating what she heard out of everyone from Grace Slick to Linda Ronstadt whenever she sang, but it was equally as important for her to hear what people like Sheryl Crow were coming up with or being a mentor to people like Natalie Maines when she guested on one of her records.
But you have to remember that Nicks isn’t interested in making music in the traditional sense every single time she plays. She is a brilliant vocalist on all of her songs, and many of her best tunes revolve around her following her ear to guide her to the best notes on tunes like ‘Dreams’, but there’s a reason why Buckingham or even Dave Stewart later in her life were sculpting the songs for her.
She needed that extra person to help build the songs around her voice some of the time, but even with years of experience in Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty seemed to know Nicks’s music better than anyone else. He had already found the swampy song that she wanted with ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’, but when they harmonised on some of her ballads, it had the same effect that you’d hear out of Nicks jamming with ‘The Mac’.
And despite being a part of Fleetwood Mac for over half of her life, Nicks admitted that she would never get tired of performing with the heartland rocker for as long as she lived, saying, “I would sing with Tom all the time if I could. It’s the harmony of our voices…harmony is what I’ve always been doing. It’s what Lindsey and I were doing [in Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac]. It’s the harmony that’s important…like the Everly Brothers.”
But it was always about more than those harmonies whenever they performed. Nicks wanted to create songs that had the same kind of weight as Petty’s when she made her first solo records, and while a lot of Bella Donna benefited from having all the Heartbreakers playing on a few tracks, she was already working with some of the best songs in her back catalogue when making ‘After the Glitter Fades’ and ‘Leather and Lace’.
Then again, Petty might have needed Nicks a lot more than he thought as well. For someone who seemed in control of every single moment onstage, he had his moments where he fell from grace, and even at his lowest point, when making records like Echo, Nicks was always there to be the comforting friend and check in on him to make sure that he didn’t become a rock and roll casualty.
That’s the kind of friendship that doesn’t come along very often in the industry, but there’s a good chance that Nicks didn’t realise what she had until Petty passed away. He had spent years being at her side, but when that magic is gone, it’s hard to create it again, even if she tries to play tunes like ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ and ‘Free Fallin’.