(Credits: Far Out / Klaus Hiltscher)
Fri 21 November 2025 20:30, UK
For Stevie Nicks, music always meant more than a few hit songs.
As much as Fleetwood Mac prided themselves on being able to create pop hits when she was in the band, there was a certain spiritual aspect to everything that she wrote that came from the heart rather than the mind, half the time. It was easy for most people to feel that feeling in their gut whenever they heard her, but she knew that some of her best friends could have the same effect when she heard their music.
But looking through all of her bandmates, it’s not like she was exactly ready to confront all of their emotional tunes, either. If anyone had come in with a song that was as direct as ‘Second Hand News’, none of us would have wanted to be included on the song, either, but even when sticking with ‘The Mac’, there was always room for her to grow once she set out on her own for the first time.
It would have been impossible for anyone else to make that jump, but through the help of people like Waddy Watchel, Bella Donna was the perfect counterpoint to whatever Lindsey Buckingham was doing on Tusk. This was the spectral rock and roll queen that most of us had known from the days of ‘Gold Dust Woman’, but she knew that she owed her career to Tom Petty when she first began.
The Heartbreakers were among her favourite bands when she left Fleetwood Mac for the first time, and she would give anything to make a record that sounded that good. And while it hurt knowing that ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ wasn’t written by her, getting Petty and Nicks together for a duet was one of the best decisions that either of them could have made at the time. Petty’s single died on the vine as a result, but he wasn’t the only one who had that kind of impact on her.
When talking about her relationships among her fellow musicians, Nicks felt that both Petty and Prince were going to be with her even after they left this Earth, saying, “We always had that crazy respect for each other. I feel that connection is still there, maybe more now than before he died — with Tom and with Prince.” But both icons feel like two sides of the same coin whenever they worked with Nicks.
While Prince and Petty did cross paths every now and again, hearing them work with Nicks feels like two completely different relationships. While ‘The Purple One’ did everything he could to work with Nicks and even helped her make tracks like ‘Stand Back’, the way Nicks talks about him always makes him feel like some supernatural musical spirit that would occasionally walk into her life.
Whereas with Petty, she practically had a rock and roll older brother. They had their disagreements every now and again, but when looking at their history together, Petty was the one that was always pushing her forward, whether that was her kickstarting her solo career for the first time or helping remind her how good she was at writing songs when she first got out of rehab.
Even if Nicks’s relationship with both Petty and Prince had its fair share of peaks and valleys, it’s not like she ever took them for granted, either. Because when someone is able to work with her on that level, that’s the kind of connection that can have more power that goes beyond friendship. These were members of her musical family, and she wasn’t going to take a second of her time with them for granted.
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