Credit: Far Out / Stevie Nicks
Sun 13 September 2026 20:00, UK
Stevie Nicks never wanted to get into the rock and roll business for the trophies.
The mark of any good songwriter was being able to recreate the magic that they made in the studio whenever they played, and Nicks was willing to go the extra mile to inhabit the characters in her songs every single time that she toured with Fleetwood Mac or throughout her solo career. Performing was as natural to her as the air that she breathed, but there were some moments where she felt that fate could be a bit more rewarding than she could have ever imagined.
Because who the hell is lucky enough to join one of the biggest bands in the world like she and Lindsey Buckingham were? Sure, they were responsible for turning Fleetwood Mac into one of the biggest rock and roll bands of the 1970s, but a lot of what turned up on Rumours came from a group effort to make sure that everything sounded right. Their songs were meticulously crafted to be perfect, but Nicks knew that could be a bit too stifling.
Some of her songs didn’t need to be run into the ground time after time, and just one album later, she was already thinking about making amateur inroads to a solo career. She didn’t want to be called another singer in a band, and the more that she looked at Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the more she started to realise that there was an avenue for her that didn’t necessarily have to be tied to her band.
Petty played by his own rules and didn’t care what anyone else thought, and that was wildly exciting for someone like Nicks, who only had to answer to her bandmates. So when she got the chance to make her first solo album, the first thing she did was book Jimmy Iovine as her producer because he was the one responsible for Damn the Torpedoes. She was going to make the kind of record that Petty could be proud of, but she probably didn’t anticipate being an unofficial member of the band.
Nicks said numerous times that she would have happily left Fleetwood Mac behind and joined Petty if she could have, but what ended up actually happening might be the best of both worlds. Some of her time away from ‘The Mac’ could get tiring for her bandmates, but when you look at the kind of track record she had on Petty’s records, she had a knack for bringing in the perfect backing vocals whenever she turned up on ‘Insider’ or ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’.
She always looked at Petty like he was an older brother, so when she finally got officially ordained as a member, she was on cloud nine, saying, “In 2006, I did 27 shows with him. Tom made me a little platinum sheriff’s badge that had 24-karat gold and diamonds across the top and said ‘To Our Honorary Heartbreaker, Stevie Nicks.’ On the back it says’ ‘To the Only Girl in Our Band.’ I keep it on my black velvet top hat. It goes with me everywhere. It’s probably the most beautiful piece of jewellery a man has ever given me, ever.”
Further reading: From The Vault
The heartland rocker did get a little bit touchy about the fact that there was a girl in his band, but there was never a second when he took her for granted. In fact, given how lost he was when making some of his later records, he was probably blessed to have someone like Nicks around when he made Echo to help keep himself sane when he was processing the fallout of his messy divorce.
Having friends like that in this industry is extremely hard to come by, but that doesn’t mean that getting there is impossible, either. You only need to choose your battles wisely, and even if Nicks considered Fleetwood Mac family, the Heartbreakers were the ragtag group of older brothers that were always going to stick by her side, no matter what happened.
