(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 28 March 2026 2:00, UK
Stevie Nicks didn’t want to take a single minute of her time onstage for granted.
Anyone is bound to get a little bit of nerves when they start seeing thousands of people waiting for them to sing, and while it can be intimidating, Nicks seems to be totally in control of every crowd she has ever played to when she gets behind the microphone. But even if she knew what her fans wanted and was more than happy to give it to them, that didn’t stop her from passing judgment on those artists who seemed to take their millions of fans for granted every time they decided to take the stage.
Because if there’s one thing that Nicks was going to make sure of, it’s that she was able to get on that stage as many times as she could. There’s a good chance that anyone else in her position would have wanted to leave Fleetwood Mac and never return after the nightmare that was Rumours, but Nicks wasn’t going to let her feelings interfere with being in a band. She and Lindsey Buckingham had their ups and downs, but they were going to grin and bear it for the sake of the band every single time they played.
It had to hurt more than a few times when singing songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’, but that didn’t matter to Nicks. She was in the business of creating art, and even if she wasn’t able to get all of her songs out with her main band, she was willing to do whatever she could in her solo career to get her music to as many people as possible. But there’s only so many times that you can go back to your ex before you want things to stop for good.
Buckingham had already broken things off with the band after Tango in the Night, but when looking at their various reunions over the years, the classic lineup was always willing to make a few appearances here and there. The Dance was the first time it felt like the magic was in the air again after nearly a decade apart, and when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there was no way Nicks was going to miss it for the world.
‘The Gold Dust Woman’ would eventually become one of the only women inducted into the Hall of Fame twice, but when she was on hand to induct Linda Ronstadt, she had a little bit of a problem with the rest of the inductees. She adored people like Cat Stevens, but when looking at how uninterested Kiss was in performing, Nicks felt like Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley weren’t putting their fans first.
This was the band that was known for putting on the biggest shows of all time, so to have them not perform was a massive disappointment for Nicks, saying, “It is their loss that they didn’t play, because the Kiss Army is out there, right now screaming for them. And they should have played for them, no matter how they felt about it. You know, Fleetwood Mac had about 500 people in it, too. They weren’t all there. All 900 guitar players didn’t get inducted. They weren’t there. So the thing is, you know what? It’s your moment. Take it. Go out there and play. It’s the most important part.”
Their resistance to play might have been because Stanley already had a chip on his shoulder about the Hall of Fame in general, but it’s not like they could have put that aside from just one show. All they needed to play was a few songs, and since Ace Frehley has since departed, there’s no way that the original lineup had a proper wave goodbye to the fans even when they were given the highest honour in rock and roll.
While there are still some people that insist that the entire Hall of Fame is a farce and shouldn’t really be that big of a deal, that shouldn’t mean that a band like Kiss should sleepwalk their way through the ceremony. They were one of the founders of shock rock, and even if they made as many enemies as they did friends along the way, that shouldn’t mean taking it out on their fans by not performing.
