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Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and an extensive solo career, which collectively have produced over forty Top 50 hits and sold over 140 million albums. She has been noted for her ethereal visual style and symbolic lyrics.[1]
Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac on December 31, 1974, along with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac's second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, 1977's Rumours, produced four U.S. Top 10 singles (including Nicks's song "Dreams", which was the band's first and only U.S. number one) and remained at No.1 on the American albums chart for 31 weeks, as well as reaching the top spot in various countries around the world. To date the album has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the tenth highest selling album of all time.
Nicks began her solo career in 1981 with the 8 million selling album Bella Donna, and she has produced six more solo studio albums to date. Her seventh solo studio album entitled In Your Dreams, and her first in ten years, was produced largely by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame, and was released on May 3, 2011.
After the release of her first solo album, Rolling Stone deemed her "The Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll".[2] Having overcome cocaine addiction, and dependency on tranquilizers, Nicks remains a popular solo performer. As a solo artist, she has garnered eight Grammy Award nominations[3] and, with Fleetwood Mac, a further five, of which one was the 1978 award for Album of the Year for Rumours, which they won. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Nicks was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jess Nicks, a corporate executive, and Barbara Nicks, a homemaker. Nicks's grandfather, Aaron Jess Nicks, a struggling country music singer, taught Nicks to sing, performing duets with her by the time she was four years old. Nicks's mother was very protective of her, keeping her at home "more than most people were" and fostering in her a love of fairy tales.[4][5] As a young child, Nicks had difficulty pronouncing her given name Stephanie, instead pronouncing it "tee-dee", which became the nickname "Stevie".[6] Nicks's father Jess's career as a food business executive necessitated frequent moves, and the family lived in Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco during Nicks's youth. With the Goya guitar that she received for her sixteenth birthday, Nicks wrote her first song called "I've Loved and I've Lost, and I'm Sad But Not Blue". She joined her first band "The Changing Times" while attending Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.[7]
Nicks first met her future musical and romantic partner Lindsey Buckingham during her senior year at Menlo Atherton High School.[8] She attended a Young Life Christian social event, saw Buckingham playing "California Dreamin'", and joined in with the harmony.[9] Buckingham contacted Nicks a few years later and asked her to join him and his bandmates Javier Pacheco and Calvin Roper in a band called Fritz. Fritz became popular as a live act from 1968 until 1972, opening for popular musicians Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, among others, in the San Francisco Bay Area.[10] Both Nicks and Buckingham attended San Jose State University in Northern California, where Nicks majored in Speech Communication. They dropped out in 1968 and moved to Los Angeles together to pursue a career in music when Nicks's family moved to Chicago.[11]

After Fritz disbanded in 1972, Nicks and Buckingham continued to write and record as a duo, producing demo tapes at the coffee plant belonging to Buckingham's father Morris.[12] They secured a deal with Polydor Records. Polydor used tracks from the demo tapes to release the album[clarification needed] Buckingham Nicks in 1973. The album was not a commercial success, despite the live shows that Nicks and Buckingham performed together to support it, and Polydor dropped the pair from the label. To support herself and Buckingham, who wrote music while recovering from mononucleosis, Nicks worked a variety of jobs, which included waiting tables and a stint cleaning engineer/producer Keith Olsen's house, where Nicks and Buckingham lived for a time.[13] Nicks says that she first used cocaine during this time.[14]
Nicks and Buckingham briefly relocated to Aspen, Colorado. While there, Buckingham landed a guitar-playing gig with the Everly Brothers, and toured with them while Nicks stayed behind. During this time, Nicks wrote "Rhiannon" after seeing the name in the novel Triad by Mary Leader, unaware at the time of the Mabinogi legend of Rhiannon. She also wrote "Landslide", inspired by the scenery of Aspen and her inner turmoil over her decision to pursue music.[15]

Nicks and Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac on December 31, 1974, after Keith Olsen played their track "Frozen Love" for drummer Mick Fleetwood, who had come to Studio City in California, in search of a studio to record Fleetwood Mac's next album. Fleetwood remembered Buckingham's guitar work after guitar player Bob Welch's departure to pursue a solo career. Initially extending the offer only to Buckingham, Fleetwood later included Nicks in the offer when Buckingham insisted that they were "a package deal".
In 1975 the band achieved success with the album Fleetwood Mac. That same year, Nicks worked with clothing designer Margi Kent to develop Nicks's unique onstage look, with costumes that featured flowing skirts, shawls and platform boots.[16]
Following the success of Fleetwood Mac, increasing tension between Nicks and Buckingham began to take its toll on their creativity, and Nicks ended the relationship.[17][18] Fleetwood Mac began recording their follow-up album, Rumours, in early 1976 and continued until late in the year. Also, Nicks and Buckingham sang back-up on Warren Zevon's debut album.[19][20]
Among Nicks's contributions to Rumours was "Dreams", which became the band's only Billboard Hot 100 No.1 hit single to date. Nicks had also written and recorded the song "Silver Springs", but it was ultimately not included on the album because of space limitations for studio albums on vinyl records, which were limited to 24 minutes per side. Instead, it was released as a B-side of the "Go Your Own Way" single, and would remain in some obscurity until it appeared on the 4-disc Fleetwood Mac retrospective 25 Years – The Chain in 1992. The song, the rights to which are owned by Nicks's mother Barbara, has always been very special to Nicks, and she was devastated when told about the omission after the decision had been made.[21]
In November 1977, after a New Zealand concert for the Rumours tour, Nicks and Fleetwood, who was married to Jenny Boyd, secretly began an affair.[22][23] The pair mutually decided to end the affair, because, according to Nicks, "we knew it would be the end of Fleetwood Mac."[24] Soon after, in October 1978, Mick Fleetwood left his wife for Nicks's best friend Sara Recor.[25] After the success of the Rumours album and tour in 1977–78, Fleetwood Mac began recording their third album with Buckingham and Nicks, Tusk, in the spring of 1978. That year, Nicks sang back-up on Walter Egan's "Magnet & Steel".

By 1978, Nicks had amassed a large backlog of songs dating back to her Buckingham Nicks days that she had been unable to record and release with Fleetwood Mac because of the constraint of having to accommodate three songwriters on each album.[26] Nicks wrote and recorded demos for the solo project during Tusk sessions in 1979 and the Tusk world tour of 1979–80. Nicks, Danny Goldberg, and Paul Fishkin founded Modern Records to record and release Nicks's material. Nicks recorded the hit duets "Whenever I Call You Friend" with Kenny Loggins in 1978, and "Gold" with John Stewart in 1979.
Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was released on October 19, 1979. During 1981, Nicks toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and New Zealand band Split Enz as a guest.
Nicks released Bella Donna on July 27, 1981 to critical and commercial acclaim. Bella Donna was the first album to feature Nicks's back-up singers, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, who have contributed vocals to all of Nicks's solo albums since then.
The day that Bella Donna reached No.1 on the Billboard 200, Nicks's best friend Robin Anderson was diagnosed with leukemia. Robin gave birth to a son, appointing Nicks as the child's godmother. Following Robin's death in 1982, Nicks married Robin's widower Kim Anderson. They divorced eight months later.[27]
In October 1981 Nicks embarked on the White Winged Dove tour, which she had to cut short to record the Mirage album with Fleetwood Mac. After the Mirage tour in 1982, Nicks prepared to record her second solo album.

Nicks released The Wild Heart on June 10, 1983. The album introduced songwriter and performer Sandy Stewart as co-writer, vocalist, and musician. The Wild Heart went double platinum, reached No.5 on the Billboard album chart, and featured three hit singles. Nicks performed at the second US Festival at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, California, and later toured the U.S. from June 1983 to November 1983. Nicks appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1983, performing "Stand Back" and "Nightbird".
Following the tour for The Wild Heart, Nicks commenced work on her third solo album. Originally titled Mirror Mirror, Nicks recorded songs for the album during 1984. However, Nicks was unhappy with the title track, and opted to record a new batch of songs in 1985.[28] Rock a Little, as it was re-titled, was released November 18, 1985 to commercial success, supported by two hit singles.
Nicks toured in 1986 with Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. The tour ended on October 10, 1986 in Sydney when Nicks was threatened by Australian authorities with expulsion from the country for not carrying a work permit.
The tour marked a turning point in Nicks's career: although she had achieved significant critical acclaim, drugs were taking a toll on her performing, affecting her vocals and changing her on-stage persona[citation needed]. In 1986, a plastic surgeon warned her of severe health problems if she did not stop using cocaine.[29] At the end of the Australian tour, Nicks checked herself into the Betty Ford Center to overcome her cocaine addiction.[30] Later that year, a doctor prescribed the tranquilizer Klonopin to help her avoid a cocaine relapse.[31]

In 1985, Fleetwood Mac began work on Tango in the Night, which was released in April 1987. Nicks joined in the later stages of production in late 1986 after her stay in at the Betty Ford Clinic.
Creative differences and unresolved personal issues within the band led Buckingham to quit the group right before their world tour. According to bassist John McVie, a "physically ugly" confrontation between Nicks and Buckingham ensued when Nicks angrily challenged Buckingham's decision to leave the band.[32]
The band embarked on the Shake the Cage tour in September 1987, with Buckingham replaced by Rick Vito and Billy Burnette. The tour was suspended during Nicks's bout with chronic fatigue syndrome and developing addiction to tranquilizers, though it resumed in 1988. Tango in the Night met with commercial success and was followed in 1988 by Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits album in November 1988.
Also in 1988, Nicks began work on a fourth solo album with British producer Rupert Hine. The Other Side of the Mirror was released on May 11, 1989 to commercial success. Nicks became romantically involved with Hine.[33]
Nicks toured the U.S. and Europe from August to November 1989, the only time she has toured Europe as a solo act. She has famously been quoted since as stating that she has "no memory of this tour" due to her increasing dependancy on the tranquillizer Klonopin[citation needed], prescribed in ever increasing amounts by a psychiatrist between 1987 and 1994 in an attempt to keep Nicks from regressing to her former abuse of cocaine.
In 1989, Nicks set to work with Fleetwood Mac on a new album, Behind the Mask, which was released in 1990 to moderate commercial success in the U.S. In the UK, however, the album entered the chart at No.1 and has been certified Platinum there. The band went on a world tour to promote the album, on the last night of which Buckingham and Nicks reunited on stage to perform "Landslide".[34] After the tour concluded, Nicks left the group over a dispute with Mick Fleetwood, who would not allow her to release the 1977 track "Silver Springs" on her album Timespace – The Best of Stevie Nicks, because of his plans to release it on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac box set.[35]