That Eric Alper

Happy birthday to the Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll, born May 26, 1948, in Phoenix, Arizona. Stevie Nicks turns 78 today, and after more than five decades of spinning shawls, spinning dreams, and spinning records into gold, her influence on music and culture is still impossible to overstate. She is the woman who gave a generation its soundtrack, who made platform boots a religion and black chiffon a philosophy, who proved that a woman could be ethereal and ferocious at the same time. From Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ to TikTok teens discovering “Dreams” for the first time, her reach has never stopped growing. To celebrate, here are 78 facts about the one and only Stevie Nicks.

1. Stevie was born Stephanie Lynn Nicks on May 26, 1948, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.
2. She is of German, English, Welsh, and Irish ancestry.
3. Her nickname “Stevie” came from her toddler self mispronouncing her name as “tee-dee.”
4. Her grandfather A.J. Nicks Sr. taught her to sing duets with him by the time she was four years old.
5. Her mother fostered in her a deep love of fairy tales, a thread that runs through her entire creative life.
6. She received a Goya guitar for her 16th birthday and immediately began writing songs.
7. Her very first song was titled “I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost, and I’m Sad but Not Blue.”
8. Her father worked as a vice president of Greyhound, moving the family through Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
9. She grew up listening to Top 40 R&B radio and loved the Shirelles and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.
10. Her grandfather once gave her a truckload of about 150 singles, country, rockabilly, Everly Brothers, all of it.
11. She attended Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, where she joined her first band, the Changing Times, a folk rock group focused on vocal harmonies.
12. She met Lindsey Buckingham during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California.
13. The moment she heard Buckingham playing “California Dreamin'” at a Young Life club, she joined him in harmony. She later said, “I thought he was darling.”
14. She attended San José State University, where she majored in speech communication.
15. She originally planned to become an English teacher.
16. With her father’s blessing, she dropped out of college to pursue music with Buckingham.
17. After Fritz disbanded in 1972, Nicks and Buckingham recorded demo tapes at night in Daly City, California, on a one-inch, four-track Ampex tape machine kept at Buckingham’s father’s coffee-roasting plant.
18. Their debut album ‘Buckingham Nicks’ was released in 1973 on Polydor Records and was not a commercial success.
19. After Polydor dropped them, Nicks worked multiple jobs, waiting tables and cleaning producer Keith Olsen’s house to make ends meet.
20. She wrote “Rhiannon” after spotting the name in a novel called ‘Triad’ by Mary Leader, before she even knew about the Welsh mythological figure.
21. She wrote “Landslide” inspired by the scenery of Aspen and her slowly deteriorating relationship with Buckingham.
22. Mick Fleetwood first heard Nicks and Buckingham’s work when Keith Olsen played him the Buckingham Nicks track “Frozen Love” at Sound City in late 1974.
23. Buckingham refused to join Fleetwood Mac without Nicks, insisting they were a package deal.
24. Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac on December 31, 1974.
25. The 1975 self-titled album ‘Fleetwood Mac’ was a worldwide smash, and “Rhiannon” became one of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
26. Mick Fleetwood once said her live performances of “Rhiannon” were like an exorcism.
27. “Landslide” from that same album went on to receive three million radio airplays.
28. She worked with clothing designer Margi Kent to develop her iconic bohemian stage look of flowing skirts, shawls, and platform boots.
29. She stands 5 feet 1 inch tall and adopted 6-inch platform boots partly so she wouldn’t feel dwarfed by the 6-foot-6 Mick Fleetwood.
30. Even when platforms went out of style, she kept wearing them, telling Allure in 1995 that she didn’t want to go back to being 5 feet 3 in regular heels.
31. Recording for ‘Rumours’ began in early 1976 while Nicks and Buckingham’s personal relationship was crumbling, as was nearly every other relationship in the band.
32. “Dreams” was her contribution to ‘Rumours’ and became Fleetwood Mac’s only number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
33. She also wrote “Silver Springs” for ‘Rumours,’ but it was left off the album because early versions ran too long. It became a collector’s item B-side.
34. ‘Rumours’ was the best-selling album of 1977 and has sold over 45 million copies worldwide as of 2017.
35. The album stayed at number one on the American chart for 31 weeks and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.
36. In November 1977, after a New Zealand concert on the Rumours tour, Nicks and Mick Fleetwood briefly began a secret affair. She ended it quickly, later saying it would have been the end of Fleetwood Mac.
37. Nicks and Buckingham also sang backup vocals on Warren Zevon’s second album during this period.
38. She recorded the hit duet “Whenever I Call You Friend” with Kenny Loggins in 1978 and “Gold” with John Stewart in 1979.
39. Nicks, Danny Goldberg, and Paul Fishkin founded Modern Records specifically to release her solo material.
40. Her debut solo album ‘Bella Donna’ was released on July 27, 1981, reached number one on the Billboard 200, and earned her the Rolling Stone title “Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll.”
41. The day ‘Bella Donna’ hit number one, she learned her close friend Robin Anderson had been diagnosed with leukemia. She later said, “I never got to enjoy Bella Donna at all.”
42. Following Robin’s death in 1982, Nicks briefly married Robin’s widower Kim Anderson, believing it was what Robin would have wanted. They divorced three months later.
43. Her permanent backup singers Sharon Celani and Lori Perry were introduced on ‘Bella Donna’ and have contributed vocals to every solo album since.
44. Her second solo album ‘The Wild Heart’ was released in 1983, went double platinum, and reached number five on the Billboard 200.
45. She appeared on Saturday Night Live in December 1983, performing “Stand Back” and “Nightbird.”
46. Her third solo album, originally titled Mirror Mirror, was reworked entirely and released as ‘Rock a Little’ in November 1985.
47. A plastic surgeon warned her in early 1986 that the next time she used cocaine she could drop dead. She checked into the Betty Ford Center at the end of her Australian tour that year.
48. On the advice of friends worried about relapse, she visited a psychiatrist who prescribed the sedative Klonopin, which turned out to be a far longer and more damaging dependency than cocaine ever was.
49. She has said, “Klonopin was worse than the cocaine. I lost those 8 years of my life. I didn’t write, and I had gained so much weight.”
50. She endured a painful 47-day detoxification in a hospital in late 1993 after a fall at home made her realize how badly she needed help.
51. ‘Tango in the Night,’ released in 1987, became Fleetwood Mac’s second-highest selling album after ‘Rumours.’
52. Her fourth solo album ‘The Other Side of the Mirror’ was released in 1989 to commercial success. She later said she had no memory of the tour that followed because of her increasing Klonopin dependency.
53. She left Fleetwood Mac after the ‘Behind the Mask’ tour over a dispute with Mick Fleetwood about releasing “Silver Springs” on her best-of compilation.
54. On the 10th anniversary of her solo debut, she released ‘Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks’ on September 3, 1991.
55. Bill Clinton used Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his 1992 presidential campaign theme, and Nicks rejoined the classic lineup to perform it at his inaugural gala in 1993.
56. Her fifth solo album ‘Street Angel,’ released in 1994, was poorly received, reaching only number 45 on the Billboard 200. She has since called it a major disappointment.
57. In 1996 she reunited with Buckingham to contribute the duet “Twisted” to the ‘Twister’ movie soundtrack.
58. She also remade Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'” for the TV show ‘Party of Five’ that same year.
59. A newly invigorated Nicks rejoined Fleetwood Mac for ‘The Dance,’ a hugely successful 1997 live reunion tour and album marking the 20th anniversary of ‘Rumours.’
60. Before that tour she started working with a voice coach and began jogging to prepare herself for the demands of extended touring.
61. In 1998, Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
62. That same year Fleetwood Mac received the Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards.
63. Her box set ‘Enchanted’ was released on April 28, 1998, complete with liner notes, rare photographs, and pages from her personal journals.
64. Her sixth solo album ‘Trouble in Shangri-La,’ released May 1, 2001, featured contributions from Sheryl Crow, Natalie Maines, Sarah McLachlan, and Macy Gray.
65. “Planets of the Universe” from that album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
66. VH1 named her Artist of the Month for May 2001 and People magazine named her one of its 50 Most Beautiful People that same year.
67. Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Say You Will,’ released in April 2003, was recorded without Christine McVie, making Nicks the sole woman in the band for the first time.
68. “Edge of Seventeen” was sampled by Destiny’s Child for their 2001 number one single “Bootylicious,” and Nicks appeared in the music video.
69. She played a fictional version of herself described as a white witch on ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ in 2014, performing “Rhiannon,” “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?,” “Seven Wonders,” and “Gypsy” on screen.
70. She reprised that role in ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ in 2018.
71. In April 2018, Lindsey Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac following disagreements with Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. Nicks helped recruit his replacements: Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Neil Finn of Crowded House.
72. In April 2019, she became the first woman ever to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and once as a solo artist.
73. Rolling Stone has named her one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time and one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
74. Four of her songs appear on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” “Dreams,” and “Edge of Seventeen.”
75. In December 2020, music publishing company Primary Wave acquired an 80 percent stake in her song catalog in a deal valued at around $100 million.
76. Taylor Swift referenced her in the song “Clara Bow” from ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ in 2024, writing “You look like Stevie Nicks / In ’75, the hair and lips.” Nicks also wrote a poem for the album’s liner notes.
77. She released “The Lighthouse” on September 27, 2024, a song she wrote to promote women’s rights.
78. She possesses a contralto vocal range, has decorated her microphone stand with roses, ribbons, chiffon, crystal beads, scarves, and small stuffed toys for decades, and has kept a journal nearly every single day since her time in Fleetwood Mac began. Some things never change.