Stevie Nicks helped Fleetwood Mac rocket to fame and fortune in the 1970s and 1980s, but the singer revealed she “wouldn’t ever want to go back” to that time. Here’s why Nicks said she wouldn’t want to revisit one of the most exciting and successful periods of her life.
Stevie Nicks said she would never want to go back to the 1980s
Fleetwood Mac invited Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to join the band on New Year’s Eve in 1974. The then-couple helped launch the group to new heights of fame with Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album and 1977’s Rumours. Many of the songs from that era were about Nicks and Buckingham’s romance and bitter breakup.
The band found global success and spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s touring and making new music. Although it was a fantastic era in Nicks’ career, the singer said she wouldn’t return to that time.
During a 2016 interview with The New York Times, Nicks was asked if she ever got nostalgic for the 1980s.
“I wouldn’t want to ever go back there,” she answered. “Yes, it was a lot of fun between 1975 and 1990 – until it wasn’t.”
The singer clarified that she still got to do the things that excited her then, like performing on stage with Fleetwood Mac. She just was no longer dependent on drugs for her energy and stamina to get through each performance.
“I walk onstage every night now and do a three-hour show with Fleetwood Mac, and I have a great time up there,” Nicks said. “I wish I had known that I actually had the energy to do this entire set totally sober and get just as excited. On one hand, that makes me feel great and on the other it makes me sad that I ever did my first line of coke.”
Stevie Nicks has said she regrets her years of drug addiction
The Fleetwood Mac singer has gone to rehab twice. Stevie Nicks checked into the Betty Ford clinic in 1986 for her cocaine addiction, and then went to another hospital in 1993 for her dependence on Klonopin.
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In a 2019 interview with Vulture, Nicks said she couldn’t believe how much she enjoyed performing sober. “I’m 65 years old. And I don’t drink. I quit smoking cigarettes. I don’t do any recreational drugs. And I’m really pretty happy,” she shared. “Sometimes I’m up onstage and I’m going, ‘I can’t really believe you are actually up here, sober as a judge, having a great time.’”
The only regret the singer mentioned was the eight years she spent on Klonopin. “I talk about how I’m happy to not be married, I’m happy to not have children, and that’s all true,” Nicks said. “But the fact is that I don’t know what would have happened in that eight years. Maybe I would have met somebody. Maybe I would have had a baby. Who knows? So that is something that was really stolen from me.”
Lindsey Buckingham’s ex-girlfriend said Fleetwood Mac relied on drugs on tour
Carol Ann Harris was in a relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham for several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 2007, she opened up to the Chicago Sun-Times about how the band abused drugs to keep up with their “exhausting” tour schedule.
“From my experience, it’s so exhausting and just such pressure [to be a touring musician],” Harris said. “These people going out on the road singing the same song night after night, doing three cities in three days, and doing it all for a year at a time – it’s exhausting. The cocaine kept them going.”
And in her book Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac, Harris recounted the first night of the Rumours tour. Road manager John “J.C.” Courage ordered Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and the rest of the band to line up backstage just before the show started.
“They seemed to know what came next,” Harris wrote. “Like obedient schoolchildren, the band formed their line, holding out their fists. J.C. poured a small pile of cocaine onto each wrist. ‘Two minutes! Let’s toot and get those roses in your cheeks, Stevie!’”
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
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