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Lindsey Buckingham

Lindsey Adams Buckingham (born October 3, 1949) is an American musician, record producer, and the lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the rock band Fleetwood Mac from 1975 to 1987 and 1997 to 2018. In addition to his tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham has released seven solo studio albums and three live albums. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Buckingham was ranked 100th in Rolling Stone's 2011 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Buckingham is known for his fingerpicking guitar style.

Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, replacing guitarist Bob Welch, and convinced the group to recruit his musical (and, at the time, romantic) partner Stevie Nicks as well. Buckingham and Nicks became prominent members of Fleetwood Mac during its most commercially successful period, highlighted by the multi-platinum studio album Rumours (1977), which sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Though highly successful, the group experienced almost constant creative and personal conflict, and Buckingham left the band in 1987 to focus on his solo career. Hit songs Buckingham wrote and sang with Fleetwood Mac include "Go Your Own Way", "Never Going Back Again", "Tusk", and "Big Love".

A one-off reunion at the 1993 inauguration ball for President Bill Clinton initiated some rapprochement between the former band members, with Buckingham performing some vocals on one track of their 1995 studio album Time, and rejoining the band full-time in 1997 for the live tour and album The Dance. In 2018, Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac and replaced by Mike Campbell and Neil Finn.

Early life
Lindsey Adams Buckingham was born on October 3, 1949, in Palo Alto, California, to Rutheda (née Elliott) and Morris Buckingham. He had two older brothers, Jeffrey and Gregory. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Atherton, he attended Menlo-Atherton High School where Buckingham and his brothers were encouraged to swim competitively. Though Buckingham dropped out of athletics to pursue music, his brother Gregory went on to win a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Though he did not graduate, Lindsey attended San José State University, like his brother Greg and father Morris.

Buckingham's first forays into guitar playing took place on a toy Mickey Mouse guitar, playing along to his brother Jeff's extensive collection of 45s. Noticing his talent, Buckingham's parents bought their son a $35 Harmony guitar.

Buckingham never took guitar lessons and does not read music. By age 13, he became interested in folk music and, influenced by banjo methods, practiced the energetic style of the Kingston Trio.

Music career
From 1966 to 1971, Buckingham performed psychedelic and folk rock with the high school rock band originally named the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band as a bassist and vocalist. The band regrouped in 1967 due to band member changes and shortened their name to Fritz. Buckingham invited friend Stevie Nicks to join Fritz as a backing vocalist. Their romantic relationship began after both left Fritz five years later.

1973–1974: Buckingham Nicks
Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks recorded seven demos in 1972 on a half-inch 4-track Ampex recorder kept at his father's coffee-roasting plant in Daly City, then drove to Los Angeles to pursue a recording contract. In 1973, Polydor Records signed the pair. Their studio album, produced by Keith Olsen and second engineer Richard Dashut, Buckingham Nicks, was released in September 1973; however, soon after its release Polydor dropped the duo because of poor sales. To help make ends meet, Buckingham toured with Don Everly's backing band, singing Phil Everly's parts.

1975–1980: Fleetwood Mac and mainstream success
While investigating Sound City recording studio in California, Mick Fleetwood heard the song "Frozen Love" from the Buckingham Nicks studio album. Impressed, he asked who the guitarist was. By chance, Buckingham and Nicks were also in Sound City recording demos, and Buckingham and Fleetwood were introduced. When Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in December 1974, Fleetwood immediately contacted Buckingham and offered him the vacant guitar slot in his band. Buckingham told Fleetwood that he and Nicks were a team and that he didn't want to work without her. Fleetwood agreed to hire both of them, without an audition. Buckingham and Nicks then began a short tour to promote the Buckingham Nicks album. The touring band included drummers Bob Aguirre and Gary Hodges (playing simultaneously) and bassist Tom Moncrieff, who later played bass on Nicks' debut solo studio album Bella Donna (1981). When they played in Alabama, the one area where they saw appreciable sales, they told their fans they had joined Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood Mac released their eponymously titled studio album in 1975, which reached number one on the American charts. Buckingham contributed two songs to the album, "Monday Morning" and "I'm So Afraid", while also singing lead on "Blue Letter" and Nicks' song "Crystal". "I'm So Afraid" and "Monday Morning" were intended for the planned follow-up Buckingham Nicks studio album, but they were instead used with Fleetwood Mac.

Despite the success of the new line-up's first studio album, it was their second studio album together, Rumours (1977), that propelled the band to superstar status, becoming one of the best-selling studio albums of all time. Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way" was the lead single, soaring into the US Top Ten; also on the album were Buckingham's "Second Hand News" and "Never Going Back Again". Buckingham also sang co-lead vocal on two of the band's biggest live staples: "The Chain", written by the entire band, and "Don't Stop", a Christine McVie number.

After the commercial success of Rumours (during the making of which Buckingham and Nicks broke up), Buckingham was determined to avoid falling into repeating the same musical pattern. The result was Tusk (1979), a double studio album that Buckingham primarily directed. Once again, Buckingham wrote the lead single, the title track that peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Buckingham convinced Fleetwood to let his work on their next studio album be more experimental and to be allowed to work on tracks at home before bringing them to the rest of the band in the studio. It produced three hit singles: Lindsey Buckingham's "Tusk" (US No. 8), which featured the USC Trojan Marching Band, Christine McVie's "Think About Me" (US No. 20), and Stevie Nicks' 6½-minute opus "Sara" (US No. 7). "Sara" was cut to 4½ minutes for both the hit single and the first CD-release of the album, but the unedited version has since been restored on the 1988 greatest hits compilation, the 2004 reissue of Tusk and Fleetwood Mac's 2002 release of The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac. Original guitarist Peter Green also took part in the sessions of Tusk, although his playing on the Christine McVie track "Brown Eyes" is not credited on the album.

1981: Going solo and Law and Order
During the time he worked on Tusk, Buckingham also produced studio albums for Walter Egan and John Stewart in the late 1970s as well as beginning work on his own solo studio album.

In 1981, Buckingham released his debut solo studio album, Law and Order, playing nearly every instrument and featuring guest appearances by bandmates Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie. The album pursued the quirky, eclectic, often lo-fi and new wave influences of Tusk and spawned the single "Trouble" (inspired by Fleetwood Mac producer Richard Dashut), which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in Australia (for three weeks).

1982: Mirage
After a large world tour that ended in 1980, Fleetwood Mac took a year-long break before reconvening to record their next studio album Mirage (1982), a more pop-friendly work that returned the band to the top of the US album chart. However, by this time various members of the band were enjoying success as solo artists (particularly Nicks) and the next Fleetwood Mac album was not released until five years later.

1983–1986: Go Insane and other solo projects
In 1983, he wrote and performed the songs "Holiday Road" and "Dancin' Across the USA" for the film National Lampoon's Vacation. "Holiday Road" was released as a single and reached No. 82 on Billboard's Hot 100.

In 1984, after ending his 7-year relationship with Carol Ann Harris, he released his second solo studio album, Go Insane. The title track was a modest hit, reaching No. 23 on the Hot 100. In 2008, he revealed the title track was about his post-breakup relationship with Stevie Nicks; however, Harris claimed in her memoir Storms that the song was written about her breakup with Buckingham. The last track of the album, "D.W. Suite", was a tribute to the late Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, a close friend of Fleetwood Mac who was briefly engaged to Christine McVie. Also that year, Buckingham played guitars and sang harmony vocals on the track "You Can't Make Love" from Don Henley's second solo studio album Building the Perfect Beast.

The next year, Buckingham performed on USA for Africa's fundraising single, "We Are the World". In 1986, he co-wrote "Since You've Gone" for Belinda Carlisle's debut solo studio album, Belinda. He did other soundtrack work, including the song "Time Bomb Town" from Back to the Future (1985). Buckingham played all of the instruments on the track except drums, which were played by Michael Huey.

1987: Tango In the Night and departure from Fleetwood Mac
Buckingham's fifth studio album with Fleetwood Mac, Tango in the Night, was released in 1987. Buckingham had already released two solo studio albums and had given up much of the material for what would have been his third solo studio album for the project, including "Big Love", "Tango in the Night ", "Family Man", "You and I" and "Caroline". "Big Love", released as the first single from the album, became a top ten hit in the US and the UK.

Propelled by a string of hit singles, Tango in the Night became the band's biggest studio album since Rumours a decade earlier. However, following its release, Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac largely because of his desire not to tour and the strain he was feeling within the band. "I needed to get some separation from Stevie especially because I don't think I'd ever quite gotten closure on our relationship," he said. "I needed to get on with the next phase of my creative growth and my emotional growth. When you break up with someone and then for the next 10 years you have to be around them and do for them and watch them move away from you, it's not easy." Fleetwood Mac continued without him, and Buckingham was replaced by two guitarists, Rick Vito and Billy Burnette.

1988–1992: Out of the Cradle
Following his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987, Buckingham spent much of the next five years in the studio, working on his third solo studio album, Out of the Cradle, which was released in 1992. Many of the songs deal with his relationship with Nicks and his decision to leave the band. "There were things lingering for years having to do with relationships and the band, hurtful things, that were impossible to deal with until I left. If you were in a relationship and split up, then had to see that person every day for the next 15 years, it might keep you from dealing with some of those things. While we made Rumours (in 1977) there were two couples breaking up in the band (Buckingham and Nicks, and John and Christine McVie), and we had to say, 'This is an important thing we're doing, so we've got to put this set of feelings on this side of the room and get on with it.' And when you do that long enough you forget that those feelings are even there. On this album, I'm putting all these feelings in the healthiest possible perspective and that, looking at it broadly, is a lot of what the album is dealing with. It's a catharsis, absolutely." "Wrong" was a gentle rebuke of former bandmate Mick Fleetwood's tell-all biography, published in 1990. Out of the Cradle received some favorable reviews but did not achieve the sales levels associated with Fleetwood Mac. However, Buckingham toured throughout 1992–93 for the first time as a solo artist; his band included an army of seven other guitarists (Buckingham himself calls them "the crazy band" on his Soundstage DVD), each of whom he individually taught the entire two-and-a-half hours of music from the concert (Lindsey Buckingham: Behind the Music documentary for VH1, 2001).

1993–2004: Return to Fleetwood Mac
In 1993, newly elected president Bill Clinton asked Fleetwood Mac to come together to perform the song he had chosen for his campaign, the Christine McVie-penned "Don't Stop", at his inauguration on January 20, 1993. Buckingham agreed to be part of the performance, but the experience was something of a one-off for the band, who were still very much at odds with one another and had no plans to reunite officially.

While assembling material for a planned fourth solo studio album in the mid-1990s, Buckingham contacted Mick Fleetwood for assistance on a song. Their collaboration lasted much longer than anticipated, and the two eventually decided to call upon Stevie Nicks, John and Christine McVie. In 1997, Buckingham and all four of his bandmates from the Rumours-era line-up of Fleetwood Mac went on the road for the first time together since 1982 in a reunion tour titled The Dance. The tour was hugely successful and did much to heal the damage that had been done between Buckingham and his bandmates. However, Christine McVie left the band in 1998 because of her fear of flying and to be with her family in the UK, thus making Fleetwood Mac a four-piece band.

A subsequent fourth solo studio album, titled Gift of Screws, was recorded between 1995 and 2001 and presented to Warner Bros. and Reprise for release. Executives at the label managed to persuade Buckingham to hold the album back and instead take several tracks from Gift of Screws and use them with Fleetwood Mac. In 2003, the reformed band released the first studio album involving Buckingham and Nicks in 15 years, Say You Will. Buckingham's song "Peacekeeper" was the first single from the album, and the band went on a world concert tour that lasted almost a year and a half. Seven songs from Gift of Screws appear on the Fleetwood Mac studio album Say You Will, in substantially the same form as Buckingham had recorded them for his solo release. Bootleg copies of Gift of Screws—taken from an original CD-R presented to Warner Bros and Reprise—are known to exist and have been widely distributed among fans through the use of torrent sites and other peer-to-peer networks.

2006–2008: Continuing solo
On his 57th birthday, October 3, 2006, Buckingham's fourth solo studio album, an acoustic album now titled Under the Skin, was released. Under the Skin features Buckingham on almost all instruments, with the exception of two tracks that feature Fleetwood Mac's rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. The album includes a cover of the Rolling Stones classic "I Am Waiting". Three days after the album's release, Buckingham embarked on a tour in support of the album that lasted until the end of June 2007. A live album and DVD, Live at the Bass Performance Hall, was released documenting the Fort Worth, Texas show from this tour.

In 2008, the Gift of Screws album was finally released, containing three tracks from the originally planned studio album, as well as seven new recordings. Buckingham then commenced a short tour to promote Gift of Screws in September and October, opening in Saratoga, California and closing in New York City.

2009: Unleashed Tour
Fleetwood Mac toured in 2009, with the first date of the "UNLEASHED" Tour as March 1, 2009, in Mellon Arena (Pittsburgh). Christine McVie was not involved with this project.

2010–2012: Seeds We Sow and One Man Show
On November 3, 2010, Buckingham's website announced that he was working on an untitled studio album with release planned in early 2011. Buckingham had finished recording the studio album, titled Seeds We Sow in April, and on April 22, 2011, he filmed a concert for DVD release to support the album. Seeds We Sow was released on September 6, 2011. On September 10, Buckingham kicked off the Seeds We Sow Tour in Reno, Nevada; the tour ended in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on November 14. Buckingham had planned to conduct his first solo tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland in December. However, in early December, Buckingham postponed all UK dates due to his guitarist suffering a back injury. The UK dates were subsequently cancelled. Buckingham began a "solo" (no backing band) tour of the United States on May 3, 2012, in Solana Beach, California and in November 2012 released a completely solo live album One Man Show via digital download at iTunes that was recorded from a single night in Des Moines, Iowa. One Man Show was released on Buckingham's own label Buckingham Records LLC.

2013–2015: Fleetwood Mac EP, world tour and Christine McVie reunion
The "Live World" tour commenced on April 4, 2013, in Columbus, Ohio. On April 30, the band released their first new studio material since 2003's Say You Will via digital download on iTunes with the four-track EP containing three new songs from Buckingham and one new song from the Buckingham Nicks sessions ("Without You"). Buckingham is credited for three songs on the 2013 release Hesitation Marks, the eighth studio album of the band Nine Inch Nails.

On January 11, 2014, Mick Fleetwood announced that Christine McVie was rejoining Fleetwood Mac, and the news was confirmed on January 13 by the band's primary publicist, Liz Rosenberg. Rosenberg also stated that an official announcement regarding a new album and tour was forthcoming.

On with the Show, a 33-city North American Tour opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 30, 2014. A series of May–June 2015 arena dates in the United Kingdom went on sale on November 14, selling out in minutes. Additional dates for the tour were added, extending into November.

In January 2015, Buckingham suggested that the new studio album and the new tour might be Fleetwood Mac's last act and that the band would cease to operate in 2015 or soon afterward. He concluded: "We're going to continue working on the new album, and the solo stuff will take a back seat for a year or two. A beautiful way to wrap up this last act". On the other hand, Mick Fleetwood stated that the new studio album could take a few years to complete and that they were waiting for contributions from Stevie Nicks, who had been ambivalent about committing to a new record.

2016–2017: Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie and Classic Concerts
In August 2016, Fleetwood said that while the band has "a huge amount of recorded music", virtually none of it featured Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and Christine McVie, however, had contributed multiple songs to the new project. Fleetwood told Ultimate Classic Rock, "She [McVie] ... wrote up a storm ... She and Lindsey could probably have a mighty strong duet album if they want. In truth, I hope it will come to more than that. There really are dozens of songs. And they're really good. So we'll see."

Buckingham and Christine McVie announced a collaborative studio album titled Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie, which also features Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The album was originally planned as a Fleetwood Mac album. Stevie Nicks did not participate due to her preference for a solo tour with the Pretenders. Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie was released on June 9, 2017, and was preceded by the single, "In My World". A 38-date tour began on June 21, 2017, and ended on November 16.

2018–present: Firing from Fleetwood Mac, Solo Anthology, and Lindsey Buckingham
Following Fleetwood Mac's performance at the MusiCares Person of the Year in January 2018, Buckingham was fired from the band. The reason was said to have been a disagreement about the nature of the tour, and in particular the question of whether newer or less well-known material would be included, as Buckingham wanted. Mick Fleetwood and the band appeared on CBS This Morning on April 25, 2018, and said that Buckingham would not sign off on a tour that the group had been planning for a year and that they had reached a "huge impasse" and "hit a brick wall". When asked if Buckingham had been fired, he said, "Well, we don't use that word because I think it's ugly." He also said that "Lindsey has huge amounts of respect and kudos to what he's done within the ranks of Fleetwood Mac and always will." In October 2018, Buckingham filed a lawsuit against Fleetwood Mac for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of oral contract and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, among other charges; the lawsuit was settled in December of the same year.

Buckingham stated he learned about the firing after receiving a call from Fleetwood Mac manager Irving Azoff with a message for Buckingham from Stevie Nicks. Buckingham stated that Azoff told him: "Stevie never wants to be on a stage with you again." According to Azoff, on the evening of MusicCares, just before the band's set, Nicks had taken issue with Buckingham’s outburst over the intro music—the studio recording of Nicks' song "Rhiannon"—and the way he had "smirked" during Nicks' thank-you speech. Buckingham conceded that "It wasn't about it being 'Rhiannon'. It just undermined the impact of our entrance. That's me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something." Days later, Buckingham called Azoff and asked, "Is Stevie leaving the band, or am I getting kicked out?" Azoff told him that he was "getting ousted" from the band after Nicks gave the other band members "an ultimatum: Either [Buckingham] go[es] or she's going to go," to which they decided to fire him. Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Neil Finn of Crowded House were named to replace Buckingham. Buckingham has stated since that he would be open to rejoining Fleetwood Mac but does not foresee it in the future.

In August 2018, Reprise issued a press release for a new solo anthology Solo Anthology: The Best of Lindsey Buckingham that focused on Buckingham's solo career since 1981. The anthology was released on October 5, 2018, followed two days later by a solo tour throughout North America. In 2020, Buckingham collaborated with the Killers on their studio album Imploding the Mirage, playing guitar on the first single "Caution". In 2021, Buckingham played on a new version of "The Past Is the Past" by Brandy Clark, issued as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of her album Your Life Is a Record.

On June 8, 2021, Buckingham announced his seventh solo studio album, Lindsey Buckingham, with the single "I Don't Mind". The second single from the album, "On the Wrong Side", was released on July 23, 2021. The record was released on September 17, 2021, and his tour to support it started the same month.

Buckingham also guested on Halsey's 2021 studio album If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power. In 2022, Buckingham would again join with the Killers on August 27, 2022, to perform his guitar solo from "Caution" live on stage in Los Angeles with the band, along with a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way". Buckingham along with the Killers were joined with Johnny Marr of the Smiths to perform "Mr. Brightside" together to close out the concert.

Personal life
Buckingham was in the same high school as Stevie Nicks but a year behind her. He started a relationship with Nicks after the breakup of their band Fritz. He then suffered from a bout of mononucleosis, which delayed their move to Los Angeles in 1971. They recorded a studio album together before joining Fleetwood Mac in 1975, while their relationship had broken down by 1977. The breakup was chronicled in a number of songs written by the two, such as "Silver Springs" and "Dreams" by Nicks and "Go Your Own Way" and "Second Hand News" by Buckingham.

Buckingham had his first child, William Gregory, with Kristen Messner on July 8, 1998. Buckingham then married Messner in 2000, and they had two daughters, Leelee in 2000 and Stella in 2004. Buckingham and Messner, who is a photographer and interior designer, have developed homes in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.

Buckingham underwent emergency open heart surgery in February 2019. His wife Kristen said that "the life-saving procedure caused vocal cord damage, the permanency of which is unclear." He eventually yet slowly recovered at home.

Kristen Messner filed for divorce from Buckingham in Los Angeles on June 2, 2021. It was reported later in September that the couple were "working on their marriage."

Musical style
Unlike most rock guitarists, Buckingham does not play with a pick; instead, he almost exclusively plays fingerstyle and tends to strum with his middle and ring fingers. Initially after joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Gibson Les Paul Custom. Before the band, a Fender Telecaster was his main guitar, and was used on his first Fleetwood Mac studio album alongside Fender Stratocasters fitted with an Alembic Blaster. In 1978, he worked with Rick Turner, future owner and founder of The Renaissance Guitar Company, to create the Model One guitar. He has used it extensively since, both with Fleetwood Mac and for his solo efforts. He uses a Taylor Guitar 814ce or a Rick Turner Renaissance RS6 for most of his acoustic performances but uses a custom-made Gibson Chet Atkins guitar for his live performances of "Big Love". He has also used an Ovation Balladeer in the past from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. In the 1980s, he also extensively used the Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer.

His influences include Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Buckingham has also worked extensively as a producer both for Fleetwood Mac and for his solo work. "I think of myself as a stylist, and the process of writing a song is part and parcel with putting it together in the studio."

In an interview with Guitar World Acoustic Magazine, Buckingham said:

"I've always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player. The song is all that matters. There are two ways you can choose to go. You can try to be someone like Eddie Van Halen, who is a great guitarist, a virtuoso. Yet he doesn't make good records because what he plays is totally lost in the context of this band's music. Then there are guitar players like Chet Atkins, who weren't out there trying to show themselves off as guitarists per se, but were using the guitar as a tool to make good records. I remember loving Chet's work when I was a kid, but it was only later, when I really listened to his guitar parts, that I realized how much they were a part of the song's fabric, and how much you'd be going 'Oh, that song just isn't working' if they weren't there."

In another interview to Guitar World, he said about using his fingers rather than a plectrum:

"I started playing very young and from early on, the people I was listening to had some element of finger style. Probably the first guitarist I was emulating was Scotty Moore, when I was maybe 6 or 7. And he played with a pick, but he also used fingers. And a lot of the session players, like Chet Atkins, they played with fingers or a pick. Then I listened to a certain amount of light classical guitar playing. And of course later on, when the first wave of rock 'n' roll kind of fell away, folk music was very popular and very influential in my style. So it was really less of a choice than what I fell into. I use a pick occasionally. I certainly use it more in the studio when you want to get a certain tone. But it's just the way I came up. I wasn't taught. I just sort of figured things out on my own terms. I guess that was one of the ways that I became comfortable and it just kind of set in."

In popular culture

 * Buckingham has been portrayed by Bill Hader in a recurring sketch titled "What Up with That?" on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The show features Hader as Buckingham, who repeatedly appears as a guest on a talk show in the sketch; however, the segment always runs out of time before he can be interviewed. Buckingham has stated he does not understand the parody, though he considers it a compliment, and he eventually appeared as himself on the May 14, 2011, episode during this sketch, offering to explain why there were two Lindsey Buckinghams.

 * Buckingham plays himself and sings in episode 3 of the Showtime series Roadies.

Music videos

 * 1981 – "Trouble"
 * 1981 – "It Was I"
 * 1983 – "Holiday Road"
 * 1984 – "Go Insane"
 * 1984 – "Slow Dancing"
 * 1992 – "Countdown"
 * 1992 – "Wrong"
 * 1992 – "Soul Drifter"
 * 1993 – "Don't Look Down"
 * 2006 – "Show You How"
 * 2006 – "It Was You"
 * 2006 – "Shut Us Down"
 * 2011 – "Stars Are Crazy" (performance clip)
 * 2011 – "In Our Own Time" (performance clip)

title: Lindsey Buckingham


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Christine McVie

Christine Anne McVie (née Perfect; 12 July 1943 – 30 November 2022) was an English musician and singer. She was the keyboardist and one of the vocalists and songwriters of Fleetwood Mac.

McVie was a member of several bands, notably Chicken Shack, in the mid-1960s British blues scene. She initially began working with Fleetwood Mac as a session player in 1968, before officially joining the band two years later. Her first compositions with Fleetwood Mac appeared on their fifth album, Future Games. She remained with the band through many changes of line-up, writing songs and performing lead vocals before partially retiring in 1998. McVie was described as "the prime mover behind some of Fleetwood Mac's biggest hits" and eight songs she wrote or co-wrote, including "Don't Stop", "Everywhere" and "Little Lies", appeared on Fleetwood Mac's 1988 Greatest Hits album. She appeared as a session musician on the band's last studio album, Say You Will. McVie also released three solo studio albums and recorded a duet album with Lindsey Buckingham.

As a member of Fleetwood Mac, McVie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1998 received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In the same year, after almost 30 years with Fleetwood Mac, she left the band and lived in semi-retirement, releasing a solo album in 2004. She appeared on stage with Fleetwood Mac at the O2 Arena in London in September 2013 and rejoined the band in 2014 prior to their On with the Show tour.

McVie received a Gold Badge of Merit Award from BASCA, now The Ivors Academy, in 2006. She received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 2014 and was honoured with the Trailblazer Award at the UK Americana Awards in 2021. She was also the recipient of two Grammy Awards.

Early life
Christine Anne Perfect was born on 12 July 1943 in the village of Greenodd, in the Furness area of Lancashire. She grew up in the Bearwood area of Smethwick near Birmingham. Her father, Cyril Percy Absell Perfect, was a concert violinist and music lecturer at St Peter's College of Education, Saltley, Birmingham, and taught violin at St Philip's Grammar School, Birmingham. Perfect's mother, Beatrice Edith Maud (née Reece), was a medium, psychic, and faith healer. Perfect's grandfather was an organist at Westminster Abbey.

Perfect was introduced to the piano when she was four, but did not study music seriously until the age of 11, when she was reintroduced to it by a local musician who was a friend of her brother John. She continued classical training to the age of 15, but shifted her musical focus to rock and roll when her brother acquired a Fats Domino songbook. Other early influences included the Everly Brothers.

Early music
Perfect studied sculpture at Moseley School of Art in Birmingham for five years with the aim of becoming an art teacher, and while at art school, she met budding musicians in Britain's blues scene. Her introduction to performing music came when she met guitarist Stan Webb and bass player Andy Silvester, who were in a band called Sounds of Blue. Knowing that Perfect had musical talent, they invited her to join them. She also sang with Spencer Davis. By the time Perfect graduated from art college, Sounds of Blue had split up. She did not have enough money to launch herself into the art world and moved to London, where she worked briefly as a department-store window dresser.

Chicken Shack
In 1967, Perfect heard that Silvester and Webb were forming a blues band, to be called Chicken Shack, and were looking for a pianist. She contacted them and was invited to join the band as pianist, keyboard player and backing vocalist. Chicken Shack's debut release was "It's Okay with Me Baby", which was written by and featured Perfect. She stayed with the band for two studio albums, and her genuine feel for the blues became evident in her Sonny Thompson-style piano playing and her authentic "bluesy" voice. Chicken Shack had a hit with a cover of Ellington Jordan's "I'd Rather Go Blind", which featured Perfect on lead vocals. Perfect received a Melody Maker award for UK's best female vocalist in 1969 and again in 1970. She left Chicken Shack in 1969, having married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie a year earlier, feeling that she would not see her husband if they were in different bands.

Fleetwood Mac
McVie was a fan of Fleetwood Mac and while she was touring with Chicken Shack the two bands would often meet. Both bands were signed to the Blue Horizon label, and McVie played piano as a session musician on Peter Green's songs on Fleetwood Mac's second studio album, Mr. Wonderful. Encouraged to continue her career, she recorded a debut solo studio album, Christine Perfect, which was later reissued as The Legendary Christine Perfect Album. She was invited to join Fleetwood Mac as a keyboard player in 1970 after the departure of founding member Peter Green, having already contributed piano and backing vocals, uncredited, to their next album, Kiln House and provided the artwork for the sleeve. The band had been struggling to manage without Green and had needed another musician to fill out their sound. McVie had been a huge fan of the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac and learned the songs for Kiln House during rehearsals.

McVie became an integral member of Fleetwood Mac as keyboard player, songwriter and female lead vocalist. Before she joined there had been talk of the band splitting up, but Fleetwood said later that "Christine became the glue [that held the band together]. She filled out our sound beautifully." The first studio album on which McVie played as a full band member was Future Games in 1971. This was also the first album on which she worked with American guitarist and songwriter Bob Welch, who had replaced founding member Jeremy Spencer.

McVie moved with the rest of Fleetwood Mac to California in 1974, where Welch left after a final album, Heroes are Hard to Find, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Buckingham Nicks joined the band. The line-up now contained two female lead vocalists who also wrote songs. McVie bonded instantly with Nicks and the two women found their voices blended perfectly. McVie wrote and sang lead on four tracks on the first studio album of the new line-up, Fleetwood Mac (1975): "Warm Ways", "Over My Head", "Say You Love Me" and "Sugar Daddy", and had a joint songwriting credit with Buckingham for "World Turning". The album produced several hit songs, with McVie's "Over My Head" and "Say You Love Me" both reaching the Billboard top-20 singles chart. "Over My Head" put Fleetwood Mac on American radio and into the national top 20.

In 1976, McVie began an on-the-road affair with the band's lighting director which inspired her to write "You Make Loving Fun", a top-10 hit from their next album, Rumours (1977). Her biggest hit from the album was "Don't Stop", which reached the top five. Rumours also included McVie's "Songbird", a slow ballad which featured McVie playing piano and Buckingham accompanying on acoustic guitar.

By the end of the Rumours tour, the McVies were divorced. Christine had a US top-20 hit with "Think About Me" from the 1979 double studio album Tusk, which did not match the success of the Rumours album. After the Tusk tour the band took time apart, reuniting in 1981 to record the studio album Mirage at the Château d'Hérouville's studio in France. Mirage, released in 1982, returned the band to the top of the US charts and contained the top-five hit "Hold Me", co-written by McVie. McVie's inspiration for the song was her tortured relationship with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. Her song "Love in Store" became the third single from the album, peaking at number 22 in early 1983.

McVie's second solo studio album, Christine McVie, recorded in 1984, included the hits "Got a Hold on Me" (number 10 US pop, number one adult contemporary and number one Mainstream Rock Tracks) and "Love Will Show Us How" (number 30 US pop). A third single, "I'm the One", was released but did not chart. McVie said of the album, "Maybe it isn't the most adventurous album in the world, but I wanted to be honest and please my own ears with it."

McVie married keyboardist Eddy Quintela on 18 October 1986 and they co-wrote songs which featured on subsequent Fleetwood Mac albums. She rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 1987 to record the Tango in the Night studio album, which became the band's biggest success since Rumours and reached the top five in the UK and US. McVie's "Little Lies", co-written with Quintela, was the biggest hit from the album. Another McVie single from the album, "Everywhere", reached number four in the UK, the band's third-highest UK chart peak. The single peaked at number 14 in the U.S. In 1990, the band (now without Buckingham) recorded Behind the Mask, which reached Gold status in the US and McVie's song "Save Me" made the US top 40. The album entered the UK album chart at number one and reached Platinum status. McVie's "Skies the Limit", the second US single from the album, was a hit on the adult contemporary chart.

McVie's father, Cyril Perfect, died in 1990 while she was on the Behind the Mask tour and she decided to retire from touring. She remained with the band and wrote and recorded a new track, "Love Shines", for the 1992 box set 25 Years – The Chain, and five songs for the 1995 studio album Time. Nicks had by now departed. In the mid-90s, Fleetwood and John McVie worked with Buckingham on one of his solo projects and Christine McVie provided vocals and keyboards on some of the tracks. A reunion was proposed, Nicks rejoined the band, and Fleetwood Mac recorded the 1997 live album, The Dance, which reached number one on the US album charts. McVie returned to touring and performed for the group's 1998 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the Grammy Awards show and the Brit Awards in the UK. She decided not to continue with Fleetwood Mac after 1998 and said this was because she had developed a phobia about flying.

1999–2014: Hiatus from Fleetwood Mac and semi retirement
After The Dance, McVie returned to England to be near her family and stayed out of public view until 2000, when she accepted an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Greenwich. Five years after McVie left Fleetwood Mac, she and Quintela were divorced.

In a 2004 interview, McVie admitted to not listening much to pop music any more and stated instead a preference for Classic FM. She appeared as a session musician on the band's last studio album, Say You Will. In December 2003 she went to see Fleetwood Mac's last UK performance on the Say You Will tour in London, but did not join her former bandmates on stage. She released her third solo studio album, In the Meantime, that year.

McVie was awarded the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors' Gold Badge of Merit at a ceremony held at London's Savoy Hotel in 2006. That same year, Paste named McVie, together with bandmates Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, as the 83rd-greatest living songwriter or songwriting team. McVie did not join her former bandmates on the band's last performance in the UK of the Unleashed tour in November 2009. When Fleetwood Mac's 2012 world tour was announced, Stevie Nicks downplayed the likelihood of McVie ever rejoining the group. Nicks said, "She went to England and she has never been back since 1998 [...] as much as we would all like to think that she'll just change her mind one day, I don't think it'll happen [...] We love her, so we had to let her go."

In October 2013, it was announced that McVie was recording a solo studio album for the first time in nine years. The album was never released.

2014–2022: Return to Fleetwood Mac and album with Lindsey Buckingham
In 2013, McVie appeared on stage in Maui, Hawaii, performing with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, which included Mick Fleetwood and ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Rick Vito. This was her first appearance on stage in 15 years. Later in September, Christine McVie joined Fleetwood Mac on stage for the first time in 15 years to play "Don't Stop" at the O2 Arena in London. She played on two dates, and her appearance on stage was received with rapturous applause.

On 11 January 2014, Mick Fleetwood announced during a concert in Maui that McVie would be rejoining the band, and it was officially announced two days later that she had rejoined.

In August 2016, Mick Fleetwood said that while the band had "a huge amount of recorded music", virtually none of it featured Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and McVie, however, have contributed numerous songs to the new project. Fleetwood told Ultimate Classic Rock, "She [McVie] ... wrote up a storm ... She and Lindsey could probably have a mighty strong duet album if they want. In truth, I hope it will come to more than that. There really are dozens of songs. And they're really good. So we'll see."

The collaborative studio album Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie was released on 9 June 2017, and was preceded by the single, "In My World". A 38-date tour began on 21 June 2017 and ended on 16 November. Eight of the album's ten tracks were played live, with the rest of the set list consisting of Fleetwood Mac songs and Buckingham solo cuts. The Wallflowers opened for the band on select nights. In June, the band appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform the album's first single, "In My World". Some extra North American shows were later added in August, including one in Los Angeles and another in New York City. Another North American leg began in October, which saw the addition of 22 more shows.

Fleetwood Mac headlined the second night of the Classic West concert, on 16 July 2017 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and the second night of the Classic East concert at New York City's Citi Field on 30 July 2017. On 9 April 2018, Fleetwood Mac announced that Mike Campbell would be joining the band along with Neil Finn to replace lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. In 2019, McVie was featured in the 90-minute BBC documentary Fleetwood Mac's Songbird – Christine McVie, directed by Matt O'Casey. In 2022, a compilation album titled Songbird (A Solo Collection) was released.

Other collaborations
McVie sang with Christopher Cross on the song "Never Stop Believing" on his 1988 studio album Back of My Mind as well as with Bob Welch on his solo version of "Sentimental Lady".

Personal life
McVie married John McVie in 1968, with Peter Green as best man. Instead of a honeymoon, they celebrated at a hotel in Birmingham with Joe Cocker, who happened to be staying there, before going on the road with their own bands. The couple divorced in 1976, but remained friends and maintained a professional partnership. During the production of Rumours, Christine had an affair with Fleetwood Mac's lighting engineer, Curry Grant, which inspired the song "You Make Loving Fun". From 1979 to 1982, she dated Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. McVie married Portuguese keyboardist and songwriter Eddy Quintela on 18 October 1986. Quintela and McVie collaborated on a number of songs together, including "Little Lies". They divorced in 2003, and Quintela died in 2020.

During the height of Fleetwood Mac's success in the 1970s, McVie resided in Los Angeles. In 1990, she moved to a Grade II-listed Tudor manor house in Wickhambreaux, near Canterbury in Kent, to which she retired after leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1998, and worked on her solo material. For years McVie found inspiration in the home's country setting, not only writing songs there, but also restoring the house. After rejoining Fleetwood Mac in 2014, she began spending more time in London, and put the house on the market in 2015.

Death
McVie died of a stroke in hospital on 30 November 2022, at the age of 79. She had also been suffering from metastatic cancer of unknown primary origin.

In a statement following her death, Fleetwood Mac said that she was "the best musician anyone could have in their band and the best friend anyone could have in their life". Fellow band member Stevie Nicks said McVie had been her "best friend in the whole world".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Christine McVie


text:
Stevie Nicks

Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.

After starting her career as a duo with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, releasing the album Buckingham Nicks to little success, Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, helping the band to become one of the best-selling music acts of all time with over 120 million records sold worldwide. Rumours, the band's second album with Nicks, became one of the best-selling albums worldwide, being certified 20× platinum in the US. In 1981, while remaining a member of Fleetwood Mac, Nicks began her solo career, releasing the studio album Bella Donna, which topped the Billboard 200 and has reached multiplatinum status. She has released eight studio solo albums and seven studio albums with Fleetwood Mac, selling a certified total of 65 million copies in the U.S. alone.

After the release of her first solo album, Rolling Stone named her the "Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll". Nicks was named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time and one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. Her Fleetwood Mac songs "Landslide", "Rhiannon", and "Dreams", with the last being the band's only number one hit in the U.S., together with her solo hit "Edge of Seventeen", have all been included in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. She is the first woman to have been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and then as a solo artist in 2019.

Nicks has garnered eight Grammy Award nominations and two American Music Award nominations as a solo artist. She has won numerous awards with Fleetwood Mac, including a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978 for Rumours. The albums Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Bella Donna have been included in the "Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums" chart by Billboard. Rumours was also rated the seventh-greatest album of all time in Rolling Stone 's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", as well as the fourth-greatest album by female acts.

1948–1971: Early life and career beginnings
Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona to Jess and Barbara Nicks. Nicks is of German, English, Welsh, and Irish ancestry.

Nicks's grandfather, Aaron Jess "A.J." Nicks Sr., taught Nicks to sing duets with him by the time she was four years old. Nicks's mother was protective, keeping her at home "more than most people" and fostered in her daughter a love of fairy tales.

As a toddler, Stephanie could pronounce her own name only as "tee-dee", which led to her nickname of "Stevie".

 * ""I listened to lots of Top 40 R&B radio. I loved The Shirelles and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas; stuff like 'Remember (Walking in the Sand)' by The Shangri-Las… [My grandfather] bought me a truckload of records when I was in the fifth grade. There must have been 150 singles: country, rockabilly, some Everly Brothers, a song called 'Party Doll' that went, 'Come along and be my party doll/And I'll make love to you.'" – Stevie Nicks"

Her father's frequent relocation as a vice president of Greyhound had the family living in Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. With the Goya guitar that she received for her 16th birthday, Nicks wrote her first song, titled "I've Loved and I've Lost, and I'm Sad but Not Blue". She spent her adolescence playing records constantly and lived in her "own little musical world".

While attending Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, she joined her first band, the Changing Times, a folk rock band focused on vocal harmonies.

Nicks met her future musical and romantic partner, Lindsey Buckingham, during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. When she saw Buckingham playing "California Dreamin'" at the Young Life club, she joined him in harmony. She recalled, "I thought he was a darling." Buckingham was in psychedelic rock band Fritz, but two of its musicians were leaving for college. He asked Nicks, in mid-1967, to replace the lead singer. Fritz later opened for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin from 1968 until 1970. Nicks credits both acts as inspiring her stage intensity and performance.

Nicks and Buckingham attended San José State University, where Nicks majored in speech communication and planned to become an English teacher. With her father's blessing, she dropped out of college to pursue a musical career with Buckingham.

1972–1978: Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac
After Fritz disbanded in 1972, Nicks and Buckingham continued to write as a duo, recording demo tapes at night in Daly City, California, on a one-inch, four-track Ampex tape machine Buckingham kept at the coffee-roasting plant belonging to his father. They secured a deal with Polydor Records, and the eponymous Buckingham Nicks was released in 1973. The album was not a commercial success and Polydor dropped the pair.

With no money coming in from their album, and Buckingham contracting mononucleosis shortly thereafter, Nicks began working multiple jobs. She waited tables and cleaned producer Keith Olsen's house, where Nicks and Buckingham lived for a time before moving in with Richard Dashut. She soon started using cocaine. "We were told that it was recreational and that it was not dangerous," Nicks told Chris Isaak in 2009.

While living with Dashut, Buckingham landed a guitar role with the Everly Brothers 1972 tour. Nicks stayed behind working on songwriting herself. During this time, Nicks wrote "Rhiannon" after seeing the name in the novel Triad by Mary Leader. (Five years later, a fan sent her the Mabinogion novels of Evangeline Walton that featured the legendary character Rhiannon, and Nicks later bought the film rights to Walton's work in the hopes of bringing the epic to the screen. ) She also wrote "Landslide", inspired by the scenery of Aspen and her slowly deteriorating relationship with Buckingham.

In late 1974, Keith Olsen played the Buckingham Nicks track "Frozen Love" for drummer Mick Fleetwood, who had come to Sound City in California in search of a recording studio. Fleetwood remembered Buckingham's guitar work when guitarist Bob Welch departed to pursue a solo career. On December 31, 1974, Fleetwood called Buckingham, inviting him to join the band. Buckingham refused, insisting that Nicks and he were "a package deal" and he would not join without her. The group decided that incorporating the pair would improve Fleetwood Mac, making the British band into an Anglo-American one. The first rehearsals confirmed this feeling, with the harmonies of the newcomers adding a pop accessibility to the band's former style of blues-based rock.

In 1975, Fleetwood Mac achieved worldwide success with the album Fleetwood Mac. Nicks's "Rhiannon" was voted one of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. Her live performances of the song throughout the decade began to take on a theatrical intensity which differs from how the song plays on the album. The song built to a climax in which Nicks's vocals were so impassioned that Mick Fleetwood declared, "her 'Rhiannon' in those days was like an exorcism." "Landslide" became another hit from the album, with three million airplays.

Becoming aware of her image as a performer, Nicks worked with clothing designer Margi Kent to develop a unique onstage look. Her costumes had a bohemian style that featured flowing skirts, shawls, and platform boots.

While Nicks and Buckingham achieved professional success with Fleetwood Mac, their personal relationship was eroding. Nicks ended the relationship. 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 eponymous second album.

Among Nicks's contributions to Rumours was "Dreams", which became the band's only Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit single. Nicks had also written and recorded the song "Silver Springs", but it was not included on the album because the early versions of the song ran too long, and the band didn't want too many slow songs on the album. Studio engineer and co-producer Ken Caillat said that Nicks was very unhappy to find that the band had decided against her song "Silver Springs", which he said was beautifully crafted, and carried some of the band's best guitar work. "Silver Springs", written about her tumultuous relationship with Buckingham, was released as a B-side of the "Go Your Own Way" single—Buckingham's equally critical song about Nicks. Copies of the single eventually became collectors' items among fans of Fleetwood Mac. "Silver Springs" was included on the four-disc Fleetwood Mac retrospective 25 Years – The Chain in 1992.

Rumours, Fleetwood Mac's second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, was the best-selling album of 1977 and had sold over 45 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. The album remained at number one on the American albums chart for 31 weeks and reached number one in other countries. The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. It produced four U.S. Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles, including Nicks's "Dreams".

In November 1977, after a New Zealand concert on the Rumours tour, Nicks and Fleetwood secretly began an affair. Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd. "Never in a million years could you have told me that would happen," Nicks has stated. "Everybody was angry because Mick was married to a wonderful girl and had two wonderful children. I was horrified. I loved these people. I loved his family. So, it couldn't possibly work out. And it didn't. I just couldn't." Nicks ended the affair soon after it began. She has stated that had the affair progressed, it "would have been the end of Fleetwood Mac". By October 1978, Mick Fleetwood left Boyd for Nicks's friend Sara Recor.

1979–1982: Tusk and Mirage
After the success of the Rumours album and tour in 1977 to 1978, Fleetwood Mac began recording their third album with Nicks and Buckingham, Tusk, in the spring of 1978. By this time, Nicks had amassed a large backlog of songs that she had been unable to record with Fleetwood Mac because of the constraint of having to accommodate three songwriters on each album. Tusk was released on October 19, 1979. Mirage was recorded in late 1981 and early 1982.

Backup vocals and duets
While working on Tusk, Nicks sang backup on virtually every track of Not Shy, recorded by musician Walter Egan, a friend of both Nicks and Buckingham. "Magnet and Steel", inspired by Nicks, prominently featured her backup vocals and became a hit single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the summer of 1978. Lindsey Buckingham also produced the album, playing guitar and providing backing vocals on some of the tracks. Nicks recorded the hit duets "Whenever I Call You Friend" with Kenny Loggins in 1978, and "Gold" with John Stewart in 1979. During 1981, Nicks made occasional guest appearances with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on their Hard Promises tour.

Solo career
Nicks wrote and recorded demos for a 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's first solo album, Bella Donna, was released on July 27, 1981, to critical and commercial acclaim, reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart, with four singles making the Billboard Hot 100, and Rolling Stone deeming her "the Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll".

The day that Bella Donna reached number one on the Billboard 200, Nicks was told that her friend Robin Anderson had leukemia. Anderson was pregnant at the time and given only three months to live. She gave birth to a son, appointing Nicks as the child's godmother. "I never got to enjoy Bella Donna at all because my friend was dying. Something went out that day; something left." Following Robin's death in 1982, Nicks married Robin's widower, Kim Anderson, believing that Robin would want her to care for the baby. "We were all in such insane grief, just completely deranged," she told the Telegraph in 2007. They divorced three months later.

Bella Donna introduced Nicks's permanent back-up singers, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry (now Nicks after marrying Stevie's brother Christopher), who have contributed vocals to all of Nicks's solo albums since then. In November 1981, Nicks embarked on her White Winged Dove tour, which she had to cut short to record Mirage.

Nicks released her second solo album, The Wild Heart, on June 10, 1983. The album went double platinum, reached number five on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and featured three hit singles. It also introduced songwriter and performer Sandy Stewart as co-writer and vocalist.

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 December 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 album, and opted to record a new batch of songs in 1985. Rock a Little, as it was retitled, was released November 18, 1985, to commercial success, supported by three successful singles. Nicks toured for Rock a Little until October 1986, and performed with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers during their tour in Australia.

The tour marked a turning point in Nicks's life. The January before the tour was to begin, a plastic surgeon warned her of severe health problems if she did not stop using cocaine. "I said, 'What do you think about my nose?'", she recalled on The Chris Isaak Hour in 2009. "And he said, 'Well, I think the next time you do a hit of cocaine, you could drop dead.'" At the end of the Australian tour, Nicks checked herself into the Betty Ford Center for 30 days to overcome her cocaine addiction. Recalling the strong influence of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix on her music and life, she told a UK interviewer, "I saw how they went down, and a part of me wanted to go down with them ... but then another part of me thought, I would be very sad if some 25-year-old lady rock and roll singer ten years from now said, 'I wish Stevie Nicks would have thought about it a little more.' That's kind of what stopped me and made me really look at the world through clear eyes."

Later that year, on the advice of friends concerned that she might relapse, she visited a psychiatrist who prescribed the sedative Klonopin to help her remain free from cocaine.

1987–1990: Tango in the Night, The Other Side of the Mirror, and Behind the Mask
In late 1985, Fleetwood Mac began work on Tango in the Night, but due to her promotional schedule for the Rock a Little album and subsequent tour, Nicks was mostly unavailable to work on the album with the band except for a few weeks following her stay at the Betty Ford Center in 1986 (which was the inspiration for the song "Welcome to the Room...Sara"). She sent the band demos of her songs to work on in her absence. The album was released in April 1987 and became the band's second-highest selling album ever, behind Rumours.

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.

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 while Nicks suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and developed an addiction to Klonopin, though it resumed in 1988. Tango in the Night met with commercial success and was followed by Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits album in November 1988.

Also in 1988, Nicks began work on a fourth solo album with English record producer Rupert Hine. The Other Side of the Mirror was released on May 11, 1989, to commercial success. Nicks became romantically involved with Hine.

Nicks toured the U.S. and Europe from August to November 1989. She later said she had "no memory of this tour" because of her increasing dependency on Klonopin, 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 Behind the Mask, released in 1990 to moderate commercial success in the U.S. In the UK, however, the album entered the chart at number one and was certified platinum. 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". 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 save it for release on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac box set. Fleetwood knew that the song would be valuable as a selling point for the box set, since over the years, it had gained interest among the band's fans.

1991–1996: Timespace and Street Angel
On the 10th anniversary of her solo career debut, Nicks released Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks on September 3, 1991. The following year, Fleetwood Mac also released a four-disc box set, 25 Years – The Chain, which included "Silver Springs".

During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Bill Clinton used the Fleetwood Mac hit "Don't Stop" as his campaign theme song, and Nicks rejoined the classic Rumours lineup of the band (including Buckingham) to perform the song at Clinton's 1993 inaugural gala. No plans for an official reunion were made at that time. Nicks was criticized for her weight gain. Nicks, who is 5 ft, had gained weight, peaking at 175 lbs (79.4 kg). "Klonopin was worse than the cocaine," she has said. "I lost those 8 years of my life. I didn't write, and I had gained so much weight."

In late 1993, while Nicks held a baby shower at her house, she tripped over a box, passed out, and cut her forehead near a fireplace. "I'm one of those people who doesn't injure themselves. I was horrified to see that blood. I hadn't had enough wine. I knew it was the Klonopin," she said. Realizing that she needed help, Nicks endured a painful 47-day detox in a hospital.

Following her successful detox, Nicks released her fifth solo album, Street Angel, recorded during 1992 and 1993 using material written mostly in previous years. Released on May 23, 1994, Street Angel was poorly received, reaching number 45 on the Billboard Top 200. Nicks has since expressed major disappointment with the album, claiming that a lot of its production work took place during her second stint in rehab, meaning she had little or no say over the final product.

Despite a three-month tour in support of the album, Nicks was crushed by the focus on her weight and the poor reception of the album. Disgusted by the criticism she received during the tour for being overweight, she vowed to never set foot on a stage again unless she slimmed down.

In 1996, Nicks reunited with Lindsey Buckingham and contributed the duet "Twisted" to the Twister movie soundtrack, while in 1996, the Sheryl Crow-penned "Somebody Stand by Me" featured on the Boys on the Side soundtrack, and Nicks also remade Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" for Fox's TV hit Party of Five.

1997–2001: The Dance, Enchanted, and Trouble in Shangri-La
In 1996, Lindsey Buckingham, working on a planned solo album, enlisted the help of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, which eventually led to a reunion of the entire band. A newly invigorated Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac for The Dance, a highly successful 1997 tour that coincided with the 20th anniversary of the release of Rumours. Prior to the tour, Nicks started work with a voice coach, to lend her voice more control and protect it from the stress of lengthy touring schedules. She also went on a diet and started jogging to lose weight.

The band's live CD The Dance was released to commercial and critical acclaim. The Dance earned the group several Grammy nominations, including a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for their live performance of "Silver Springs". In 1998, Nicks joined the group for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, Fleetwood Mac was awarded the Outstanding Contribution at the BRIT Awards.

Nicks put work on a new solo album on hold when she was approached by Warner Music to release a solo career-spanning box set, to finish her contract with Atlantic Records in the U.S. After the culmination of the Fleetwood Mac reunion tour, Nicks settled down in Los Angeles and Phoenix with close friends and colleagues to devise a track list for this three-disc collection.

The box set Enchanted was released to acclaim on April 28, 1998, with liner notes from Nicks, as well as exclusive rare photographs, and pages from her journals. Nicks supported the box set with a successful U.S. tour. In 1998, Nicks contributed to the Practical Magic soundtrack and performed in Don Henley's benefit concert for the Walden Woods Project.

Nicks had begun writing actively for Trouble in Shangri-La in 1994 and 1995 as she came out of her Klonopin dependency. According to her, friend and former musical partner Tom Petty was responsible for convincing her to write music again when he rebuffed her request that he write a song with her. She resumed recording songs for the Trouble in Shangri-La album with Sheryl Crow, who produced and performed on several tracks. When a scheduling conflict forced Crow to drop out of the project, Nicks first approached R&B producer Dallas Austin, but these sessions have never surfaced. Nicks finally called on John Shanks to produce the remainder of the album, with additional contributions from David Kahne, Rick Nowels, Pierre Marchand, and Jeff Trott. Artists Natalie Maines, Sarah McLachlan, and Macy Gray contributed to some of the tracks.

Released May 1, 2001, Trouble in Shangri-La restored Nicks's solo career to critical and commercial success. "Planets of the Universe" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and Nicks was named VH1's "Artist of the Month" for May 2001. Nicks was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People, was featured in a well-received Behind the Music episode, and performed an episode of the VH1 Storytellers Concert Program. Nicks made several television appearances in support of the album and performed at the 2001 Radio Music Awards.

Nicks supported the album with a successful tour, although some shows were canceled or postponed because of her bout with acute bronchitis. Shows were also canceled because of the September 11 attacks in the U.S.

2002–2009: Say You Will, Crystal Visions, and Soundstage Sessions

In 2001, Fleetwood Mac began work on a new studio album, though this time without Christine McVie, leaving Nicks as the sole woman in the band for the first time. After the end of her solo tour, Nicks convened with the other members of the band for recording a new album, Say You Will, which was released in April 2003 and met with commercial success but mixed reviews. Nicks joined the group to support the album with a world tour lasting until September 2004.

She has subsequently stated in several interviews that she was not happy with the album or the successful world tour that followed, citing production disputes with Buckingham as a core factor, as well as the absence of fellow female band member Christine McVie. A documentary of the making of the album, Destiny Rules, was released on DVD in 2004 and chronicles the sometimes-turbulent relationships between band members, especially Buckingham and Nicks, during that time in the studio.

After a few months' respite from the Say You Will tour, Nicks did a four-night stint in May 2005 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and then did 10 shows with Don Henley dubbed the Two Voices tour. During the summer of 2005, Nicks continued doing solo shows (Gold Dust tour) with pop singer Vanessa Carlton as the opening act, playing over 20 dates nationwide.

On March 27, 2007, Reprise Records released Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks in the U.S. The album debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

The compilation includes her hit singles, a dance remix, and one new track, a live version of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll". Two versions of this album were made, one with just the audio CD and a deluxe version which includes a DVD featuring all of Nicks's music videos with audio commentary from Nicks herself, as well as rare footage from the Bella Donna recording sessions.

A tour with Chris Isaak, opening in Concord, California on May 17, 2007, supported the release.

Reprise Records initially released two radio-only promos, the live version of "Landslide" with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and "Rock and Roll". Both tracks failed to garner much airplay and made no impact on the charts. Reprise Records released "Stand Back" (issued with club mixes) on May 29, 2007. "Stand Back", which peaked at number five on the pop singles chart in 1983, reached number two on the Billboard Club chart. Nicks previously reached number one on this chart, with "Planets of the Universe" (from Trouble in Shangri-La) in 2001. The remix single of "Stand Back" debuted on the Billboard Hot Singles Sales chart on September 15, 2007, at number 10, peaking at number four the following week. It also debuted on the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales chart at number three, later peaking at number one.

On March 31, 2009, Nicks released the album, The Soundstage Sessions, via Reprise Records. The album debuted at number 47 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. The first single from the album, "Crash into Me", was released as a digital download, along with "Landslide" (orchestra version) as a B-side, on March 17, 2009.

In late 2008, Fleetwood Mac announced that the band would tour in 2009, beginning in March. As per the 2003–2004 tour, Christine McVie would not be featured in the lineup. The tour was branded as a 'greatest hits' show titled "Unleashed", although they played album tracks such as "Storms" and "I Know I'm Not Wrong".

2010–2013: In Your Dreams and Extended Play Tour

After completing the Unleashed tour with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks began work on her first solo album in a decade with David A. Stewart, a musician and record producer best known for being one half of the duo Eurythmics.

Nicks performed in a series of shows in August 2010 ("it's not really a tour", she said). They did not contain any of her new music, because she did not want it to end up on YouTube. The Santa Barbara show benefited a young girl she had met through the Make-a-Wish Foundation in Los Angeles with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer.

On January 13, 2011, Reprise announced Nicks's upcoming album In Your Dreams would be released on May 3, and the lead single, "Secret Love", would be released on February 8. Reprise provided a free download of the single to fans who ordered the album via certain websites. Nicks originally wrote "Secret Love" in 1976 and recorded a demo of it for Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album, Rumours. It did not make the final cut for the album. The demo version had been circulating among fans for many years prior to its inclusion on In Your Dreams. Nicks promoted the song with a video directed by Dave Stewart. Nicks's goddaughter Kelly appears in the video wearing a vintage dress that Nicks wore on stage in 1976. According to Nicks, Kelly portrays the young Nicks blending with the soul of Nicks's 62-year-old self. On the U.S. Billboard charts, "Secret Love" was a modest hit on the Adult Contemporary Singles chart, peaking at number 20, and at number 25 on the Triple-A Singles chart. Another song on the album, "For What It's Worth", features Nicks's niece in the video. The song reached number 25 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in September 2011. A documentary film was made for the album, directed by Stewart. The documentary was critically acclaimed, and Nicks appeared at many film festivals to support the documentary.

Nicks promoted the album with appearances on various television shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The X Factor, The Talk, Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. and Dancing with the Stars.

In Your Dreams was well received by music critics. Rolling Stone commented, "It's not just her first album in 10 years, it's her finest collection of songs since the Eighties". The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200, giving Nicks her fifth top-10 album on that chart, with 52,000 copies sold in the first week. Elsewhere, the album has made numerous top-50 debuts, including number 24 on the Australian ARIA chart, number 22 in Canada, and number 14 in the UK.

The same day that Nicks's new album was released, Fox Network broadcast the Glee episode (Season 2, Episode 19) "Rumours" that featured six songs from Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album, including Nicks's song "Dreams" (the band's only number-one song on the U.S. charts). The show sparked renewed interest in the band and its most commercially successful album, and Rumours re-entered the Billboard 200 chart at number 11, the same week that In Your Dreams debuted at number six. Nicks was quoted by Billboard saying that her new album was "my own little Rumours".

Nicks contributed a cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" for the tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly, released in September 2011.

On March 29, 2012, Nicks made a guest appearance as herself on the NBC sitcom Up All Night. The show featured an excerpt of the 1981 track "Sleeping Angel", as well as new duets with both Maya Rudolph and Christina Applegate of "Whenever I Call You Friend" and "Edge of Seventeen".

On December 14, 2012, it was announced that Nicks would be featured on an original track done in collaboration with Dave Grohl for his Sound City soundtrack, alongside other artists.

In 2013, Fleetwood Mac toured again as a four-piece band throughout North America and Europe. On April 30, the band released their first new studio material since 2003's Say You Will via digital download on iTunes with the four-track EP, Extended Play containing three new songs and one new song from the Buckingham Nicks sessions ("Without You").

On December 3, 2013, Nicks released the In Your Dreams documentary film on DVD. The DVD debuted at number seven on the Billboard Top Music Video sales chart and number 29 on the UK Music Video Top 40 chart.

Since 2014: 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault and future endeavors
In 2014, Nicks appeared on the third season of television series American Horror Story, Coven, in a role she reprised in the eighth season, American Horror Story: Apocalypse. She played a fictional version of herself, portraying a "white witch" with supernatural powers in three episodes. On the show, she performed the songs "Rhiannon", "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?", "Seven Wonders", and "Gypsy".

"I said 'That's perfect,'" she told Us magazine in response to the show's music request. "Because that's exactly how I like to affect people. I want people to put my songs on because they are unhappy and need a boost to dance around their apartment a little and feel good. That's why I write. 'Of course, you can use my music. Take it!'" In May 2014, Nicks was honored with a BMI Icon Award. In July 2014, it was announced that Nicks would join The Voice as the adviser for Adam Levine's team.

In September 2014, Nicks released her eighth studio album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, which reached number seven on the Billboard 200. She also began a North American tour with Fleetwood Mac, now reunited with Christine McVie, the On with the Show tour. The tour began in September 2014 and concluded in November 2015.

In May 2015, Nicks reissued Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks on "crystal clear" transparent double vinyl. The vinyl came with a vinyl messenger bag and a limited-edition lithograph. Throughout 2016 and 2017, Nicks toured with The Pretenders on the 24 Karat Gold Tour.

On April 26, 2017, Pitchfork revealed that Nicks would be featured on a track from American singer Lana Del Rey's fifth studio album, Lust for Life, which was released on July 21, 2017. The song is titled "Beautiful People Beautiful Problems".

On July 9, 2017, Nicks performed at the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park in London, supporting Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. She later performed "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" with Petty as part of the Heartbreakers' set, in what would turn out to be their final performance of the song together before Tom Petty's death in October 2017.

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. This reworked lineup embarked on a world tour entitled An Evening with Fleetwood Mac in 2018–2019.

In April 2019, Nicks was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She became the first woman to be inducted twice, once as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.

In September 2020, Nicks released a live album and concert film, with recordings from the 24 Karat Gold Tour (2016–2017), directed by Joe Thomas. On October 9, 2020, Nicks released her first new music in six years. The official video accompanying the track "Show Them the Way" was directed by Cameron Crowe.

In December 2020, music publishing company Primary Wave bought an 80% stake of Nicks' song catalog. The Wall Street Journal valued the deal at US$100 million.

On May 27, 2021, Stevie Nicks was one of the headliners of the 2021 Shaky Knees Music Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. In August 2021 Nicks canceled her five planned 2021 solo appearances due to concern about catching COVID-19.

On August 31, 2022, the virtual band Gorillaz announced the tracklist of their album Cracker Island, released on February 24, 2023. Stevie Nicks is featured on the album's second track, "Oil".

In September 2022, Nicks released a cover of "For What It's Worth", song written in 1966 by Stephen Stills and recorded by Buffalo Springfield. That song was legendary but misinterpreted. On concert 16 July 2024 in Manchester, Stevie explained the fact that the song was written by Stills, who was that night on Sunset Strip and saw young people fight with police officers, the song has nothing related to politics as which is generally perceived.

Artistry
Standing at 5 ft, Nicks has stated she felt "a little ridiculous" standing next to Mick Fleetwood, who is 6 ft. For this reason, she developed a penchant for 6 in platform boots. "Even when platforms went completely out of style, I kept wearing them because I didn't want to go back to being 5 ft in heels", she told Allure in 1995. Over the years, Nicks has developed a style which she calls her "uniform”, consisting of flowing diaphanous clothing, boots and shawls.

Nicks has said that her vocal style and performance antics evolved from female singers like Grace Slick and Janis Joplin. She admitted inspiration when she saw Joplin perform live (and opened for her with her first band Fritz) shortly before Joplin's death. Nicks owns a strand of Joplin's stage beads. She also commented that she once saw a woman in her audience dressed in dripping chiffon with a Gibson Girl hairstyle and big boots, and Nicks knew she wanted something similar. She took the look and made it her own. Nicks possesses the vocal range of a contralto and her voice has been described as a "gruff, feathery alto". Over the years, she has decorated her microphone stand with roses, ribbons, chiffon, crystal beads, scarves, and small stuffed toys.

Philanthropy
Nicks has started a charity foundation titled "Stevie Nicks's Band of Soldiers" which is used for the benefit of wounded military personnel.

In late 2004, Nicks began visiting Army and Navy medical centers in Washington, D.C. While visiting wounded service men and women, she became determined to find an object she could leave with the soldiers that would raise their spirits, motivate, and give them something to look forward to each day. She eventually decided to purchase hundreds of iPod Nanos, load them with music, artists, and playlists which she would hand select, and autograph them:

"I call it a soldier's iPod. It has all the crazy stuff that I listen to, and my collections I've been making since the 1970s for going on the road, when I'm sick ... or the couple of times in my life that I have really been down, music is what always dances me out of bed."

She now regularly delivers these tokens of her appreciation, bringing her closest friends, such as Mick Fleetwood, along to share the experience:

"So, as Mick [Fleetwood] and I went from room to room delivering their tiny iPod, they told us their stories. Mick became his tall, loving, father figure, English self, taking in every word they said, remaining calm (at least on the outside) inspiring them. We floated from room to room down through the halls of the two hospitals over a three-day period. We gave out all our iPods. Right before I left for DC, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry dug into their pockets and came up with $10,000 for me. In my eyes they went from the coolest rock stars to generous great men; as my press agent Liz Rosenberg said, every returning wounded soldier should be given an iPod. It will be an integral part of their recovery."

Style
Nicks's style has remained the same throughout her years in the spotlight and even "at 60 she is still working the gossamer tunics and shawls that have influenced two generations of Stevie acolytes and given her performances the feel of a Wiccan ritual," writes New York Times reporter Ruth La Ferla.

In the late 70's, Nicks began receiving threatening mail accusing her of witchcraft. Nicks told the Los Angeles Times in 2013, "In the beginning of my career, the whole idea that some wacky, creepy people were writing, 'You're a witch, you're a witch!' was so arresting. And there I am like, 'No, I'm not! I just wear black because it makes me look thinner, you idiots.'" The witch rumors frightened Nicks so much that she gave up black for a period of time (approximately 1978 to 1982), instead opting to wear colors such as apricot and sea foam green. Nicks later stated that she felt ugly in the new colors, ultimately gave up, and went back to black in 1983. That same year, when asked what she thought about people who still believed the rumor, Nicks said, "I don't like it all and I wish people would stop thinking about that, because I spent thousands of dollars on beautiful black clothes and had to stop wearing them for a long time, because a lot of people scared me."

Nicks filed tax-deductible expenses in 1991 costing "$12,495 for makeup and hairstyling [and] $43,291 for professional clothing and maintenance."

Nicks sings about the store where her iconic style all started in the song "Gypsy" on Fleetwood Mac's 13th studio album Mirage, released in 1982. In the song, Nicks sings of a store called the Velvet Underground, a boutique in San Francisco, California, where famous rockers like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick were known to shop.

Legacy
Many artists have cited Nicks as a source of influence and musical inspiration. These include Beyoncé and Destiny's Child, Courtney Love, Michelle Branch, Belinda Carlisle, The Chicks (formerly known as Dixie Chicks), Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, Nadia Ali, Florence Welch, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Vanessa Carlton, Delta Goodrem, and Lorde. Australian singer Darren Hayes cited Nicks as one his favorite musicians during his teenage years, while Eminem's mother Debbie Nelson mentioned in her book My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem that her son loved the song "Rhiannon".

The Dixie Chicks covered "Landslide", which became a top-10 hit (number one on the Adult Contemporary chart) and a number one hit on the Country chart. This cover also earned her a BMI Songwriters Award in 2003 when it won Song of the Year (the award is given to the songwriter of the track, regardless of the performer). According to BMI, "Landslide" also earned Nicks the 35th Robert J. Burton Award as "Most Performed Country Song of the Year". This distinction is given to the song tallying the most feature U.S. broadcast performances during the eligibility period. Included on the Dixie Chicks' platinum Monument album Home, "Landslide" was a Country, Adult Top 40, Hot 100 and AC Billboard charts smash. Alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins made an acoustic cover of the song that was featured on their 1994 B-side collection Pisces Iscariot.

Other successful covers have included the Corrs' "Dreams" and Courtney Love's band Hole with "Gold Dust Woman". "Edge of Seventeen" was sampled on Destiny's Child's 2001 number one single "Bootylicious". Nicks appeared in the video for "Bootylicious" and in an episode of MTV's Making the Video that featured it, in which she expressed her admiration for both the song and the group. Also, American actress and singer Lindsay Lohan covered "Edge of Seventeen" on her second studio album A Little More Personal (Raw) (2005). Deep Dish fulfilled their "Dreams" of working with Nicks in 2005 when Nicks offered to re-record vocals on a remix of her number-one penned song, "Dreams". The Deep Dish version went on to reach number two on the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay chart, as well as providing Nicks with her third UK top-40 hit. Nicks provided additional vocals on Vanessa Carlton's 2007 album, Heroes and Thieves.

On January 31, 2010, Nicks performed with Taylor Swift at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. Swift, who describes Nicks as one of her childhood heroes, introduced her to the audience by saying, "It's a fairy tale and an honor to share the stage with Stevie Nicks."

In October 2018, Nicks was one of fifteen artists to be nominated for induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On December 13, 2018, she was announced as one of seven inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2019, making her the first woman to be inducted twice to the hall.

On April 19, 2024, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift referenced Nicks in the song "Clara Bow" off of her eleventh studio album The Tortured Poets Department (2024). In the song, she wrote "You look like Stevie Nicks / In '75, the hair and lips". Nicks also wrote a poem for the inside of physical copies of the album.

Personal life
Nicks was romantically linked to Lindsey Buckingham from 1966 to 1977, briefly to Mick Fleetwood in 1978, to Eagles drummer/vocalist Don Henley during the late 1970s, and briefly to Eagles songwriter J. D. Souther. In 1979, Nicks had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Henley.

Nicks's only marriage was to Kim Anderson, the widower of her best friend Robin Anderson. They married in 1983 soon after Robin Anderson died of leukemia and while the Bella Donna album was on the top of the charts. Nicks later explained of the marriage, "I was determined to take care of [Robin's] baby, so I said to Kim, 'I don't know, I guess we should just get married.'" Nicks and Anderson divorced after only three months: "And so we got married three months after she died, and it was a terrible, terrible mistake. We didn't get married because we were in love, we got married because we were grieving and it was the only way that we could feel like we were doing anything."

Years after the divorce, she reunited with her stepson when he was a teenager, putting him through college, and has maintained contact with him ever since. In 2020, Nicks said in an interview for The Guardian that his daughter, named Robin after his late mother, calls Nicks “Grandma Stevie.”

She connected with Jimmy Iovine, who produced Bella Donna, during 1980–81, and with Eagles and James Gang guitarist Joe Walsh during 1983–1986, to whom she referred in 2007 as one of her greatest loves, but the couple could not sustain the relationship because of mutual drug abuse. Nicks toured with Walsh in 1984 and wrote "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?" about Walsh's deceased daughter.

Until July 2007, Nicks lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, in a home she had built in 1981 and shared with her brother, Christopher Nicks, his wife, Lori Perry-Nicks, and their daughter, Jessica, her niece. She announced in mid-2007 that her Paradise Valley home would be put up for sale, citing her aspirations to "downsize" and focus more on her charity work, and that in the previous year she had only "spent about two weeks there". The house was put on the market for a reported $3.8 million and later sold for $3 million.

Nicks became an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church and officiated at the wedding of Deer Tick singer John McCauley and singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton on December 27, 2013.

Nicks has said that she consciously chose not to have children of her own, due to her demanding career and desire to follow her art wherever it should take her: "My mission maybe wasn't to be a mom and a wife; maybe my particular mission was to write songs to make moms and wives feel better."

Of her niece, godchildren, former stepson, and extended family she says: "I have lots of kids. It's much more fun to be the crazy auntie than it is to be the mom, anyway."

Nicks has maintained a journal nearly every day since her tenure in Fleetwood Mac began. She has said, “I like to tell all my fairy goddaughters and my niece that when I'm gone they can sit on the floor and go through all these journals, and they can walk through my life, and they can smell the gardenia perfume on the pages. They can have it in their hands, who I was."

Regarding a book based on her life, she has said, "I wouldn't write a book unless I could really tell the truth, and say all the people are in it are represented right...If I'm gonna talk about all the people in my life, I need to be old enough and so do they, that nobody's gonna care ... I would never write a book about the bad parts. I would mostly revel in the fantastic parts, of which there were so many."

Studio albums

 * Bella Donna (1981)
 * The Wild Heart (1983)
 * Rock a Little (1985)
 * The Other Side of the Mirror (1989)
 * Street Angel (1994)
 * Trouble in Shangri-La (2001)
 * In Your Dreams (2011)
 * 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault (2014)

With Buckingham Nicks

 * Buckingham Nicks (1973)

With Fleetwood Mac

 * Fleetwood Mac (1975)
 * Rumours (1977)
 * Tusk (1979)
 * Mirage (1982)
 * Tango in the Night (1987)
 * Behind the Mask (1990)
 * The Dance (1997)
 * Say You Will (2003)

Tours

 * Solo tours:
 * White Winged Dove (Bella Donna) Tour: 1981
 * The Wild Heart Tour: 1983
 * Rock a Little Tour: 1986
 * The Other Side of the Mirror Tour: 1989
 * Whole Lotta Trouble (Timespace) Tour: 1991
 * Street Angel Tour: 1994
 * Enchanted Tour: 1998
 * Holiday Millennium Tour: 1999–2000
 * Trouble in Shangri-La Tour: 2001
 * Two Voices Tour (with Don Henley): 2005
 * Gold Dust Tour (on select dates with Vanessa Carlton or John Farnham): 2005–06
 * Highway Companion Tour (with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers): 2006
 * Crystal Visions Tour: 2007–08
 * Soundstage Sessions Tour: 2008
 * Heart & Soul Tour (with Rod Stewart): 2011–12
 * In Your Dreams Tour: 2011–12
 * 24 Karat Gold Tour: 2016–17
 * Live in Concert Tour: 2023-24

In October 2005, Nicks attended the Melbourne Cup Week in Australia, and one of the horse-racing stakes was named after her: The Stevie Nicks Plate. She used this opportunity to launch her promotion of an Australian/New Zealand extension to her Gold Dust tour in February and March 2006. Nicks toured in Australia and New Zealand with popular Australian performer John Farnham. She also appeared in concert with Tom Petty in June near Manassas, Virginia, and at the Bonnaroo Music Festival that same month.

In 2006, Nicks performed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the first leg of their tour in the summer, and later in the year returned as a guest performer for a number of songs on the tour celebrating Petty's 30th anniversary since his debut album. Tom Petty's Homecoming Concert in Gainesville, FL, which contained performances with Stevie Nicks, was filmed for PBS Soundstage as well as DVD release for March 2007. Nicks was also the featured performer for Bette Midler's benefit function, Hulaween, in October 2006.

In 2008, Nicks embarked on the Soundstage Sessions tour in the U.S. A video recording of one concert date was released in 2009: Live in Chicago. Vanessa Carlton performed as a guest artist.

Rod Stewart and Nicks co-headlined the Heart & Soul Tour. Launched March 20, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the tour united the two singers for a series of arena concerts throughout North America – with performances in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Tampa, Montreal, and more.

A solo tour for In Your Dreams began on August 9, 2011, in Denver, Colorado. Nicks announced on her July 27 appearance on America's Got Talent that Michael Grimm would be going on tour with her. She then continued on an Australian and New Zealand leg of the tour accompanied by Dave Stewart until December 2011.

Nicks joined Rod Stewart in the summer of 2012 for another leg of the Heart & Soul Tour, and resumed the In Your Dreams tour in June 2012. In 2023, she and Billy Joel performed a series of concerts across the United States, beginning with SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles on March 10. This was in conjunction with a solo tour. In early 2024, she announced a European leg to the tour, starting in Dublin, Ireland on July 3rd.

 * Touring band 2012
 * Sharon Celani – backing vocals (1981–present)
 * Waddy Wachtel – lead guitar, musical direction (1981–86, 2001–present)
 * Lori Nicks – backing vocals (1981–89, 1996, 2007–present)
 * Carlos Rios – rhythm guitar (1989–present)
 * Al Ortiz – bass (2001–present)
 * Jimmy Paxson – drums (2005–present)
 * Darrell Smith – keyboards (2005–present)
 * Brett Tuggle – keyboards, rhythm guitar (1998–2006, 2012)

Grammy Awards
Nicks has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards as a solo artist, holding the record for most nominations for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance without a win.
 * Solo

Nicks has been nominated for six Grammy Awards as a member of Fleetwood Mac, winning the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Rumours, and received the 2003 Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
 * With Fleetwood Mac

title: Stevie Nicks