Tragic Details About Stevie Nicks

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Search in your mental index of rock and roll queens, and you will not find one like Stevie Nicks. This musical goddess of all things ethereal, who most recently made history as the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, has clearly set the bar in the music industry. From her outrageously cool outfits to her bewitching lyrics about love, life, gypsies, and even Greta Garbo, Nicks has a boho energy all of her own making. And, she's willing to sweep her fans up and take them with her as she performs her own emotional ballet on stage.

What is the cost of becoming a whimsical and unapologetic yet powerful diva of the music world? If you're Stevie Nicks, the cost can be quite painful at times. For nearly 50 years, the artist has worn her heart on her sleeve for all to see, balancing her career with her relationships as the world watches eagerly. But fear not for Nicks, who can't be counted among the faint-hearted. She's weathered everything the universe has thrown at her — all the while willingly sharing her triumphs and sacrifices with her fans. Here's an intimate look into how Stevie Nicks has climbed her own enchanted ladder to the top.

Within two years, Buckingham Nicks was signed by Polydor Records, Factinate says. Their debut, self-titled album came out in 1973 and "went largely unnoticed," per Biography. Except for one thing: The couple appeared nude from the waist up. Fleetwood Mac News, quoting from a 2014 eBay listing of images from the photo shoot, says it was the first time "a music duo appeared on the cover of their LP topless." But there was more to the story. In his biography Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks, author Stephen Davis explains that after Nicks demurred when asked to take off her blouse, the abusive Buckingham threw a fit. "This is art!" he had said.

Nicks gave in, hiding the album and refusing to show it to her father. It was not the first or last time she would give in to Buckingham. Following the virtual failure of the album, the couple struggled financially. Buckingham continued working on his music, but Nicks worked at a variety of jobs to keep the couple afloat, including dental assistant, maid, and waitress. In 1994, Nicks told the Island Ear (via In Her Own Words), "I worked at the Copper Penny, Clementine's and Bob's Big Boy. I supported Lindsey and I for years."

As Fleetwood Mac skyrocketed to fame, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, along with Christine and John McVie, weren't doing so hot. Nicks was already embittered about working as a waitress while Buckingham turned down $500 gigs at steakhouses in the old days. She hoped for a better relationship with Fleetwood Mac, per Billboard. "You and I have to sew this relationship back up," she told Buckingham. "We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us." But life was now more complicated, and even the McVies problems escalated when Christine had an affair with a lighting director in 1976. But she also became a mentor for Nicks as the group worked on their next album, Rumours.

The West Australian's Simon Collins (per Fleetwood Mac News) plucked the best songs and lyrics from the Rumours album as the obvious prelude to the impending romantic breakups. There was Buckingham's "Second Hand News" and "Never Going Back Again," Nicks warning, "women, they will come and they will go" in "Dreams," and even Christine McVie's "You Make Loving Fun" (about her affair). So as Rumours took off to become #1 on Billboard, and won a Grammy for Album of the Year, the players who "only love you when they're playing" looked elsewhere for love. Nicks even had an ill-fated affair with Mick Fleetwood.

Stevie Nicks' newfound freedom included romancing the Eagles' frontman, Don Henley (pictured with Nicks in 2002). The relationship began in the late 1970s, per Smooth Radio. Nicks' 1981 debut album, Bella Donna, featured Henley on one of the tracks — the ever romantic "Leather and Lace." But although it was rumored that Henley wanted to marry Nicks, the couple eventually broke up. A decade or so later, in 1992, Nicks told VOX magazine (via Tinseltown Mom) that she had once been pregnant by Henley, as well as three other men. Nicks decided to terminate her pregnancies. "To give up four babies is to give up a lot that would be here now," she said. "So that bothers me, a lot, and really breaks my heart."

In 2009, Nicks elaborated further to The West Australian's Simon Collins (via Fleetwood Mac News). "I chose purposely — my choice — to not be married or have children so I could follow being a true artist," she said. She also explained Henley's claim (per Billboard) that she named the unborn child Sara and wrote her 1979 song of the same name "to the spirit of the child." Not so, said Nicks. "Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara," she said. But the song, she said, was actually about Sara Recor who later married Mick Fleetwood.

Yes, Stevie Nicks spent most of the early 1980s as high as a kite. She tried to quit her cocaine habit as early as 1982, Stevie Nicks Info says, but slipped while filming her epic video, "Gypsy." She also began chain-smoking cigarettes, and in 1986, discovered that her cocaine usage had literally burned a hole in the septum of her nose, according to Biography. Nicks' parents and friends finally intervened in the late 1980s. "I was very worried about her," Nicks' close friend Tom Petty told Rolling Stone magazine (via the The Fix). "If the phone did ring and they said, 'Stevie died,' I wouldn't have been surprised."

Nicks checked into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986. Three songs came from the experience. "Welcome to the Room, Sara" and "When I See You Again" appeared on Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night album in 1987, and "I'm Doing the Best I Can (Escape from Berlin)" appeared on Nicks' own The Other Side of the Mirror album in 1989. By then, however, the singer had been prescribed Klonopin by her psychiatrist and was addicted to the drug. She entered rehab a final time in 1993. "My only advice to anybody who is watching me talk right now is to say, 'Save your money,'" she told viewers on Oprah Winfrey's Master Class series in 2013, "because it's gonna cost you $50,000 to go to rehab. You will have to go or you will die."

In 1998, Nicks told People magazine she remembered very clearly that day in 1986 when her plastic surgeon told her, "If you want your nose to remain on your face, stop [using cocaine] right now." Another told her one more snort could cause a brain hemorrhage. But her stints in rehab caused the petite singer's weight to go up to 175 pounds. Her weight was obvious at the Clinton performances, and at the end of her 1994 tour, Nicks decided, "I would never sing in front of people again. Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn't handle people talking about how fat I was." She also discovered she had Epstein-Barr virus, which explained why she was constantly tired.

Unfortunately, Stevie Nicks' weight became the talk of the music world. University students Marceline and Carol L. Thompson even wrote a paper about the waning popularity of Nicks' albums during the early 1990s because of her heaviness. The women theorized that because female fans could no longer identify with the once fairy-like singer, and sadly, they listened to her music less. The decline in album sales was not lost on Stevie Nicks, who vowed not to "go on stage ever again if I don't lose this weight." And she did, embarking on a high-protein, low carb diet in 1995 to shed 30 pounds.

There is no doubt that Stevie Nicks is a fighter. In 2019, the rock icon made history yet again: she was inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the second time (the first being in 1998 as part of Fleetwood Mac). No other woman in music history has achieved such an honor. She was inducted by musician Harry Styles, whom Nicks told Rolling Stone "is the son I never had." Indeed, the lady has a lot to be thankful for. She is rich in fans, rich in friends, and just plain rich; The Richest estimates her net worth at a cool $75 million dollars.

Nicks also continues to tour, and her "24 Karat Gold The Concert" was recently made into a film. The lady has few regrets, though one is that she never got to meet Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "I wanted to hold her hand and give her a huge hug and thank her for all she had done for women, and for all she would continue to do," Nicks wrote on Facebook. She sufficed by honoring Ginsburg another way. "She was a political rock star. As a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, the first female to be inducted twice, compared to 22 men having been inducted twice, I Stevie Nicks, induct Ruth Bader Ginsburg into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Life." Ginsburg would probably like that.