Rolling Stone Magazine
December 2024

By ANGIE MARTOCCIO
Photograph by RANDEE ST. NICHOLAS

Every second feels like an eternity when you’re hovering four inches from Stevie Nicks, noodling around with her blouse. This is Stevie Nicks, the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice — as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. Stevie Nicks, whose legendary shawl collection resides in its own temperature-controlled vault. Stevie Nicks, who, at 76, has become an obsession of younger generations, from her American Horror Story appearance to the original poem she wrote for Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department to a recent viral TikTok video, where she intensely stares down her ex-boyfriend and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham during a 1997 performance of “Silver Springs.” (Yes, Nicks has seen it.)

This is also Stevie Nicks, who’s somehow gotten a long, spiraled, gold ring she’s wearing stuck in the mesh fabric of her blouse, requiring the up- close-and-personal assistance of an interviewer she met only minutes ago.

She is surprisingly nonchalant as I lean over her, delicately unwinding the thread from each loop of the ring. “It happened [recently] onstage,” she says of the ring tangling. “It was stuck on my ‘Gold Dust Woman’ cape, and the most handsome guy on our entire tour ran out and was down on one knee trying to undo it. I felt like a princess in a Cinderella movie.” She laughs. I loosen up. Miraculously, I free the material from the ring without a single tear. “Thank you, honey,” she says sweetly.

Nicks has been in Philadelphia for the past three days, wrapping up a massive tour and recording a Christmas song with former NFL star Jason Kelce. Tonight, she’s in her signature all-black attire, save for hot-pink hair ties that hold her blond, elegant French braid. Her tiny Chinese crested dog, Lily, saunters in and out of the room, occasionally sitting on Nicks’ lap and staring at the massive charcuterie plate in front of us.

The spread will go untouched over the next three and a half hours while Nicks takes me on a wild ride through her life — and, at one point, into the bedroom to meet her Stevie Nicks Barbies. There’s the prototype, dressed in her beloved “Rhiannon” black dress, and the official Stevie Barbie, released last fall. Nicks didn’t love Barbies as a child, but there’s something special about this doll. “I never in a million years thought this little thing would have such an effect on me,” she says, holding the miniature Gold Dust Woman.

Nicks is more prolific and driven than ever. She’s also unmoored from her famous band. After a successful tour with the classic Fleetwood Mac lineup in 2014 and 2015, Buckingham ran into conflict with his bandmates — and with Nicks in particular — leading to him being fired from the group in 2018. The 2022 death of Christine McVie, whom Nicks calls “my musical soulmate,” truly seems to have ended the band; Nicks says she’s done with Fleetwood Mac for good. Instead, she launched a two-year-long solo tour, which just wrapped a couple of evenings before we talk at the 30,000-seat Hersheypark Stadium.

She’ll perform to millions shortly after our conversation, when she appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 40 years. When she steps onto the stage at Studio 8H, she’ll play her women’s-rights anthem “The Lighthouse,” which Nicks wrote following the demise of Roe v. Wade. Featuring guitar and co-production by Sheryl Crow, it’s a cathartic rocker in which Nicks compares herself to a lighthouse, guiding women and encouraging them to stand up for their power.

“You know what I always think of when I say SNL?” she asks me. “Stevie Nicks Live.”