Stevie Nicks is one of those pop culture figures who seems to transcend time and space. The White Witch, as we know her today, seems so intrinsically linked to her being that it’s hard to imagine a time in which she was anybody different. But superstar status or not, no young adult is immune to a few identity changes in their late teens and early twenties. And Nicks was no different.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, Nicks recalled spending a “whole summer” singing along to the 1969 album Crosby, Stills & Nash, digesting its harmonies and imagining a reality in which she would be in a vocal-rich band like that. Nicks was briefly in a band that focused on vocal harmonies in high school. But it never developed into something more serious. But that wasn’t the only avenue Nicks had the freedom to explore at a young age.
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Her senior year of high school, she flew to Los Angeles to meet with a record producer. It turned out to be a success. She flew back home to her home in Atherton, California, with a record deal. However, the sparkle of her new contract didn’t last long.
Stevie Nicks Experienced Her First Label Drop at Around Eighteen
Stevie Nicks’ first record deal wasn’t with some scrappy, underground label. Through someone she described as “a friend of a friend of my dad,” she landed a meeting with 20th Century Fox producer Jackie Mills. She brought her guitar and sang her original music. The record label liked her so much that they signed her to a five-year contract. But soon after, Mills left 20th Century Fox. Due to a “main man” clause in Nicks’ contract, her agreement was null and void.
“That meant I was now released from it,” Nicks explained. It might have seemed like a crushing blow for such a young, sensitive artist. But not Nicks. “I wasn’t upset. Even at that age, I was smart enough to realize that I didn’t want to be stuck on a label with people that I don’t know.” And anyway, Nicks had other projects to focus on.
By that point, Nicks was playing in a psychedelic rock band called Fritz with her boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham. The two would branch off into a folk-rock duo called Buckingham Nicks shortly thereafter. However, this, too, would fizzle out before turning into something more concrete.
On New Year’s Eve 1974 (or New Year’s Day 1975, depending on the specific retelling), Nicks and Buckingham would find a more permanent home in Fleetwood Mac. It was through this project that Nicks found what she knew she wasn’t going to find at Fox: artistic freedom, sure, but even more importantly, camaraderie. Did that closeness inherently create drama? Of course it did. But one could argue it’s still a better dynamic than going at it alone.
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