Stevie Nicks: ‘There Is Nothing Better Than Being Inducted Into the Hall of Fame’:
Stevie Nicks was two shows away from wrapping up the 2018 leg of Fleetwood Mac‘s world tour when the news came in that she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, making her the first woman in history to enter the institution twice. “It’s a lot to take in emotionally,” she told Rolling Stone the following evening. “I’m kind of really emotional now. If I have to cry, you just have to let me cry and then we’ll get back to this.”
Nicks managed to avoid crying during our 20-minute conversation, but she did explain why this honor is so meaningful to her, why she’ll miss Tom Petty and Prince that night along with her parents, how she hopes this will inspire younger women in the industry, how the other members of Fleetwood Mac reacted, what she told the members of Haim after a recent show and how she hopes to finally meet Janet Jackson at the ceremony.
Walk me through the moment of when you found out you were in.
“I obviously found out about the nomination [in October], but I never believe anything is going to happen until it actually happens. I believed that the nomination was happening because the nomination happened. But I didn’t give it that much thought because I was out on the road working extremely hard with an extremely hard schedule for a little old lady like myself. I was just like, “Okay.”
But I’ve always been that way, ever since I was a little girl. When something big or fantastic happens, I never go there in my mind. I just go, “That’s really great.” And I really appreciate that. But I don’t really believe it ever. That’s because in my whole life I’m the type of person where I don’t want to get my feelings hurt, so I’m not going to believe it until it actually is. That’s in every type of part of my life, from family to friends to projects to whatever. I don’t know where that came from, but it started a long time ago, that way of accepting things.
When I found out yesterday that it was for sure I was getting ready for the second big show at the Forum, so I was super tired and super wanting to walk onstage and for all of us to just be spectacular. And then I’m trying to process the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so it’s a lot for one brain to take in. I was just like, “That’s great. That’s amazing. I’ll be there.”
But then when we went onstage… I never would have expected anybody in the band to have said anything about it. But I was standing right in front of Mick [Fleetwood] and all of a sudden he did say something about it, but I had one of my ear monitors out. I thought he said something about the Hall of Fame, but I wasn’t really quite sure. I turned around and looked at him and I could hear he was saying, “Congratulations. We’re really proud of you.” It was something like that. I couldn’t really tell what he said.
And then I turned towards Christine [McVie] and she was like, “Congratulations sweetheart” or something and I’m just standing there and thinking that this was not anything that would have been mentioned onstage before. [She seems to mean before Lindsey Buckingham left the group, but she was unwilling to field questions about that situation.]
I was a little bit verklempt and I didn’t know what to do. And then we were getting ready to go into the song that Neil [Finn] and I do [“Don’t Dream It’s Over”] and then during the “Landslide” dedication I said, “I wouldn’t have said anything about this, but because Mick and Christine said something about it, you’ve opened the doors.”
Then I made a dedication to Jimmy Iovine for making this Gemini able to have two careers, which for somebody like me was so wonderful because I like bouncing from one thing to the other back to the other back to the other. I’m never bored, ever, and if I want to take a vacation, I told the audience, I don’t want to go to Hawaii for a year. I really just want to go to Hawaii for like two weeks and then come back and start on another project. That’s how I’ve always been. I would be bored stiff.
The fact that I’ve been able to have these two careers my whole life… I joined Fleetwood Mac at the beginning of 1975. We started talking about the solo album at the end of 1979, so my solo work was just a little over four years behind Fleetwood Mac. It has made my life amazing because I’ve been able to have these two amazing careers and live in two completely different worlds. I did dedicate it to Jimmy Iovine, him and several others. But it was Jimmy that said, “I will produce your record and we’ll make you a Tom Petty record, expect it’ll be a girl Tom Petty record.” I found that very exciting and I was jumping off the walls.
That’s how it all started. The people around me in my solo career were all very much like, “This is not going to mess with Fleetwood Mac. You’re going to be able to do both. It’s what you do. You’re a Gemini. You want two lives.” And then it just took off, both things. So I’m very grateful to all the spirits that it was made easy for me to do this and nobody was angry with me and saying, “You shouldn’t do this.” Everybody backed up the whole thing. That was really wonderful because it could have gone the other way, but it didn’t go the other way.“
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