The Eagles’ Joe Walsh Reacts to Stevie Nicks Calling Him the ‘Great, Great Love’ of Her Life
Stevie Nicks once dated Joe Walsh, the Eagles’ singer and guitarist, and she has called him the “great, great love” of her life. What did Walsh think when he heard about Nicks’ feelings for him, years after their breakup? Here’s what the two musicians have said about their relationship.
Stevie Nicks said she fell in love with the Eagles’ Joe Walsh at first sight
Fleetwood Mac star Stevie Nicks dated several famous men, including multiple members of the Eagles. But she only called one the “great, great love” of her life – Joe Walsh, the band’s singer and guitarist.
“My great, great love was Joe Walsh,” Nicks told the Telegraph in September 2007. She said she fell in love with Walsh at first sight when they met at a hotel in Dallas in 1983.
“I guess in a very few rare cases, some people find someone that they fall in love with the very first time they see them… from across the room, from a million miles away,” Nicks wrote in the liner notes of her TimeSpace album (per Songfacts). “Some people call it love at first sight, and of course, I never believed in that until that night I walked into a party after a gig at the hotel, and from across the room, without my glasses, I saw this man and I walked straight to him. He held out his hands to me, and I walked straight into them. I remember thinking, I can never be far from this person again… he is my soul.”
How Joe Walsh reacted to Stevie Nicks calling him the ‘great, great love’ of her life
During an October 2012 conversation with Interview Magazine, Joe Walsh was asked what he thought of Stevie Nicks saying he was the “great, great love” of her life.
He laughed and said, “I’m very humbled by it. She’s a great songwriter, a great singer and a great person.”
Walsh continued to describe his relationship with the Fleetwood Mac singer from his perspective. “We spent about a year together, and she helped me write a bunch of music, and I helped her write her music. We had a great relationship.”
He still has a lot of respect for Nicks as a person and a musician. “Romantically, it shifted, but in terms of friends and respect for each other, that’s all still there,” Walsh shared. “She’s really a great person. Anybody who knows her will tell you that. And she’s a national treasure. Anything she sings, you immediately know it’s her. If it’s on the radio, you don’t change stations, you listen to it.”
How long did Stevie Nicks date Joe Walsh?
If Joe Walsh was the great love of Stevie Nicks’ life, then why did they break up? The “Dreams” singer told Q Magazine that drugs destroyed her relationship with the Eagles’ guitarist.
“Joe and I broke up because of the coke,” she shared. “He told my friend and [backing] singer Sharon, ‘I’m leaving Stevie, because I’m afraid that one of us is going to die and the other one won’t be able to save the other person, because our cocaine habit has become so over the top now that neither of us can live through this, so the only way to save both of us is for me to leave.’”
Nicks has been candid about her history of addiction. She checked into the Betty Ford clinic in 1986 for her cocaine use, and then went to another hospital in 1993 to get off Klonopin.
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
