Stevie Nicks Was Accused of Being ‘Shallow’ for Dating a Musician: ‘How Dare They?’
After Stevie Nicks’ breakup from Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham, she began dating other people in the music industry. At this point, she was a highly successful artist, having released two multiplatinum albums with the band. Despite this, she explained that there was a time when another artist called her “shallow” for dating musicians. She said that she would never forget the remark.
Stevie Nicks had a lengthy relationship with Lindsey Buckingham
Nicks and Buckingham began dating when they decided to pursue music as a duo. They had been in a band together but chose to move to Los Angeles and strike it out on their own. Nicks explained that leaving behind their bandmates drew them closer together.
“It was like, ‘Well, we’ve done it now,’” she told Rolling Stone. “‘We’ve completely screwed up their lives forever now. So why not?’ So we became a couple.”
Though they stayed together for years, Nicks said she became aware of problems in the relationship from the very beginning.
“From the very beginning, Lindsey was very controlling and very possessive,” she explained. “And after hearing all of the stories from my mother and how independent she was and how independent she made me, I was never very good with possessive people or with controlling people.”
She then began dating The Eagles’ Don Henley
While writing and recording Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album, Nicks and Buckingham broke up. Not long after, Nicks began dating Don Henley of The Eagles. She shared that he made a number of grand romantic gestures.
“He sends a limousine driver to our hotel with a box of presents for me, and they’re delivered right to the breakfast room where everyone’s eating,” she said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis. “There’s a stereo, a bunch of cool records. There’s incredible flowers and fruits, a beautiful display.”
While dating Henley, his bandmate Glenn Frey called Nicks spoiled and hinted that she was shallow for dating a musician. The comment frustrated her.
“He knew I was in Fleetwood Mac; I wasn’t exactly chopped liver,” Nicks told Us Magazine in 1981, per The Nicks Fix, adding, “I never forgot it. I thought, ‘How dare they think I’m so shallow that I’m hanging around with a rock star because I have nothing else to do!’”
Stevie Nicks is now happily single
Decades after this insulting comment, Nicks is happily single. Though she considers herself a romantic, she doesn’t necessarily need a relationship to be happy.
“I’m single, I don’t have children, and I’ve never been married except for three months a long time ago. And that doesn’t matter; It wasn’t a marriage of reality,” she told The New York Times. “I live a single woman’s life and yes, I spend a lot of time by myself. I have a few very close friends, most of them I’ve known forever, and I kind of like it.”
Though she believes in love at first sight and the possibility that her next great romance is around the corner, she said she would be just as happy living out her life as a single woman.
“If it were to happen to me I’d be thrilled,” she said. “But when I’m 90 years old and sitting in a gloriously beautiful beach house somewhere on this planet with five or six Chinese Crested Yorkies, surrounded by all my goddaughters who will at that point be middle-aged, I’ll be just as happy.”
