Stevie Nicks Formed a Coven of Woman to Tour With Fleetwood Mac
Though Stevie Nicks has continued to do it for decades, life on tour can get lonely, especially when the members of Fleetwood Mac were often fighting. She had bandmate and close friend Christine McVie around, but Nicks wanted more company. She didn’t feel comfortable bringing her boyfriends around the band, so she recruited a group of women to go on the road with her.
Stevie Nicks never wanted to bring boyfriends on tour with Fleetwood Mac
Not long after the couple joined Fleetwood Mac, Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up. At around the same time, McVie and husband John McVie divorced. Tensions ran high, and the two women worried about bringing any boyfriends around the rest of the band.
“We almost always had boyfriends, but they weren’t on the road because they’d just get stomped on,” Nicks told The Guardian. “For me to have a guy out on the road with us, and have Lindsey glaring at him the whole time? Or for Christine to have a guy out and John just walk past and flip him off? No, we both learned very early on that we would never bring boyfriends on the road because it created arguments.”
Despite this, Nicks said she and McVie were happy when their exes brought women on tour.
“The boys brought girlfriends on the road but the thing about that was we didn’t care they had new girlfriends! Because we didn’t want to be with them!” Nicks said. “We were happy they had new girlfriends! Thrilled! Oh my God, they’re happy! The pressure is off!”
She brought her best friends on the road with her
Nicks took her close high school friend Robin Snyder on the road as a vocal coach. She appreciated the way that Snyder kept her grounded.
“She’s just been in my life since I was 14,” Nicks said on VH1’s Behind the Music. “She was the one person that knew me for the person I really was and not for the famous Stevie, and it was good to have someone who knew the real you besides just your mom and dad.
Nicks brought other young women on the road in addition to Snyder.
“My first impression of touring with Fleetwood Mac was seeing Stevie and her acolytes,” Kenny Loggins said, per the book Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams, and Rumours by Zoë Howe. “She seemed to collect talented, young, beautiful girls who would then dress like her and follow her around all the time.”
These women stuck close to Nicks and ensured she had everything she needed while recording and performing.
“Stevie’s girls—Robin Snyder, Mary Torrey, Christie Alsbury, and others—dressed like Stevie, in long skirts and long hair with lots of accessories and drop-dead shades,” Stephen Davis wrote in the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks. “They smelled like her, too, redolent of patchouli oil and sandalwood.”
With these women, touring was less of a slog for Nicks.
Stevie Nicks gives out necklaces to those close to her
Nicks often wears gold necklaces, including one with a golden crescent moon. She gives replicas of the necklace to those close to her, as well as fellow artists like Taylor Swift, Tavi Gevinson, and the Haim sisters.
“That moon necklace holds a lot of power,” Alana Haim told the Huffington Post. “Ever since I put it on, every single person I’ve met has been like, ‘Where did you get that necklace?’ People are drawn to the moon. I can’t express it.”
