Stevie Nicks’ Mom Had a Fan Club: ‘It’s the Funniest Thing’
Stevie Nicks rose to massive levels of success in the mid-1970s and has maintained fame for decades. Naturally, she has many fans, but in a surprising turn, her mother also picked up something of a fan base. Nicks’ mother, Barbara, explained that fans often cheered her name when she stepped out in public with her daughter. Nicks joked that her mother had her own fan club.
Stevie Nicks said her mom taught her to be independent
Nicks and her mother were close, and the Fleetwood Mac artist shared that she learned a lot from Barbara. She explained that Barbara instilled fierce independence in her.
“She said, ‘You are going to be an independent woman if it kills me. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whether you’re a rock-and-roll star, or whether you’re the president of a company, or a lawyer, or whatever it is you decide to do, you are going to stand in the middle of a room full of men and you are going to be way ahead of them. They are never going to look down on you as a woman,’” Nicks told The New Yorker. “So my mom was a serious feminist. She implanted that in me.”
Nicks said that Barbara stressed the importance of never backing down, something that has greatly helped her in her music career.
Her mother picked up a fan club of her own
Nicks is happy to sing her mother’s praises, and it seems that her fans once were too.
“Stevie always says that Mom has her own fan club,” Barbara told the Arizona Republic in 1997, per The Nicks Fix. “It’s the funniest thing for me to see.”
After a concert in Phoenix, where Nicks was born, the singer walked past a crowd of cheering fans. When Barbara followed soon after, the group began to cheer for her as well.
“After the show, we walked from the stage to the dressing trailer,” Barbara said. “All these people are yelling, ‘Barbara! Barbara! Look over here, Barbara!’ Stevie just looked at me and laughed, ‘Oh, Mother!’”
She explained that she would even receive fan letters from people who couldn’t reach Nicks. Though the letters were from fans of Nicks, they also spoke directly to Barbara.
“I think a lot of people write letters to her and never hear anything, so they write to me,” she said. “They’re so nice to me and they write such wonderful letters.”
Stevie Nicks and her mom were so close that she says they still communicate
Both Nicks and Barbara have spoken about the closeness of their relationship.
“We’re really very close. We always have been,” Barbara said. “She’s really a very special little girl. I mean, here I am calling her a little girl, but she always will be my little girl in a way.”
Even after Barbara’s death, Nicks explains that she still feels that they are in communication. Nicks shared that she believes in spiritual forces and thinks that Barbara is with her at all times. When she misplaces something, she can always count on her mother to help her find it again.
“It’s so real and creepy, and I always just go ‘Thank you, Barbara,’” she told the LA Times. “I sometimes feel I have more of a relationship with my mom since she’s been dead than I did before she died.”
