Stevie Nicks Said She Dreamed of Giving Fans a ‘Little Fairy Tale’ — Like ‘The Muppets’
Stevie Nicks is not a witch, but she always dreamed of giving her fans a little bit of a fairy tale. Sort of like The Muppets, she said. The furry puppets don’t strike aren’t exactly fairy tale-like, but in Nicks’ mind, there’s a connection.
Stevie Nicks liked dressing up as a witch for Halloween as a child
According to Stephen Davis’ Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks, Nicks loved dressing up as a witch for Halloween as a kid. In fact, she was adamant about it.
“Holidays were a big deal in the Nicks household, and Stevie’s mother particularly liked Halloween. But Barbara could never understand why Stevie always wanted to go out trick-or-treating as a witch,” Davis wrote.
“I always had a great love for Halloween,” Nicks recalled, “and for being a witchy character from when I was six years old. My mom and I argued about it every single year, and she was very tired of making witch costumes.”
When Nicks got to the fourth grade, her mother made her a yellow Martha Washington costume. But Nicks wouldn’t budge. She dyed it black, and Barbara gave up.
Later, after Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, she carried that witchy vibe with her. Whenever the group performed “Rhiannon,” Nicks would introduce it, saying, “This is a song about an old Welsh witch.”
After some time, Nicks started getting letters from fans saying she was a witch. They terrified her. “In the beginning of my career, the whole idea that some wacky, creepy people were writing, ‘You’re a witch, you’re a witch!’ was so arresting,” she told the LA Times. “And there I am like, ‘No, I’m not! I just wear black because it makes me look thinner, you idiots.'”
Nicks tried wearing lighter clothes to dispel the myth, but she never dropped the vibe.
Nicks dreamed of giving her fans a ‘fairy tale’ sort of like ‘The Muppets’
In a 1982 interview, High Times asked Nicks where her fascination with witches came from. “Did you dream about things like that when you were a little girl?” they asked. Nicks reiterated that she’s not a witch. However, she often dreamed of giving her fans a “fairy tale.” Only she relates her version of a fairy tale to The Muppets.
“I dreamed only about giving a little fairy tale to people,” Nicks said. “That’s what the outfit is on my album cover, that’s what that bird is. (Reaches for the album jacket.) That bird belongs to my brother, that’s the only reason I could work with a wild animal. That’s Max on the front.
“With my clothes and the things that I wear, I have so much fun with them. I was talking to a lady today and were talking about dress-up and about how much fun dress-up used to be. And if there was a trunk in the attic, I was in it looking. And I would rather wear that drape than anything you could sell me from Bloomingdale’s.
“I don’t like all that stuff. I love the Muppets. Miss Piggy on the front of the TV Guide kills me with her portable TV, and Kermie in the back sitting, and with her little shoes. I just adore Miss Piggy to death. I collect marionettes and dolls so I have an incredible collection and I carry these things all over the world. They’re so real. See, that’s a fantasy.
“The Muppets are no different from my fantasy. My fantasy is giving a little bit of the fairy princess to all the people out there that maybe don’t have the Hans Christian Andersen books, and the Grimm’s fairy tales. If that’s the only thing I can do for them, well, that’s fine.”
Witches and witchcraft scare the singer
As High Times puts it, it’s hard to imagine Nicks as a type that “sits around and puts black spells on people.”
“I don’t do that,” she said. “That’s silly and stupid, and anyone that does that is making up their own character and has nothing to do with me. I love good witches. I like the good witch of the north, Glinda. Glinda is my friend, not the other one. And I don’t want them around.
“My love of that fantasy fairy-tale thing is the good part, and I’m a coward and I get very scared. I don’t go see any of those scary movies. I just watch old movies and good sad movies, but I don’t want to be scared and frightened.”
After Nicks released her solo debut, Bella Donna, which has the picture of her holding Max on the front, she told ET in 1983, “I do not believe in witchcraft as a natural philosophy at all. I just think it’s fun. And I love black clothes and I love moons and stars and Merlin hats and Mickey Mouse. But no, I do not believe in that side of it at all.
“I don’t like it all and I wish people would stop thinking about that, because I spent thousands of dollars on beautiful black clothes and had to stop wearing them for a long time, because a lot of people scared me.”
However Nicks views herself, the things she likes, and the world she’s created around herself; whether it’s a Muppet-like fantasy or not, fans will never stop loving her.
