Stevie Nicks Said Fleetwood Mac Once Filthied a Hotel Room to Let off Steam: ‘It Looked Like a Farmyard’
Stevie Nicks and the rest of Fleetwood Mac spent a lot of their time engaged in bitter fights, but they also had fun together. She shared that while touring, they would pull pranks on managers, bandmates, and anyone else who was with them. According to Nicks, though, the jokes were more well-thought-out than what one might expect. She detailed the types of pranks they used to pull when they were together.
Stevie Nicks and the other members of Fleetwood Mac spent a good deal of time fighting
When Nicks first joined Fleetwood Mac, the band was primarily composed of couples. She and her longtime boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham joined together, playing alongside married couple John and Christine McVie. Mick Fleetwood was married, though not to anyone in the group.
By the time the band was writing and recording Nicks’ second album with the group, Rumours, every band member was single, each having gone through messy splits. Despite the turbulent atmosphere, Nicks said that she was still grateful to be a part of the group.
“Sometimes I think that not even the bubbliest, wildest soap opera could compare with being in Fleetwood Mac,” she told Record Mirror in 1989, per The Nicks Fix. “We’ve done a lot of laughing and a lot of bleeding in the band and I don’t think there are another group of people I could work with. There’s such a chemistry and a feeling of love and respect between us.”
She shared the kind of pranks they used to play on each other
When the band members were not embroiled in relationship drama and arguments over music, they enjoyed their time together.
“Oh yeah, we’ve had some wonderful, crazy times,” she said. “But I think we’ve always been too sophisticated to become your average hotel wrecking band.”
She explained that they often played pranks while touring.
“We always put a bit of thought into any of the pranks we got up to,” she shared. “I remember we played the last night of a tour in Hawaii and somebody put chickens in the road manager’s room. It looked like a farmyard because somebody had put straw all over the place as well. And then we had this terrific fight with chocolate cream cakes. I was wearing a white chiffon outfit and my beautiful white suede boots. I never did get the muck properly cleaned off.”
Their lives were so centered around music that they needed to find ways to relax.
“We led a high pressure existence, we spent most of our lives on the road for a long time,” she said. “We had to let off steam.”
The members of Fleetwood Mac once teased Stevie Nicks when she hurt her eyes
Nicks wasn’t always the one playing pranks, though. On one occasion, she was the target of the band’s jokes. Nicks forgot to remove her contacts during a 48-hour party, leaving her corneas damaged. For a short period, her vision was impaired enough that she required help doing day-to-day tasks. Her bandmates took advantage of this.
“They dressed her in outrageous outfits — ‘You look very pretty today,’ we’d all grin — they put food and drink just out of her reach and set booby traps,” Buckingham’s then-girlfriend Carol Ann Harris said, per the book Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams & Rumors by Zoë Howe. “Very childish, but we laughed like idiots.”
