Stevie Nicks Said She Wanted to ‘Go Down’ Like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Stevie Nicks thought she would follow in the footsteps of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. She held great admiration for both as musicians, but she also predicted that her drug use would eventually end her life. She said that, on some level, she wanted this to happen. Eventually, though, she realized that was not the path she wanted for herself.
Stevie Nicks once glamorized a lifestyle like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
After joining Fleetwood Mac, Nicks threw herself into a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. The group used so much cocaine that a sound engineer once joked that they’d snorted seven miles of it. Mick Fleetwood said it didn’t sound too far off to him.
“We could sit here and I go into some war story about snorting seven miles of cocaine,” he told The Sun. “I guess we figured we did X amount a day, and then some goofball got out a calculator and came up with that seven miles figure and said, ‘Isn’t that funny?’ And it sort of is. But not in the context of where I want to end up.”
To Nicks, it seemed she was following in the footsteps of some of her musical heroes, Hendrix and Joplin. Both died of overdoses.
“I made many mistakes along the way, you see, because I did watch them from a close, close view,” she said in an interview. “Through the looking glass I saw them and how they went down. And so there was a part of me that said, ‘I want to go down with them also,’ and another part of me that said, ‘Isn’t it too bad that Jimi Hendrix isn’t still here? What would he be doing now? Isn’t it really very sad that Janis Joplin is not still here?'”
Nicks said she found it tragic that these artists, and others, couldn’t produce more meaningful work. She didn’t want one of her fans or another artist to think the same thing about her.
“That’s what really turned me around to say, well, maybe we better be in a little more control here. Because I would be very sad if some 25-year-old lady rock ‘n’ roll singer in 10 years said, ‘I wish Stevie Nicks had just thought about it a little more carefully and been around to maybe do another Complete Works of Stevie Nicks so that I would have it.’ And that’s kind of what stopped me and made me really look at the world through clear eyes.”
Stevie Nicks saw Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin as early influences
Part of the reason why Nicks wanted to follow in the footsteps of Joplin and Hendrix was that she had admired them since before she was famous. In her pre-Fleetwood Mac band Fritz, Nicks opened for both musicians. During one performance, Joplin shouted Fritz off the stage, which Nicks described as one of the biggest honors of her life.
Similarly, she felt extremely honored when Hendrix dedicated a song to her during a performance. She said he became a musical inspiration to her after watching him perform.
The Fleetwood Mac singer has been sober for years
After going to rehab for her cocaine use, then her Klonopin usage, Nicks has stopped using all drugs and alcohol. She said one of the biggest surprises with her sobriety is that she still enjoys performing.
“I’m past that, you know. I’m 65 years old,” she told Vulture in 2013. “And I don’t drink. I quit smoking cigarettes. I don’t do any recreational drugs. And I’m really pretty happy. Sometimes I’m up onstage and I’m going, ‘I can’t really believe you are actually up here, sober as a judge, having a great time.'”
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
