Stevie Nicks Says Her Abortion Is Why Fleetwood Mac Existed
Stevie Nicks has been part of the rock music scene since the late 1960s. As one of the lead singers in Fleetwood Mac, she gained a huge fan following and saw her career quickly take off. She has had tremendous success, winning two Grammy awards and becoming the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.
Nicks once said Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have existed if she didn’t get an abortion. Here’s what the singer shared about her choice to have an abortion and why she thinks it had an impact on the band’s future.
Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac
Nicks, and her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975. Buckingham told band founder Mick Fleetwood he had to accept Nicks into the band if he was going to hire him as the new lead guitarist. He made it clear he and Nicks were a package deal.
The first song Nicks performed with the band was “Rhiannon.” In Gold Dust Woman, author Stephen Davis says the song “changed everything” for Fleetwood Mac. The band had some success before Nicks and Buckingham joined, but they gained even more attention after their arrival. Davis says this song “exploded like a radio grenade” after it was released in February 1976.
Stevie Nicks’ abortion
Nicks tells The Guardian Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have existed if she didn’t get an abortion. The singer reveals she had an abortion in 1979 while she was dating The Eagles’ Don Henley. At the time, Fleetwood Mac was wildly successful. Nicks believes she couldn’t have had a child during this time in her career because of her hectic schedule. She also admits she was on drugs.
“If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks tells the publication. “There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs; I was doing a lot of drugs. I would have had to walk away.”
Nicks believed the music she produced with Fleetwood Mac would bring healing to the world. She wanted to make her fans happy and help them live their best lives.
“And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy,” says Nicks. “And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.”
During an interview with Billboard, Nicks reflects on that time in her life. She tells the publication that if she and Henley had gotten married and had a girl, she would have named their baby Sara.
Stevie Nicks says singing is her life
Nicks tells The Guardian she would die without music in her life. She says performing makes her feel alive. “It would kill me,” says Nicks. “It isn’t just singing; it’s that I would never perform again, that I would never dance across the stages of the world again. I’m not, at 72 years old, willing to give up my career.”
Follow Sheiresa Ngo on Twitter.
