Stevie Nicks Shared the Best Lessons She Learned From Her Parents
Stevie Nicks was close to her parents, writing songs about her family members and working to support them. She shared that their lessons have helped her enjoy such long-lasting success. Nicks revealed the best lessons that her parents gave her about her life in the music industry, despite them not being a part of it.
Stevie Nicks said her parents supported her songwriting
When Nicks was in high school, her boyfriend left her for his ex, one of Nicks’ good friends. Though she knew they didn’t purposefully try to hurt her, she was heartbroken by their relationship. She channeled the emotion into songwriting.
“I finished that song, hysterically crying. And I was hooked,” she said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis. “When I played my own song later that night, I knew — from that second on — that I was not going to sing a lot of other people’s songs. I was going to write my own. From that day forward, when I was in my room playing my guitar, nobody would come in without knocking, nobody disturbed me.”
Her parents recognized how important songwriting was to her.
“They even let me miss dinner if necessary, it was that important to me,” she explained. “They could hear that I was working, at sixteen years old, and they would leave me alone.”
She shared the vital lessons that she learned from her parents
When Nicks found monumental success, she said she was grateful that her parents provided her with a foundation of support.
“I think my mom and my dad both knew that we were going to make it,” she told The New Yorker. “There are probably a lot of really brilliant artistic people out there who did not get that kind of support from their parents, so therefore didn’t do it.”
She shared that she learned how to navigate success from her parents.
“I learned a lot from my dad,” she said. “My dad ended up being the C.E.O. of Armour, Greyhound, and Dial. That’s meat, buses, and soap, but so many other things. I watched my dad carry his team all over to where we went — to Texas, to Utah, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Chicago. I watched him be an amazing host, and I watched him know everybody’s name. And I watched him be really loving to all the people that he worked with. And I learned that from him.”
She also learned from her mother, who Nicks described as a “serious feminist” who encouraged independence.
“From my mom I just learned to never back down. Or, if you were backing down, to back down so subtly that nobody really realized that you were backing down,” she explained. “She taught me how to maneuver through life without people really knowing that I was so clever — so that I was just moving the chess pieces as I went. And nobody really knew that, but I was.”
Stevie Nicks shared that she still feels connected to her mother
Nicks’ parents have died, but she shared that she still feels a distinct connection to her mother.
“When my mom died, on the twenty-eighth of December, 2011, I started noticing that I would be looking for stuff, like a specific piece of jewelry,” she shared. “I just looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find it. And then I would say, like, ‘O.K., Mom, where is it?’ And I swear to god, I would turn around and put my hand down and there it would be right under my fingers.”
Nicks said she also has a crystal, ship-shaped chandelier that she shines a light on to watch the reflection. After her mother’s death, Nicks noticed one crystal reflection in particular. She felt that it was a ship belonging to her mother.
“And, to this day, whenever I go there and I turn that on, I just feel her come into that crystal, old-fashioned sailing ship and just let me know that she’s still there.”
