Celebrity

Stevie Nicks Talks to Prince When She’s Nervous

Stevie Nicks once had a close relationship with Prince. She says she sometimes gets nervous before a performance, so she relies on the late singer's presence to give her a confidence boost.

by Sheiresa Ngo

Published on April 21, 2022

3 min read

Stevie Nicks never wanted a solo career

Prince smiles and holds a guitar during the Purple Rain tour.

Prince during the Purple Rain tour | Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

During an interview with Rolling Stone, Nicks discusses her career and what it means to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (once as part of the band Fleetwood Mac and once as a solo artist). Although Nicks is thrilled with the success of her solo career, she says she never intended to go solo. She reveals she had so many songs that she needed another outlet for them. Nicks says she was writing so much that all she could do before going solo was put them in her “trunk” of songs.

“My solo career is much more girlie,” says Nicks. “It’s still a hard rock band — but it’s much more girlie-girl than Fleetwood Mac is. I never wanted a solo career — I always wanted to be just in a band. But I just had so many songs! Because when you’re in a band with three prolific writers, you get two or three songs per album — maybe four. But I was writing all the time, so they just went into my Gothic trunk of lost songs.”

Stevie Nicks talks to Prince when she gets nervous

Stevie Nicks wears a long, black outfit while speaking into a microphone during a concert.

Stevie Nicks | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Nicks admits she sometimes gets nervous when she’s about to perform. Many entertainers deal with some level of anxiety (Betty White thought her co-stars would “deck” her because she would get so nervous) surrounding a performance, and she’s no different. Nicks tells Rolling Stone she feels like Prince, who died in 2016, is still with her. They had a very close friendship. Nicks quiets her nerves by speaking to him.

“I feel like Prince is with me,” says Nicks. “When I’m nervous, I’ll talk to Prince. In my solo act, when I do ‘Moonlight,’ I wear this white wolfy coat — I put this coat on, and I try to transform into a Dire Wolf from Game of Thrones. And before I go on, I always say, ‘Walk with me, Prince.’”

Stevie Nicks went years without talking to Prince

Nicks didn’t always maintain communication with Prince. She says they had a falling out and didn’t speak to each other for years. Nicks tells Details she went to the premiere of Prince’s 1984 movie Purple Rain. During one scene, Prince’s character slaps Apollonia Kotero’s character across the face. This scene disturbed Nick so much that she got up, went to the bathroom, and stayed there for the rest of the movie.

“I was at the premiere of Purple Rain, and in the scene where he slaps Apollonia, I freaked and had to go sit in the bathroom,” says Nicks during her 1994 Details interview (via The N icks Fix). “Afterward, I went back to see him, and when he asked why I’d left, I had to tell him, ‘When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain.’ He looked at me like it just killed him.”

Nicks says her critique of that scene hurt Prince, and they stopped talking to each other. Prince told her there was a reason for the slap. When she saw the entire movie later, she realized he was right. Nicks regrets not calling him to mend fences.

“My one regret with him is that I did not call him up one day and say, ‘Listen, I’m just coming in, I’m gonna fly in and come over to Paisley Park and just hang out with you for two days. Because I just would love to see you,’” Nicks tells The New Yorker. “And that’s what I always tell people. Remember, every single day of your life, the people you love could be gone tomorrow.”

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