Stevie Nicks Went Years Not Talking to Prince After Her Words ‘Just Killed Him’
Stevie Nicks and Prince were friends, but they stopped talking after the premiere of his film, Purple Rain. Her reaction to one scene disappointed him so much that they went for years without speaking. She regretted losing this friendship, particularly because she eventually understood why the scene was included in the film.
Stevie Nicks doesn’t like controlling and domineering men
From a very early age, Nicks’ mother instilled a sense of independence in her.
“‘You are going to be an independent woman if it kills me,’” Nicks told The New Yorker her mother said. “‘Wherever you go, whatever you do, whether you’re a rock-and-roll star, or whether you’re the president of a company, or a lawyer, or whatever it is you decide to do, you are going to stand in the middle of a room full of men and you are going to be way ahead of them. They are never going to look down on you as a woman.’”
She shared that this made some later relationships difficult for her, particularly her tumultuous one with Lindsey Buckingham.
“From the very beginning, Lindsey was very controlling and very possessive,” she told Rolling Stone. “And after hearing all of the stories from my mother and how independent she was and how independent she made me, I was never very good with possessive people or with controlling people.”
She hurt Prince’s feelings with her reaction to a scene from ‘Purple Rain’
Nicks and Prince had a friendship that came screeching to a halt at the premiere of Purple Rain.
“When Purple Rain came out, I went to the première, and I watched up until the part where he slapped Apollonia [Kotero] across the face really hard,” she explained. “That definitely wasn’t the Prince that I knew, and that just freaked me out. I got up and I walked out and went into the really beautiful bathroom of the Chinese Theatre, and I just sat in there for the rest of the movie.”
At the afterparty, Prince asked Nicks where she’d gone.
“When he asked why I’d left, I had to tell him, ‘When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain,’” she told Details, per The Nicks Fix. “He looked at me like it just killed him. We’ve never spoken since. [sighs] It’s a shame, really … we were alike in so many ways.”
She gave the interview with Details in 1994, 10 years after the 1984 premiere of Purple Rain. She shared that this falling out was particularly regrettable because she eventually understood why the scene was a part of the movie.
“He said, ‘You left? If you had watched the end, the slap would’ve made sense to you. I was, like, fighting for my life during that part,’” Nicks said. “And then, over the next two years, I watched it and I understood what he meant. You know, there was a reason for it.”
Stevie Nicks believed that Prince wanted a relationship with her
Nicks believed that before they stopped speaking, Prince also wanted a romantic relationship with her.
“Prince and I were just friends,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I think he would have been happy to have had a relationship.”
She worried that any romance between them would ruin their friendship and any future chances of future musical collaboration.
“I really wanted a musical relationship, and I had smartened up, even then,” she explained. “You’ll break up and never speak again. But he wasn’t interested in just that.”
