The moment Stevie Nicks knew she would become famous
(Credits: Far Out / Ueli Frey / David Wainwright)
Shakespeare once wrote, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some are showered with greatness.” For many people, one or the other is true. Maybe they are born with talent but never break through, or maybe they develop slowly but surely over time and spend their lives climbing the ladder with greatness in tow. For some, greatness is showered upon them when a spark of fame seemingly hits them instantly. For Stevie Nicks, all three are true, and she knows it.
The typical eulogy or acceptance speech at an awards ceremony usually goes something like, “I never thought this would happen to me” or “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be here.” Usually the speech is modest, downplaying the artists’ enormous status by pretending it all came as a complete surprise. For many artists, it probably did. Some find themselves in the spotlight suddenly and unexpectedly, when projects they’ve been tinkering with in the background suddenly burst into the spotlight or become overnight sensations without them really trying or asking for it. Some genuinely don’t believe they’ll ever make it, and when they do, it’s a real shock.
But for Stevie Nicks, that wasn’t the case. Instead, she always knew she would make it. “I think I absolutely knew I was going to be famous,” she said Interview Magazine Sure. It may sound presumptuous or arrogant, but Nicks seemed to see the greatness in her from the start and never doubted that she would achieve something through it.
But her comforting knowledge that she was going to be famous didn’t come from a desperate desire like some reality TV contestants or one-hit wonders who are just waiting for their 15 minutes. Rather, it seemed to sit in her gut, like a feeling of total, secure self-confidence that grew out of her talent and her trust that her talent would always be noticed.
“I knew it when I wrote my first song about the first love of my life and sat there on my bed watching myself play it in the mirror with tears streaming down my face,” she recalls. “It was my 16th birthday – my mum and dad gave me my classic Goya guitar that day. I sat down and wrote this song,” she continued, with a title that could easily have fit on a Fleetwood Mac album.
That first song had already brought Nicks to tears. Whether it was the feeling of catharsis it gave her or a beautiful moment of realizing she had a talent for expressing her innermost feelings, the result was a firm belief that she would eventually do just that. “I just knew that was the only thing I could ever really do – write songs and sing them to people,” she said.
And she wasn’t the only one to notice. From then on, people around Nicks began to recognize that greatness, that spark, that talent. In high school, a group of other students asked her to join the band The Changing Times because they saw she had something special. Then she met Lindsey Buckingham, and the two formed a romantic and musical partnership that would change the course of her life. By the mid-1960s, Nicks was in Buckingham’s band, opening for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, still feeling justifiably that this was what she was born to do.
Her talent was so great that when she wanted to drop out of college to pursue music full-time, her father gave her his blessing – a rare occurrence in an industry built on teenage rebellion and upsetting parents.
Yet who could ever deny her early premonition, seeing the artist Nicks became and is today? Her youthful belief that she would become famous and spend her life writing and singing songs came true, to a degree she probably couldn’t have imagined herself, no matter how confident her self-confidence was.
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