Next month marks six years since the world lost one of the greatest musicians ever. Prince, the iconic artist, was found dead at his Paisley Park home in Minneapolis in April 2016. He was 57 years old.
Throughout his life, Prince was a prolific singer, songwriter, and musician who collaborated with many stars. One of those stars was Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, who recently shared some touching memories about her relationship with Prince and how he once warned her about her drug use. Stevie and Prince worked together in the early ’80s, and their musical collaboration turned into a “really amazing relationship.” Stevie, now 73, recalled feeling flattered when Prince seemed to be interested in her romantically.
“Prince and I were just friends,” Nicks told Harper’s Bazaar. “I think he would have been happy to have had a relationship.” Stevie remembered a time when she was on her honeymoon with her now ex-husband Kim Anderson. She heard Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” on the radio and was instantly inspired.
“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I’m singing along, going, ‘Stand back!’” Nicks recalled on Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. “I’m like, ‘Kim, pull over! We need to buy a tape recorder because I need to record this.’ So we did – we careened off the freeway to find a radio or record shop, and we bought a little tape recorder.”
She spent that night working on a song that would become the lead single from her 1983 solo album “The Wild Heart.” The single, “Stand Back,” went on to reach No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Top 100. After writing “Stand Back,” Nicks asked to meet with Prince. Just 20 minutes later, they met for the first time in a studio in Los Angeles. Prince listened to her song, inspired by his “Little Red Corvette,” and immediately went over to the keyboard to add his own parts. Then he got up, gave her a hug, and left.
“He spoiled me for every band I’ve ever had because nobody can exactly re-create – not even with two piano players – what Prince did all by his little self,” she said in the book “Rock Lives.”
Despite her admiration for Prince, Nicks avoided a romantic relationship with him because she valued their musical connection. “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.”
Interestingly, Prince’s song “When Doves Cry” was inspired by Nicks’ song “Edge of Seventeen.”
During their collaboration, Nicks was heavily into drugs. “The eighties were pretty bad drug years for me,” she told The New Yorker. “And Prince was not very into drugs. The fact that he ended up being on a lot of pain medication just blows my mind because he was so against it, and he gave me so many lectures about it.”
Nicks recalled how Prince warned her about her drug use. “I’d talk to him every once in a while on the phone, and we’d talk for hours, and he’d go, ‘You gotta be careful, Stevie.’ And I’d go, ‘I know, I know.’”
After Prince’s death, Nicks expressed her sadness, saying, “My sadness is that he did die of an accidental drug overdose. He’s up there looking down, saying to me, ‘Sweetie, I can’t believe it happened either.’”
Prince was right to worry, as Nicks ended up in rehab twice. She checked into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986 for cocaine addiction and another hospital in 1993 for an addiction to Klonopin, a drug she said she was over-prescribed.
In 1986, a conversation with a plastic surgeon about her nose was a turning point. The doctor told her she had burned a coin-sized hole in her nose from cocaine abuse.
“I said, ‘What do you think about my nose?’” Nicks recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, I think the next time you do a hit of cocaine, you could drop dead.’”
After that conversation, Nicks decided to check into the Betty Ford Clinic. That decision helped turn her life around and likely saved her career and her life.
Thank goodness she had a conversation that set her on the right path. It sounds like it came at just the right time.
It is, however, a tragedy that Prince couldn’t escape the harmful opioids he was on. Nicks’ story highlights his musical genius and generosity.
He will always be remembered as a musical legend, missed by millions.
