(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 28 February 2026 17:15, UK
Stevie Nicks has practically been married to her music throughout her life.
Although everyone might like to talk about her many affairs with members of Fleetwood Mac and beyond, she has always stood by the fact that her true love was watching all of her songs come together whenever she gets up onstage. And if she was going to go down in history as one of the finest songwriters of her generation, she was going to have to let go of some of the most important people in her life along the way.
Then again, there was probably a good reason why she and Lindsey Buckingham needed a massive break from each other. Rumours was the sound of a toxic relationship on parade when looking at their individual songs, and even if Nicks tried to take the high road whenever she could, it didn’t make Buckingham’s biting lyrics hurt any less on songs like ‘Second Hand News’. But by the time she struck out on her own, she seemed to have moved on to much bigger and better things.
She had already been in high-profile relationships with people like Don Henley, but when she started her solo career on Bella Donna, she had some of the finest musicians working with her. Jimmy Iovine was already the person steering the ship, but when working with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nicks might as well have been introduced to the long-lost older brother that she never had.
But after a few years flying solo, she was smitten when she started dating Joe Walsh. He was already one of the most lovable guitarists in classic rock, and if someone has the power to make Eagles haters sing along to ‘Hotel California’, he had to be doing something right. When Nicks got to see the person that he was underneath it all, she knew that she could never love anyone the same way when writing tunes like ‘Has Anyone Ever Written A Song For You’.
Everything seemed like it would be perfect, but there were a lot more rough edges in their relationship than they realised. Both of them were still heavy drug abusers, and even though they complemented each other in just the right way from time to time, Nicks felt that one of them was going to end up six feet under if they kept up their relationship for the rest of their lives.
Neither of them wanted to break things off as quickly as they did, but Nicks felt that it was the only way for her to survive, saying, “I was passionately in love with Joe Walsh, for example. He was very rich, very famous, a huge rock star. He would come to my house and my friends would be over, and he would say, ‘I don’t know these people, get them out.’ So I would throw them all out. He just wanted to be with me. It was flattering and irritating in equal parts. I could never have been married to Joe, but we were all so high at that point. Joe and I were doing so much cocaine, we were sure we were going to die.”
Even if they remained great friends, it was probably for the best that they went their separate ways as well. Walsh was already being pressured into getting sober by Eagles, and while Nicks eventually lost a few years to drugs like Klonopin, she was grateful to make it to the other side and still be able to have a laugh with her old friend without having to shove anything up their noses anymore.
That kind of love affair is definitely intoxicating at the start of any relationship, but Nicks knew all too well that it was way too good for it to last very long. It would have been the perfect rock and roll couple for a few years, but even if the love didn’t last, the songs were going to preserve that moment in time forever.