Next month will mark six years since the world lost one of the greatest musicians of his time. Prince was found dead at his Paisley Park home in Minneapolis, in April 2016; he was 57 years old.
During his life, he wasn’t just one of the most prolific singer-songwriters and musicians but also collaborated with many stars.
One such star was Fleetwood Mac’s very own Stevie Nicks, who recently opened up about their relationship, saying the iconic star once warned her about her drug use.
The two worked together in the early 80s, and their musical collaboration turned into a “a really amazing relationship.” At one point, the now 73-year-old said she was flattered to find he was “putting the moves on her.”
“Prince and I were just friends,” Nicks told Harper’s Bazaar. “I think he would have been happy to have had a relationship.”
While Nicks was on her way to her honeymoon with now ex-husband Kim Anderson, she heard Prince‘s “Little Red Corvette” and immediately started creating her own version.
“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I’m singing along, going, ‘Stand back!’” Nicks recalled to Uncle Joe Benson on the 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.’ And so we do – we careen off the freeway to find a radio, record shop or something, and we go in and we buy a little tape recorder.”
She spent the night working on a song that would end up becoming the lead single from Nicks’ 1983 solo album “The Wild Heart” and the single went to No. 5 in the U.S. Billboard Top 100.
After writing her song “Stand Back” she asked for a meeting with Prince, and 20 minutes later, they were introduced to each other for the first time in a studio in Los Angeles.
Nicks said Prince listened to her song, inspired by his “Little Red Corvette” classic, and went straight over to the keyboard to start adding his own parts.
He then 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.”
Nicks said as much as she admired Prince, she avoided a romantic relationship with him because she appreciated 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.”
In turn, Prince’s “When Doves Cry” was inspired by Nicks’ song “Edge of Seventeen.”
The Fleetwood Mac star said that she was heavily into drugs when she collaborated with Prince.
“The eighties were pretty bad drug years for me,” Stevie Nicks told The New Yorker. “And Prince was not very into drugs. And 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.”
The “Gypsy” singer said 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.’”
Following his death, Nicks said, “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.’”
It seems Prince was right to be worried at the time as Nicks ended up in rehab twice. The singer checked into the Betty Ford clinic in 1986 for her cocaine addiction and then went to another hospital in 1993 for her addiction to Klonopin, which Nicks said she was over-prescribed.
But in 1986, Nicks spoke to a plastic surgeon about her nose. The doctor told her she had burned a coin-sized hole in her nose from her cocaine abuse.
“I asked, ‘What do you think about my nose?’” the singer recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, I think the next time you do a hit of cocaine, you could drop dead.’”
Following her conversation with the doctor, Nicks decided to check into the Betty Ford clinic. The move helped turn her life around and arguably 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 get off the harmful opioids that he was on. Nicks’ story just confirms the musical genius he really was and how generous he was with his talent.
He will always be a musical legend, missed by millions.
