Stevie Nicks has said that going through with her pregnancy in 1979 would have “destroyed” her career with Fleetwood Mac.
During a new interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, the 76-year-old singer-songwriter spoke about the inspiration behind her powerful new single ‘The Lighthouse’.
The song is a rallying cry for women to reclaim their reproductive healthcare rights in the US and beyond, and was written following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
Nicks was asked why she had decided to “take the risk” of weighing into the abortion debate. She responded: “Because everybody kept saying, ‘Well, somebody has to do something. Somebody has to say something’.
“And I’m like, ‘Well, I have a platform. I tell a good story. So maybe I should try to do something’. I was also there. I was, ‘been there, done that’.”
She went on to open up about finding out she was pregnant with Don Henley’s baby, but said becoming a mother would have been difficult due to her lifestyle as a touring musician.
“In my younger life, I’d already decided I didn’t want to have somebody have their feelings hurt all the time, and [they’d be] like, ‘When are you comin’ back?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll be back when I get back’, you know?” Nicks said.
“And not even having any idea how big that Fleetwood Mac was going to get in the future, you know?”
Continuing with her “super personal” story, Nicks said: “I got pregnant. And it was like, ‘Why? I have an IUD. I am totally protected. I have a great gynaecologist. How come this has happened? What the heck?!’
“And I’m like, ‘This can’t be happening!’ Fleetwood Mac is three years in. And it’s big. And we’re going into our third album. It was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no, no’. It would have destroyed Fleetwood Mac.”
She reiterated that this would have “absolutely” been the case for “many reasons”, adding: “I would’ve, like, tried my best to get through, you know, being in the studio every single day expecting a child.
“But mostly, having a child with Don Henley would not have gone over big in Fleetwood Mac, with Lindsey [Buckingham] and me – we had been broken up for two or three years. It would’ve been a nightmare scenario for me to live through.”
You can watch the full video interview above.
In another recent interview, Nicks reflected on her tumultuous relationship with her ex-partner and former bandmate Buckingham – saying that she had given him “more than 300million chances”.
The guitarist was fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018 after his working relationship with Nicks broke down. He was replaced by Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers and Neil Finn of Crowded House.
Earlier this year, Nicks said there was “no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together” without Christine McVie – who died in 2022 aged 79. “Without her, it just couldn’t work,” she reasoned.
In a previous interview, Nicks explained that there was “no reason to” continue the band. She called McVie her “best friend” and “musical soul mate”. “When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this,” the singer continued.
Nicks played a headline solo concert at London’s BST Hyde Park 2024 in July, where she was joined by Harry Styles. She also performed in Manchester, Dublin and Glasgow as part of her 2024 UK and Ireland tour.
In other news, Stevie Nicks recently performed ‘The Lighthouse’ and ‘Edge Of Seventeen’ on Saturday Night Live – marking her first appearance on the show in 41 years.