Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer and songwriter. Nicks is best known for her work as a songwriter and vocalist with Fleetwood Mac, and also for her chart-topping solo career. She is known for her distinctive voice, mystical stage persona and poetic, symbolic lyrics. Collectively, her work both as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist has produced over forty top 50 hits and sold over 140 million records, making her one of the best-selling music acts of all time with Fleetwood Mac. She is the only woman to have been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and as a solo artist in 2019.
With the Goya guitar that she received for her 16th birthday, Nicks wrote her first song, "I've Loved and I've Lost, and I'm Sad But Not Blue". While attending Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, she joined her first band, the Changing Times, a folk rock group focused on vocal harmonies. Nicks met Lindsey Buckingham, during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. He was in a psychedelic rock band, Fritz, but two of its musicians were leaving for college. He asked Nicks in mid-1967 to replace the lead singer, guitarist Jody Moreing. For the next three years, Fritz was composed of Nicks on lead vocals, Buckingham on bass and vocals, Brian Kane on lead guitar, Javier Pacheco on keyboards, and Bob Aguirre on drums. Pacheco was the main songwriter, with a psychedelic bent, but Nicks's compositions brought a country rock flair. Fritz became popular as a live act when it opened for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin from 1968 until 1970.
After Fritz disbanded in 1972, Nicks and Buckingham continued to write as a duo, recording demo tapes at night in Daly City on a one-inch, four-track Ampex tape machine Buckingham kept at the coffee-roasting plant belonging to his father, Morris. They secured a deal with Polydor Records, and released the album Buckingham Nicks in 1973. The album was not a commercial success, despite the live shows that Nicks and Buckingham performed together to support it, and Polydor dropped the pair. On December 31, 1974, Fleetwood called Buckingham to ask him to replace Welch, but Buckingham insisted that Nicks and he were "a package deal". A few days later, Nicks and Buckingham discussed the offer over dinner with Fleetwood and the McVies. The group decided that incorporating the pair would improve Fleetwood Mac, making the British band into an Anglo-American one. The first rehearsals confirmed this feeling, with the harmonies of the newcomers adding a pop accessibility to the hard rock. Buckingham Nicks was called to perform three sold-out dates in Birmingham, Alabama – the one area in which their album had seen success. During these final performances as Buckingham Nicks, the duo told their fans that they had joined Fleetwood Mac.
In 1975, Fleetwood Mac achieved worldwide success with the album Fleetwood Mac. Nicks's "Rhiannon", which appeared on the album, was eventually voted one of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. Her live performances of the song throughout the decade began to take on a theatrical intensity not present on the album's single. Also included on the album was "Landslide", which achieved over three million airplays and spawned multiple cover versions. The band began recording their follow-up album, Rumours, in early 1976 and continued until late in the year. Among Nicks's contributions to Rumours was "Dreams", which became the band's only Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit single. Nicks had also written and recorded the song "Silver Springs", but it was not included on the album because the early versions of the song ran too long, the album was getting to be longer than the producer's target of 22 minutes per side, and the band was also concerned that the album had too many slow songs. "Silver Springs" was released as a B-side of the "Go Your Own Way" single. Copies of the single eventually became collectors' items among fans of Fleetwood Mac.
After the success of the Rumours album and tour in 1977 to 1978, Fleetwood Mac began recording their third album with Buckingham and Nicks, Tusk, in the spring of 1978. By 1978, Nicks had amassed a large backlog of songs dating back to her Buckingham Nicks days that she had been unable to record and release with Fleetwood Mac because of the constraint of having to accommodate three songwriters on each album. Nicks wrote and recorded demos for a solo project during Tusk sessions in 1979 and the Tusk world tour of 1979–80. Nicks, Danny Goldberg, and Paul Fishkin founded Modern Records to record and release Nicks's material. Nicks recorded the hit duets "Whenever I Call You Friend" with Kenny Loggins in 1978, and "Gold" with John Stewart in 1979. Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was released on October 19, 1979. During 1981, Nicks made occasional guest appearances with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on their Hard Promises tour. Nicks's first solo album, Bella Donna, was released on July 27, 1981, to critical and commercial acclaim, reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart, with four singles making the Billboard Hot 100, and Rolling Stone deeming her "the Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll". Nicks released her second solo album, The Wild Heart, on June 10, 1983. The album went double platinum, reached number five on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and featured three hit singles. She has released seven more solo studio albums, with her most recent, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, released in October 2014.
