Stevie Nicks envisioned fame in 1973 letter to parents
Fleetwood Mac icon wrote from a Los Angeles studio about a Beverly Hills dream life; the note resurfaces with the Buckingham Nicks re-release.
Stevie Nicks, the singer whose work with Fleetwood Mac and later solo career cemented her as a defining figure in rock, imagined what fame would look like in a 1973 letter to her parents and brother. At the time she was in the thick of recording Buckingham Nicks with Lindsey Buckingham in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, a project that would help set the stage for her rise to superstardom.
The letter, written as Buckingham Nicks took shape, shows a young artist mixing ambition with humor. In the note she described being at the famous Sound City Recording Studio and venting about spending 12 hours a day listening to music, then outlining a future life in which she resides in a small but luxurious Beverly Hills home with a secluded pool, where she could sun in the nude and even joke about a hypothetical plastic surgery leg lift. She described much of the scene as peachy.
Buckingham Nicks' collaboration drew Mick Fleetwood's attention, who invited Buckingham to join his band; Buckingham urged that Nicks be included in the deal, setting in motion the Fleetwood Mac lineup that would dominate the rest of the decade. The group released Fleetwood Mac in 1975, which climbed to No. 1 and produced nine Top 10 hits, including Dreams and Rhiannon. Nicks would go on to score several Top 10 singles on her own in the years ahead.
Prolonged interest in the early project resurfaced with the Buckingham Nicks re-release. A billboard last summer on Sunset Boulevard advertised the cover art for the 1973 album by Nicks and Buckingham, a reminder of the duo's unlikely ascent from a Los Angeles studio to global superstardom. The newly public letter offers context for those early days and the way Nicks pictured fame long before the first major breakthrough.
As her career unfolded, Nicks became a defining voice of the era, with hits that endured for decades. The anecdote from the 1970s demonstrates how even future legends imagined their path to stardom in the margins of late-night studio work.
Source: HuffPost reported the letter and its context around the Buckingham Nicks re-release, citing Associated Press.