Before Stevie Nicks began making a name for herself as one of the most iconic women in rock of the 1970s, women like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick had already done so for the previous decade. As a high schooler living in southern California, Nicks and her car radio got a front-row seat to the likes of Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, and Jimi Hendrix.
Nicks began performing in a band called Fritz with her partner, Lindsey Buckingham, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When Fritz was lucky enough to land an opening slot for more famous musicians coming through, Nicks found herself in the same rooms as these people she had heard so many times before. Her first encounter with Joplin was especially memorable.
Stevie Nicks Meets Janis Joplin For The First Time
By the time Stevie Nicks joined Fritz, Janis Joplin was well beyond her “cutting teeth” years. The “Piece of My Heart” singer had already made a name for herself with Big Brother & the Holding Company and was riding high on a successful solo career. Nicks and Joplin might have existed in the same West Coast scene of the late 1960s, but the two women were on two different rungs of the industry ladder. Simply put: Nicks had a lot to learn from Joplin. And one fateful night, she got the lesson of a lifetime.
“When I first saw Janis, she was very angry,” Nicks said in a 2011 interview with The Telegraph. “The first band had run over time, and she came on stage screaming, scared me to death. I was hiding behind the camps. She told them to get the you-know-what off her you-know-what stage. And they wrapped it up!” In a 2008 interview with Q, she was more blunt, recalling, “I didn’t know who she was because she wasn’t all dressed up. She was little, and she just looked crazy, and she was telling them to get the f*** off.”
Nicks continued to Q, “Thirty minutes later, on comes Janis, very different, feathers in her hair, fantastic bell bottoms, really high-heeled shoes and a top with little bell sleeves in silky, beautiful material and beads and wild, crazy curly hair. I was blown away by her. I learned more from her during that hour and a half—watching how she dealt with the crowd, how she paced herself, how she sang—than any hour and a half in my life.”
From One Woman In Music To Another
Stevie Nicks was still years away from joining Fleetwood Mac when she first met Janis Joplin. The “Me and Bobby McGee” singer tragically died at 27 in 1970, five years before Nicks and her partner, Lindsey Buckingham, would join the British blues band that would catapult them to international rock stardom. Before Nicks would become the chiffon-laden, tambourine-wielding rocker we know her as today, she had to take a few tumbles. Her tenure in Fritz didn’t last long. A folk-rock venture with Buckingham called Buckingham Nicks was a commercial flop, resulting in their dismissal from their label.
Through it all, Nicks guided her steps with the lessons she learned from Janis Joplin. In her 2011 Telegraph interview, Nicks described Joplin’s stage presence as “lots of attitude, arrogance, the crowd in the palm of her hand. She was not a beautiful woman but very attractive. I was very taken with her. From Janis, I learned that to make it as a female musician in a man’s world is gonna be tough, and you need to keep your head held high.”
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
