An Anthology of Things I Know About Stevie Nicks

I have not always liked Stevie Nicks, and I wouldn't blame anyone for suspecting that I bear her animosity to this day. For years now, I've been writing what amount to Bill Brasky jokes about her, inserting her into situations wherever something stupid seems like it would be funnier if a proper name were attached. I need to describe someone rabidly beating a monoglot au pair? Sure, have Stevie Nicks do it with a WWE Championship belt. Someone's driving a Smart Car through a co-op and screaming, "WE WON THE WAR SO WE COULD EAT STEAK"? Make it Stevie again. Great.

All of this is assuredly unfair to her, since of course Stevie Nicks has done nothing to me short of getting "Gold Dust Woman" stuck in my head in inappropriate venues, like funerals. But, for whatever reason, I started telling jokes about her in real life (and later on Twitter) years ago. Only lately, working on a longer piece about Fleetwood Mac, did I start to wonder why.

Which, of course, made Vulture's June publication of a profile of Stevie Nicks feel just about perfect. Because, on top of being interesting in its own right, it confirmed almost every impulse to make up absurd factoids about Stevie Nicks with paragraph after paragraph celebrating everything sui generis about her you could possibly imagine.

For example, culled from just that article:

In Your Dreams has two songs referencing vampires, including "Moonlight," inspired by a tear-filled viewing of The Twilight Saga: New Moon...

Her look...has influenced fashion designers from Anna Sui to somebody's brother's girlfriend who gave her an organically dyed silk poncho during tour rehearsals because Nicks had inspired her to go into fashion... A woman in the U.K. named Johanna Pieterman paints Celtic-style portraits of Nicks with your spirit animal of choice (usually an owl, wolf, stallion, or unicorn)...

She communicates with her fans by handwritten letters that Johnston [an assistant] scans and uploads to the Internet. She hasn't had a driver’s license since 1978 ("Where would I go by myself?") and is only reachable by phone through landline or Johnston. I was with them once when Johnston's cell phone rang; Nicks harmonized with the ringtone...

There are Buddhas everywhere. She's not a believer, she says, "but I probably will be someday."

Above her bathtub is a sign reading "DON'T PISS OFF THE FAIRIES."

The article is an embarrassment of Stevie Nicksness, and the first thing it made me do was go through my Twitter archive and the Mr. Destructo Facebook page and find every Stevie Nicks factoid published there in the last few years. I realize that this might seem silly to you, but I feel very strongly about sharing all of it. Thank you.