After her ill-fated relationship with Lindsey Buckingham ended, Stevie Nicks had a number of other high-profile relationships. One of them was with Don Henley from The Eagles. Buckingham was reportedly most jealous of Nick’s relationship with Henley, probably because of his grand romantic gestures. The way he treated Nicks alarmed her Fleetwood Mac bandmates.
Don Henley and Stevie Nicks | Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Stevie Nicks avoided bringing her friends around with Fleetwood Mac
Following her split from Buckingham, Nicks knew jealousy would be an issue. Because of this, she avoided bringing new friends into the band.
“[Christine McVie and I] almost always had friends but they weren’t out because they were just being trampled on,” Nicks told the Guardian. “Having a guy with us and Lindsey staring at him all the time? Or that Christine lets a guy out and John just walks by and knocks him out? No, we both learned very early on that we would never take a friend out on the street because it would lead to arguments.”
McVie learned this the hard way when she began a relationship with Fleetwood Mac’s lighting director.
“When they found out I was meeting him, he was fired shortly after — because of that!” she said. “After that, I didn’t really take the boys out on the street.”
She said Don Henley’s behavior upset her bandmates
Not long after her split from Buckingham, Henley began expressing interest in Nicks. They spoke on the phone and their relationship deepened when Fleetwood Mac began opening for The Eagles. At one point, Fleetwood Mac Nicks’ John McVie and Mick Fleetwood pranked them by leaving a bouquet of roses and a note that read, “To Stevie: The best of my love – Tonight?” With love, Don.”
The prank angered Nicks, but the gesture wasn’t too far from Henley’s typical demeanor. When they first started dating, he used big romantic gestures to express his feelings for Nicks.
“Here’s one thing Don did that freaked my band out so much: We’re all in Miami,” she said, according to Stephen Davis’ book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks. “They record in the beautiful pink house they rent. It’s right on the water, totally romantic. Anyway, he sends a limousine driver to our hotel with a box of gifts for me, and they are delivered straight to the breakfast room, where everyone eats. There’s a stereo, some cool vinyl. There are incredible flowers and fruits, a beautiful display.”
Despite the display’s beauty, Nicks knew it wouldn’t go down well.
“The limousine driver puts all of this on the table and I’m like, ‘Oh please… please… this isn’t going to go over well,'” she said. “And they want to know who it’s from. And Lindsey is not happy.”
Moments like this reportedly made Buckingham more jealous of Henley than any of Nicks’ other friends.
Stevie Nicks had an abortion while dating Don Henley
Choosing not to have children, Nicks had an abortion while dating Henley. She doesn’t think Fleetwood Mac would have continued if she had had a child.
“If I hadn’t had that abortion, Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have existed, I’m pretty sure,” she told The Guardian. “I just couldn’t have had a kid back then if I worked as hard as we worked all the time. And there were a lot of drugs; I did a lot of drugs. I should have gone.”
She is happy that her abortion has allowed her to continue making music for decades to come.
“I knew the music we were going to bring to the world would heal the hearts of so many people and make people so happy,” she said. “And I was like, ‘You know what? It’s really important. There is no other band in the world that has two female lead singers and two male lead singers. That was my world task.”
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