In excerpts from the new biography Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams and Rumours, the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman revealed that at one point her cocaine use was so bad that it had burned a hole the size of a a dime in her nose. Rumors quickly spread she had her assistants administer the drug through her rear end.
“There was no way to get off the white horse, and I didn’t want to,” Nicks said, in excerpts provided by the Daily Mail.
The excerpts reveal a fascinating portrait of the singer, who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and quickly shot to superstardom with albums like the groundbreaking Rumours.
According to the book, Nicks quickly got involved in drugs after joining the band, becoming addicted to cocaine, Quaaludes, alcohol, and cigarettes, which caused her to faint and fall down on stage. The singer reportedly wore a pendant filled with cocaine around her neck so she would never have to be without the drug.
Nicks related to her biographer, Zoe Howe, that to avoid body searches during one European tour, the band hired a luxurious private train that had once belonged to Hitler, including an onboard attendant who had once served the leader of the Nazis.
Nicks eventually checked into the Betty Ford Center and successfully beat her cocaine addiction, but she became addicted to the anxiety medication Klonopin in its place, an addiction that lasted an additional nine years.
“I believe there have been angels with me constantly through these last twenty years, or I wouldn’t be alive,” Nicks says in the book.
The biography also details Nicks’ relationships with several of her bandmates, including childhood sweetheart Lindsay Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, and Eagles’ guitarists Don Henley and Joe Walsh.
“There was no other man in the world for me, and it’s the same today,” Nicks said of Walsh, who left her after believing one of them would die of a drug overdose if they remained together. “There was nothing more important than Joe Walsh, not my music, not my songs, not anything.”
“We were a couple on the way to hell,” Nicks said of the drug addiction that consumed the pair. “It took me a long, long time to get over it.”
Fleetwood Mac is currently in the middle of an extensive North American tour, called “On With the Show.” The band will finish up the East Coast leg of the tour this weekend before heading to the Midwest and West Coast this spring.