Stevie Nicks on How John Lennon’s Death Terrified Her and Shook up the Music Industry

In the genre’s heyday, rock stars lived by a hedonistic oath. They were enviable for their carefree mentalities and commitment to living life on the edge. So what happens when something calls that kind of lifestyle into question? What happens when rock stars are forced to think about their safety and, moreover, the inevitable? Well for Stevie Nicks, a moment like that did happen. In the wake of John Lennon’s death, Nicks remembers feeling terrified that something similar could happen to her. In fact, she felt it shook up the rock community as a whole.

Read more about Nicks’ reaction to the Beatle’s death, below.

[RELATED: Why a Psychologist Told Stevie Nicks Joining Fleetwood Mac Was “The Saddest Day of Your Life”]

Stevie Nicks on How John Lennon’s Death Terrified Her and Shook up the Music Industry

Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman. His death came as a shock to fans–including Nicks. “If you were the president of the United States, maybe, but to just be a music person, albeit a Beatle,” Nicks once said of the situation.

Nicks wasn’t only mourning her fellow musician, but she was also terrified of meeting the same fate.

She continued, “To be shot and killed in front of your apartment, when you had a wife and two kids. That was so unacceptable to all of us in our community. That was a very scary and sad moment for all of us in the rock and roll business.”

“It scared us all to death that some idiot could be so deranged that he would wait outside your apartment building, never having known you, and shoot you dead,” she continued elsewhere.

Nicks is a longtime fan of Lennon. One of her most famous tracks, “Edge of Seventeen,” was written in the aftermath of Lennon’s death. It was inspired by her uncle as well as the late Beatle.

“It became a song about violent death, which was very scary to me because at that point no one in my family had died,” Nicks once said of the song. “To me, the white-winged dove was for John Lennon the dove of peace, and for my uncle, it was the white-winged dove who lives in the saguaro cactus—that’s how I found out about the white-winged dove, and it does make a sound like ‘whooo, whooo, whooo.’ I read that somewhere in Phoenix and thought I would use that in this song.”

Revisit “Edge of Seventeen,” below.

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