MUSIC
Stevie Nicks Once Told Katy Perry Not to Have 'Rivals' After Her Own Pact with Christine McVie
Stevie Nicks said she told Katy Perry that fan base rivalries were "bulls—"
By Rachel DeSantis
February 15, 2022 05:00 PM
Katy Perry, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie | CREDIT: ERIC MCCANDLESS VIA GETTY; GREGG DEGUIRE/WIREIMAGE; IAN WEST/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY
Stevie Nicks knows the importance of being confident in your standing as a woman in the male-dominated music industry.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer opened up in a new interview about her longstanding friendship with Christine McVie as the only women in Fleetwood Mac, and her advice to Katy Perry that reflected a pact she and McVie had made years earlier to support each other.
Nicks, 73, told Tavi Gevinson in a lengthy interview published in The New Yorker that she once ran into Perry, 34, at the Corinthia Hotel in London circa 2012, and was surprised to hear the singer ask about rivalries.
"She said, 'So Stevie, who are your rivals?' And I said, 'I don't have rivals.' And her big blue eyes got bigger and bluer," she recalled. "And I said, 'No Katy, I don't, and neither do you. You are Katy Perry, you're who you are, you do what you do and you're great at it. I'm Stevie Nicks, I do what I do and I'm great at it. We don't have rivals. That's just ridiculous.'"
According to Nicks, the "I Kissed a Girl" singer at first rebuffed the advice, name-dropping Taylor Swift, with whom she was rumored to have had some bad blood at the time.
"She said, 'Well, there's like, the Taylor Swift army and there's like, the Katy army and there's like—' And I was like, 'That's just bulls—,'" Nicks recalled. "'You have to just walk away from that. Don't carry that around in your mind because then they're winning the game.'"
The "Dreams" singer told a story earlier in the interview involving bandmate McVie, 78, that exemplified her point — during the early days of Fleetwood Mac, the two made a pact together that they'd never be disrespected by men in the music industry.
Fleetwood Mac in September 2018 | CREDIT: JB LACROIX/WIREIMAGE
"We were very protective of each other. We made a pact, in the very beginning, that we would never be treated with disrespect by all the male musicians in the community," she said. "And we really stuck to it. I think we did the pinky swear thing that, if we ever feel like we're being treated like that, we would just get up and walk out—and we did. We would just say, "Well, this party is over for us."
Nicks said that she and McVie "instantly" became best friends after meeting, and that although their personalities were different, "sometimes opposites attract."
"She'd go, like, "You're like such a girly girl." And I'd be, like, "Well, I guess I am, but at the same time, I think I'm pretty hardcore too, Christine,'" she said. "We met in the middle… I would say to her, 'Together, we are a serious force of nature, and it will give us strength to maneuver the waters that are ahead of us.'"
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