• May 11, 1998
• Vol. 49
• No. 18

Stevie Nicks: Rock Singer

• 
• 

From PEOPLE Magazine

Twenty years ago she swirled about the stage, a gypsy dervish of gauze and glitter. Today, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks has come full circle: Back on the charts with a reunited Mac's The Dance, she is also seeing her layered hippie look reinterpreted by hipster designers. "I'm feeling like the old Stevie again," says Nicks, who turns 50 on May 26. And that, says rocker Sheryl Crow, "is a combination of beauty, mystery, talent and power."

Nicks has only one rule of face. "I never go to sleep with my makeup on," she says. "People say that I have really good skin, and I think that's why." When she's awake, however, she doesn't let her mascara and lipstick out of her sight. "I never check my makeup bags when traveling," she says. "I could get to Germany, and my clothes and equipment will be lost, but I'll have plenty of makeup and shampoo. It shows clear priorities!"

She doesn't joke about her true priorities. She has been sober since 1993, after beating addictions to cocaine and the tranquilizer Klonopin. But by the time she embarked on a solo tour in 1994, the 5'1½" Nicks had ballooned up to 175 pounds. "When I walked off the stage after the last show, I told my assistant that I'd never sing in front of people looking like that again," she recalls. True to her word, she lost 30 pounds on the low-carb Atkins diet. "Sure, I'd like to be 20 pounds thinner," admits Nicks, who quit a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit last year and treadmills daily at her homes in Phoenix and L.A. "But I think I've accepted the fact that I'm not going to be picture-perfect. I just want to be strong."