Stevie Nicks Talks Her Barbie-fication and the Fate of Fleetwood Mac

"When [Christine McVie] died, I figured we really can't go any further with this. There's no reason to."

Photo: Sharon Steele

BY Kaelen BellPublished Oct 2, 2023

Stevie Nicks is now a Barbie Girl. Perhaps rock 'n' roll's resident witch has always been a Barbie Girl in one way or another, but as of today it's officially official — rolling with this year's Barbie Mania, Mattel is making a Barbie version of Nicks as part of its Music Series Barbie line, dressed in her iconic outfit from the cover of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

It's a major milestone in Nicks's career — in a new interview with Vulture, she seems over the moon about the whole thing — and the doll comes with her own Nicks-invented romance with an Elvis Presley look-alike Ken doll that Nicks has dubbed Kenelvis. 

As earth-shattering as all this doll talk is, the interview's most pressing piece of new information actually comes when Nicks is asked about the fate of Fleetwood Mac in the wake of Christine McVie's death. In Nicks's mind, the band is done touring, saying, "When she died, I figured we really can't go any further with this. There's no reason to."

Here's Nicks's full answer: 

We did go out on the road and do a year-and-a-half tour with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell. We had a really great time and it was a huge tour. That was there in the realm of possibility. But when Christine died, I felt like you can't replace her. You just can't. Without her, what is it? You know what I mean? She was like my soul mate, my musical soul mate, and my best friend that I spent more time with than any of my other best friends outside of Fleetwood Mac. Christine was my best friend. When I think about Taylor Swift's song "You're on Your Own, Kid" and the line "you always have been," it was like, that was Christine and I. We were on our own in that band. We always were. We protected each other. Who am I going to look over to on the right and have them not be there behind that Hammond organ? When she died, I figured we really can't go any further with this. There's no reason to.

Nicks also talks about McVie's musical contributions to the band, calling McVie the "pop star" of the group, explaining that the band would have to remove all of McVie's beloved hits from the setlist were they to ever go on tour again:

And her songs, you take out all of those songs. Christine was the pop star. She wrote all those really super pop hits. None of the rest of us could write those songs. What would happen is we'd have to take the songs out, like we did when she actually retired for 18 years. We couldn't re-create those songs. So we became a much more hard-rock band.

You can read the whole interview here, where you can learn more about Nicks's doll, her thoughts on Daisy Jones & the Six, and her favourite shawl of all time. 

See a tweet from Nicks about her doll below. 
 

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