Stevie Nicks Talks About Living in El Paso in New Yorker Magazine Interview

Having written an article some years ago about celebrities who once called El Paso home, I knew Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac fame had spent some of her formative years here.

I knew from having done research for the article that the Rock and Roll legend and icon, known for her billowing chiffon skirts and shawls, and her on-stage twirling lived here from 1955-1960.

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She spent third through seventh grade in the Sun City, attending Loretto Academy, Basset Middle, and Crockett Elementary. Her classmates knew her as Stephanie back then.

Click on this link if you want to see a school photo of Stephanie Lynn from what I’m assuming are her Loretto days since it was posted on the Loretto Academy Facebook.

But what I didn’t know until I read a recent article published in The New Yorker was the lasting influence her short time here had on her that led her down the path to what she would eventually become: a global super star, and the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. With Fleetwood Mac in '98 and as a solo artist in 2019.

In the article, titled Stevie Nicks Is Still Living Her Dreams, Nicks credits El Paso as the place where she learned to sing, and found her voice and direction. The rock goddess tells the author she knew she wanted to be a singer at a very young age.

“I wanted to start singing for real when I was in the fourth grade,” she said.

Her grandfather, who was a country singer, exposed her to a lot of country music and that was the type of singer she wanted to be, too. But then she fell in love with the sounds of the Motown girl groups after hearing their songs, presumably on El Paso radio stations.

So I made a U-turn and walked away from country in the fifth grade. We’d drive around in El Paso, Texas, and I would just be singing away to this R. & B., girl group, because they wrote all the hit songs. It was Motown, full on. And my mom and dad would turn around and look at me and go, “Who are you?” And that’s how I learned to sing.

About 15 years later, in May of 1975, Stephanie Lynn returned to the city where she "learned to sing" and performed at the El Paso County Coliseum for the very first time with her new bandmates: Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham.

Stevie Nicks and El Paso, Texas. We'll always have a connection.