Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

“I was inspired by Jimi Hendrix from a rock standpoint, because Lindsay and I got to open for him,” Stevie Nicks shares in a new interview with radio show Ultimate Classic Rock Nights.

“It was a big huge show in San Francisco,” Nicks adds, recalling her time in pre-Fleetwood Mac outfit Fritz, a band which opened for many major rock acts touring through California in the mid-to-late Sixties.

“There was like 20 bands on,” she then continues, “there was you, there was 15 more bands and then there was Jimi Hendrix.”

“He actually dedicated a song to me,” she adds. “He looked over at me and said, ‘This is for you, babe.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re awesome! You are so awesomely cute and handsome and you play so amazing and thank you, Jimi!’”

This is not the first Nicks has spoken on the influence of Hendrix.

“I saw him play once,” she told BAM Magazine in 1997, “and I remember thinking, ‘I want to wear white fringe. I want to tie a beautiful scarf in my hair.’”

Hendrix also jammed with the earlier blues-based iteration of Fleetwood Mac at New York night club The Scene in 1968, seven years prior to Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joining in 1975.