Pop chanteuse Stevie Nicks turns 63 tomorrow. Though Nicks is no longer a Valley resident (she sold her home in Paradise Valley in 2007 for more than $3 million), she was born here at Good Samaritan Hospital and we still count her among Arizona's most famous rock residents.
So in honor of Nicks' first breath on Terra Firma almost 63 years ago, we present a time line of Nicks' previously notable birthdays.
1975: Nicks' first album with Fleetwood Mac, the self-titled Fleetwood Mac, was released on July 11. Nicks' birthday the previous May was her 27th, and we imagine she spent it basking in the afterglow of the newly-finished album and preparing for its release and her subsequent stardom.
1978: After a secret affair with drummer Mick Fleetwood (after which Fleetwood left his wife for Nicks' best friend, Sara Recor), Nicks' 30th birthday passed while she was in the studio recording the Fleetwood Mac double album, Tusk.
1981: A dubious birthday year for Nicks. On the downside, her childhood best friend, Robin Anderson, was diagnosed with leukemia (Anderson died the following year). On the upside, Nicks had finished recording her debut solo album, Belladonna, shortly before her birthday, and it reached #1 on the Billboard chars.
1983: When Nicks turned 36, she was busy promoting the release of her upcoming solo album, The Wild Heart (it was released in June). She was also beginning to battle an addiction to drugs.
1987: Nicks, having checked herself into the Betty Ford Center to beat her cocaine addiction the previous year, begins taking doctor-prescribed Klonopin, a drug which she will also eventually have to detox from. A month before her birthday, the Fleetwood Mac album Tango in the Night was released, but as the group geared up for a tour, Lindsey Buckingham quit the band and had a confrontation with Nicks. Nicks left the band after the tour. (Buckingham and Nicks had both reunited with the band by the time The Dance came out in 2007.)
1994: In what made for possibly the worst birthday ever for Stevie Nicks, her worst solo album to date, Street Angel, was released three days before she turned 46. Nicks had just finished a second stint in detox for Klonopin, after falling and cutting her head during a baby shower at her house. Street Angel, consisting mostly of old, unreleased material, was panned by critics and sold poorly.
2001: Nicks spends her birthday in retrospect, as the Enchanted box set of her solo works is released.
2011: Fresh off a spot on Dancing with the Stars, and with a new album (In Your Dreams) on shelves, Nicks will turn 63 while on the road with Rod Stewart for the Heart & Soul Tour.
