Relive Stevie Nicks’ Show-Stopping ‘Edge of Seventeen’ in 1981

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Relive Stevie Nicks’ Show-Stopping ‘Edge of Seventeen’ in 1981

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Stevie Nicks. Photo by Francesco Da Vinci/Getty Images.

Stevie Nicks' iconic debut solo album, Bella Donna celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, making it the perfect time to revisit the album’s stunning third single Edge of Seventeen – easily one of Stevie's most famous and enduring hits! 

In a 1981 interview, Nicks revealed that the song was actually inspired by Jane Petty, the wife of late rock legend Tom Petty, who features on another of the album's chart-topping classics, the Petty-penned duet, Stop Draggin' My Heart Heart Around. 

"She told me that when she met Tom he was, she said, 'at the age of seventeen' but she has this incredible southern drawl so it sounded like 'edge of seventeen,' Nicks said. "I said, 'Jane, I'm writing a song called Edge of Seventeen.' And she laughs, you know, she didn't ever think I was ever serious. So it started out about Tom and Jane basically, who I have no idea what they were at 17, but I made it up."

Watch Stevie's phenomenal live performance in the song's official music video below. 

Stevie Nicks | Edge of Seventeen

Nicks' critically-acclaimed Bella Donna LP  featured an all-star cast of high-profile musicians, including Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers and Roy Bittan of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. The album quickly climbed number one on the Billboard 200 chart, with four singles making the Billboard Hot 100, and Rolling Stone deeming her "the Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll."

Nicks also reflected on writing the album's most popular hit Edge of Seventeen, in a 1992 interview with Vox magazine, saying: "The energy that was written into that song was so intense that it took us about two nights to get the track to that, and it's like nobody's feet ever stopped moving. It was like there was this energy that was so strong. I cried in the middle of the bridge thing, about the sea never expects it when it rains, but the sea changes colour, but the sea does not change. And so with the slow graceful flow of age, I went forth with an age-old desire to please. It was like, well, we have to keep going now. And I wanted that song to have all that energy of them and of us going on."

Celebrating 40 years of Bella Donna, the iconic album has been reissued on gold vinyl, for a limited time only – get it here! 

 

bella donna
Bella Donna (Gold Vinyl)

GET STEVIE NICKS ALBUMS ON VINYL, HERE. 

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