Sex, drugs and fancy dress dogs: 12 extraordinary facts about Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams and Rumours by Zoë Howe lifts the lid on the extraordinary life of one of music’s living legends.

There are no lies, sweet little lies, here – just a complex woman who took so much cocaine she risked a brain haemorrhage and lived in a porn set, but also visits war veterans and dresses her dogs in outfits matching her stage costumes.

1. Stevie Nicks took so much cocaine that it burned a hole in her nose ‘the size of a dime’. She was advised by her doctor that if she continued to take the drug, she was at risk of a brain , or death. Stevie has long been clean and now prefers a nice cup of tea, (maybe a shot of tequila before a show).

2. Stevie Nicks had a close friendship with Prince during the 1980s, to the extent that His Purpleness took care of Nicks when she was suffering from flu. But Prince was all about tough love: when she requested another spoonful of cough medicine, he scolded: ‘I didn’t come here to start you on a new drug!’

3. Stevie is celebrated for her mystical ‘white witch’ persona, but during the 1980s, one fan in particular took this too far. Former mental institution patient and ‘self-proclaimed homosexual’ Ronald Anacelteo stalked Nicks with a view to ‘abducting and impregnating her’ – he had been taken in by a homophobic church campaign which preached that gay people required ‘healing’ and believed kidnapping Stevie Nicks could be his salvation.

4. Nicks adores dogs and has a separate wardrobe full of miniature versions of her own clothes – capes in particular – for her precious pooches to wear.

5. One of Stevie’s many fabulous homes was a Dutch castle in the Hollywood Hills. Pure Tinseltown artifice, it looked positively medieval – from the stonework to the portraits hanging inside – but it was built in the 1970s. It has since been used as the set for many an adult movie.

6. Known for her generosity, Stevie has spent a lot of time working with hospitalised war veterans, loading up hundreds of iPods with playlists from her own music collection for them to help pass the time.

7. Stevie has had many rock ‘n’ roll relationships, one of which was debonair Eagles star Don Henley, who would pick her up in a Lear jet for a night of romance. While they remain friends, unfortunately the charming Henley was not interested in settling down. His style of dating became known as the ‘love ‘em and Lear ‘em’ technique in the Eagles camp.

8. Stevie’s grand piano has bullet-holes in it. Not because of a particularly bad fight with Lindsey, but because the instrument was caught in a drive-by shooting while being transported from LA to her home in Phoenix.

9. Stevie Nicks has toured since toddlerhood – her grandfather AJ Nicks was a country singer who taught little Stevie to sing with him, and he took her on the road, entertaining drinkers in bars across the Mid-West together when other kids her age were still learning to read.

10. Fleetwood Mac was always the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll psychodrama, not least when Stevie Nicks and erstwhile partner Lindsey Buckingham joined.

But when the pair split up, they could never get closure, remaining in the band and continuing to sing the songs they’d written about each other on stage to this day.

11. This lack of closure could get ugly – during a performance in the early 1980s, Lindsey’s fury spilled over and he threw his guitar at her (he just missed), even kicking at her in front of an audience of thousands. But would either of them cut their losses and leave the band? Never.

12. Want Stevie Nicks to marry you? No, not like that. Stevie can officiate weddings and married singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton and Deer Tick frontman John McCauley in 2013. But is it possible for Stevie Nicks, by her mere presence, not to upstage the bride?