In one week, in December of 1980, Stevie Nicks suffered two blows: John Lennon was gunned down in New York City and her uncle John died after a long battle with cancer. The trauma and grief of the two events inspired her hit “Edge of Seventeen.”
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Released as the third single off Nicks’ 1981 solo debut Bella Donna, following hit duets “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” also written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, and “Leather And Lace” with Don Henley, “Edge of Seventeen” was a more personal account of Nicks’ and stood out on its own, peaking at No. 4 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
The Two Johns
The lyrics of “Edge of Seventeen” document a grief-stricken Nicks from the death of her uncle Jonathan, who lost his battle with cancer, along with the murder of John Lennon within the same week in December of 1980.
“‘And the days go by like a strand in the wind,’ that’s how fast those days were going by during my uncle’s illness, and it was so upsetting to me,” said Nicks of the lyrics in a 1981 interview. “The part that says ‘I went today… maybe I will go again… tomorrow’ refers to seeing him the day before he died. He was home and my aunt had some music softly playing, and it was a perfect place for the spirit to go away. The white-winged dove in the song is a spirit that is leaving a body, and I felt a great loss at how both Johns were taken. ‘I hear the call of the nightbird singing, come away, come away.’”
Lennon
On December 8, 1980, Stevie Nicks was in Australia, the day Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. The verse, words from a poet and a voice from a choir, refer to the late Beatle. Jimmy Iovine, who produced Bella Donna and was Nicks’ boyfriend at the time, was distraught over his friend Lennon’s death, while Nicks felt helpless in comforting him and had to fly back home to Phoenix to be by her uncle’s side before his death.
“I didn’t know John Lennon, but I knew Jimmy Iovine, who worked with John quite a bit in the ’70s, and heard all the loving stories that Jimmy told about him,” shared Nicks. “When I came back to Phoenix I started to write this song.”
“White-Winged Dove”
The phrase “white-winged dove” in the chorus ties into the idea of the spirit leaving one’s body and affected Nicks while writing the song because of the way Lennon and her uncle died.
“It became a song about violent death, which was very scary to me because at that point no one in my family had died,” said Nicks elaborating on the meaning of the line. “To me, the white-winged dove was for John Lennon the dove of peace, and for my uncle, it was the white-winged dove who lives in the saguaro cactus—that’s how I found out about the white-winged dove, and it does make a sound like ‘whooo, whooo, whooo.’ I read that somewhere in Phoenix and thought I would use that in this song.”
Nicks added, “The dove became exciting and sad and tragic and incredibly dramatic. Every time I sing this song I have that ability to go back to that two-month period where it all came down.”
In 2020, Stevie Nicks posted a video of a dove that came to the window of her Arizona home and sang to her. In her Twitter post, Nicks explained where she first found the lyric “white-winged dove” and the magical moment she caught on video nearly 40 years after writing “Edge of Seventeen.”
“In 1980 I was flying home from Phoenix, Arizona and I was handed a menu [on a flight] that said, ‘The white wing dove sings a song that sounds like she’s singing ooh, ooh, ooh. She makes her home here in the great Saguaro cactus that provides shelter and protection for her…’” shared Nicks on Twitter. “As you well know, I was very taken with that whole picture and went on to write ‘Edge of Seventeen.’ But over the last 40 years, I can honestly say, I have never heard a dove sing—until now.”
She added, “I started to cry. This dove had come here to watch over me.”
Just like the white-winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Just like the white-winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing
Ooh, baby, ooh, said ooh
“Searchin for an Answer”
Well, I went searchin’ for an answer
Up the stairs and down the hall
And not to find an answer
Just to hear the call
Of a nightbird singing, “Come away”
(Come away, come away)
In this verse, Nicks describes being with her uncle when he passed away and feeling so alone, and the bird calling “come away,” alludes to him leaving this earth.
“We were both there and for some reason, nobody else was there and my uncle died,” shared Nicks in 1997. “And we were just there by ourselves with him and we didn’t even know what to do. It was like, I can’t believe this is happening.”
Tom Petty’s Wife Jane
At one point, Nicks was going to write a song for Tom Petty and his then-wife Jane Benyo, who were high school sweethearts, but the meaning behind “Edge of Seventeen” turned into something completely different. When thinking of a title for her new song, Tom Petty’s wife Jane suggested “At the Age of Seventeen,” but Nicks thought she heard “Edge of Seventeen” through Jane’s thick southern accent. “Edge” it was.
Legacy of “Edge of Seventeen”
Throughout the decades the song has been featured in TV, film, and video games—Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games). The track was even sampled in Destiny’s Child’s 2002 hit “Bootylicious” as well as on the series American Horror Story: Coven in 2013. In 2016, a film called The Edge of Seventeen, starring Hailee Steinfeld was released, though Nicks’ song was not featured in the film, and in 2019, Amazon used the track in their Prime Wardrobe commercial as a woman imagines herself in a new dress with white-winged doves flying overhead.
To date, Nicks ends her concerts with “Edge of Seventeen” and has never changed its arrangement.
“I’ve never changed it, and I can’t imagine ending my show with any other song,” said Nicks. “It’s such a strong, private moment that I share in this song.”
(Photo By Rick Diamond/Getty Images)
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