Watch Stevie Nicks on “Saturday Night Live ”nearly 41 years after her last appearance
The Fleetwood Mac legend last took the "SNL" stage on Dec. 10, 1983.
Rock legend Stevie Nicks took the stage as musical guest on Saturday Night Live this week, four decades after her last appearance on the NBC sketch show.
Clad in her signature flowing black garb, the 76-year-old Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee performed new song "The Lighthouse" and the classic "Edge of Seventeen" on Saturday's episode, hosted by past musical guest Ariana Grande,
"The Lighthouse" is a pro-choice anthem that urges listeners to "learn how to fight" for their rights. "Don’t close your eyes and hope for the best / The dark is out there / The light is going fast," Nicks declares in the song she wrote after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after nearly a half century.
For her second performance, the Fleetwood Mac legend sang the hit "Edge of Seventeen," from her 1981 debut solo album, Bella Donna. Ahead of the song, an SNL bumper appeared that fittingly showed a photograph of Nicks holding a white-winged bird. Oddly, the image — which came after an ad break — stayed on screen for more than a minute before cutting to a second series of commercials. EW has learned the delay was due to a technical issue that was resolved. When the show returned soon after, Grande introduced Nicks for the second time and the performance seemed to go smoothly.
At the end of "Edge of Seventeen," Nicks repeated the avian-heavy lyric about hearing "the call of a nightbird" before closing with the line, "I know what it sounds like when doves cry." This is a clear nod to the famous lyric from "When Doves Cry" by Prince, who Nicks has said inspired her song "Stand Back" and actually joined her in the recording studio to play the synthesizer on it.
It was also a callback to the last time Nicks was on stage at Studio 8H, on Dec. 10, 1983, when she sang "Stand Back" and "Nightbird" — a song written as a continuation of "Edge of Seventeen" — both from her second solo album, The Wild Heart.
Nicks recently shared that her performance in the season 9 episode was nearly derailed when a singer who was supposed to join her on stage for "Nightbird" backed out at the last minute.
"She freaked out and had terrible stage fright, so she couldn't do it," Nicks told PEOPLE, likely speaking of musician Sandy Stewart, who sang the duet with her on the album. Fortunately, Nicks found a quick replacement.
"One of my singers, who ended up being my sister-in-law Lori [Perry], she said, 'I'll do it,' and she's crazy, but she said, 'I'll do it,'" Nicks recalled. "This is literally right before we went on, and so we went on and we did it, and it came out perfect!"
The "Landslide" singer explained to the outlet that the pressure was on during her first SNL appearance as she was still proving herself as a solo artist after gaining fame as a vocalist for her iconic rock band.
"That was about two and a half years into my solo career, so it was nerve-wracking because it was not Fleetwood Mac," Nicks said. "So it was very scary to go on the show when you've been in a huge band and now you're going on Saturday Night Live as a solo artist."
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Watch Nicks perform "The Lighthouse" and "Edge of Seventeen" on this week's SNL above.
Saturday Night Live, now in its 50th season, airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.
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