(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 30 November 2025 13:33, UK
Stevie Nicks‘ raspy majesty could stir honey into tea from a thousand paces. She’s a rare double inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and has written a back catalogue that continues to resonate, sending Fleetwood Mac towards the lofty reaches of the best-selling bands in history.
However, the late David Crosby opines that when it comes to piercing performances, she pales in comparison to the prowess of one of his personal musical heroes and the woman that he crowned the queen of rock: Grace Slick.
Speaking to Jefferson Airplane biographer Jeff Tamarkin for the book Got a Revolution!, Crosby heaped lofty praise on the fiercely talented frontwoman. “Slick reigned with Janis Joplin as queens of rock at that time,“ Crosby declared. “The force of both her voice and her personality made her a ceiling-shattering feminist counterculture icon and an inspirational model for many to follow. When [Jefferson Airplane] got Grace in the band, that was just beyond belief. She was stunning.”
Following that appraisal, the famously combative Crosby delved into one of his favourite pastimes of a rock ‘n’ roll comparison. “She had a power and intensity onstage that Stevie Nicks should only ever dream she could get,” he said of the ‘White Rabbit’ singer.
That being said, Nicks would likely relish the mere comparison as a compliment. After all, Slick was a pivotal inspiration for her. When Nicks was initially starting out in music, she joined her first band while attending Arcadia High School in California and fell in love with the flowery side of counterculture.
Thereafter, she moved on to Menlo Atherton High School as a senior and met Lindsey Buckingham at a Young Life social event. He was playing ‘California Dreamin’’ and she provided sweet harmonies alongside her future sweetheart. The rest, as they say, is ancient history, and Nicks has been extolling heartbreak and exultation from it ever since in a fashion akin to her Laurel Canyon heroes.
Grace Slick performing with Jefferson Airplane in 1970. (Credits: Far Out / Noord-Hollands Archief / Fotoburo de Boer)
That Californian musical handshake proved to be a befitting one, given the talents she would later go on and attempt to emulate. In her early days in San Francisco, Buckingham and Nicks were an opening act for the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of the Bay Area opened her eyes to such an extent that her eyelids may as well have peeled clean off.
As she told Rolling Stone: “Flamboyance and attitude from Janis, humbleness and grace from Hendrix, and a little bit of slinky from Grace Slick,” Nicks said of her assimilated heroes. “Those were the three people who I emulated when I was on stage.” It’s a potent mixture that she has continued to concoct ever since she was first inspired by the trio of counterculture icons.
This admiration also flows both ways, with Slick commenting, “Stevie Nicks has written some of the best rock songs. I don’t know her that well, but I like that strange little person that she’s decided to be. A…somebody from some fairy story, and I thought that was great.“
Reiterating for good measure: “She also writes some great songs.“
One of which was even partly inspired by her: ‘Gypsy’. As Nicks explained about the lyrics to the 1982 classic from Mirage: “So I’m back to the velvet underground’—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane. It was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff.”
Grace Slick pioneered a new era. (Credits: Far Out / RCA Records)
This notion of fashion being part of Slick’s mystique is a pertinent one. Slick’s searing singing performance could haunt an empty house, but she also used her unique talent to encapsulate the era in some way. While she rattles the rafters of thunderclouds, it is the words that emanate out from her and the style with which she serves them that tell the tale of the ’60s.
Up until the summer of love, the era had journeyed to the precipice of a revolution. Now, as Slick explained, it was ready to jump down the rabbit hole, the old pills were out and the new were in: “I identified with Alice [in Wonderland]. I went from the planned, bland ’50s, to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole.”
With this outlook, she caused a revolution that went beyond bravura; the music had a point. And besides the power of her voice, this is why Crosby pitches her above Nicks.
He might have been a laidback fellow, but Crosby always had an eye for the intent of art. So, when someone asked whether he’d take Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young over Fleetwood Mac, he chose to retweet the following from a fan: ”Love them both. But CSNY changed the course of history with ‘Ohio’, impacting public opinion of Nixon and the war.”
She continues, “Nixon never recovered. History will remember them for it.” That similar sense of profundity and understanding of the zeitgeist can also be felt in Slick’s finest work, and that is just one of the many reasons Crosby calls her the true queen of rock.
As for Slick’s own king? Well, she had this to say about Hendrick, “Or me, Jimi, aside from the Beatles, represents the ’60s more than any other individual.”
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