Stevie Nicks finally hears a white winged dove sing her song
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Nearly 40 years after Stevie Nicks wrote the lyrics, “Well, I hear you in the morning and I hear you at nightfall…” she never actually heard a white winged dove sing.
Edge of Seventeen comes off of her solo debut album, Bella Donna, released on July 27th, 1981.
“I was in Australia when John Lennon was shot. Everybody was devastated. 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. When I came back to Phoenix I started to write this song,” Stevie Nicks spoke in commentary for her Live In Concert video recorded on her Bella Donna tour.
According to songfacts.com Stevie came up with the title, Edge of Seventeen, after asking Tom Petty’s wife, Jane, how they met. Jane said, “At the age of seventeen,” but she had a very strong southern accent and Stevie thought she said ‘the edge of seventeen.’ In an on air interview with Los Angeles disc jockey Robert W. Morgan in 1981, Stevie said, “It’s got to be edge. The Edge of Seventeen is perfect. I’m going to write a song.”
Here’s Stevie Nicks performing Edge of Seventeen live at a U.S. Festival on May 30th, 1983. And an impressive performance by her band, especially her drummer, who continuously played for nearly ten minutes.
“If you ever think that you don’t matter, I want to tell you something, to me, you’re the only thing in the whole world that matters,” Nicks said just before walking off the stage.
