With this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony going totally virtual amid the pandemic, Stevie Nicks (who, it should always be stated, is the only woman to be inducted into the Hall twice), isn’t sold on the idea of cable television gatekeeping the event. But, she notes, at least the inductees seem to be in good health. In a new interview with Variety, the Fleetwood Mac chanteuse revealed that during her induction ceremony as a solo artist in 2019, she was hiding what became a very severe illness that left her hospitalized for several days. “I have compromised lungs. I was really sick last year. The night of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I knew before I went on stage that something was wrong with me, so I had to really pull it together,” Nicks explained. “The next day, I got really sick, and I ended up going into the hospital in Philadelphia for a week in ICU with double pneumonia and human metapneumovirus and asthma. Talk about your oxygen levels going down; my oxygen levels were hardly existing.” During her Rock Hall induction segment, Nicks performed several solo songs (one with “love child” Harry Styles) and gave the longest speech of the evening.
Despite being plagued by illnesses, Nicks called the induction an “incredibly memorable night,” which makes this year’s virtual “exclusive special” on HBO all the more depressing to her. (It will be streaming for HBO and HBO Max subscribers on Saturday, November 7.) “Do you know what I would have done if I ran the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I would have just said, ‘We’re going to take a pass this year. Hopefully it’s just a year. So we’re going to do it next year, and hopefully everything will be back to normal enough where we can do it the way it’s supposed to be done,’” Nicks explained. “I mean, it’s the biggest deal in the world. The only people that think it isn’t a big deal are the people who don’t get in. The second that your name goes up, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a really big deal.’ And so I’m very sorry that it’s going to be done in some sort of a weird virtual reality way, because it’s like not going to the ball.” The 2020 class consists of Depeche Mode, the Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, the Notorious B.I.G., T-Rex, and Ahmet Ertegun Award honorees Jon Landau and Irving Azoff, in addition to dozens of star-studded guests. They’re making the best of it!
