Stevie Nicks Was a 'Changed Woman' After the 'Spooky' End to a Romance

Stevie Nicks is happy to divulge information about some of her romantic relationships, like her tormented dynamic with Lindsey Buckingham and her great love for Joe Walsh. She’s a bit more secretive about others, though. After a whirlwind romance with producer Rupert Hine, Nicks abruptly ended the relationship for a mystery reason. She shared that after leaving, she was a changed woman.

Stevie Nicks fell in love while working on a solo album

In 1988, Nicks began working on her fourth solo album, The Other Side of the Mirror. Her team hired Hine to produce the album.

“The night I met Rupert Hine was a dangerous one,” she said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis. “He was different from everyone else I’ve ever known. He was older, and he was smarter, and we both knew it. I hired him to do the album before we even started talking about music. It just seemed that we had made a spiritual agreement to do a magic album.”

They rented a castle in the Hollywood Hills for six months to work on the album. During this time, Nicks and Hine began a romantic relationship.

The relationship had a mysterious end

Nicks and Hine decided to finish the album in his London studio. After spending Christmas with her family, she flew to England, planning on staying for several months in early 1989. They spent time at Hine’s home north of London but had to fly back to New York for two days to record with Bruce Hornsby.

They returned to London, but Nicks was only there for a short time. According to Davis, Nicks and her entourage left Hine’s home very suddenly and under mysterious circumstances.

“[It was] somewhere outside London,” Nicks later said. “It was like being in a cottage in Wales, it was a little spooky … the atmosphere was like nothing I had ever experienced. Then something happened to him [Rupert] that simply made it impossible for us to ever be together again.”

She shared that the experience deeply impacted her.

“I left him there … the rooms were still burning, but the fire had been stolen from us. It wasn’t over love, in fact, it had nothing to do with love. It was just a bad situation. I came back to Los Angeles a very changed woman.”

Stevie Nicks is single but a lifelong romantic

These days, Nicks is happy to live her single life. She has her dog, her friends, and her godchildren to keep her company. Still, she thinks of herself as a romantic and won’t rule out another relationship.

“I’m not going out with anyone. And I haven’t gone out with anyone in a long, long time,” Nicks told The Guardian. “But I will say, I am always a romantic and I’m never averse to the fact that it is possible that you might turn a street corner and walk into somebody that just catches your eye, because it’s happened to me a million times. So, could I fall in love and run away with somebody at 72 years old? Yeah. It’s probably not gonna happen, but it’s possible.”

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