Edge Of Seventeen

Nicks wrote this song about the death of her uncle and the death of John Lennon. The line about the "Words from a poet and a voice from a choir" refers to Lennon.

Speaking about the song in commentary for her Live In Concert video, she explained: "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.

Right when I got to Phoenix, my uncle Bill got cancer, got very sick very fast, and died in a couple of weeks. My cousin John Nicks and I were in the room when he died. There was just John and I there. That was part of the song when I went running down the hallways looking for somebody - I thought where's my mom? Where's his wife and the rest of the family? At that point I went back to the piano and finished the song."

Speaking further in her video commentary, Nicks spoke about the "white-winged dove" and what this song means to her:

"It became a song about violent death, which was very scary to me because at that point no one in my family had died. To me, the white-winged dove was for John Lennon the dove of peace, and for my uncle it was the white-winged dove who lives in the saguaro cactus - that's how I found out about the white-winged dove, and it does make a sound like whooo, whooo, whooo. I read that somewhere in Phoenix and thought I would use that in this song. The dove became exciting and sad and tragic and incredibly dramatic. Every time I sing this song I have that ability to go back to that two month period where it all came down. I've never changed it, and I can't imagine ending my show with any other song. It's such a strong, private moment that I share in this song."

Stevie came up with the title when she was recording "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" with Tom Petty. When she asked Tom Petty's wife Jane when 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," which makes a great song title. Telling the story in a 1981 interview with Los Angeles disc jockey Robert W. Morgan, Nicks said she told Jane: "It's got to be 'edge.' 'The Edge of Seventeen' is perfect. I'm going to write a song."

Bella Donna was Stevie's first solo album. This was the third single; the first 2 were duets: "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" with Tom Petty and "Leather And Lace" with Don Henley. The album proved that Nicks had enormous appeal outside of Fleetwood Mac.

When Nicks played this as the last song at the last stop on her Bella Donna tour at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, California, she walked across that stage and collected various gifts audience members brought for her as she finished the song. This became a tradition, with Nicks ending up with a mountain of flowers and stuffed animals at the end of her solo shows which she always donates to local children's hospitals. Performing with Fleetwood Mac, she can't do this as there are five stars in the band.

This song is featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar Games and distributed by Take-Two Interactive for multiple video game consoles. The game features fictional in-game radio stations that can be heard when the player gets in a car; this song is featured on the "Liberty Rock Radio 97.8" station along with other rock songs such as "1979" by the Smashing Pumpkins and "The Seeker" by The Who.

Destiny's Child sampled the famous guitar riff on this track for their song "Bootylicious." Some of Stevie's fans were horrified, but she loved it, and even appeared in the video. Stevie met the group when she was on the The Rosie O'Donnell Show promoting her Trouble In Shangri-La album, and Destiny's Child was in the same building rehearsing for Saturday Night Live.