Stevie Nicks Pens Remembrance for 20th Anniversary of 9/11: ‘I Became a New Yorker on That Day’
Stevie Nicks commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with a note to fans, posted in her signature journal format.
Nicks began the remembrance on September 10th at 11:50 p.m., noting that she thinks of the clock striking midnight each year. She had just flown in with her solo band from Canada that morning — ready to perform three shows — and stayed at the Waldorf Astoria. “It was 2:30 a.m. when we landed,” she wrote. “By the time I went to bed it was almost 7:30 a.m. I sat in the window for a minute and looked dawn on a glorious day. The whole city was up. I actually thought about just not going to bed and going out to have breakfast and then out to walk the streets. Well, I’m too old to do that now, so, I laughed and went to bed.”
Nicks’ assistant woke her up right when the second plane hit. “We had been attacked,” she said. “It couldn’t have been an accident. Not two accidents in a row… I walked over to the window where I had been sitting (it seemed like minutes ago) and looked down. Everything was grey. There were no cars. There were no yellow cabs. There were no people. It looked like death. It looked like the end of the world.”
— Stevie Nicks (@StevieNicks) September 11, 2021
Nicks remained at the hotel in lockdown, calling family and friends and watching the news on television. “We saw things on our TV that most people did not see because the Waldorf is where the presidents and the foreign diplomats stay,” she wrote. “So we saw things that the U.S. did not see — but the rest of the world saw.”
After her New York shows were cancelled, Nicks took a bus to Atlantic City, where she was slated to perform at the Etess Arena on the 15th. “I called my mom and Don Henley to ask, ‘Should I come home?’” she recalled. “And they both said, ‘If the people aren’t asking for their money back, then they must want to see you.’ So, we put a big American flag up behind me and went on. It was like everyone just wanted to be with everyone that night.”
She also added a photo of an angel she drew in 1994. “I named her ‘A Soldiers Angel,’” she said. “She visited Walter Reed and Bethesda with me many times. The soldiers held her and signed their names on the back. She heard many of their stories of war and compassion. So I send her out to you on this day to be your angel; you might see a faint candle burning on her right side. It burns for all those lost on this day — and all those who survived this day and to tell their own personal stories.”
“I am so sorry, so broken hearted for all that we lost that day,” she added. “But I would not have wanted to be anywhere else but there in New York with the people of New York. I became a New Yorker on that day. I was honored.”
