This dedication to her career has not been without cost. Nicks 'pretty much sold my soul to the devil a long time ago', as she puts it, so that 'I could follow this dream fully and completely, and not be wrapped up in children and husbands and boyfriends and all of that. I chose not to have child-ren.' Her brief marriage in 1983, she says, 'doesn't count'. It was an odd episode. That year her best friend Robin died of leukaemia three days after giving birth to a son, Matthew. A grieving Nicks convinced the bereaved husband, Kim Anderson, that they should marry and raise the child together. 'Completely crazy.' She shrugs. 'We were all in such insane grief, just completely deranged. The families were just outraged at what we were doing; in a lot of people's eyes it was very blasphemous. But I didn't care. All I cared about was that little boy, Matthew.' The marriage lasted only a few weeks, before Nicks made the decision to bring it to an end. 'I said, "You have to take the baby and go back to Minnesota", where he was from, where he had family, "because, Kim, I'm a rock'n'roll star. It's what I do, it's who I am." ' She didn't see Matthew for the next eight years, but she is now putting him through college in Atlanta.