2007Released
5:29

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Edge of Seventeen. By Songfacts®.

Stevie 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 recorded on her Bella Donna tour, 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 asked Tom Petty's wife Jane when the couple 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." At first, the song was going to be about Tom and Jane, but it became something completely different.

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Edge of Seventeen.
CKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
111BPM

Album

The album Edge of Seventeen is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Edge of Seventeen.
Reprise
© 2007 Reprise Records for the U.S. and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the U.S.
℗ 2007 Reprise Records for the U.S. and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the U.S.

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