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Brush with fame: The public’s one-sided bond with celebrities

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Journalist Jancee Dunn shows Susan Spencer her T-shirt autographed by Stevie Nicks.

CBS News, September 2024

Journalist Jancee Dunn admits it: She has been obsessed with rock star Stevie Nicks ever since high school. “I listened to Stevie’s music for hours and hours and hours,” she said. “I tried to dress, in an ill-advised moment, like Stevie! And she’s just kind of bound up in my early years in a way that is really intense and deeply personal.” The years flew by, but her feelings never faded. So, imagine her joy when, in 1997, Harper’s Bazaar assigned her to interview Stevie Nicks at her California home! 

Dunn began prepping immediately, rehearsing in front of a mirror how she would say “Hell-o, Stevie.” Did Nicks understand what a fan she was? “I kept it together so I wouldn’t creep her out; I don’t think she fully knew what a fan that I was,” she said. “I knew to kind of pull it back!” The interview even featured a surreal tour of the rock star’s closet, filled with capes she had worn on stage and her famous platform boots. Dunn said it was, indubitably, one of the happiest afternoons of her life. Her only keepsake: A precious autographed T-shirt that she stores folded in a special place in her closet.

Read more on CBS News.

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