RELEASED ON ITUNES MAY 14, 2013
Available on Netflix and on-demand (Check your local cable listing)
RELEASED ON DVD December 3, 2013
Amazon USA | Amazon Canada | Warner Bros.
Amazon UK | Barnes and Noble US
JB Hi-Fi New Zealand | JB Hi-Fi Australia
Available on Netflix and on-demand (Check your local cable listing)
RELEASED ON DVD December 3, 2013
Amazon USA | Amazon Canada | Warner Bros.
Amazon UK | Barnes and Noble US
JB Hi-Fi New Zealand | JB Hi-Fi Australia
On Wednesday December 04, 2013 the day after the DVD release, Stevie signed copies of the "In Your Dreams" DVD from 7:00PM until 10pm at Barnes and Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles. People began lining up in the early hours of December 4th so that at 9:00am when Barnes and Noble opened they could pickup a wrist band guaranteeing them the chance to meet Stevie and have her sign their DVD or CD that they needed to purchase that day. Over 800 people had this chance through out the evening and they had an awesome time and for many it was a dream come true - they met Stevie Nicks!
Stevie speaks to Billboard
Stevie speaks to Ultimate Classic Rock
Reviews:
ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE
‘IN YOUR DREAMS-STEVIE NICKS’ DOCUMENTARY SCHEDULED TO PREMIERE AT HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OCTOBER 7TH & MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL ON OCTOBER 12TH
Music Collaborator, Documentarian and Former Eurythmics Mastermind Dave Stewart Reveals Intimate Portrait of Grammy Winning Legend
September, 2012…For Immediate Release…New York City…
Rock legend Stevie Nicks in collaboration with musical wizard Dave Stewart have co-produced and co-directed “In Your Dreams – Stevie Nicks” a documentary portrait of the illusive Nicks as they embark on a musical journey to write and record the critically acclaimed album “In Your Dreams”. The film will premiere at the 35th International Hamptons Film Festival on Sunday October 7th and at the 20th annual Mill Valley Film Festival on Friday, October 12th which has already sold out.
Nicks, a multi Grammy Award winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, lead singer and emotional catalyst and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac and one of the most recognizable female rock stars and revered songwriters in the world, allowed cameras into her home as she holed up in a magical old mansion high atop the hills of Los Angeles with Stewart and a wild cast of characters. The vibrant documentary tracks the year (2010) which Nicks calls “the best year of my life”. The result is a rare study of a fascinating artist on par with D. A. Pennebaker’s classic Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back” or Madonna’s notorious “Truth or Dare.”
Stewart and Nicks, co-directors of the film also co-wrote many of the songs on “In Your Dreams”. The inner life of the legendary Nicks has by her design long been kept at a distance from the public. We learn in “Dreams” that her world features, costume parties, joyous dinner feasts, tap dancing, fantasy creations and revealing songwriting and recording sessions all of which are captured on film. Also cameos by Edgar Allan Poe, Mick Fleetwood, Reese Witherspoon, a massive white stallion in the backyard, owls and naturally a few vampires who appear in several “home movie” style music videos.
Along with tracking the Nicks/Stewart creative partnership, “In Your Dreams” includes plenty of other cinematic payoffs including rare never before seen personal scrapbook stills from Nicks’ childhood and family life, and a wealth of candid backstage and performance shots taken over the last 35 years.
Nicks, who has sold millions of records as a solo artist, writer of such iconic songs as “Landslide”, “Gold Dust Woman” and “Edge of 17” is regularly sited by stars as diverse as Taylor Swift, Kid Rock, Courtney Love, Sheryl Crow, The Dixie Chicks and John Mayer as an iconic favorite and heroine and is a continuous inspiration to the world’s top fashion designers.
“I think you see in this film that Stevie just tells it like it is. She is who she is, and she doesn’t change,” commented Stewart.
“In Your Dreams – Stevie Nicks” Hamptons Film Festival – Sunday, October 7th at 3pm Sag Harbor Cinema
“In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks” Mill Valley Film Festival - Friday, October l2th at 6:30pm at Smith Raphael Film Center
For more information on the Hamptons Film Festival, please go to www.hamptonsfilmfest.org.
For more information about the Mill Valley Film Festival, please go to www.millvalleyfilmfestival.com
Press Contact:
Liz Rosenberg
Liz Rosenberg Media
212-991-4290
liz@lizrosenbergmedia.com
HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Sag Harbor, NY - Billed as AN AFTERNOON with STEVIE NICKS AND DAVE STEWART, the premiere was held Sunday, October 7, 2012 at Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor, NY and also screened at Sag Harbor Cinema.
View Photos | Video and read about the Premiere
JACOB BURNS FILM CENTER
Pleasantville, NY - Monday, October 8, 2012 4pm - Documentary Screening and Stevie Nicks Q&A with New York Times critic Janet Maslin.
View Photos | Video and read about the screening
MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
Mill Valley, CA - Friday, October 12, 2012 6:30pm Smith Rafael Film Center San Rafael, CA - Documentary Screening and Q&A with Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart. A second screening was held at CineArts at Sequoia 2 in Mill Valley on October 13th - Stevie did not attend.
View Photos | Video and read about Mill Valley
SUNSET SESSIONS - LAS VEGAS
Las Vegas, NV - Friday, November 9, 2012 8:30pm-10:30pm held at The Cosmopolitan Hotel Las Vegas.
View Photos and read about the event
SXSW INTERACTIVE, FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL
Austin, TX - Thursday, March 14, 2013 2-3:40pm - Documentary Screening and Q&A with Stevie Nicks at Paramount Theatre Details / Pricing
View Photos | Video and read about SXSW
LOS ANGELES SCREENING AND Q&A
Held at the Landmark Theatre in Los Angeles March 31, 2013 with Jim Ladd conducting the Q&A with Stevie.
View Photos | Video from the LA Event
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Toronto, ON Canada Monday, April 15, 2013 - Documentary Screening and Q&A with Stevie Nicks. View Photos | Video and read about the Toronto screening.
LONDON, UK PREMIERE
Monday, September 16, 2013 - Curzon Theatre.
View Photos and read about the London premiere
BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Press Release:
‘IN YOUR DREAMS’ – STEVIE NICKS DOCUMENTARY SCHEDULED FOR EXCLUSIVE NORTH AMERICAN THEATRE RELEASE ON APRIL 2ND
March 11, 2013
Intimate Portrait of Grammy Award Winning Artist and Member of Legendary Rock Band Fleetwood Mac as She Creates Album with Dave Stewart
Film Featured at SXSW Film Festival on March 14th in Austin, Texas with Media Q&A Red Carpet
Special Screening at Famed TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) on April 15th with Nicks Including Q&A
New York, NY – March 11, 2013.Following the tremendous positive response to the Stevie Nicks documentary “In Your Dreams”, an intimate portrait of one of rock’s most enduring and legendary artists, at the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival, this up close portrayal of Nicks recording her critically acclaimed “In Your Dreams” CD in collaboration with Dave Stewart is now scheduled to screen in over 50 theaters across North America on April 2nd. Tickets will be available on www.inyourdreamsmovie.com once they go on sale. A current schedule of cities and theaters follows this release, with more cities to be added.
The “In Your Dreams” film is being distributed by Abamorama. Co-produced and co-directed by former Eurythmic Dave Stewart, “In Your Dreams” is a portrait of the elusive Nicks as she and Stewart embark on a musical journey to write and record the critically acclaimed album “In Your Dreams.” Nicks called this “the greatest year of my life” and felt compelled to share the joyful experience that she terms “the day the circus came to town” with her fans. The record was co-written by Nicks and Stewart and produced by Stewart and Glen Ballard. Watch the trailer at www.inyourdreamsmovie.com
Nicks, one of the lead singers and emotional catalyst for Fleetwood Mac, is embarking on a world tour with them beginning April 4th in Columbus Ohio. A multi Grammy Award winning artist and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Nicks allowed cameras inside her magical old mansion high atop the hills of LA with a wild cast of musicians and friends. The inner life of the legendary Nicks has by her design long been kept at a distance from the public. We learn in “Dreams” that her world features, costume parties, elaborate dinner feasts, tap dancing, fantasy creations and revealing songwriting and recording sessions all of which are captured on film. Also cameos by Edgar Allan Poe, Mick Fleetwood, Reese Witherspoon, a massive white stallion in the backyard, owls and naturally a few vampires who appear in several “home movie” style music videos.
Along with tracking the Nicks/Stewart creative partnership, “In Your Dreams” has plenty of other cinematic payoffs including rare never before seen personal scrapbook stills from Nicks’ childhood and family life, and a wealth of candid backstage and performance shots taken over the last 35 years. The documentary was produced by Dave Stewart’s production company, Weapons of Mass Entertainment.
Nicks, who has sold millions of records as a solo artist and writer of such iconic songs as “Landslide,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Edge of 17,” is regularly cited by stars as diverse as Taylor Swift, Kid Rock, Courtney Love, Sheryl Crow, The Dixie Chicks and John Mayer as an iconic favorite and heroine and is a continuous inspiration to the world’s top fashion designers.
“She is really real. It doesn’t matter if she is singing in the make-up room or in the middle of a TV interview. She is who she is, and she doesn’t change.” commented Stewart.
“This is our baby and we give her lovingly into your dreams. From our tribe to yours,” concluded Nicks.
__________________________________________________
STEVIE NICKS DOCUMENTARY HEADS TO FILM FESTIVALS by ArtisanNews
Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart Q&A
"In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks"
Screening at Sunset Sessions Las Vegas - November 9, 2012
Photos by Tom Walko, Michele Clark Dougherty and Sunset Sessions
Michele Clark Dougherty with Dave Stewart and Stevie Nicks |
Stevie Nicks surrounded by the invited Veterans and active duty military members |
On Nov. 9, Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart hosted a special screening of “In Your Dreams,” a film the pair directed together, followed by a rousing Q&A discussion with Dennis Constantine (from KFOG San Francisco Radio) who moderated/interviewed the two. Several dozen veterans and active duty military were invited to attend the event as Stevie shared her personal inspiration for the film and discussed her lengthy career.
Photos by Tom Walko, Michele Clark Dougherty and Sunset Sessions
THE LADY BRAIN SHOW
with Steph & Lauren
Stevie Nicks was interviewed on The Lady Brain Show about her documentary IN YOUR DREAMS - STEVIE NICKS. The interviewed aired this past weekend... If you missed it, the interview is now available to listen to online here. podcasts
The Lady Brain Show
FLICKNATION INTERVIEW
with STEVIE NICKS
Flick Nation presents Soundwaves TV's exclusive interview with Stevie Nicks on the making of her new documentary "In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks" with Dave Stewart.
You can stream the Interview or download the Interview... Skip ahead to around the 20 min mark for the start of Stevie... Or listen to the whole show. Great interview!
INTERVIEW
Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart Q&A
following the screening of Stevie's new documentary
"In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks"
at The Mill Valley Film Festival - October 12, 2012
You can also download the Q&A at The Lens
Thank you Kay Delongpre :)
A look back at the Mill Valley Film Festival
by Mal Karman
Pacificsun.com
Senior Squeals: If you think 64-year-old mystical songstress Stevie Nicks has seen better days, you weren't at the full house for her documentary In Your Dreams, during which viewers - many of whom we're guessing have grandchildren - were bouncing out of their seats and shrieking the way they did for Elvis decades ago. MVFF audiences are considered fairly sophisticated, but they turned on their bygone juices when Nicks stepped from her limo onto the red carpet in front of the Rafael Film Center. For those of you soooo young you think Fleetwood Mac is a Cadillac with a computer, the onetime Menlo-Atherton High School and San Jose State University student has collectively produced more than 40 Top 50 hits, sold more than 140 million albums, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Chatting openly and at a mile-a-minute with strangers after the film, she talked about recently losing her mother, whom she still "calls on" for advice, about leading (by choice) a rather cloistered life, and about her battles to overcome cocaine addiction and dependency on tranquilizers. She confessed to having "the best time in rehab—because it's real" and said it is a lot more challenging to get up in front of 10,000 people when you're sober. Yeah. We can identify with that...
Full Article
Stevie Nicks Opens Up MVFF35 About Film, Album and Roller Coaster Career
By Cate Lecuyer
Millvalley patch
Photo Gallery
In promoting a new documentary about the making of her first solo album in more than a decade, former Fleetwood Mac singer returns to the Bay Area, where she spent some of her most crazy and creative years.
When you listen to Stevie Nicks’ new album, In Your Dreams, sit on a couch with two huge speakers at your side - hopefully in front of a fireplace - pour yourself a glass of port, and take it in from start to finish.
That’s the request Nicks made after the screening of her self-produced documentary Friday night during the 35th Mill Valley Film Festival. The film chronicles the year she spent recording her first solo alum in more than a decade, with Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, who joined Nicks on stage at the sold-out Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
Nicks' ties to the Bay Area run deep. She lived in San Francisco from 1968 to 1971, and recorded the renowned Fleetwood Mac album Rumours at the former Record Plant in Sausalito during a stretch that had the group regularly piling into the studio's outdoor hot tub.
For this latest album, the magic happened at Nicks’ own mansion in Pacific Palisades – although the 64-year-old rock 'n' roll icon actually lives with her dog in a one-bedroom condo a few minutes away. With people like Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and 'her girls,' backup singers Sharon Celani and Lori Nicks, all together under one roof, for Nicks it became “the moments that I live for.”
“I really wanted it to go on forever,” she said. Documenting the experience has been a way for her to relive it, and she also hopes it influences up and coming musicians about how much fun the process of creating an album can be.
“We are the teachers,” she said. “And it’s important in this day and age that all the kids who are following us need to know how to do it – and do it right.”
The documentary captures moments that unveil the spirit of the album, and of Nicks herself. From lighthearted disagreements over changing the tense of a pronoun mid-song – “I just snapped and said, ‘would you say that to Bob Dylan?’” Nicks said – to the heavy emotions she experienced after Hurricane Katrina and when she volunteered helping wounded veternas at Walter Reed Hospital, her inspiration shines behind each and every song, and paints an intimate portrait of what's behind the music.
In a touching moment, a girl in the audience, Amber, told Nicks how her music gave her and her friends something to believe in during a difficult time when they were about 13 or 14-years-old.
"That's all I ever wanted to do with my songs," Nicks said. "I just want to affect people." Whenever she receives notes and mail from people, it gets tucked away into one of her journals.
Nicks also talked candidly about her struggles with addiction - "I loved both my rehabs," she said - the importance of parents supporting their kids' dreams even if it means letting them discover they really can't sing on their own, and her difficulty dealing with the death of her mother in December 2011.
She highlighted some choice words, which she later apologized for, against American Idol judge Nicki Minaj in response to the hip-hop star's altercation with fellow judge Mariah Carey.
"That was the first time something happened when I couldn't call my mom and ask what to do," Nicks said.
She also talked about how difficult it is to make it in the music industry today. The advice she gave was to form a band, have a place like your parent's garage to rehearse in, and play as much as you can in one city and then grow from there.
"It's a different world out there," Stewart said, and Nicks had a nostalgic moment for 1975.
"It was such a romantic time," she said. "It doesn't mean we were all having affairs - we were - but it was romantic overall."
The documentary In Your Dreams captures both the old and the new, and proves that good music never dies.
"My hope is when people see this, they're going to want to hear this record," Nicks said. "Because this record is magnificent."
Mill Valley Film Festival Arrivals
Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart
Oct 12, 2012 - Photos by Trisha Leeper
Lib at Large: Stevie Nicks' 'Dreams' in full view
By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal
STEVIE NICKS WAS on the road — as usual — being driven to the Hamptons Film Festival for last Sunday's world premiere of "In Your Dreams," her self-produced documentary chronicling the year she spent recording her latest solo album — her first in a decade — with the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart.
Talking on her cellphone as she rolled through Long Island, she confessed, "I'm really nervous about it. I've seen the film a hundred times because I've been editing it since last February. But, honestly, this is my first time delving into anything involving film. In the '80s, we made a lot of videos, but that's as filmesque as I've ever been. I know so little about all of this. I've never been to a film festival before in my life."
She didn't take long to get the hang of it. After the premiere, the 64-year-old rock hall of famer treated the audience in Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theater to an impromptu medley that included 1981's "Bella Donna," the title track of an album that's sold more than 8 million copies and earned her the title of "the reigning queen of rock 'n' roll" from Rolling Stone magazine.
We can only hope she feels that inspired when she's here for Friday's 6:30 p.m. screening of "In Your Dreams" at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
"San Francisco is kind of like my second hometown," she told me in a voice that is surprisingly deep. "I lived there and started playing in aband from 1968 to 1971, so I really feel like I'm coming home."
Nicks met schoolmate Lindsey Buckingham during her senior year at Menlo Atherton High School on the peninsula. He was playing "California Dreamin'" at a party, she began harmonizing with him, and thus began one of the most enduring and tempestuous relationships in rock.
Two years later, he invited her to join him in Fritz, a band that was popular enough in the Bay Area in those days to open for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the other groups that created the San Francisco Sound.
"We happened to live in San Francisco during the greatest music period of all time, from 1966 to 1971," she told me. "We opened all those amazing shows at the Fillmore and the Avalon and Winterland. That was one of those accidentally-we-fell-upon it times in our lives."
Wearing her feather boas, furs and oversized glasses, Joplin had a flamboyant stage persona that Nicks would later interpret in her own mystical way, creating an ethereal visual style — diaphanous skirts and shawls, platform boots, layers of leather and lace.
"We opened for Janis two, maybe three times," she recalled. "When you're in the band that opens up, the perk is that you get to sit on
the side of the stage and watch the headlining act. What I walked away with from watching her was huge. You don't want to be Janis Joplin, but you certainly pick up the things she did that you love and carry them into your own thing. San Francisco made Lindsey and I who we are. That's where we learned how to be rock 'n' roll' stars."
With that experience behind them, when she and Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, they were ready for the big time.
"Lindsey and I had learned our craft in San Francisco," she explained. "That's why it was so easy for us to walk onstage with Fleetwood Mac 1975."
Nicks' impact on the formerly British band was immediate. Fleetwood Mac's eponymous 1975 album was a commercial and critical success, thanks largely to her song "Rhiannon," voted by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. She also contributed "Landslide," another much-covered classic.
The band was flying high when it holed up in Sausalito's Record Plant to record "Rumours," the 1978 album of the year. It's sold 40 million copies on the strength of four Top 10 singles, including Nicks' song "Dreams," the band's first and only No. 1 hit.
In "Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album," producer Ken Caillat reveals the drama around the band then, the creative differences, infidelity, divorce, drugs, alcohol and hard partying that the group somehow managed to survive. Despite that chaotic history, Nicks has pleasant memories of that crazy period.
"We were in Sausalito for about four months," she recalled. "That was one of the best times I can remember. Being in Sausalito every day and being able to sit in restaurants and look across the bay at San Francisco and drink Irish coffee and laugh and kid around and then go to work in this beautiful studio was so much fun. We have great memories of Sausalito."
Nicks, who has recovered from addiction to cocaine and the prescription drug Klonopin, has eight acclaimed solo albums to her credit. The new one, "In Your Dreams," was recorded in the mansion she owns in Pacific Palisades that is featured so prominently in the documentary. She bought the place in 2005, but lives most of the time with her dog in a nearby one-bedroom apartment overlooking the ocean.
"The house became one of the characters in the film," she said. "In San Francisco in the '60s we would have said, 'This is a happening.' It was like a trip without the acid. Everybody who would come over would just want to be there. We were like rolling stones that were gathering moss."
One of the guests was Buckingham, who played acoustic guitar and sang background vocals on the recording of "Soldier Song," a track inspired by the volunteer work Nicks has done with wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital.
In the film, Buckingham's visit was portrayed as a healing moment in their famously stormy love affair cum friendship.
"You could see him relax and start having a great time," she remembered. "He didn't feel like he was in any kind of competition (with Dave Stewart). But since the beginning, Lindsey and I never really agreed on anything, but that's just who we are. If we had felt exactly the same, I don't think we would have made a good duo. We're always going to be Lindsey and Stevie. It was the same when we were 16 and 17 as it is now that we're 63 and 64. We're exactly the same people."
Nicks is at the end of a summerlong tour behind the "In Your Dreams" album. The Rafael Film Center screening of the 101-minute documentary about the making of the record will be its West Coast premiere. On Oct. 27, she stars in "A Bewitching Evening with Stevie Nicks," a Halloween street party benefit for the revamping of A.C.T.'s Strand Theatre (www.act-sf.org).
Nicks looks back on the year she spent making the record and the film as the best of her life. "When everybody left, I sat on the stairs, put my head in my hands and cried," she recalled. "I really didn't want it to end."
But she's knows it's time to look ahead. She will rejoin Fleetwood Mac in February for yet another tour.
"At some point you have to move on," she said. "And Fleetwood Mac, they're waiting. We'll probably tour all next year. And then I'll go back to my own world the year after next. That's the future."
Q&A with Stevie Nicks
Jacob Burns Film Center - October 8, 2012
Pleasantville, NY
Full Hour Conversation & Q&A with Stevie Nicks
Hampton International Film Festival
Sag Harbor, NY - October 7, 2012
Sag Harbor, NY - October 7, 2012
Dave Stewart announced that a new
"In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks"
website is coming next week!
During this interview in The Hamptons below when asked where people could find out more on the film Dave said a new website will be up next week called inyourdreamsthemovie.
What we can expect to see according to Dave and Stevie is Photos, Outtakes and the future screening dates for the film!
What we can expect to see according to Dave and Stevie is Photos, Outtakes and the future screening dates for the film!
Cool!!
In Your Dreams: Stevie Nicks: Film Review
The Hollywood Reporter
by John DeFore
Stevie Nicks and producer Dave Stewart co-direct a diary about the album they made together.
THE HAMPTONS, NEW YORK — A diaristic doc whose appeal is limited strictly to megafans, In Your Dreams: Stevie Nicks chronicles the collaboration between Nicks and Eurythmics member Dave Stewart on the 2011 album of the same name. A raucous premiere here (with viewers applauding after every song) suggests Nicks has enough admirers to fill special screenings here and there, but the film is best suited to a CD/DVD Collectors' Edition package.
Nicks and Stewart share directing credit on the film, displaying an enthusiasm for effects -- from filters to fisheye lenses -- that sometimes exacerbates the choppiness of Shane Mclafferty's editing. Their stylistic flourishes fit more smoothly in the music video-like sequences scattered throughout, where 19th-century costumes and the occasional vampire or magician matches the music's mood.
The film opens "somewhere in Southern California," where Nicks has decided to set up mikes in the middle of her sprawling old house and spend the better part of a year piecing a record together with Stewart and some other old friends. Having handed Stewart a book full of writings (she uses the word "poems" pretty loosely), the two collaborate on making songs from them; the film gives each track its own bit of screen time, whether it was inspired by a long-ago post-rehab romance ("For What It's Worth") or is little more than an aural book report about "Wide Sargasso Sea."
This may suit devotees, but more casual fans will wish for a movie that doesn't assume we already know everything there is to know about the singer's career. Only one brief tangent on her childhood makes its way onscreen, and there's almost no talk of her early solo outings or her heyday with Fleetwood Mac. (An enjoyable bit of keyboard noodling on "Dreams" is as close as we get to the glory days.) Old bandmates Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham do drop by to record on new songs, though, and we are treated to a funny story about the time Nicks tried to steal a Mike Campbell tune that became Tom Petty's "Runaway Trains."
Though unconvinced viewers may snort when Nicks compares herself to Bob Dylan or treats lyrics scribbled on hotel stationery like relics of great import, we do see things partly explaining her success: Knowing she's not getting what she wants during a track's playback, she proves to have remembered one of Stewart's guitar solos better than he himself does.
Production Company: Weapons of Mass Entertainment
Directors-Executive Producers: Dave Stewart, Stevie Nicks
Producers: Dave Stewart, Paul Boyd
Director of photography: Paul Boyd
Editor: Shane Mclafferty
Sales: John Beug
No rating, 100 minutes
Stevie Nicks Talks Film and Collaboration
October 8, 2012 | By Christopher Walsh
East Hampton Star
Stevie Nicks charmed a capacity audience at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Sunday, where she discussed her 2011 album, "In Your Dreams," the making of which is depicted in "In Your Dreams - Stevie Nicks," which premiered at the Sag Harbor Cinema following her talk.
"When you make a record in your house, you are able to really be yourself because you're in your place," Ms. Nicks said, explaining how she, with her co-producer, Dave Stewart, and other musicians, engineers, and assistants spent what she called the best year of her life.
Mr. Stewart had said he hoped to write a few songs with her, Ms. Nicks said, though at the time she had no such intention. Even with her original collaborator, Lindsay Buckingham -- with whom she had a long romantic relationship, released an album in 1973, and joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974 -- she had never co-written music, fearful of the inevitable hurt feelings that would follow a potentially unsuccessful collaboration. Mr. Stewart had experienced a similar path, as musical and romantic partner with Annie Lennox in their band, Eurhythmics.
Ms. Nicks's resistance finally gave way when she began to collaborate with Mr. Stewart on "In Your Dreams." "I'm going to go with this, I'm going to give him a chance" she recalled thinking. I would never give Lindsey a chance, because Lindsey and I had way too much baggage. But I didn't have that kind of baggage with Dave Stewart, so I didn't have all the reasons to hate him," she said, to laughter and applause.
Ms. Nicks gave him a book of her poems, having no expectation that he would read them all. But he did, and their collaboration was born.
Stevie Nicks on Film: 'The World Used to Give You More of a Chance'
Fleetwood Mac memories were in the air on Sunday as the legendary lead singer showed the world her new music documentary at the Hamptons Film Festival.
Northfork Patch
By Erin Schultz
Photo and article Credit Erin Schultz |
Since the early ‘70s, iconic songstress Stevie Nicks has been living and sharing her dreams through music that has touched a universal nerve over the years — even if you’re not a fan of Nicks or Fleetwood Mac, you’ve heard the mega hits like “Dreams,” “Landslide,” and “Stand Back” on the radio, on the jukebox, or over the P.A. at the grocery store.
As part of the Hamptons Film Festival, Nicks shared her thoughts about her sweeping musical career and her latest solo album, entitled “In Your Dreams,” to a lively audience at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Sunday afternoon before the debut of a music documentary that chronicles the making of the album.
“The world used to give you more of a chance — they might not like everything on your album, but they might like some of it, so they’re going to listen to all of it,” she said during a Q&A session at the Bay Street.
Nicks and longtime musical soul mate, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, took the love of album-based songwriting to new heights right out of the gate with “Buckingham Nicks,” an acoustic-driven songfest that is still available only in its original 1973 vinyl form — much to the chagrin of a few fans from Westhampton Beach who stood in line outside of the theater with that very album in hand Sunday morning.
“We hope they can get back together again and perform these songs,” said Lisa Pastor of Westhampton Beach, holding the “Buckingham Nicks” album for a photo opp. “We just love Stevie — you can just relate to her songs, everyone can.”
Nicks and Buckingham, Christine and John McVie and Mick Fleetwood got together, broke up, and got together again over the years, and through their own raw emotional experiences made one of the best — and best-selling — albums in 1977 called “Rumors,” and that album and those songs — “Dreams,” “Second Hand News,” “Go Your Own Way” — permeate the world of popular music to this very day.
Before taking the stage for the Q&A Sunday, the Stevie Nicks of then and now was featured in a teaser clip of “In Your Dreams,” explaining that she never took lessons or played by any rules creating songs — rules take away from the authenticity of the heart, she said.
But with the help of producers Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and Glen Ballard, “In Your Dreams” does follow the rules Nicks laid out for herself with Buckingham long ago, with and without Fleetwood Mac — the concept of the album is everything. Released in May of last year, the solo album is the fifth to crack Billboard’s top ten for this down-to-earth songstress with lasting universal appeal.
“The old way, up until not that long ago, was the only way,” Nicks said during the Q&A. “And that meant, you know, you make a record, you sequence the songs so that even if someone doesn’t like the third song they’re probably going to listen to it anyway because it comes out of the second song and goes into the fourth song beautifully.
“And I wanted to make this new record at my house, because, as Fleetwood Mac did even as recently as 2003, you don’t have time limits as you would in a studio, and you are instantly more calm. You are able to really be yourself.”
Stevie Nicks, Melissa Leo close out Hamptons film fest
By RAFER GUZMÁN
Newsday
Stevie Nicks and Melissa Leo helped wrap up the last big day of the 20th annual Hamptons International Film Festival, which included an awards ceremony for the winning films and a screening of David Chase's "Not Fade Away," the closing night film.
Sunday was a day to see a platinum-selling singer and an Oscar-winning star in action. Nicks, whose self-produced documentary, "In Your Dreams," had its world premiere here, spoke at Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theater and thrilled the audience with an impromptu medley of several songs, including 1981's "Bella Donna."
Stevie Nicks discusses her first film at the Hamptons International Film Festival
By Rafer Guzman
October 5, 2012
Newsday
Rafer Guzman with Stevie Nicks Photo by Karen Johnston (Stevie's Assistant) |
The Hamptons received a visit from California rock royalty Thursday night when Stevie Nicks drove into town. On Friday afternoon, Nicks, the face of Fleetwood Mac and a solo artist in her own right, began granting interviews to discuss her first film "In Your Dreams: Stevie Nicks."
The documentary chronicles the making of her 2011 album, "In Your Dreams," which was produced by Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics) and Glenn Ballard. It became the singer’s fifth album to enter Billboard’s Top Ten.
Stewart and Nicks co-directed the film, which will have its world premiere 3 p.m. Sunday at the Regal Southampton. Nicks will also be interviewed before a live audience earlier that day at 1 p.m. at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.
Nicks, 64, sat poolside at the Maidstone hotel to talk about her first film and her first-time jitters. Here's an edited version of the conversation.
How did you choose the Hamptons festival for your world premiere?
I can't tell you that, because I honestly don't know. I've never been to a film festival. I've heard of Sundance and Cannes, but I've never gone to them, so I really have no idea.
So who made the decision?
Probably Liz [Rosenberg, powerhouse publicist, relaxing in a deck-chair nearby]. Dave and his people spent all last year editing the film, probably 10 to 11 months, down to 3 hours. And then on Feb. 1, me and Dave's editor and my assistant Karen [Johnston], we started editing at my house. So we edited for four months to take it from 3 hours down to an hour-40. I've been on tour, editing, on tour, editing. So really this has all come very fast. I was just told by the powers that be that the Hamptons film festival was fantastic, and that I was lucky enough to have been asked. I'm thrilled to be here, because I've never really gotten to spend any time here. I'm not leaving till Monday.
How did you and Dave Stewart meet?
We met in 1983. He wrote a song for me in 1985 called "Don't Come Around Here No More." He brought it to me and we went in with Jimmy Iovine and Tom Petty to help. I went home that night and when I came back the next night Tom had written it. Not to be horrific to me, it was Jimmy and Dave and Tom for 24 hours, so they just finished it. And when I came back the next night I was just furious. I fired Jimmy. I couldn't fire Dave, because he was my friend. ... You can't be mad at Dave. There is something about him, there's no place for anger.
He came up to the house one night [while producing the new album] and said to me, "We should film this." I said, "Dave, that's a lot of work ... that means I'm going to have to do my own makeup, I'm going to have to dress up." Because Dave totally dresses up, every day. I think he dresses up at home.
He always did have a dandy look.
Oh, very ... And Dave said to me, "Listen, darling, if you don't like it, we'll take it out. If you don't like any of it, we won't use any of it."
In the early '80s, there were very clear divisions between the new, synthesizer-based bands like the Eurhythmics, and the previous, guitar-rock generation. Did you feel that vibe back then?
I loved a lot of the '80s music, so I was able to relate to everything. I had huge hair. I had a massive perm! I loved the '80s, and it was a really super, dress-up time, so I loved it. And I was sorry when it was over. I loved it much more than the '90s. I was really sorry when grunge came in, because I was not grunge. And really, neither was Fleetwood Mac. So Fleetwood Mac just stayed a great elite 70s band, and that's still today what we are.
And the '80s did embrace you, as did MTV.
And that was really my solo career, which started in 1981 and went all the way till now. For me, that was "Stand Back" and "I Can't Wait" and "Talk To Me." A lot of those songs really fit into that whole genre.
Are you coming to see the film?
I'll be the one cowering in the dark, with my hands over my eyes. I'll be all the way in the back row.
Photographer Lisa Tamburini East Hamptons Patch |
Photos by Lisa Tamburini
Photo by thehamptons.com |
INTERVIEW: Stevie Nicks On Making "In Your Dreams" And The Hamptons
By Nicole B. Brewer and Nicole Barylski
October 5, 2012
Hamptons.com
Nicole B. Brewer & Nicole Barylski with Stevie Nicks |
After a ten year hiatus legendary songwriter Stevie Nicks is back with her latest album "In Your Dreams" and a rockumentary, produced by the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, of the same name. "When you see it you are going to be living in my world for one hour and forty minutes," said Nicks during our recent interview. The 'gypsy' is in the Hamptons this weekend for the 20th Hamptons International Film Festival. We sat down with her at The Maidstone on a gorgeous fall afternoon to get the scoop.
"It was the best year of my life! I have never had so much fun in my life," exclaimed Nicks as we sat in the garden and talked about nail polish a bit before our interview officially began. She prefers OPI Big Apple Red and does her nails herself saying as we settled in, "If I wasn't doing this I'd be a manicurist!"
The "In Your Dreams" album was ten years in the making and all started with 9/11 explained Nicks, "I went on the road at the end of June with 'Trouble in Shangri-La'. I had been on the road for two and a half months, which is nothing and then 9/11 happened. So for all practical purposes the record and everything blew up." Nicks was in New York by herself set to enjoy her one day off on that fateful day, her band was in Canada getting ready for the next leg of the tour. "I went to bed at 7:30 p.m.," she went on to say, "and when [my assistant] Karen woke me up at 11 a.m. the world had changed."
Ever generous to her devoted fans, Nicks stayed on the road for another month because "no one had turned their tickets in or asked for refunds." She went on the "Say You Will" tour with Fleetwood Mac in 2002, then again on her own in 2003 and 2004. During that time she kept pondering writing and another record but the music industry was in flux and piracy was a hot topic. Her advisors told her to enjoy touring and wait. Nicks says her managers told her, "You're a songwriter, you create the song it's yours, you write the poem, and you put it out. [Then] one person buys it and sends it out to 500 personal friends and they send it out to their friends. You are a songwriter this is how you make money. What we recommend is you go back on the road because you can still do big shows and sell tickets. A lot of people can't." So she did.
Inspiration for "In Your Dreams" happened quite unexpectedly in 2009 while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in Australia. "I saw the second 'Twilight' movie and wrote 'Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)' right then." Nicks told us, "There was a piano in my suite and I said to my assistant Karen, I am ready to make a record now. I don't care what is going on around me I'm doing it. If nobody wants it or everybody steals it I will have to deal with that then."
As soon as she got off tour she called Dave Stewart and asked him if he wanted to work with her to produce. He jumped right in. "Dave came up [to my house] to spend one day discussing it and I said why don't we do it here. We don't have to go into the studio and pay $2,500 per day. He said, 'let's do it.'" Vamping a bit and mimicking her dear friend and collaborator she went on, "By the third day he said, 'Darling we have to film this.' And I said, 'Darling do you know what that means?' Now this guy dresses up every day and loves it." Nicks is not in full stage dress and makeup at home, she likes a more casual look. For her the thought of cameras every day meant hair, makeup, and wardrobe which caused some hesitation. She relented when he reassured her, "He said if you don't love it, we won't use it. I said, 'Hand to God?' and he promised 'Swear to God.'" But he didn't get off that easy. "Fair enough," she told him, "But I will hunt you down and kill you if any of it gets out and I don't like it."
From there they filmed for a year and in her words, "Had the best time." Stewart's team then edited a year of her life down to three hours. Later the film would be cut to a final hour and forty minutes. "We finished just two weeks ago," said Nicks, "With that kind of thing it's like 'no you can't have it it's not done yet.'" When they finally handed it in and realized the film was complete Nicks was "in tears and I said 'take it.' It's like your child."
Regarding the genius that is Dave Stewart, Nicks went on to gush a bit, "He is an amazing photographer. He's been filming women for years. With Annie Lennox, he is the reason she cut off all her hair. He was behind all of this amazing stuff, I didn't even know." On "In Your Dreams," Nicks says he gave everyone Flip cameras and said, "Everyone film and we will see what we come up with. If it doesn't make sense or is an 'Alice In Wonderland' bewitched world we won't put it up. If we love it we will let people have it." It was an "easy thing to do because Dave made it into a no big deal thing."
Having only been in and out of the Hamptons a mere three times for benefits over the years Nicks is looking forward to enjoying the film festival weekend in Sag Harbor with friends. So if you notice a familiar looking blonde with a crescent moon necklace window shopping next to you on Main Street take time for a second look, it might just be the Stevie Nicks, star of "In Your Dreams" and 140 million album selling Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend.
• Get up close and personal with Stevie Nicks at Bay Street Theatre on Sunday, October 7, 2012, at noon for a "Conversation With Stevie Nicks" presented by Capital One. Catch a screening of "In Your Dreams" during the Hamptons International Film Festival this weekend at the Sag Harbor Cinema also on Sunday, October 7, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. For details check out www.hamptonsfilmfest.org
Stevie Nicks Rocks Hamptons International Film Festival
OCTOBER 5, 2012 By Dan Koontz
Dans Hamptons
Stevie Nicks is coming to the Hamptons. But not to sing. Well, not exactly. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy winner is coming to take part in the Hamptons International Film Festival, which will be screening In Your Dreams, an intimate documentary about the making of her latest album. She’s also looking forward to a little R&R.
“Last night I just did my last 2 hour and 10 minute performance. We’ve been out on the road since June, and I really need a break from that.” Speaking from her hotel room in Florida, the rock icon who sang in Fleetwood Mac starting in 1975 and wrote many of their hits before launching her fabulous solo career sounds thoroughly pleased to be on her way to spend a few days in our neck of the woods.
“I’ve been to the Hamptons three times before, to do benefit performances, but this will be the first time I’ll have a chance to really look around. I’m a real water person, so I’m looking forward to getting down to see the ocean. And so many people have told me that I’ve got to see Sag Harbor!”
Nicks is also tremendously excited about what she calls “this little film” that is showing during HIFF, one that documents the nearly yearlong process of writing and recording the CD In Your Dreams in her Malibu home. It was a process that Nicks likens to a “happening,” with at least ten people in and out every day. “It was the best year of my life,” she says, which is saying a lot for a rock queen who has surely had many a great year, even if they were sometimes legendarily tumultuous.
The idea to film the In Your Dreams sessions originated with producer Dave Stewart (best known as Annie Lennox’s partner in Eurythmics), who is in the habit of filming everything. Initially, Nicks was skeptical.
“I don’t care who you are, every woman has a problem with being photographed,” she observes. “But David said”—and here she imitates Stewart’s British accent—“Stevie, I’ve been filming women all my life. I know how to do it.”
In the end what truly convinced Nicks to allow cameras was revisiting the short film that captured the recording sessions where George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan got together as the Traveling Wilburys—an event made more poignant by the early passing of both Orbison and Harrison not so long after. “It will never happen again, not this way,” Nicks points out. A singular creative process cannot be repeated. Why not film a record of the day-to-day work and play that goes on in making an album?
Nicks is also practical. Given what she calls the “dire straits” of the music business (i.e. nobody buys records anymore), she hopes that people will be inspired by the sounds they hear in the film to seek out the CD. She is indeed quite disturbed by the now ubiquitous practice of musical file-sharing, and of all the other technologies that have put musicians out of work. As a result of her deeply held convictions in this regard, she herself refuses to own a computer or any other device that she blames for the music business’s current plight.
Nicks’s Hamptons fans will no doubt want to learn more about her thoughts on these and other issues, and we’ll get our chance at noon on Sunday, October 7th at Bay Street Theatre, where she will be interviewed live before an audience before the screening of In Your Dreams at the Sag Harbor Cinema that same Sunday at 3 p.m. After that, maybe it’s off to the beach.
In Your Dreams Documentary Premieres at Hampton's: Chatting With Stevie Nicks
by: Mike Ragogna
October 4, 2012
Huffington Post
In Your Dreams: A Conversation With Stevie Nicks
Mike Ragogna: Stevie, how are you?
Stevie Nicks: Good, how are you?
MR: Pretty good, thanks. Stevie, you have a new documentary that's going to be premiering on October 7th at Hamptons International Film Festival. The name of you new documentary with Dave Stewart is In Your Dreams, that title also having been the name of the last album. Obviosuly, this was an important album for you.
SN: This was an important album. This was an album that I probably was never going to make, because after I did Trouble in Shangri-La that came out in 2001, I went out on the road with Fleetwood Mac for a couple of years and then in 2005, I was going to make a record. I came off the road with Fleetwood Mac and that's kind of what I've always done. I do my whole thing with Fleetwood Mac, and it was like a year and a half for Say You Will, and then I was going to make a record. I really got very depressed feedback from everyone in the business around me, which was like, "You know what, the business is so screwed up that really, right now, you just shouldn't bother." It wasn't just my manager, it was everybody. It was like I'd tripped and fallen down the stairs. It was a really bad moment in my life, and I said, "Okay." That's really not like me, but with the whole internet piracy and everything, I don't have a computer, I didn't have one then, but I knew that was coming ten years ago. I knew that that was going to start to destroy the music business, and I was like, "Oh, my God, it's happening, it's even happening to me."
MR: Yeah, it took out the record companies, leaving them going, "How in the world are we going to make money now?"
SN: Right, and then not to mention us--the elite bands from the seventies who never stopped playing and who could go out and do big tours, vis-à-vis Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles. We can have a three-hour repertoire if we want. We can have a five-hour repertoire if we want. We can still do these big tours and that's where the money is right now. But what makes me very sad is all the kids, all those really talented kids anywhere from fourteen to thirty, just so talented and out there waiting to be found. But the problem is that record companies don't have money so they can't help you. In my day, they helped you. When we did Buckingham Nicks, Polydor helped us before they dropped the record. For two years, they helped us and they gave us money and they helped us with our rent and our car and food. You can't get that now, so how in the heck is anybody that's up-and-coming going to make it if they can't support themselves because they've moved out of their parent's house and their parents are like, "Hey, you're on your own. We're not going to just support you for the next ten years while you try to make it in a business where people are stealing your songs, even if you're the best songwriter we've ever met." That's just so unfortunate. I feel so sorry for this generation--for the last five years' worth of the generation coming up that so want to be in the music business that are having such a hard time because they cannot support themselves.
MR: Stevie, let me ask you, what do you think of these talent shows like The Voice, American Idol and the franchises that have popped up over the years? To me, it does seem like a last hurrah or a last gasp for the record companies to try to hook into something. But it's the same problem, right, the loss of sales?
SN: Yeah. The problem with that is, people ask me all the time, "If you and Lindsey moved to LA now and you were 23, 24 or 25, would you go on one of those shows?" and I'm like, "Well, first of all, I'd have to drag Lindsey kicking and screaming. However, oh you bet your life we would!" That is the last bastion right now to get noticed. But then again, I know people who have won these shows and some of them are doing really well and some of them disappear within the next year. I guess even once you've won those shows, then what? You put out a record, five hundred people buy it, and each one of those five hundred people sends it out to a hundred of their close personal friends and then each one of those close personal friends sends it out to another five hundred people and you may have won a big television show, but unless you're Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson, you're still going to have a terrible time. My friend Michael Grimm who won America's Got Talent, I took him on tour with me and he's amazing. He's like Boz Scaggs.
MR: Yeah, I interviewed him a while back. Nice guy.
SN: He's so sweet and dear and he walks out there on that stage and that voice is amazing. He lives in Las Vegas, he's doing gigs there, and he said, "You know, I actually had more gigs before I won America's Got Talent, and it was a great thing. I won a million dollars and was able to set my grandparents up, who pretty much raised me, and I was able to take care of the people around me. But when it comes down to me, my goal...it's like I'm really back to doing exactly what I was doing before." The record companies don't have the money. They're going to be onto the next thing the second they even see you falter.
MR: Yeah, remember when artists on A&M or Geffen or whatever and the label would hang in there for like four or five albums because they believed in you?
SN: Our record company, after Rumours, when we did Tusk, needless to say, Warner Brothers was like, "What is this?" and Lindsey's like, "We're not making another Rumours. We're making something completely different." So he went in on a mission to make something that was the other side of Rumours and we did. The record company really wasn't happy about it, at all, and it was a double album, so it was double bad. But they didn't drop Fleetwood Mac, they said, "Okay, we're going to let you guys be crazy...and when your record comes out, we're going to totally promote it, and we're going to go with you on this one because we are willing to hang with you and let you morph...from Fleetwood Mac to Rumours to Tusk to Mirage to Tango In The Night." They could have just dropped us. If it had been even in the last ten years, they would've dropped us so fast with Tusk. You would've never heard about Fleetwood Mac again.
MR: Before you leave Tusk, I also got to interview Lindsey and one of the things I mentioned to him was that I've found that over the years, Tusk has become much more appreciated, with artists doing projects based on what they've learned from the project.
SN: People love it now because it was way ahead of its time. I used to say that we were climbing to the top of the mountain to find the gods. It was a thirteen-month project where we there 24/7 every day. It was pretty outrageous, but we lived in that bubble where it was kind of strange and mystical world music, music from all over the world we were listening to in order to make that record. We knew it was weird, but we also knew in our hearts, I think, because...people always ask me with Fleetwood Mac, "You guys were doing a lot of drugs and you were all crazy and breaking up and mad with each other and stuff." My answer to that is always, "Yes, that's true." However, we were so very focused on our music that we weren't letting anything get in our way and if we were mad at each other, we did not take that into the studio. If we were a little bit too high, somebody would always say, "Why don't you go home and come back tomorrow and don't be that way." It's like with every one of the five of us there were always two or three people going, "Listen, what's most important here?" Fleetwood Mac is most important here. Fleetwood Mac trumps everything that is happening in everybody's life. So whatever it is, don't bring it here.
MR: Let's get further into In Your Dreams. On camera, you appear fluid, informed, and very comfortable. You're very at ease here.
SN: Yes. You know what, I have been a little performer since I was four years old, and you're going to see that in this film. I was just nuts for the stage. I came into the world dancing and singing, and my mom and dad, I think, knew from the very beginning. My grandfather was a country-western singer and a fiddle player and guitarist, and he wrote songs and traveled all over the United States and played gigs in the forties. My parents were very supportive of my love of music and my focus was very strong from when I was in grade school. They knew I didn't want to be an actress, I didn't want to take drama, I didn't really want to take musical drama. I just wanted to listen to rockabilly and rock 'n' roll and R&B, and I just was in my own little musical world. I had it planned out. In sixth grade, I was wearing a black outfit with a top hat. I had it all planned out.
MR: We like to diagnose things as ADD or ADHD, but how about, "No, she just had the music in her?"
SN: Exactly, and I was really refusing to go any other way. But you know, the great thing about this record is that I wrote a song in the early seventies when Lindsey and I first moved to Los Angeles called "Lady From The Mountains." It never got recorded for real, but a demo was made of it and the demo was stolen from my house and it went out as a bootleg. So the whole world heard this song called "Lady From the Mountains." In 2009, we went to Australia and I saw the second movie in the Twilight series and I was very taken with it. Either you are or you aren't; I was. I went back to my hotel in Brisbane and I took the first and the third verses from "Lady From The Mountains," and I wrote the second verse and the chorus and it became the song, "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)." When I finished that song and we did it on a demo, I got up from the piano and I said to my assistant, "Karen, I am ready to do a record now, and I don't really care what anybody says and I don't really care if the record business in trouble. I'm going to make this record for me. I need to do it and I feel the power right now." So I did. I went straight back and I called Dave Stewart at the beginning of January and I said, "I'm going to do a record, Dave. Would you produce it?"
We got together at his studio and offices in downtown Los Angeles and that's when we decided to do it at my big house and from there on, within three days, we were filming. Even though the filming thing was like, "Okay, really, does that mean I have to wear makeup every day and I have to kind of dress up every day and do my floor-length hair every day," he said, "Well kind of. Or you could come down in your pajamas, it's okay, I don't care." He said to me, "Darling, if you don't like it, we won't use it," and right there, it was like, "I love him and I trust him." And I knew that, first of all, he really knows how to film women and has since Annie Lennox, and so that right there is a big, huge plus. So I said, "Okay, we'll give it a go," and by the end of the first two weeks, not only Dave was filming and not only did he have a friend of his who was a great film photographer who just came in with a small, really great camera, he had the girl background singers and the chef--my god-daughter who was a really great film photographer--he had everybody in the house filming. Then it became really, really fun because all of us had really great stuff. Not only were we writing songs and making this great album, but we were all part of this filming project. It was the best year of my life and that's what I tell people. It'll be hard to ever recreate something that is this much fun.
MR: Yeah, and you've said you would like to leave this behind for people who are getting into music, which brings me to my next question. What advice do you have for new artists?
SN: Well, if I had kids that were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old and I could see that they were so talented--Dave has a daughter that's twelve and she's super talented and she sings like Janis Joplin for real--it's like what do you tell these kids? I would say, you have to do what you have to do, and if you really want to be a singer and you really want to be a songwriter, put a band together and you're just going to have to live at your parents' house and play everywhere in your city that you can, every night. And if you have to go to school at the same time like I did, that's what I did. I practiced from five to ten with the band every night, and I studied from ten thirty to three every night and I went to college. I went to five years of college when I was in that band up in San Francisco before we moved to Los Angeles. So I did both--I went to school and I was in a band that was actually playing two to three gigs a week. You just can't give up. I think it depends on how strong your spirit is to actually make it in the music business. If your spirit is super strong and you've really got the goods, then you're going to take on that attitude that you're not going to fail and you're going to give it a try. You're going to go after it in every place you can possibly play, from any mall that will accept you to a coffee shop to steakhouse to any place you can possibly get in. That's what you do. That's what you did then and that's what you do now, except that, hopefully, you have a supportive family that let you stay at home for a couple extra years.
MR: Yeah, or pay for you wherever you're going to live.
SN: Well that's asking a lot, right there.
MR: I know, who has money.
SN: With this kind of financial crisis that's been going on for eight years, you're asking a lot. So you're going to have to have a very supportive backup team besides being super-talented. You're going to have to have a super support team. But you know what? Nobody would be able to tell me, if I moved to Los Angeles right now and I knew how good I was, because I did know how good I was, if I moved there and everybody said, "The record companies are screwed and you're never going to get a record deal," I would go, "Just watch me." That's how I would go into it. I would pack my bag and I'd be off to Los Angeles or New York in ten minutes. If I had to be a cleaning lady and have five waitress jobs and be a temp somewhere and substitute for dental assistants, whatever you have to do, you do it if you love it that much and then, five years later, you make a decision on what you're going to do.
MR: You, personally, have a very spiritual side that also keeps you driven, right?
SN: Oh yeah--spiritual backed up by extremely hard work. I psychically knew in the sixth grade when I did a lip-syncing tap dance to Buddy Holly's "Everyday" I was going to be famous. I flat out told my parents that. "I'm going to be famous. You do know that, don't you?" They were like, "Well, okay, we get it, but you're also going to go to school because you're going to back up your fame with a good education." My mother would say to me, "You know what Stevie? I totally believe that you're going to be famous but you're going to be able to stand in a room with all of the famous people that you're going meet--and there are going to be politicians and movie stars and famous scientists--and you're going to be able to totally be on their level because you're going to have a five-year college education. You're never going to feel like you're not as smart as all these people are. You're going to be able to sing and dance and do your thing, but you are going to be really educated."
MR: Stevie, your song "Landslide" has embedded itself in this culture to the point where it keeps getting re-recorded and sung during countless open mic nights. And it wasn't a top ten Fleetwood Mac song. How do you explain that?
SN: You know what, it's just that little song. That's what I tell people on stage when I do it. I wrote it in 1973 in Colorado in Aspen, and I knew when I was sitting on the floor looking out at the snow-covered hills and I wrote this little song, I knew. I got up from the floor and I said, "This is going to be that little song. This is going to be it." That's what I tell everybody in the audience. So when you're writing songs--any of you out there that are songwriters--understand that when you write a song that's really special, it could be the song that makes your whole life.
MR: Yeah, there's something about "Landslide."
SN: That is the one. That's the one that can never go out of the set.
MR: Stevie, any more reflections on the documentary?
SN: I tell people that Dave created a magical sandbox for me and my singers to play in and that he became The Mad Hatter and this walk through ten months in my house is like going into Alice In Wonderland's world. You really get to experience making this record. Anybody who loves music, wants to be in music, is a singer, is a writer, used to be a singer or a writer, is ninety years old and wishes they were still young enough to be a singer and a writer, it's like you come into my world and it's very, very special. I'm so proud of this that my real prayer for this film is that when people see this--because they get to see a little bit and hear a little bit of the finished product of each song, not a lot--but what I'm hoping is that in this world of "We don't need to buy a whole concept record," that they see this film and they go, "I really need to hear this record!"
MR: Nice. And again, it's debuting at the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 7th.
SN: Right. Dave and I are going to be there and it's going to be so fun.
MR: I also want to congratulate you on your song "Soldier's Angel." It's still very touching and I love that you are still with the Band Of Soldiers charity. You've contributed to our soldiers' lives as well as the culture in beautiful ways.
SN: Well, thank you. I think that "Soldier's Angel" is probably the song off of this record that will live on forever because it does sort of capture a moment in time through Iraq and Afghanistan and everything that's going on now. These wars aren't over and these kids are coming back and they're so wounded and they're never going to be the same and people should try to remember that and try to take care of these guys because once they leave the hospitals, they're on their own. When you actually sit on the bed of one of these injured soldiers, you're like, "Oh my God, what can I do to help?" and I tell everybody every night, you need to send in five bucks a month. Do whatever you can.
MR: All right, Stevie, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
SN: You too, and hopefully I'll see you soon.
MR: Yes, I'll see you soon.
Stevie Nicks Lives Her 'Dreams'
By Dawn Watson
27east.com
October 2, 2012
Dawn Watson with Stevie Nicks Photo by Lisa Tamburini |
Sitting on her bed, in a cottage on a beach somewhere in Florida, multi Grammy Award-winner Stevie Nicks counts her blessings.
“We just finished our last big concert and I’m surrounded by people I love—my two back-up singers Sharon Celani and Lori Nicks, she’s my sister-in-law, and my assistant, Karen—and my little doggie Sulamith Wülfing,” she said. “She’s in the movie too,” Ms. Nicks said of her 14-year-old Chinese Crested Yorkie.
The movie is the documentary “In Your Dreams,” which was co-directed by Ms. Nicks and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and focuses on the making of the album of the same name. The 14-track album was released in May 2011. The 101-minute documentary feature will make its world premiere at the 20th annual Hamptons International Film Festival on Sunday, October 7, at 3 p.m. at the Sag Harbor Cinema.
According to Ms. Nicks, she and Mr. Stewart, with whom she collaborated for the album as well (“Dave and I wrote songs together. I’d never written songs with anyone in my life, not even Lindsey,” she said, referring to former lover and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham), will both be at a talk preceding the screening, to be held at noon on Sunday at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.
“We barely finished the film 10 days ago,” the former Fleetwood Mac member and singer of such hits as “Landslide,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Edge of Seventeen,” and “Leather and Lace,” said on Friday afternoon. “I’ve never made a movie. When you put something out there this personal, you get a little scared. You want people to love it. I’m not spoiled so I don’t expect everyone will love everything that I do but I hope everyone likes it.”
Filming, which took place in 2010 at her home in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, was a “super-magical time,” Ms. Nicks said. It was the happiest year of her life, she added.
“It was from the very, very beginning of the album, to the very end. We followed each song through the journey,” she said. “We were all running around with Flip cameras, recording each other, even when we were shooting our videos in my backyard. When it was finished, I sat on the stairs and thought ‘this will never happen again.’”
Ms. Nicks said that working with Mr. Stewart was the experience of a lifetime, and one that she hopes to soon repeat.
“He makes you feel like Alice in Wonderland and he’s the Mad Hatter,” she said. “And that’s a wonderful way to feel.”
“Every day Dave arrived at 2 o’clock with his posse, and then I have my entourage, and we’d work and film until around 7:30 or 8 and have dinner for 12. It reminded me of the stories of the artists in Paris in the ’20s,” she recalled. “Then we’d go back to work for another two and a half hours. That’s what we did every night. And every holiday, from Easter to Halloween, we’d dress up and film that too,” she continued. “Dave Stewart created this amazing magical sandbox for me, for my friends, for his friends.”
A big motivation for making the film came from watching the documentary “The True History of the Traveling Wilburys,” which filmed George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Jim Keltner during a week at Mr. Stewart’s home, Ms. Nicks said. The film shows the band members writing and recording a song a day to produce an album.
“I loved it so much that they filmed that part, it’s a legacy that they left behind. That was my epiphany,” she said. “I told Dave, I want to do that. I want to do what Tom did for the little music men and women. I want to give them that help ... To show them, this is why you want to be a rock star.”
The World Cinema documentary “In Your Dreams,” starring Stevie Nicks, Dave Stewart, Glen Ballard, Waddy Wachtel, Sharon Celani and Lori Nicks will screen at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Sunday, October 7, at 3 p.m. Preceding the film, Ms. Nicks will give a talk at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor that day at noon. For more information, visit hamptonsfilmfest.org.
4 comments:
The only showing in North or South Carolina is Winston-Salem and Columbia! Really? That's insane.
I'm so sad! I was dying to know when the film was going to be released in NYC, and it was on April 2nd, but I knew nothing about it! I was in the neighborhood where it was shown, and I could have easily got to see it, if I had know it was being only shown once in Manhattan. That SUCKS SO MUCH! I wanted to full movie experience, not a TV screen/computer screen/DVD experience! I can't believe that movie houses didn't show this film for an entire week, nor that the Museum of Modern Art did feature it for a few days. I'm heartbroken. This film and the album both got the shaft in terms of publicity. Now, I'll have to purchase the DVD. Maybe we'll get bonus features...I still need to see this in a big movie theater. Again, I'm so sad.
I am looking for anyone who has these clips on a DVD - " YOU CAN'T FIX THIS " FROM DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW,ALL MUSIC VIDEOS FROM " IN YOUR DREAMS " ,"IN YOUR DREAMS DOCUMENTARY" AND "UP ALL NIGHT". Thank you kindly. francessmb17@hotmail.com
Stevie is my favorite singer I'm admire to much is a steel woman, my mistic RHIANNON
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