Stevie Nicks to play Toledo's Huntington Center on Aug. 19th

Stevie Nicks has dreams she likes to sell. Her crystal visions of magic, eternal love and enchanting characters beckon. It’s those poetic fairy tales shrouded in mist set to music — and that voice. 

by: Vicki L. Kroll
Toledo Free Press

As the shawl-wearing rock star twirls through the mystical seasons of her life, fans still cry out for “Rhiannon.” And “Edge of Seventeen,” “Dreams,” “Landslide,” “Stand Back,” “Gold Dust Woman.”

She’s one of the few artists with a successful solo career while in a band. With Fleetwood Mac, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2003. The group has sold 48.5 million discs, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and Nicks solo has tallied 10.5 million.

“In Your Dreams,” her seventh solo record, debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in May, and the music is hauntingly familiar. Dave Stewart, formerly of Eurythmics, co-produced the disc and co-wrote seven songs.

“When you’ve been part of a duo like Dave and I have, the spirit of Annie Lennox and Lindsey Buckingham float with you,” Nicks said during a teleconference with four newspapers, including Toledo Free Press Star.

She talked about what it was like during the nine months when Stewart was at her house working on the record.

“The fireplace is on, and all the moons and stars are on the ceiling, and it’s all totally this magic living room that I live in, and he just starts playing his guitar and he’s like, “Well, come on, let’s go ahead.” And I’m like a deer in the headlights: Oh my God! Does he expect me to sit here and write a song with him? With him in the room? So I did, I just started kind of reciting my words in a sing-songy way, and that song in 15 minutes became the third to the last song on the record, “You May Be the One.’

” Nicks recalled how they talked about poetry — and resurrected a gem.

“I said I wrote a song once that was to an Edgar Allan Poe poem named ‘Annabel Lee.’ And he said, ‘Can we hear it’” And I said, “Sure,” and I went and got the demo out of the vault and played it for he and [co-producer] Glen Ballard and they loved it. They loved the fact that I had written it when I was 17, and they loved the fact that I didn’t even make a demo of it until 1996, so it lived in my head from 1965 until 1996.”

The singer said “Secret Love,” another song from the new disc, was written in 1975.

“When I first joined Fleetwood Mac in the fifth day of 1975, we — both Lindsey and I — already had a ton of songs that didn’t make it on the “Buckingham Nicks” record that were really good, like, for instance, ‘Rhiannon,’ so we would just put the songs away.

“And then you join Fleetwood Mac and you have three writers,” she said. “And you’re writing like crazy because you’re experiencing this new band and this crazy thing — and you only get three or four songs.

“So then two years goes by until you do your next record, and you’re writing all through that two years — you’re on the road, I’m writing in my journal,” Nicks said. “By the time we get to ‘Rumours,’ I’ve got all the songs that didn’t go on ‘Fleetwood Mac’ that also aren’t going to fit on ‘Rumours.’ So I call it the song vault, so all those little songs go into the vault. And then every time I do a record, I peruse through all those songs.”

The songwriter has a few thoughts about casting musical spells.

“You just need to be a good storyteller,” she said. “The truth speaks volumes. So that’s what I always tried to do was be totally truthful, and none of my songs are made-up stories, they’re all real, they all came out of my journals, they all came out of my prose writing, which someday I’ll put into a book you guys all will get to read.”

In the meantime, fans can see Nicks’ “In Your Dreams” tour, which will stop at the Huntington Center on Aug. 19. Tickets for the 8 p.m. concert range from $49.50 to $125.

The 63-year-old talked about prepping for the tour with a show at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

“We weeded,” she said. “‘Stand Back,’ ‘Edge of Seventeen,’ ‘Gold Dust Woman,’ ‘Sorcerer,’ ‘Landslide,’ we did the musts, the must-haves, and then we did seven new songs. And the reviews that came back from that show were like the old songs were great, but there was a special light around the new songs that we haven’t seen in a long time.”