Q&A Anything Stevie Nicks says carries a massive amount of weight.

Q&A: Stevie Nicks On How Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne And CSN Shaped Her Sound

By Steve Baltin - Forbes

Anything Stevie Nicks says carries a massive amount of weight. She is a two-time member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, solo and with Fleetwood Mac, and one of the most beloved icons in music today.

So when she talks about her influences, those artists that shaped her sound, it is a fascinating read. And one of the main influences in the quartet that she says, " I just put in the big witches' pot and stirred it up and made it into one thing," to make her sound, happens to be fellow multiple member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (solo and with Buffalo Springfield), Neil Young, who turns 75 today.

So in honor of Young's seventy-fifth birthday, here is part three of my incredible 90-minute conversation with Nicks, where she talks about her quartet of influences, Bob Dylan and much more. If you want to know where Stevie Nicks' sound comes from, she tells you here. And not surprisingly it is some of the greats of music, like Crosby, Stills And Nash, who she talks about wanting to cover. How cool would that be?

Steve Baltin: I love the way that you refer to "Show Them The Way" as a prayer and saving the world. What are some protest songs for you, that give you the feeling of being able to save the world and also what are some songs that are like a prayer for you, that have a similar sort of ethos to show them the way?

Stevie Nicks: That’s a hard question. When I think of actual protest songs, the song that runs through my head is Bob Dylan’s "Tangled Up in Blue," “There was music in the cafes and revolution in the air." I was just losing my head the first time I heard "Tangled Up in Blue." Which was a long time ago, before there was ever a political bone in my body .But I understood that he was very political and that just everything he wrote was touched with some politics. And the idea that there was music in the cafes and revolution in the air, and that’s what music does to people. They may be out there protesting in the streets, but if there wasn’t a pandemic they’d still be going into restaurants and into bars and into clubs and discuss it in those places and play music and they’d be discussing it while music was playing. So I think that it’s what Bob Dylan meant by that statement. I just always think of that.

Baltin: Blood On The Tracks is such a personal album that is intertwined with political. When you look at other songs that you’ve written, are there other songs of yours that you feel you were… touched by God, as if you were a conduit for it?

Nicks: Well I think I was definitely a conduit for this. I don’t know if I’ve ever written a political song actually. I did write a song, "Desert Angel,' for Desert Storm, and that was a long time ago. I was in Phoenix when that happened. I must have been pretty bummed out about it because I wrote that song. And I wrote "Illume" for 9/11and I’ve never been able to do "Illume" on stage, still, after all this time, because it’s too close. I don’t know if I could do it. And "Desert Angel," that I never did. Those are my three political songs, "Illume," "Desert Angel", and this one.

Baltin: Most writers agree songs change for them over time. Look at a song like "Landslide," written in 1975, it probably feels like an entirely different life?

Nicks: Yeah, they do change for sure. It’s interesting that you bring up Jackson [Browne’s] song "These Days" because the line in that that I remember is the one, “Don't confront me with my failures / I have not forgotten them.” That line, because we all feel that way. You don’t have to bring up my failures to me because I know exactly what they were. That’s a pretty heavy statement. It’s like "Music in the cafes and revolution in the air," sometimes just a sentence out of somebody’s song will mean a million things to you, who didn’t write it. Just to the person that’s listening to it. And sometimes us as writers are the last people to really understand.

Baltin: What have you been listening to during this time?

Nicks: I love Neil Young . I've been listening to a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and Joni Mitchell and just that whole era of people. Buffalo Springfield in the last seven, eight months. I've been listening to a lot of their music on my Sonos and it makes me happy. And I've decided that Neil Young was actually a lot more...he wrote a lot of very loving love ballads. He was not only the huge rock and roll crazy guy that I always thought. There are so many ballads I've gone, "Wow, you know what? You're just a big pussycat. I can't believe it." No wonder they chose him to come into Crosby, Stills And Nash. They wanted somebody like the Eagles wanted Joe Walsh, they wanted somebody that would have that heavy hand. But then when you listen to something like "Slowpoke" or some of these amazing songs, I've been blown away over the last couple of months listening to his ballads going like, "This guy, really seriously, in a way, wanted to be in love."

Baltin: That is fascinating. But it's interesting because I noticed that transition musically from angry young men in Dylan and Petty to much more sentimental and forgiving. But I also think guys just mellow as they get older.

Nicks: Yeah, I do too. And I'm glad that most of them got their hard rock parts out and then also got some of the beautiful love things out at the same time so that it wasn't like they were tacking on the other side at the end of their career. So they were actually written around the same time because I've been listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and some of those songs, some of those records, are really sweet from Neil Young and I just never knew that.

Baltin: Is there one song off that record that speaks to you the most?

Nicks: Well, that whole record. I spent my whole summer after my senior year listening to nothing but that record for three solid months. Every single song from "Helplessly Hoping" to a bunch of songs I would really like to record and talk about protest songs, "For What It's Worth" and "Ohio," they wrote some really amazing protest songs. You're like, "Wow, those things could have been written today too."

Baltin: Great protest songs are timeless because the best protest writers are also the best storytellers often, Look at Jackson Browne, who is one of my favorite lyricists of all time.

Nicks: "That Girl Could Sing," one of my favorite songs because I always wanted to think that, even though I didn't know Jackson Browne at that point, that he wrote that about me because, "Oh, I'm such a cool presence." And when you take, "She was a friend to me when I needed one," and you remember those sentences and even the melody of those sentences. When I tell people my greatest influences I say Joni Mitchell for phrasing, she could fit 50 words in a sentence and have them sound glorious without being rushed or crushed in, so I really learned a lot from her about phrasing. From Jackson I learned about writing love songs. From Crosby, Stills And Nash it was the three-part harmony I wanted Lori [Nicks], Sharon [Celani] and me to become like to make my first solo album, which we are doing even on this record, even on this song. There's one line where we do a three-part, "It was just another night in the presence of Martin Luther King," we did that in a three-part. And every time it goes by I go, "That was it, that was what I told Jimmy Iovine when I told him I wanted to produce the record." I told him, "I have two girl singers and they sing amazing. And together we have created a sound. It's like a Crosby, Stills And Nash sound and that's what we want. I don't always want my voice to be louder than theirs." And he said, "Okay, that's what we'll do." That's another thing. I'm so proud of this song, I'm so proud of the singing in this song. It maybe a political song, it maybe a protest song, it may just be a really good song. But what it also is, it's a really well-sung song. And I'm so proud of the girls because we didn't have much time and we pulled off some of the best vocals we have ever done since 1980 when we started Bella Donna.

Baltin: How do you hear all of those influences in your music?

Nicks: When I was coming out of high school to my second year of junior college that was when those four influences really started to take over my life, to the point I'd get in an elevator with Lindsey [Buckingham] and I would be singing Joni Mitchell's "Same Situation:" and he'd look at me and go, "Don't you know anything else?" And I'd look at him and go, "No, I don't. That's all I know right now is that song. I'm just gonna continue to sing it, so thank you" (laughs). That was how completely attached I would get to each one of the songs on all those records. I would just pick one and stick with it for two weeks. That's how I learned. I put them all together, all those people, I blended them into one voice. I took what I thought was the greatest thing about the way Joni phrased and about how Jackson picked out incredibly romantic things to say and about how Crosby, Stills And Nash had the three-part harmony that made me think I should be on the Southern Cross sailboat that was going across the ocean singing at the top of your lungs and that Neil Young was actually a sweet, loving guy that just wanted to be in love besides being a rock star. And all of that I just put in the big witches' pot and stirred it up and made it into one thing. And that was my inspiration for everything I ever did.

Q&A with Stevie Nicks "One Last Thing" People Magazine November 23, 2020

 From the November 23, 2020 issue of People Magazine with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the cover.

STEVIE NICKS, THE SINGER- SONGWRITER, 72, JUST RELEASED HER 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR LIVE ALBUM AND HER NEW SINGLE ‘SHOW THEM THE WAY’

Last time I was starstruck

David Beckham. It was at a big concert in San Francisco, and he just oozed handsomeness. Gorgeousness, you know? I just stood there, like, “Is this real? Maybe it’s a dream.”

Last time I danced

I dance around my apartment all the time. I like to make up dances to Lady Gaga’s song “Applause.” my girlfriends and I have our own version of the Hustle that we update.

Last time I missed someone

My niece just got married, and I couldn’t go to her wedding. I can’t run over and hug my friends. My mantra every day is: I’m not getting [the coronavirus]; I can’t chance it.

Last indulgence

I found out I’m allergic to gluten. But I just had these gluten-free brownies from Erewhon Market in Pacific Palisades that taste like chocolate soufflé. As long as they exist, I can do this.

Last time my dog made me laugh

Lily, my Chinese crested, just the way she walks: Her little butt does the total Marilyn Monroe wiggle. It’s back and forth, back and forth. I say to her, “We will get old, but this will never get old.”

By JULIE JORDAN

STEVIE NICKS PLANS SOLO TOUR WHEN THE WORLD GETS BACK TO NORMAL

Stevie Nicks on Her New Concert Film, the ‘Crazy’ Resurgence of ‘Dreams’ and Staying in Touch With the Spirits of Prince and Tom Petty

In a wide-ranging Q&A, the singer discusses everything from a life-changing moment seeing the "Woodstock" movie at a drive-in to having her own new "24 Karat Gold: The Concert" film play at outdoor and indoor theaters.

By Chris Willman - Variety

Not that it ever was far from rock fans’ consciousness, but Stevie Nicks’ voice is suddenly a ubiquitous part of popular culture again, thanks to a viral video of a skateboarding man singing along to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” that has become the feel-good hit of a feel-bad fall season. Naturally, the snippet of it has made a hungry world ready again to consume more of “Dreams” than can fit in a TikTok video, which is why “Dreams” and the “Rumours” album have both returned to the top 10, 43 years later.

But if the resurgence has led you to want to hear not just “Dreams” but two hours and 10 minutes of unexpurgated Stevie, the universe has conspired to accommodate that. Sunday night, Nicks’ film, “24 Karat Gold: The Movie,” will be playing at theaters and drive-ins across the country. It’ll be followed Friday by the release of a full soundtrack on CD (as a Target exclusive), on vinyl (at Barnes & Noble) and for download, further capturing a 2017 show in Pittsburgh that found Nicks at what she considers her well-oiled performing peak. Its rendering of something that seems impossible now — an arena gig — really does feel like a dream.

Nicks got on the phone with Variety earlier this month, just as the “Dreams” phenomenon was starting to take off, to discuss the making of the new concert movie, a new studio single (“Show Them the Way”), her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year, feeling like she’s still in touch with Tom Petty and Prince, how the “Woodstock” film changed her life, hopes and fears about the coronavirus crisis, and the importance of suede boots on the ground.

VARIETY: One of the songs in this concert film is “Dreams.” As you know, there’s this whole TikTok video tie-in, and suddenly “Dreams” is on the chart again.

NICKS: From the skateboarder? I know. How crazy is that? My assistant showed it to me — he’s drinking his juice and just skateboarding along and just filming himself and singing “Dreams.” It’s so funny, and so great, because “Dreams” is a fun song to sing. I’m thrilled that people still love it, and that it does still make people happy. And who knows even why? But it does. But “Dreams” came out how many years ago? Like in 1975, right? [Editor’s note: early 1977.] My assistant just told me there’s a lot of young kids who don’t even know the song, but they like it, and its streaming is massive. It’s fantastic.

STEVIE NICKS 'because of “Show Them the Way” I will make another record'

Stevie Nicks on Why Payback Is Coming For Trump Post-Coronavirus and Plans for New Album

"I never thought that I would’ve gone underground so heavily as I have," says Nicks of struggling to find inspiration amidst the pandemic.

By Lyndsey Havens - Billboard

10/26/2020

When Stevie Nicks was my age, she tells me, she had just joined Fleetwood Mac at 27.

“I remember the phone call,” she says, calling from her Los Angeles home’s landline late on Saturday night. “I remember scheduling a dinner the next day and meeting for Mexican food somewhere in Hollywood where it was all decided. It’s just like yesterday to me; I can smell the amazing smells of enchiladas and tacos and tamales, and see all of their beautiful faces. We were so young, but it just seems like I could reach out and touch that night.”

Now, Nicks is 72 -- and enjoying the unexpected return of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and Rumours back on the charts at No. 12 on the Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Billboard 200, respectively. Meanwhile, Nicks herself just topped the Billboard Songwriter’s Chart.

It’s all thanks to the now famous TikTok; yes, that one with user doggface208 longboarding and sipping some Ocean Spray while vibing out to “Dreams.” Since he posted it to the platform, the clip has raked in 65.5 million views, and inspired everyone from Mick Fleetwood, Shakira and even Nicks herself to join in with their own renditions.

She says she’s “tickled pink” at the virality of her decades-old hit, and shares one important piece of advice: “If the young kids start listening to Fleetwood Mac, start with the first album and just go through them. Sit down and be in it for the long run, and you’ll have the best time.”

She also relates the moment currently being experienced by doggface208 (real name: Nathan Apodaca) to her own unexpected early-'70s breakthrough with Fleetwood Mac. “We all do silly, creative dumb things that we never think anybody is going to care about, and the fact that [this TikTok user] just reached out to the entire world with his 10-second ride… his life will never be the same. In a strange way, it’s kind of like when Lindsey and I joined [the band] and we had no money -- and I do mean no money -- and within eight months, together we were almost a millionaire.”

Now, Nicks is a millionaire many times over on her own accord, and has celebrated one victory after the next throughout her career, whether historic accomplishments like becoming the first (and still only) woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, or personal triumphs like participating in her first Zoom during the ongoing pandemic (she says the concept is “terrifying”).

And even though the icon has made her hatred of our current reality well known -- she refuses to contract the coronavirus, saying “I have put a clear plastic ring of angels around my body” -- she’s still managed to find pockets of creativity this year, resulting in her anticipated concert film, Live In Concert: The 24 Karat Gold Tour, which hit select theaters and drive-ins for two nights only last weekend, and powerful new pop-rock single, “Show Them The Way,” her first piece of new music in six years.

With so much to celebrate, it’s odd for Nicks to be lounging at home. “One more reason to hate this pandemic is that if this hadn’t been going on, I would have been out in the world [right now],” she says. “The only connection that I really have to all of this is doing these interviews.”

How does it feel to be back in the spotlight while also stuck at home?

Singer, songwriter, superstar Stevie Nicks is getting a little restless these days.

Rock star Stevie Nicks, in her own words

CBS Sunday Morning Interview with Tracy Smith

Singer, songwriter, superstar Stevie Nicks is getting a little restless these days.

The pandemic has put performances for large audiences on hold so she's waiting to take the stage again, and, as she told "CBS Sunday Morning's" Tracy Smith last week, the waiting is the hardest part.

"It seems like, for so many creative people, this is a very creative time. But, also, time is slipping away," Smith said to Nicks.

"Time is being stolen from all of us," Nicks said. "Absolutely. Especially if you're 72 years old."

"Does that weigh on you?" Smith asked.

"Yeah, it does," Nicks said. "When you're really working, you really stay young. You stay young because you have to."  "But, when you're just sitting around in your house, I think that Old Man Time starts to get ahold of you," the Fleetwood Mac singer continued.

Still, it seems that Old Man Time has always been kind to Stevie Nicks. You can see it in her just-released feature film, "24 Karat Gold the Concert," where she looks and sounds pretty much the same as she always did.  The movie will stream soon, but for the moment it's being shown in socially distanced theaters.

"It's as close to a really big rock 'n roll concert in a big venue as you're gonna get," Nicks said.

And it's not the only way Stevie is making herself heard these days. She decided to release her first new song in six years, "Show them the Way," as a call for action on the eve of the election.

And now, some of her classic tunes are suddenly climbing the charts again. Thanks to a cranberry-juice-loving Idaho skateboarder who went viral after posting a video on TikTok featuring Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams."

"So four decades after 'Dreams' and 'Rumours' came out, they're both in the top 10 again," Smith said.

"I know," Nicks said.

The video has inspired quite a few imitators, including bandmate Mick Fleetwood. And last week, one from Nicks herself.

"This TikTok thing has, kind of, blown my mind," Nicks said. "And I'm happy about it because it seems to have made so many people happy."

You could say making people happy has been Stevie Nicks' calling for the past 50 years or so,  And after a career of platinum-selling albums and sold-out concerts, she became the first and, so far, only woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.

"It's 22 men that are in twice for their solo work and being in a big band," Nicks said. "And no women."

"Until you," Smith said.

"Until me," Nicks said. "So I feel that I definitely broke a big rock 'n roll glass ceiling."

And her backstory is just as legendary.

When young Stevie dropped out of college to chase her musical dreams, her parents cut her off financially. So she waited tables and cleaned houses to support herself and her then-boyfriend, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.

"Were there moments when you were cleaning, I mean, you were like cleaning houses, what, scrubbing toilets, mopping floors. Was there a moment when you thought, 'Ooh, I made a mistake?'" Smith asked.

"No. No, because I was doing that to support my music, my music pal, Lindsey and some other friends, too, you know, that didn't have hardly anything," Nicks said. "So I was the one who actually was able to pay the rent and pay the money to keep our Toyota running. And so it's like, I didn't mind at all, because I did not expect my boyfriend, Lindsey, to get a job. Because what in the world would he do?"

"So you had to be the one?" Smith said.

"It was all about me," Nicks said.

By the time she became a member of Fleetwood Mac, she almost expected to be underestimated. So she had an arrangement with the group's other female star, Christine McVie.

"You two stuck together through thick and thin and really had each other's backs," Smith said.

"Yeah, we did," Nicks said. "And Christine and I, we made a pact at the very beginning that if we were ever in a room of super famous guitar players that didn't treat us with the respect that we thought that we deserved, that we would just stand up and say, 'This party's over,' and we would walk out."

"And did you have to do that?" Smith asked.

"We never actually did have to do that," Nicks said. "So that was a nice surprise. We never had to make a scene."

And their friendship endures.

Stevie Nicks' romantic relationships seemed to be more of a challenge, but they inspired some great music.

"Have you had a love," Smith asked, "a great love in your life?"

"Yeah. Three. But it's not easy to be Mr. Stevie Nicks," Nicks said. "Even if you happen to be Mr. Really Famous Rock Star Guy."

"So Lindsey falls in that category?" Smith asked. "The great loves?"

"Oh, absolutely. Well, not exactly," Nicks said. "Lindsey is — has his own category. Lindsey was my great musical love. That's different."

Stevie Nicks' dad once told her she'd never marry because her music would always come first. He was wrong, she was briefly married once. But dad was also right.

For Stevie Nicks, music will always be her true love.

"When I'm 90 years old," Nicks said, "I don't wanna be laying in my big, gorgeous bedroom and, you know, with music playing and 15 little Chinese crested dogs and going like, 'Ugh, I'm so broken-hearted that I didn't find the one.'"

"And then I would have to answer myself and say, 'Yes, but you did find several "the ones" who you wrote really great songs about and that's why you're living in this absolutely spectacular house with everything that you want and anything that you could possibly wanna buy,'" Nicks continued. "And it's, like, so maybe this is just all the way your dad saw it when he said, 'Stevie will never get married.'"

"And the way it's supposed to be," Smith said.

Returning to her 2017 live shows proved to be a godsend for Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks Can’t Wait for the Magic to Come Back

Nicks discusses her ’24 Karat Gold Concert Film’ and returning to live shows in new interview

By Brittany Spanos - Rollingstone

Photo: Randee St Nicholas

In another life, Stevie Nicks would have been a music-film editor. “I think I’m really good at it,” she says one Friday evening, calling from her home in Los Angeles. Her canine companion Lily is begging for her attention with a toy as Nicks reflects on her second life. “I can only say this about a few things.”

She’s had plenty of experience, working closely with director Joe Thomas on concert films for Fleetwood Mac (2004’s Live in Boston), her late friend Tom Petty (2006’s Live From Gainesville), and most recently, Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold Concert Film. Recorded during her 2017 tour stops in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, the film is getting a special release this month and being screened at select drive-ins, theaters, and exhibition spaces on October 21st through 25th. The set lists featured classic solo and Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac songs along with tracks off her 2014 album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault. For the music fans desperately missing live shows in the time of Covid-19, the film perfectly encapsulates the tambourine-banging, shawl-twirling, story-spinning magic that only Nicks can deliver.

Putting the project together with Thomas became one of two pandemic projects for the rock goddess (the other being her new song “Show Them the Way”). She flew out to Chicago in May with her assistant on a “full-on, fogged-out, Covid-free private plane” and lived in a house on a golf course that no one had been in since before lockdown had begun. Nicks would go to Thomas’ studio, masked up alongside everyone else (“I felt imprisoned by the mask, but I love the mask — I felt safe”), and got to work, diligently assessing the footage captured by all 12 cameras from shows in the two cities.

“I’m really the second editor,” she says of her uncredited job. “The fact is that if I don’t like a shot, it’s not going in.” She learned, as she had in past editing-room experiences, that men see women differently.

Even in quarantine Stevie Nicks is not slowing down!

Stevie Nicks is still dreaming

by - Greg Wetherall - Dazed
October 20, 2020

Photo: Randee St Nicholas

She’s just released her first solo single in six years. A new concert film is about to hit cinemas. And a viral TikTok has put the Fleetwood Mac classic Rumours back in the Top 10. Even in quarantine, the rock and roll icon is not slowing down.

Stevie Nicks has had “a hell of a day”. Not only is it 3am at her home in Los Angeles when we first speak on the phone, the power has gone out in her house. “It was out all day until about nine o’clock (in the evening), but we’ve not been here,” she laments. “We got home and it was on. I came in, got ready to do this interview, and the power went out again.”

Nicks, the 72-year-old Fleetwood Mac singer and solo star, is almost entirely nocturnal these days. The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent quarantine has locked her into a diet of rolling news and perpetual worry, and being awake and active during the witching hour has become her normal. Her current lack of electricity, however, is somewhat less so. “We are prepared here, just in case there’s an earthquake,” she continues (the ‘we’ referring to her assistant and two goddaughters, who Nicks has been holed up with ever since the pandemic struck). “We have a lot of lanterns. I’m in a window seat in a swing. We’ve lit the area so at least I can see the papers in front of me.” Our conversation unfurls to breaking news that Donald Trump has tested positive for COVID-19. “When everyone wakes up in the morning and discovers that the whole government has possibly been exposed to the virus, they’re gonna go crazy,” she remarks, adding that Trump contracting the virus proves that wearing a mask is “not political... it’s contagious and it’s dangerous”.

To speak with Stevie Nicks is to spend time with one of music’s true greats. Not only is she responsible for writing some of the rock and pop canon’s greatest standards – “Dreams”, “Landslide”, “Edge of Seventeen” – her life has been so eventful that it can include opening up for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, to turning down Prince’s offer to record “Purple Rain” among its many, many tales. When we talk, she’s just arrived home from the edit suite, where she’s been busy applying the finishing touches to the video for “Show Them the Way”, her first solo single in six years.

Stevie Nicks can’t wait to perform with Harry Styles again when this is all through

Stevie Nicks Just Wants to Keep Telling Stories

by Keaton Bell - Vogue

October 20, 2020

Photo: Randee St Nicholas

Stevie Nicks bought her first copy of Vogue when she was 25 years old. It was 1973, around the time of Buckingham Nicks, the first and only album she and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham ever released as a duo. Still a few years removed from the fame and fortune that would follow their recruitment into Fleetwood Mac, Nicks was earning just a buck fifty an hour waiting tables in a flapper girl uniform.

“I only had enough money for one magazine at that point, and Vogue was the first one I ever bought,” Nicks recalls. “I would scrape my money together and buy it every month.” 

Five decades later, Nicks—who prefers using a landline and doesn’t own a computer—still finds comfort in her lo-fi rituals. “To this day my favorite thing is getting into bed at five o’clock in the morning with a cup of decaf coffee, playing some soft, groovy music, and reading my Vogue,” she tells me. “Me and my little dog Lily pore over every single page for hours, and it’s been that way since 1973.”

Nicks has spent most of the pandemic in her Pacific Palisades home with two close friends and the aforementioned Lily—a Chinese crested who sits dutifully on her owner’s lap during our call. “She has her back turned to me because she doesn’t really wanna be here. I just know she’s plotting her escape,” Nicks says with a raspy giggle. “It’s fine. My feelings aren’t too hurt…well, they are, but I’ll be okay.”

As Fleetwood Mac’s lovelorn frontwoman, Nicks crafted masterworks out of the sex-and-drug-fueled dalliances that almost destroyed the group (documented in real time on their 1977 breakup opus Rumours). Still one of the 10 best-selling albums of all time, Rumours made stars out of its new lineup, but it was always clear from the outset who the breakout was. With three songwriters fighting for space on each record, it wasn’t long before Nicks needed her own outlet.

“They said, ‘You can make your solo album and have a solo trip, but if we go into work, we’re gonna call you,’” she remembers. “‘Terrific, I’ll be there.’ That was always my promise to them.” 1981’s shimmery Bella Donna set the stage for a second career that made Nicks the first woman to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (once with the group in 1998 and by herself just last year).

2020 was originally meant to be a year off from the grueling lifestyle that comes with back-to-back arena tours as both Fleetwood Mac frontwoman and solo enchantress. With just one festival show a month, Nicks would slow down. Then the shows—her headlining slots at Jazz Fest and Governors Ball were early casualties—began to be canceled.

INTERVIEW focused on Stevie Nicks superb new single "Show Them The Way"

Sunday Conversation: Stevie Nicks On Why Hew New Single Was A Premonition, John Lennon And More

by Steve Baltin - Forbes

As I started in part one of my marathon Stevie Nicks interview, there was no way to condense 90 minutes with one of the most iconic figures in music to one part. Nicks simply had way too much to offer in the lengthy call.

Part two, below, focuses on her superb new single, "Show Them The Way," which she views as a prayer to lift people up and unite them in these incredibly turbulent and fractured times.

The song actually dates back to 2008, when she had a dream that inspired the lyrics. Looking at how much it fits into our world today she now sees the song and the dream as a premonition.

I spoke with her about the song, the unintentional nod to John Lennon, the powerful video directed by Cameron Crowe and her concert film, 24 Karat Gold, screening in cinemas this week (October 21 and 25).  

Steve Baltin: I love the new single, 'Show Them The Way." And I love the symmetry of releasing it on John Lennon’s eightieth birthday. It came from a your dream and Lennon was one of the best at talking about dreams. So was it just a coincidence that it came out on John Lennon’s 80th birthday?

Stevie Nicks: It kind of was, but I have to tell you that John Lennon was the first shadow and the last verse. And the shadow says, “The dream is not over, the dream has just begun. And the last shadow in the last verse is my mom saying, "Don’t forget what me and your father were fighting for, sweetie. Don’t forget it."

Baltin: You have said the song comes from a dream you had in 2008.

Nicks: The reason that I wrote it, I was back in Chicago for about two months editing a film and when we’d get home at about 10 o’clock from the studio we’d turn on the TV. And they were playing all the documentaries from the late '50s, and all through the '60s, and into the '70s. For two months I watched documentaries because it was also at the same time Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were going back and forth on who was going to be the candidate for the democratic primary. So it was a good way to walk away from what you were doing musically into another world. I had all these documentaries in my head. And towards the end of that two months, I just went to bed one night and had that dream. And the dream was so clear I sat up in bed and reached for my journal and just started writing it down in prose, not as a poem. Just like, "I was invited to be the entertainer for the party in the Hamptons . It was for some really famous political figures and why the hell did they ask me? I don’t play piano that well." I just said in the dream, “Well, sure I’d love to do that, right?” So when I woke up I just started writing it down as a story and I got the whole story written down. And then I stopped and walked away from it and went back to it the next night and made it into a poem because that’s what I do with my writing. I write it in prose and then if I think it’s poetry worthy then I go back and I write it into a poem. So the poem came very fast and then the next day I put it to music. And then it was done and I put it in cold storage because it wasn’t the time for a song like this to come out then. It just wasn’t. I knew a song like this wasn’t going to be a song that would always fit.

Baltin: So what made this the time to release it?

INTERVIEW Stevie Nicks on book plans, "Show Them The Way" and her style

Stevie Nicks on how she wrote 'Dreams,' her signature style, book plans and not being able to tour: 'This virus has stolen time from me'

By Lyndsey Parker

Yahoo Entertainment

To describe Stevie Nicks as a woman of many words — fascinating words — is a massive understatement. Whether it’s in the cosmic lyrics to classic songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (which is a bigger hit than ever, thanks to Nathan Apodaca’s TikTok skateboarding video); her eloquent, journal-like social media posts; her new fever-dreaming comeback single, “Show Them the Way”; or her utterly unfiltered interviews like the one below, Nicks is a brilliant thinker, a consummate storyteller and an absolute icon.

Leading up to the release of her film Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert — which will run for two nights only, on Oct. 21 and 25, at select cinemas, drive-ins and exhibition spaces around the world — Yahoo Entertainment spoke at length with the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee about the secret “magic room” where she conjured “Dreams” in 1975, how she came up with her signature look, her friendship with Harry Styles, her admiration for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, why she’s happy being single, her COVID-era fears about never being able to perform onstage again and her hopes of compiling all her wonderful words into a book one day.

Yahoo Entertainment: Lately, you’ve been writing some very beautiful, heartfelt things on social media, almost like essays. And one that really struck me was you were expressing your fears about being able to return to doing what you love, which is performing live. It must be bittersweet to be releasing a concert film in the middle of a time when there are pretty much no concerts happening at all.

Stevie Nicks: Well, first of all, last February I had a talk on the phone with my friend Harry Styles — I call him “H” — about when we could perform together again, because I had just sung with him at the Forum, and it was so much fun. And he said to me, in all of his 26-years-old-ness, “Stevie, I think it’s going to be a long time before we can walk onstage again. I don’t think that we will walk onstage again until the end of 2021, and maybe not until 2022.” And now I’m like, “Oh my God, this man is more psychic than I am!” Damn, if he wasn't right. So the thing is, is that, are we sad? Yes, we’re devastated. I turn the television on for 15 minutes and it’s showing every single state and the upticks in every single state, still going up. Like, what the hell? This is terrible. We were hoping that by this time we would be at least getting closer to being able to go back out and at least do outdoor festivals. But you know what? We’re not Donald Trump. We can’t put people in danger, and we never will put people in danger because of that. We're not going to take people into a big venue like the Forum and take the chance that they’re all going to come down with this virus in six weeks. So, honestly, I don’t know what the future holds.

At 72, STEVIE NICKS is still looking for adventure

Stevie Nicks on art, ageing and attraction: ‘Botox makes it look like you’re in a satanic cult!’

Jenny Stevens - The Guardian

At 72, the singer is still looking for adventure. She talks about her years with Fleetwood Mac, the abortion that made them possible, and her friendship with Harry Styles

Stevie Nicks has been taking the pandemic even more seriously than most. She has barely left her home in Los Angeles this year. “My assistant, God bless her, she puts on her hazmat suit and goes to get food, otherwise we’d starve to death,” she says. She fell seriously ill in March 2019, ending up in intensive care with double pneumonia; after that shock, she fears contracting Covid-19 could end her singing career: “My mom was on a ventilator for three weeks when she had open-heart surgery and she was hoarse for the rest of her life.”

What would it mean to her to stop singing? “It would kill me,” she says. “It isn’t just singing; it’s that I would never perform again, that I would never dance across the stages of the world again.” She pauses and sighs. “I’m not, at 72 years old, willing to give up my career.”

It is nearly midnight in LA when we speak on the phone; not a problem for Nicks, who is “totally nocturnal”. The night she fell ill last year, she had just become the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice – an honour that reflects her wild success as one of the lead singers of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, as a writer and singer of raw, magical songs about love and freedom, including Dreams, Rhiannon, Gold Dust Woman, Landslide and Edge of Seventeen. Nicks is unabashedly funny, dry as a bone, often sidling into sarcasm.

I ask about her approach to spirituality. She says that, for all her fears about her career, “some people are really afraid of dying, but I’m not. I’ve always believed in spiritual forces. I absolutely know that my mom is around all the time.” Just after her mother died, in 2012, Nicks was standing in her kitchen with “really bad acid reflux”. “And I felt something almost tap my shoulder and this voice go: ‘It’s that Gatorade you’re drinking,’” she says. “I’d been sick and chugging down the Hawaiian Punch. Now, that’s not some romantic, gothic story of your mother coming back to you. It’s your real mother, walking into your kitchen and saying” – she puts on a rasp – “‘Don’t drink any more of that shit.’” She pauses, waiting for me to laugh, then cackles.

Nicks was close to her mother, Barbara, who pushed to get her career back after she had children. “She said to me: you will never stand in a room full of men and feel like you can’t keep up with them. And you will never depend upon a man to support you. She drummed that into me, and I’m so glad she did.”

Women’s rights have been on Nicks’ mind since the death of her “hero”, the US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, last month. “Abortion rights, that was really my generation’s fight. If President Trump wins this election and puts the judge he wants in, she will absolutely outlaw it and push women back into back-alley abortions.”

Nicks terminated a pregnancy in 1979, when Fleetwood Mac were at their height and she was dating the Eagles singer Don Henley. What did it mean to be able to make that choice? “If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs, I was doing a lot of drugs … I would have had to walk away.” She pauses. “And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.”

Stevie Nicks, she reflects on mortality

Stevie Nicks Salutes Lost Friends: ‘I Never Thought Prince And Tom Petty Wouldn’t Be Here In 2020’

By Steve Baltin Forbes

There are certain moments you dream (pun intended ) of as a journalist. Spending 90 minutes on the phone on a Friday night with twice-inducted Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer Stevie Nicks is definitely one of those.

Over the course of the wide-ranging conversation, which will run in three parts, due to the remarkable length, we touched upon a number of subjects, from her brilliant new single, "Show Them The Way" to her influences.

At one point we joked about the viral success of "Dreams." Thanks to the superb original TikTok video from Nathan Apodaca, the song was top five on streaming charts from that day, sandwiched between six or seven Van Halen songs following the death of guitar legend Eddie Van Halen a few days before our conversation.

Of course, Nicks knew Van Halen, who she said she had written a tribute to (as of this publishing it has not been shared). And that set off a conversation about other recent losses, including her friends like Tom Petty and Prince.

Here in part one with Stevie Nicks, she reflects on mortality.

Steve Baltin: "Dreams" is on the charts today sandwiched between several Van Halen songs, which should rightly be in the top 10.

Stevie Nicks: I wrote something about Eddie that I'm gonna put on my website cause I knew him quite a while ago. So when you know somebody fairly well for several years it doesn't have to be just the few years. He was always so nice to me and such a nice person. I really liked him besides the fact he was such an awesome guitar player. But that's really too bad, that's a big loss. One more person that I didn't want to lose.

Baltin: Is there music from friends who have passed you find it hard to listen to?

Nicks: It's mostly Tom's music and I love Tom's music. I listen to Tom Petty Radio [on Sirius XM] and it makes me feel like he's still alive because he spent a lot of time on that radio station to the point where the rest of the Heartbreakers were like, "So you missed your calling. You just really wanted to be a disc jockey." And he did so much work on it they've been able to totally keep the Tom Petty radio station alive and I'm so happy about that because to me I hear him and it's like I'm talking to him while he's talking to us. I forget that he's gone because of that station. And I'm so happy that he actually did piss everybody off and spent a lot of time putting that all together for all of us because it's so special. But I did want to tell you one thing my dad said to me once. He died in 2005. In the last couple of years of his life, at one point he said to me, "All my friends are dead." And I was struck dumb when he said that cause I actually knew a lot of his friends. But then of course there were a lot of his friends that I didn't know or didn't know anything about cause he was 22 years older than me so there were a lot of friends in my father's life that I never even knew. Same with all of us, we don't really know everything about our parents. And the fact is when he said that to me I thought, "That's the worst thing I ever heard." And just in a really quite, somber voice, "All of my friends are dead." I'm like, "I don't want to hear that, that makes me so sad for you." So when my dad died there was a part of me that went, "Farewell, my friend, farewell, my father. Now you're gonna be with all your friends who you obviously were missing so much. And I'm glad you made that final journey and you're up there with them now." When he said that I didn't even get it. And now I'm starting to really understand because just in the time of the loss of Prince, the loss of Tom Petty, the loss of Glenn Frey, the loss of Eddie Van Halen, it's like I knew all these people. And then you can kind of go to the generation that was 15, 20 years older than me and think, "They already went through this. Every generation it goes through." And the people that live to be really old, like hopefully me, there will be a time where a lot of people will be gone. And I certainly never expected for Prince and Tom Petty to be gone in 2020.

Baltin: I don't think anyone did. But I love what you said about the radio station. And it's funny because when you think back on his relationship with Jim Ladd and "The Last DJ," he did give a foreshadowing he wanted to be a DJ.

Nicks: Well, he never did tell me that and I never even knew he was working on that. But then when he died all the rest of the Heartbreakers told me all of their stories cause they'd be like, "Tom, let's record something." And he'd be like, "I'm going to the station." And he wanted to be there by himself so he could make up all those names. And I just laugh because he had such a goofy sense of humor, dry, but goofy. And it's all there. And I just go, "This is so great that he actually did this." It's too bad all of us aren't obsessed enough with radio we can't go out and actually do what he did because it really had made a difference I think for everybody who misses Tom Petty. You just turn on that station and listen to him, it's like he's back. If anything it proves we need to try to appreciate our friends more than we probably do because we're not gonna have them forever.

Baltin: Is there one Tom song you wish you had written or one that speaks to you the most?

Nicks: That would be a hard question for me because there are so many. I really love "Don't Come Around Here No More," which came basically from Dave Stewart to me. Dave Stewart wrote the track for that for me, for the timbre, timbre was the word he used, of my voice. And then we went into the studio with Jimmy Iovine, me and Dave and Jimmy. Then we started working on it and at some point Jimmy said, "We should call Tom." I said, "Yeah, he can come and help us." So Tom came down and by this time it was one o'clock in the morning and for whatever of my reasons, me who stays up all night every night, I was tired. So I went home to get some rest and said I'd try to be in the next afternoon earlier than usual. So when I came back the next night I walked in and Jimmy was like, "Okay, listen to this." Tom was there, Dave was there, they pushed play and it was the entire song, done, finished. And I was furious, I was so pissed off because I said, "It's done." And Tom says, "Oh, you can change any of it you want." "Thanks, yeah, I'm gonna change your, 'I don't feel you anymore, don't darken my door.' First of all, Tom, I bow to your greatness. And it's amazing. You did an amazing job for this f**king awesome song." Then I said to Dave, "I'm sorry, Dave Stewart that it's now not gonna be my song. It's gonna be Tom Petty's song, the world is gonna love it and you did a great job." And I said to Jimmy, "How could you let this happen?" And I fired him. I was so angry. And then Jimmy sent me a final mix of it and I thought, "This has just become my favorite Tom Petty song. So it really was a collaboration between him and Dave Stewart, who wrote the track. So the track was really as it is now. When Dave does a track for you it's like done. Same with Mike Campbell. They give you the finished track almost. Then it became my favorite song to do with Tom on stage. So as difficult as it was that I didn't get to write it because Dave did write, "Don't come around here no more," just that one sentence. He usually does that. Like "In Your Dreams," he wrote a song for me, just the track. But he did write "Everybody loves you, but you're so alone." So he gives you this little seed of an idea and then you take it from there. And when I listen to "Don't Come Around Here No More" I always think there's a little bit of my vocals because Sharon [Celani] and I did do some vocals that first night on that chorus. But there are so many. If I got a list of all of Tom's songs, there are a million songs he wrote I'd like to actually record and may sometime take four or five of his songs and record them. But I would trade all that just to have him come back.

Part 2 and 3 to follow.

Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down.

Stevie Nicks: “In Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie and I were a force of nature”

On the eve of her new concert film, the Fleetwood Mac singer talks new solo material, Trump's response to COVID-19 and the chances of a 'Rumours'-era reunion

By Greg Wetherall 15th October 2020 - NME

Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down. When Fleetwood Mac concluded their year-long world tour at the end of 2019, the 72-year-old singer songwriter decamped to her Santa Monica home with the intention of taking the year off from touring. Like the rest of us, she didn’t expect to be holed-up for quite so long. “I’ve been quarantined solid since March,” Nicks tells NME. “I figured that I’d probably do about ten gigs and then I was just going to work on a miniseries for Rhiannon but then the door slams and we have a pandemic.”

Out of these dark days, Nicks has kept a busy schedule. ‘Show Them The Way’, worked upon remotely with the help of Dave Grohl, is her first single in six years. She has also helped produce 24 Karat Gold The Concert, a spellbinding concert film from the 2016/7 tour of the same name, which in cinemas for two nights later this month featuring staples such as ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ alongside unreleased gems and deep cuts.

Whilst a viral TikTok video may have drawn headlines and pushed her song ‘Dreams’ back into the charts recently, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had other things on her mind when we caught up with her, including her issues with Trump, the lost ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album and why she is fatalistic if ‘Rumours’–era Fleetwood Mac are to never play together again.

Your first single for six years and the 24 Karat Gold The Concert film – this is turning into a very busy time for you…

“In a million years, I never thought I’d have two projects coming out within two weeks of each other. It’s been a lot of work over the last two months, let me tell you. I’m pretty excited and really proud of everything. I think the film is the closest anyone is going to get to a real, serious concert until the pandemic is over. And I think the song is ‘right now’ with what’s going on in our country. Our country is so divisive. We have gone back so far. It is very sad and very scary.”

You have been openly critical of the US administration’s response to COVID-19. You tweeted that ‘Nobody is leading us. Nobody has a plan.’ You called it ‘a tragedy’ and ‘a real American Horror Story’.  

“You know that our President and his wife contracted the virus? It’s like, ‘wear your mask’, you know? It’s a simple thing to ask. Just wear your mask. Especially if you’re the President of the United States. It’s pretty simple. We’ve been told again and again and again that it’s incredibly contagious. I don’t take any chances. Nobody in my world does. For me, as a singer, if I get it and I get that terrible cough that never goes away; if it attacks my lungs and I don’t have my lung power anymore it would kill me. It would destroy my career.”

Do you feel that Trump been irresponsible?

“I think if you don’t wear a mask you’re irresponsible. I’m very sorry that he got it – I’m not saying anything like that – but he never wears a mask. Nobody in his circle does. And now they’ve all got it. It really proves something to the people in the US who view it as some political thing. Well, guess what? It’s not political. It’s dangerous and it’s contagious. But he [Trump] had to get it to know that? He couldn’t listen to the science? He couldn’t listen to all the doctors who probably said in private, ‘you need to take care of yourself and wear your mask’?” 

Why do you think he hasn’t listened to the scientists?

“I think he just thinks he knows better. But what is he going to say now? This is like telling your children to be careful when they go out and then they don’t come home one night. All you can do is tell people and whether they listen or not is up to them. But that’s not my problem. I’m very sorry that they got it. But they knew better.”

You have a reputation for being forthcoming and open in interviews. I presume this is what you’re like in all aspects of your life?

“It’s the only way I can really be. I know that comes from my mum. I just am who I am. I know that sometimes my honesty is a lot for people and that it pushes some away, but if you can’t hear the truth then I can’t really hang out with you!”

In 24 Karat Gold The Concert, you detail difficulties you had making 1983’s ‘The Wild Heart’. You say you were ‘arrogant’ and ‘less of a team player’ than you were on your solo debut, ‘Bella Donna’. Why so?

“‘Bella Donna’ took three months to make. It was the first record in a solo career and I was not stupid enough to waste time and spend too much money. No self-indulgence. Then, after ‘Bella Donna’, I made ‘Mirage’ with Fleetwood Mac. That took a year and we went on tour for about another year. ‘Mirage’ was a big record and had a tonne of singles on it and so, when I came back, I was different. I could not consider myself a cleaning lady and a waitress anymore.”

How did this affect the recording of ‘The Wild Heart’?

“When I walked into the studio I was much more confident. I can call it arrogance or I can call it confidence. It was somewhere in between the two. I was much stronger in my ideas. For example, I wanted to produce. I just wanted to be more involved than I was during the first album. When I look back on that now, that was just me growing as an artist. I didn’t want it all done for me. ‘The Wild Heart’ was different. It needed to be different. Much like how, after ‘Rumours’, we [Fleetwood Mac] made ‘Tusk’ because we didn’t want to do ‘Rumours’ over. Even though the record company said we needed to, we just said, ‘We can’t do it.’”

Was your second album a personal turning point?

“‘Bella Donna’ kicked off my solo career but as I walked away from ‘The Wild Heart’ everybody knew that I had arrived as a solo artist. I was not going to just say, ‘That was fun’ and go back to Fleetwood Mac. I was going to be able to handle being in both bands. When Fleetwood Mac took vacations, I could go and make a solo album and tour. And then go back again. It worked out great for a Gemini: I had two worlds. Never a boring moment.”

Were you ever conflicted about offering songs to Fleetwood Mac rather than keeping them for yourself?

“No, I was never selfish with the songs. If I had ten songs that I had written, I would sit at the piano and play all ten for Fleetwood Mac. I would let them choose because if they chose the songs then they were going to be good. If I tried to shove songs down their throat, they weren’t going to be good. Who they go to is fine by me. It’s never been a problem. It kinda works itself out. The songs that are supposed to be on the record that you’re doing at the time jump out. And the ones that aren’t right for that particular time don’t.”

Thinking of the revelations springing from the #MeToo movement, did you ever experience any difficulties of that kind over the years?

“Honestly… in Fleetwood Mac, Christine [McVie] and I were a force of nature. In the first two months I was in the band, Chris and I made a pact that we would never be in a room full of famous English or American guitar players and be treated like second class citizens. If we weren’t respected, we would say, ‘this party’s over.’ We have stayed true to that our entire career.

In my own career, I didn’t have Christine but I had Lori Nicks and Sharon Celani. My [backing] singers and my best friends. We wanted to be Crosby, Stills and Nash! Sometime we would try not to make my voice louder than theirs, so that we could have that three-part [harmony] going on. I had my girls: the three of us. They were my sound. Together, we were also very much like, ‘don’t mess with us, because we’re really good, we’re talented and we’re really nice women. If you don’t treat us the way we feel that we should be treated we won’t work with you.’”

Was the need for a pact, or strength in numbers, necessary because you witnessed mistreatment, or worse, directly? 

“Sometimes I saw women treated in a way that I didn’t think was great. At 72 years old, I am totally behind MeToo. I support all those women, totally. I joined a famous band in 1975. I didn’t have to move to Los Angeles by myself and try to find a job in a band or try to find something to do with music all alone. I didn’t have to do what women who move to LA to be an actress have to do. I had a team behind me immediately. When I was with Lindsey [Buckingham], I had him. I was never out there alone having to talk to producers or men who were going to try and take advantage of me. I’m really lucky. It’s really unfortunate that most women in showbusiness do experience that, but I seem to have skated through it.”

The film features ‘Cryin’ in the Night’ from 1973’s ‘Buckingham Nicks’. This album has never been released in the CD era and beyond. Due to your fall-out are we further away than ever from a release?

“I don’t know. I think it should be released. It should just be polished up a little bit. I don’t think it should be remixed. I think it should just go out the way it was mixed when we released it. I hope it happens. Owning ‘Buckingham Nicks’ between me and Lindsey is like owning an old Mercedes. One person says, ‘let’s release it!’ and the other person goes, ‘I don’t wanna let it go.’ And then three years later it’s the other way around. That’s what’s been happening with ‘Buckingham Nicks’ since 1975!”

Have you heard back from Lindsey since you sent him a note following his heart attack last year?

“The heart attack was serious. All of us in Fleetwood Mac wrote to him and told him that he’d better get well. Being an ex-girlfriend, I wrote more than that. I said, ‘you’d better stay well and you’d take care of yourself’. The same old thing, right? But we haven’t had any communication. It’s OK. If it’s ever meant to happen, it will. If we’re meant to communicate ever again, we will. It’s not happening right now.”

Did he acknowledge the letter though?

“He’s acknowledged it, yeah. He wrote a kind of group letter to us all. None of us have had any communication with him since. You know, it lasted 43 years, so we had a really, really good run.”

Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert will be in cinemas on 21 Oct. Find your screening at stevienicksfilm.com. The 2CD & digital/streaming releases will be available on 30 Oct.

INTERVIEW Stevie Nicks Releases Powerful "Show Them The Way" with Dave Grohl and Dave Stewart

Stevie Nicks on Her Hopeful New Single ‘Show Them the Way’ and Her Fears for the Next Four Years. 

In a conversation with Variety, Nicks describes the new song as "nonpartisan" and "a prayer." But she has strong feelings about everything from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to wearing masks, and talks about her fantasy exit path if we get four more years of the same.

By Chris Willman - VARIETY

Stevie Nicks wrote the lyrics for her new single, “Show Them the Way,” exactly three election cycles ago. But in the Cameron Crowe-directed video for the song, when someone is pictured holding up a sign that says “November is coming,” it’s clear that it’s this year’s election that’s weighing heavy on her mind.

“I did hold it back since 2008, and I just knew that right now, with the presidential election and everything else that’s going on, that this was the time,” Nicks tells Variety. “I hope that this song and its words will be seen as a prayer — a prayer for our country, and a prayer for the world. It’s a pretty heavy song. And,” she says of the newly recorded version, with Greg Kurstin as producer and Dave Grohl on drums, “I think it’s just a spectacular song.”

Is it a political one? “I hope people understand that it’s nonpartisan — that it’s not for Republicans, it’s not for Democrats. It’s meant to be a moment of peace for everyone, and… you know the silly thing where people say ‘Can’t everybody just get along?’ It’s like, can we just figure a way out of this horrific thing that we have walked into? That’s why I released this now.”

But calling the song nonpartisan doesn’t mean she lacks strong opinions about the seismic changes affecting the country, and which way she hopes things swing in a month. Asked what she means by “this horrific thing that we have walked into,” Nicks answers, without ever naming any names: “I just mean what’s happened to the country. Racism in the last four years is so much worse than it was. I’m 72 years old. I lived through the ‘60s. I’ve seen all this. I fought for Roe vs. Wade; that was my generation’s fight. And I don’t want to live in a country that is so divisive. I go, like, well, if this starts over and there’s another four years of this, then I’m going — but we’re not welcome anywhere. So where can I go? And I’m thinking: Oh, space. Maybe I can talk Elon Musk into giving us a jet and letting me pick 50 people, and we’re like the arc, and someone can take us and let us live on another planet until the next four years are over.”

Nicks says she’s releasing two versions of the song. “There’s an acoustic piano version with me and Greg Kurstin, my amazing producer,” she says, referring to the two-time Grammy producer of the year winner famous for Adele’s “Hello.” “And then we did this rock ‘n’ roll version of it too, with Dave Grohl playing drums and Dave Stuart (of Eurythmics fame) playing lead guitar from the middle out. And. Greg is the most amazing keyboardist; I was so blown away.”

The lyrics are, by her account, essentially a transcription of a dream she had during the Democratic primaries leading up to the 2008 presidential election, when she was in the studio and would come home every night and watch news and historical political documentaries on television every night.

“One night I had a dream that was so real, I was pretty sure it had happened,” Nicks says. “It’s a cinematic story; it had a beginning, a middle and an end, and every detail, every color, every smile was there. And I wrote the story when I woke up. The dream was: I was invited to a party to play the piano and sing a few songs. And nobody’s ever really asked me to come and be the entertainment for anything by myself, because I don’t play that well — so that’s how you know this was a dream, right?” she laughs. “But I had done three benefits in the Hamptons before, so that was up there in my brain somewhere. There were all these political people there, in the dream. The next day I wrote down the words, and then I made it into a poem, then I wrote the music the next day. And since I never recorded it till now, I felt that now was its time, its reason. I understood what it meant then and what it means now.”

Nicks hopes that it is a balm amid one of the most turmoil-fueled times the nation has known — but admits she finds little reason for abject calm with the coronavirus still running rampant. “I would never have put this song out if I didn’t hope that it might put some hope out into the world,” she says. “Because I think that everybody is very afraid and nervous, and we’re all locked in and can’t go anywhere and can’t do anything. People aren’t paying attention with their masks, and other people are getting it. And this virus has never going to go away if the whole world doesn’t get in the game and start wearing their masks and start doing everything you have to do. It’s like a creeping fungus. And it’s going to keep us all locked in our houses and it’s not going to help the economy. Nobody’s ever going to be able to really go back to full-on work, and nothing’s ever going to be the same unless we can get ahold of this thing.”

To her, this is still nonpartisan talk, though it may not be taken as such by all. “The whole thing has become so political. It’s not political, everybody! It’s not. It’s a virus. It doesn’t care what side you’re on. It’s going to kill you. And I’ve said that if I get it it’ll kill me. I have compromised lungs. I was really sick last year. The night of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [which she was inducted into in 2019 as a solo artist after previously being in as a member of Fleetwood Mac], I knew before I went on stage that something was off, so I had to really like pull it together. The next day I got really sick, and I ended up going into the hospital in Philadelphia for a week in ICU with double pneumonia and and asthma. And talk about your oxygen levels going down — my oxygen levels were hardly existing. If I was to go on a ventilator… My mom was on a ventilator for a month, and she was hoarse for the rest of her life. All the other side effects that come along with this virus… You may get over it and just be like, ‘Great, I’m good. It’s gone.’ It’s not gone. It comes back in little ways to attack you forever.

“So you don’t want to get it. It’s like I’ve built a thin shield of magical plastic around me, you know? Because I don’t want my career to be over. I don’t want to not pull on those leather boots again.”

The “Show Them the Way” video includes a brief glimpse of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To many of the rest of us, she may be “RBG” for short, but to Nicks, “I just call her Ruth. Ruth — oh my God, I was just so sorry she couldn’t have hung on for a couple more months. But God bless her. I think she had pancreatic cancer about five different times. It’s the worst cancer you can get, and how she did it, and worked out with her trainer every day — how in the world did that little lady do it? Because she knew how important it was that she stay on this earth as long as she could. And she did her best. She’s our little icon. We’ll never forget her.”

Nicks was speaking with Variety not just about her new studio single, but about her live concert film, “Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert,” which will be hitting theaters and drive-ins — the ones that are open, obviously — for a two-night engagement Oct. 21 and 25, to be followed by a live audio album of the same material Oct. 30. For an in-depth interview with Nicks about that project, look to Variety next week.

Stream | Download "Show Them The Way"

OFFICIAL VIDEO

Stevie Nicks has released the powerful rock ballad “Show Them the Way.”

Stevie Nicks Asks Spirits for Guidance on Powerful New Song ‘Show Them the Way’

Rock star’s ’24 Karat Gold’ concert film will screen in select cinemas and drive-ins for two nights later this month.

By BRITTANY SPANOS - Rollingstone

Stevie Nicks has released the powerful rock ballad “Show Them the Way.” This is Nicks’ first new solo song since releasing her 2014 LP 24 Karat Gold.

Greg Kurstin produced the anthemic new track. Two official versions have been released: an acoustic, piano-only take and a full-band recording that features Dave Stewart on guitar and Dave Grohl on drums. Citing Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and John F. Kennedy, Nicks looks for guidance from great leaders while looking to the future. The song is inspired by a real dream Nicks had where she was playing a benefit in the Hamptons, preparing herself to sing for the likes of MLK Jr., Lewis and the Kennedys. “Someone said, ‘Sing us a song, there’s a piano’/And handed me a drink/The room was full of hope/A song would set them free,” she delivers on the vivid tune.

In an interview arriving at a later date, Nicks revealed to Rolling Stone that she had originally penned the song in 2008. She was in St. Charles, Illinois editing a concert film at the time and returned to the house she was staying in to flip through the TV channels. Over the course of the two months that she lived there, she ended up watching several historical documentaries about the same figures that inspired “Show Them the Way.” 

“I watched it all,” she tells Rolling Stone. “Then, what happened was, one night I went to bed and I had this dream. I dream a lot, but I almost never remember the dreams. I’ll wake up and I’ll go, ‘I remember a train with some people smiling and waving at me that went by really fast,’ and that’s it. This dream was so really real that there was a little bit of me, for a minute, when I sat up was like, ‘Did that just really happen?’ So I wrote it down just in prose. I didn’t write it down in a seven verse poem. I wrote down what had happened.”

Towards the end of “Show Them the Way,” Nicks meets a shadow who represents her mom, who worked at a prisoner of war base outside of Phoenix. The figure reminds her: “Don’t forget what we were fighting for,” a quote the singer’s mother had repeated throughout her life. 

She considered putting “Show Them the Way” on her 2011 album In Your Dreams, but had presented it to her collaborators at the time too late. “I said, ‘OK, I totally get it, and it really doesn’t go with the rest of these songs, it would be an outlier on this,'” she explains, adding that she wanted it to feel like the right time for the song to be out in the world. “I think the world is calling for it right now.”

Later this month, Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold concert film will screen at select cinemas and drive-ins for two nights only.

Stream | Download the single 

Stevie Nicks may not be able to tour but she’s been working hard on a new TV miniseries.

Outtakes: Stevie Nicks on Petty, Prince, Beyoncé and Harry

By MESFIN FEKADU - Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Stevie Nicks — who is releasing a new song Friday and a concert film later this month — discusses the TV miniseries she’s working on as well as her relationships with Tom Petty, Prince, Beyoncé, Harry Styles and the members of Fleetwood Mac in outtakes from a recent 90-minute-plus interview with The Associated Press.

PETTY and PRINCE

When editing her concert film “Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert” — recorded over two nights during her 2016-17 tour — Nicks had a realization: “Tom was still alive when we did this, wasn’t he?”

“Honestly, as I was watching the show, for me, he was just alive again,” she continued. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, he didn’t die until after that.’”

Petty died in Oct. 2017. Just months before he passed, the pair got together at the British Summer Time at Hyde Park in London to perform their 1981 hit “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

Fleetwood Mac’s recent tours wrap up with a cover of Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and Nicks said that was always hard to perform.

“It was between Michael (Campbell) and I — it was incredibly difficult for us to even look at each other. I would stand up next to him at the very beginning when it was starting and if I even put my hand on Michael’s back, it was like both of us just started to wither,” she said.

The late icon Prince also has a presence in Nicks’ concert film. She dedicates her performance of “Moonlight” to the Purple One and his photo is above her as she sings the classic “Edge of Seventeen.”

“He was inspired by ‘Edge of Seventeen’ to write ‘When Doves Cry.’ That’s really when he and I started to sort of be friends,” she said. “From that moment onward at the very end of ‘Edge of Seventeen’ I go, ‘I know what it sounds like, I know what it sounds like, I know what it sounds like when doves cry. It sounds like you.’”

BEYONCÉ and BOOTYLICIOUS

Speaking of “Edge of Seventeen,” Stevie Nicks let R&B girl group Destiny’s Child sample the song for their 2001 smash “Bootylicious.”

Nicks even appeared in the video, and remembers meeting Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams and Beyoncé — who was just 19 at the time.

“I got to sit there with them and hang out with them all day long. ...Then I did my guitar playing part, which was totally fun and so when I left there, I felt like I knew them. I never really saw them again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Beyoncé since. We had a great day,” Nicks said.

“Bootylicious” not only topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, it was so popular that the word was added to the dictionary thanks to the song’s success.

“Without all the makeup and everything, they just looked like three really cute, little teenage girls. Then of course, they’re just like me, they put on those — whatever it is that makes them — them. Whether it’s your boots or your jacket or whatever, then they became Destiny’s Child, and I saw it. It was really a marvel to see,” Nicks said. “I always feel like I know them, even though I really don’t. I feel like I know Beyoncé even though I really don’t know her at all. I feel like I know her because I was with them for a long time that day. They gave me a chance to pretend like I was playing guitar. I don’t think anybody ever gave me that chance ever again.”

WOMEN WHO ROCK

Speaking of Beyoncé — who has a chance of matching Stevie Nicks by becoming a two-time member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — Nicks says she’s sort of bummed she’s the only woman to achieve the feat.

Nicks was first inducted into the Rock Hall in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and she made history when she became a member as a soloist last year. Twenty-two men have been inducted twice, including Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed and all four members of the Beatles.

“I hope that I will be the catalyst for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame allowing some other women to come in because they should. They absolutely should,” Nicks said. “We are just as good as they are... That’s why there should be more women in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because we worked just as hard.”

Artists can become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first record. Beyoncé will qualify for induction as a member in Destiny’s Child in 2023 and as a soloist in 2028.

Nicks’ advice to women to wanting to be inducted twice: “If they’re in a band, well, just make a quickie solo album somewhere in there. You never know. That’s the only way you’ll ever get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Both careers have to exist for a really long time.”

One of her favorite moments during her second initiation last year? Harry Styles inducting her.

“I loved it and everything he said helped me with my speech, which went on way too long. Probably the longest acceptance speech ever at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” she said.

WHEN HARRY MET STEVIE

Speaking of Harry Styles, Nicks has become close friends with the former One Direction member since he invited her to perform at one of his concerts in 2017.

Since, they’re performed several times together and Styles even previewed his latest album, “Fine Line,” for Nicks and some of her friends before it was released in December.

“He’s watching me to learn, just like I watched Jimi Hendrix to learn or I watched Janis Joplin or I watched Buffalo Springfield or I watched all the different bands that Lindsey and I opened for,” Nicks said of Styles.

Though they haven’t written or recorded together, Nicks admits “we will.”

Styles topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart this year with the sweet pop song “Watermelon Sugar” from his new album. But Nicks says she feels “so bad for him that this stupid pandemic had to happen right as ‘Fine Line’ was coming out.”

She gives Styles credit with warning her about the serious impact the pandemic would have on touring.

“This is before they locked us down, I said to him, ‘You know, it’s going to be a long time until we actually walk onstage again.’ ... In all of his 26-ness to a 72-year-old he said, ‘I don’t think that we’ll be back onstage until the end of 2021.’ This was February. I said, ‘Are you serious? Are you kidding? Really? That’s what you think?’ He goes, ‘That’s absolutely what I think.’”

“He became like this sage, man of wisdom, I was like, ‘Wow! I hope you’re wrong.’ But he’s absolutely right.”

CALL ME MAYBE

Speaking of friends Stevie Nicks have been in touch with — don’t count the members of Fleetwood Mac.

“I haven’t talked to anybody in Fleetwood Mac. I haven’t even talked to Mick. I’m really, really good friends with Mick,” she said. “Not only did I not call them, but they didn’t call me either. It seems like everybody is very much existing in their own bubble. It’s like there are people that I really need to call that are important to me that I have not called.”

Fleetwood Mac wrapped a yearlong tour in December, just months before the pandemic hit.

“Whenever I feel really guilty, then I say to myself, ‘Well they haven’t called you either.’ That’s your excuse out. Soon as somebody calls you, then you have to call them back,” Nicks continued. “It’s society of pandemic. We’re all going to be so excited when it’s over that we’re all going to be over-friendly and calling people all the time and people are going to be like, ‘Back off. Stop.’ I think that hopefully we’re all going to get through this and please God will show us the way and we’ll be OK.”

STEVIE TV

Speaking of the pandemic, Stevie Nicks may not be able to tour but she’s been working hard on a new TV miniseries.

The show is based off the Welsh goddess Rhiannon, which inspired Nicks to write the 1975 Fleetwood Mac hit of the same name. After learning more about Rhiannon, Nicks bought the rights from author Evangeline Walton’s adaptation of the ancient British Mabinogion, which includes the Rhiannon story.

“I was in meetings for that in January and February before this thing happened,” she said. “It’s one of the few kinds of work that actually can go on in a pandemic.”

Nicks has also been bingeing TV shows with her two goddaughters and assistant, naming favorites like “The Last Kingdom,” “Outlander,” “The Crown,” “Victoria,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Law & Order,” “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Med.”

“I think it’s creative for me to watch all that good TV because it is good and it’s fun. And it takes your mind off of everything that’s going on. We’re watching movies for ‘Rhiannon,’ we’re watching the old Excalibur movies and the King Arthur movies. All the medieval movies, even the really old ones. That’s really good too because that kind of keeps you in sort of that mindset also,” she said.

“We don’t seldom just sit around at night and talk, because there is nothing left to talk about. We’ve told every story that any of us have ever heard 50,000 times over the last 30 years. So, we’re done talking.”