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The Boomer Rock Renaissance 2020 Never Saw Coming
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks’s brilliant October single “Show Them the Way” prays aloud for this generation to find a song that galvanizes its politics as the protest music of her own formative years did.
By Craig Jenkins - Vulture
by Steve Baltin - Forbes
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?
By Chris Willman - VARIETY
“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.”
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.’”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
By MESFIN FEKADU - Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s Saturday at 9:30 p.m. and Stevie Nicks is singing on the phone.
The rock icon is at her Los Angeles home, where she’s been cooped up since December after wrapping the “An Evening with Fleetwood Mac” tour. She arrived there at first to relax after spending a year on the road and to celebrate the holidays. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Stuck at the house is both good and bad for Nicks. The good news? Her house is a creative oasis where all her favorite musical instruments live. It’s where she spent a year recording her 2011 album “In Your Dreams” with Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard.
Her current 10-month stint — and counting — at home even fueled her to record the new single “Show Them the Way,” out on Friday.
“It’s beautiful,” she says after singing the song’s chorus at the end of a 90-minute-plus interview, where Nicks excitedly discussed everything from her admiration for late icons and pals Tom Petty and Prince to her relationships with Harry Styles and Beyoncé.
The bad news? Nicks is 72 and doesn’t want to be homebound when she prefers to be singing live on the road.
“This pandemic is more than just a pandemic for me. This is stealing what I consider to be my last youthful years,” Nicks told The Associated Press. “I don’t have just 10 years to hang around and wait for this thing to go away. I have places to go, people to sing for, another album to make. With every day that goes by, it’s like taking this time away from me. That I think is the hardest thing for me.”
“I have a lot of friends that are 60 and they’re going, ‘Oh I’m so old, I’m 60.’ I’m like, ‘You know what, the violins of the world are playing for you. You’re going to really appreciate 60 when you turn 72,’” she continued. “I don’t feel like the whole world is really getting behind getting this to go away. I feel like people are just thinking it really is just magically going away. All it takes is a few people that don’t wear a mask to spread. Just let one person catch it from you and there it goes — it’s like the never-ending story. That worries me because I’m going, ’Will it really be gone by the end of 2021?
“Will it be safe next year for us to walk into Madison Square Garden?’ I don’t know that it will,” she said.
Nicks is hoping to satisfy fans she would typically see in-person on tour with the new concert film “Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert.” It was recorded over two nights during her 2016-17 “24 Karat Gold” tour and will be available at select theaters and drive-ins on Oct. 21 and 25. A CD and digital album of the concert will be released Oct. 30.
“As we started to understand that this COVID thing was not a joke, I started going to myself, ‘Well, you know what? This may be the closest to going to a big, big concert that’s actually not from 1977 that is new,’” Nicks said. “It’s brand new and it’s fantastic.”
The only time she left her West Coast home was to edit the film in Chicago. She took a private jet to the home on a golf course that had been vacant for some time, spending a month there and editing down hours of footage to create the 140-minute film.
“They can’t do it without me. I won’t allow it,” Nicks said. “We got it all done. It was really fun. We were really safe.”
But at the end of the trip, Nicks tripped in the snow and fractured her knee: “I was like screaming as I went through the air and saw the gravel driveway coming toward my face and just made a quick turn. So, I didn’t fall face down and caught myself. Because of my strong, tambourine arms, I was able to stop myself from crashing even worse. It was a really bad fall, but it’s OK.
“It’s had a hard time getting better,” she continued. “I hurt this knee really bad, my left knee, before, years ago. I had been dealing with it and fixed it. ...I had just really gotten it to be to the place where it was totally better, then I fractured it. So now it’s almost better,” she said.
Apart from producing her concert film and recording “Show Them the Way,” Nicks has been busy in the home where she’s been creative in the past: “Another famous rock ‘n’ roll star, who will not be mentioned, sent me a song that he wants me to sing on,” she revealed.
Though “Show Them the Way” arrives Friday, Nicks said the song came to her in a dream in 2008 when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were competing for the Democratic Party nomination for president. In the dream Nicks is performing at a political benefit where attendees include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, John Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
Dave Grohl plays drums on the new song, which was produced by Greg Kurstin (Sia, Adele, Beck). Cameron Crowe is directing the music video.
“This song really is a prayer. This song is a prayer for people to unite. A prayer for people to get together,” Nicks said.
“I didn’t really realize that until just the last few days. The chorus was written a week or so later,” she continued.
“The chorus, and I can sing it for you, it goes, ‘Please God show them the way/Please God on this day/Spirits all give us strength/Peace will come if you really want it/I think we’re just in time to save it/Please God, oh please God, show them the way.’”
