This Week in Rock History: Stevie Slammed at JFK Stadium Performance

WNEW | Where Rock Lives: This Week in Rock History: Steve and Stevie: "This week in 1978, JFK Stadium in Philadelphia was the site of one of those fabulous all-day all-star shows that studded '70s summers: Fleetwood Mac, the Steve Miller Band, former Mac member Bob Welch, and the Sanford-Townsend Band. It wasn't a particularly great day of music, however: Rolling Stone's review [link] of the show dismissed Welch and Sanford-Townsend in a single sentence and slammed Stevie Nicks, although it praised the rest of Fleetwood Mac, and Steve Miller was apparently pretty good."

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT: STEVIE NICKS MAY INCLUDE NEW SONGS ON TOUR

BUT ARE THOSE NEW SONGS BRAND NEW SONGS?... OR OLD SONGS NEVER PERFORMED, THEREFORE STILL BEING NEW?

Twitter was active today with the following from David Wild @Wildaboutmusic (Rolling Stone Magazine Contributing Editor).

@Wildaboutmusic: "Today I am supposed to talk to Stevie Nicks, then introduce Brian Wilson tonight. For a kid from New Jersey, a very California Dream."

@Wildaboutmusic: WILD SONG OF THE DAY: "Italian Summer" by Stevie Nicks. Just one stunning song from her upcoming album."

[insert a plethora of Tweets directed at Mr. Wild regarding the above statement]

@Wildaboutmusic:"To all of Stevie's loving fans, I"m sorry you'll have to wait. And yes, it will be worth the wait."

@teribury "David can you ask Stevie if she will be performing any of her new songs next week on her mini tour? Thanks."

@Wildaboutmusic: "Yes, I will try and ask Stevie if she's performing any new material on her upcoming mini-tour."

@Wildaboutmusic:"Just spoke to the lovely Stevie, and she'd love to try a new song or two on her mini-tour for her fans, but doesn't want them on YouTube."

@Wildaboutmusic:"Look for more details in an In The Studio piece I will write soon for Rolling Stone. I'll keep you posted here when to expect that."

I kinda don't blame Stevie one bit about not wanting her new stuff on Youtube!.... Are you kidding me, fans would erupt if she gave us a preview of anything new! You know it would happen if she were to play something new...  As it is, probably 90% of her first show will show up on Youtube!  But it's all good... People are just excited!

Al Ortis, Bass player in Stevie's band who has been working with her since the late 90's and who can be found Monday nights in LA at The Joint playing in the Waddy Wachtel Band when he's not on tour - posted on his facebook page the following:

"Sittin here goin over Stevie Nicks tunes for the upcoming August tour. Mostly live stuff of the band's passed shows and new songs too. Wow Pretty killin band. Can't wait to see everyone and play some great music."

Hello?!.... New songs too?!  Okay, so are they considering adding new NEW songs?... or just new OLD songs never played before?  Al's statement isn't really clear!  In any case a shake-up in the set is definitely needed!  And whether they add tracks from older albums never played, or something brand spankin' new, it will be a welcome edition... 

HAPPY 29th BIRTHDAY TO THE ALBUM THAT STARTED IT ALL

Released on this day in 1981

Bella Donna is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks. Released on July 27, 1981, the album hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts in September of that year, remaining there for one week. Bella Donna was awarded Platinum status by the RIAA three months after its release on October 7, 1981, and has sold over 4 million copies in the U.S. and remains her best-selling solo album to date worldwide.

The album spawned four substantial hit singles during 1981 and 1982: the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-penned duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (#3), the Don Henley duet "Leather and Lace" (#6), the iconic "Edge of Seventeen" (#11), and country-tinged "After the Glitter Fades" (#32).

Bella Donna would mark the beginning of Nicks' trend of calling upon her many musician friends and connections to fully realize her sparse demo recordings. Along with friends Tom Petty and Don Henley, Nicks brought in famed session musician Waddy Wachtel, Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band pianist Roy Bittan, and Muscle Shoals session man Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. & the MGs. Though Bella Donna's personnel list includes some 20 musicians, the album is very much Nicks' own work, with all but one of the songs on the record written by her.

The album also marked the first recording featuring Nicks' backing vocalists, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, who still record and tour with Nicks today.

Wikipedia

Its interesting to note that on the eve of Bella Donna's anniversary that an interview is published with Stevie comparing the writing and recording process of her current album to that of Bella Donna.

STEVIE NICKS AT HOME RECORDING VOCALS... (PHOTOS)

Latest photos from Dave Stewart at Stevie's house recording vocals: Stevie's recording her vocals for her new CD in the entry way to her Californian home.... Cool!

1. At Stevie Nicks place playing amazing guitar Mike Campbell from "The Heartbreakers" gave me as a gift.
2. Where Stevie sings her vocals.



Follow @davestewart on Twitter

STEVIE NICKS IS LOOKING BACK, CHARGING FORWARD ON NEW ALBUM

Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Reigning Queen Plans Santa Barbara Concert for a Cause

Monday, July 26, 2010
by ALY COMINGORE
The Santa Barbara Independent

I’m a firm believer that every girl born this side of 1969 has had their Stevie Moment. It’s that time in a young lady’s life when, barring any and all scholastic goals and career aspirations, she realizes that she just kind of wants to be Stevie Nicks. Even for a day. I’d like to think my brush with the phenomenon came on post-high school, when I started driving and slowly realized that I missed the never-ending Nicks tributes that once poured from my friend’s mom’s car speakers during our daily trips to school. (She’d been having her Stevie Moment since Rumours came out, I later realized.) Suddenly void of my Fleetwood fix, I caught the bug—and came to realize that there’s just something far too cool about Stevie. It’s the flowing skirts, the mile-high boots; the fact that she could make dressing like a hippie witch look chic. It’s the way her voice, no matter what she’s saying, can send chills up the spine. Needless to say, when the opportunity to chat up Nicks arose, I had more than a moment—I had a full-on Nicks fit.

At 62, Nicks is a not-so-far cry from the chanteuse I envisioned during those drives. In conversation, she’s giddy, passionate, and assertive in a way that forces you to pay real close attention. She is her own hype machine. This Wednesday, Nicks returns to the Santa Barbara Bowl as part of a short six-city tour. The jaunt also acts as a reprieve from Nicks’s current project, which will be her first album of new material in almost 10 years. I recently spoke with Nicks from her home outside of Los Angeles about the tour, the record, and why her S.B. stop is much more than “just another concert.”

How did these concert dates come about?

This was very unplanned. I’m in the middle of doing a record, so I really wasn’t planning on touring this year, but I got some offers to do five or six shows. My manager said, “Well, if you stop doing your record for one month, you can go out and do five or six shows, and it will be like you worked all year!” [Laughs.] But I decided to add the show in Santa Barbara because I have a little friend named Cecilia who’s eight years old, who I’ve known for almost five years, and she was diagnosed a couple months ago with a very, very rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. It’s a rare soft tissue cancer. … She has one more week of radiation, and she’s looking down the road of almost a year of chemotherapy. Needless to say, this has been extremely devastating to her family. So when I found out this was all happening, I called my manager and said, “So, what can we do?” And he said, “We’ll figure it out.”

So the proceeds from the show are going to her?

She’s getting my salary for the night, basically. I lost my best friend to leukemia in 1981. Robin was 33, so when I saw the picture of Cecilia, I’d already seen it. When you spend a year at a cancer ward, you kind of understand. I’ve been drawing since Robin died; I think that was her gift to me. I never took an art class in my life, and when she was sick I started drawing these little things—pyramids, stick people, just these funny little drawings that she could hang on her wall and look at when I wasn’t there. … So I’ve picked one, a really sweet little drawing, and I’m going to have it made into a T-shirt for Cecilia. It’s a two-fold thing. It’ll be nice for my fans to have a piece of my art and it will be nice to be able to have a piece of art that is drawn from a situation like this, which makes it so much more special.

After these shows, what comes next? Can you tell me anything about the album?

I think it will go down in history as my greatest work. I have written nine songs with [The Eurythmics’] Dave [Stewart], and I feel like I’m part of a writing team—like Lennon and McCartney or something. I have always been so closed to the idea of writing with anybody, and my eyes have been so opened now.

Stylistically, how would you describe the stuff you’ve done so far?

It’s very diverse. There’s really, really rock ’n’ roll things, then there’s a song called “Italian Summer” that’s just a beautiful, beautiful love song I wrote when I was in Italy last year. It wasn’t even about anybody. It’s just the feeling you get when you go to Italy is just so romantic, so I wrote this song about this country that I just so fell in love with. Then there are the suffering Stevie songs. [Laughs.]

How did you and Dave team up?

I had met Dave a long time ago, and a couple years ago, he did a pilot for an interview show with Jimmy Iovine. So he kind of interviewed me, then we went to the piano. We sat down and I played “Rhiannon,” and he got his guitar out—because he’s never without it—and he sat down next to me and started playing along, and we did like a 15-minute rendition of “Rhiannon,” and it was so spectacular that I said to myself, “Okay, the next time I do a record, I’m going to ask Dave Stewart to produce it.” He’s very similar in a lot of ways to Lindsey [Buckingham] in the way he plays. He’s like a peer of Lindsey’s; he’s one of those great guitarists. … The girl always gets all the attention—Annie Lennox got all the attention—but the fact is, after spending four months writing with him, I know how important Dave was to all those Eurythmics records. They wrote those songs together, and that’s why they were so fantastic.

If you had to compare this to a past record, which would it be?

Well, probably Bella Donna, because that was my first solo album. I could go back to Rumours, but we didn’t know how great Rumours was. That was just a record that we made that we thought was good, but we had no idea Rumours was going to become one of the biggest records of all time. We had no idea. We made the record, and then we went on the road. The second we came off the road, we went straight in to make Tusk. There wasn’t really much celebration time there. I think I was sitting in my apartment, and I heard one of the songs come on the radio, and it was played, like, after a Beatles song, or after a Who song, or a Led Zeppelin song, and I thought, “Oh my God. One of our songs has just been played right after Led Zeppelin. We’ve made it. We’ve hit the big time.” That moment is forever in my mind—and that’s kind of how I feel about this. I feel an intense kind of slow burning excitement about this that I have not felt in a long time.

Stevie Nicks plays the Santa Barbara Bowl (1122 N. Milpas St.) on Wednesday, August 4, at 7 p.m. Call 962-7411 or visit sbbowl.com for tickets and info.

AUSTRALIAN CHARTS UPDATE: STEVIE NICKS "THE VERY BEST OF"

AUSTRALIA'S TOP 50 CATALOGUE CHART: WEEK OF JULY 26, 2010

Week 12 on Australia's Top 50 Catalogue Chart for the week July 26, 2010 - sees Stevie's 2007 "Crystal Visions The Very Best Of Stevie Nicks" drop from #30 to #44.