Published by @Nickslive at nickslive.blogspot.com for Fleetwood Mac News and Reviews:
Stevie Nicks looks back over her life and loves on her new album, says Helen Brown
(This article appears in the December 8th printing of the Hobart Mercury (Tasmania). Article was originally published in The Telegraph in June, 2011
Stevie Nicks looks back over her life and loves on her new album, says Helen Brown
(This article appears in the December 8th printing of the Hobart Mercury (Tasmania). Article was originally published in The Telegraph in June, 2011
WHEN Stevie Nicks asked her 15-year-old god-daughter to take part in her new video – “playing me at 30, around the time I joined Fleetwood Mac” – the girl asked for a little direction.
“So I told her to twirl, talk to yourself, make like you’re crazy – be me,” Nicks says. “We put her in my vintage, evergreen tie-dye with my top hat. Oh, she looked so beautiful. My girlfriends laughed when we saw the dress. Were we ever that small? We must have been!” She may lament outgrowing her youthful stage gear but Nicks is still a rock-star Rapunzel at 63, blonde locks cascading over billowing, black chiffon sleeves.
It’s been a long and winding road for Nicks. She developed a huge cocaine addiction between the 1977 release of Fleetwood Mac’s 40 million-selling Rumours and her 1986 admission to the Betty Ford Clinic. Her recovery was “aided” by a prescribed tranquilliser, to which she became addicted for eight years.
“I’m still very angry about that,” she says. “I might have met somebody, had a baby, made three more amazing albums in those years.
“I’m pretty sure that had I not eventually checked myself into a hospital and stayed there for 47 days, I would be dead now. I would have OD’D on something crazy – over the counter.”