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.

STEVIE NICKS JOINS TIKTOK "Afternoon vibe. Lace 'em up!"

That's right... Stevie has joined the TikTok universe [ @stevienicks ]... Her first video is her take on the Dreams Challenge first started by @420doggface208 on TikTok... Check it out below.

Within 5 hours the video has views in excess of 5.5 million on TikTok and over a million on her personal Instagram account. At the time I'm writing this she has gained 346,000 followers on the platform.  Amazing!!  Hope she posts more.

Mick Fleetwood [ @mickfleetwood ]is also on TikTok.... He currently has 275,000 followers and over 11.5 million views on the one video he has posted.

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MICK FLEETWOOD AND LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM RECONNECTED RECENTLY OVER PETER GREEN

Mick Fleetwood on viral video and whether Lindsey Buckingham will return 

By Nicki Gostin 

Page Six

Mick Fleetwood thinks it’s “cool” that his band’s classic tune “Dreams” is climbing the charts again.

Last month, Nathan Apodaca posted a TikTok video of himself skateboarding and chugging cranberry juice while lip-syncing to the Fleetwood Mac 1977 hit “Dreams.” The clip has been viewed over 30 million times, resulting in Apodaca being gifted a cranberry-hued truck from Ocean Spray and the Stevie Nicks penned song gaining over 8 million on-demand streams last week.

Fleetwood, 73, even made his own TikTok copying Apodaca and the two met up via a Zoom chat.

The British-born musician is humble about the video’s success chalking it up to a “moment of connectivity” that “just resonated.”

“It was a reach out with a smile,” he told Page Six from his home in Hawaii. “Here I am and here we go. It’s so what we need right now. And how cool is that?”

“It was sort of a huge accident. This is hugely gratifying and it’s fantastic,” he said.

Fleetwood Mac are as famous for their songs that defined the ’70s as much as their internecine squabbling, which has led to members leaving and returning.

The most recent was in 2018 when guitarist Lindsey Buckingham was fired.

Fleetwood, who says he spoke to Buckingham recently, “has no idea” if Buckingham will ever return.

He explained in a not very clear or succinct way: “I think the reality is without going into huge detail, one of the things I always say is that the disconnect happened and there were emotions that were somewhat not removable and there are personal things within the band and Lindsey’s world.

“All I can say is really openly is that Lindsey Buckingham and the work he has done with the band is never going to go away and we have a functioning band with the changes that we made. You know time heals and it was lovely to be able to talk with him.”

Fleetwood said the two spoke by phone after Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green passed away age 73 in July.

“Lindsey said, ‘I know you’re really sad and of course, I was.’ And that’s what reconnected me and Lindsey. We had the greatest talk. It was like we’d just spoken five minutes ago.”

The drummer  is looking forward to a post-COVID time where he can perform again and “there has to be a positive outcome of stories to be told by all of us.”

 

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Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' and 'Dreams' explode on the Billboard Charts!

  

Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' is the "greatest gainer" this week on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart as it explodes in sales and jumps up the Top 200 albums chart to #13 from #27 last week as a result of Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok video featuring 'Dreams'.  I believe the last time the album was this high on the charts was back in May, 2011 when the entire 'Rumours' album was featured in the Glee episode and it reached #11.

The 1988 Greatest Hits release also sees a major boost on the chart, jumping up to #61 this week from #103 last week.

DREAMS ROCKETS UP THE BILLBOARD HOT 100

'Dreams' re-enters the Billboard Top 100 singles chart at #21 this week based on sales, streams and radio play. The song took off following Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok video flying up the iTunes and Spotify song charts. The song is currently No.1 on iTunes in the US and has been for a number of days.  This is the first time the song has been on the Hot 100 since August, 1977!