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.

Eddy Quintela, second husband to Christine McVie has passed away

Eddy Quintela, second husband of Christine McVie and co-writer on a number of her songs from 1987 through 1997 has passed away.

Song writer, keyboardist and composer of Portuguese origin, Eddy Quintela was also the second husband of Christine McVie, a fundamental element in the formation of Fleetwood Mac. For the North American band, Quintela composed with McVie numerous songs between the years 1987 and 1997 Among them is the hit, "Little Lies" from the album Tango in the Night, published in 1987. The hit helped this LP to become the second best seller in the entire Fleetwood Mac career.

They divorced in 2003 but continued to collaborate on Christine McVie's solo album published the following year. One of Eddy Quintela's themes for the American band, "Nights in Estoril", alludes to the time spent by the couple in Portugal, where the musician established several connections, namely in the Cascais line, with Marita Leon (with whom he maintained a musical project in the 1990s) and Fernando Cunha dos Delfins. The song would be published on Fleetwood Mac's Time album, which came out in 1995. In an interview with the British newspaper Guardian, McVie would say however "he was not happy in love".

Eduardo Quintela de Mendonça, of his full name, will also have collaborated with Adelaide Ferreira, at the time of "Baby Suicida" and Portuguese rock. In a post on his Facebook page, Manuel Falcão, founder of BLITZ, says he met Eddy Quintela through a mutual friend, Pedro Baltazar. "He lived a large part of his life in the United States and Great Britain and returned to Portugal some twenty years ago. He was a creative man, he was engaged in a musical project that he loved, a rock opera about John Kennedy, which he left almost ready, now that's left".

- Blitz Expresso

Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac was certified Platinum in the UK

Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies" has been certified Platinum in the UK on October 16, 2020 for sales exceeding 600,000 units.

Little Lies was the 3rd single released from Tango In The Night in 1987 and peaked at number 5 in the UK.

Stevie Nicks talks Harry Styles, Christine McVie and the Pandemic

Stevie Nicks talks Harry Styles, pandemic fears and her Fleetwood Mac pact

Bree Player, Stellar Magazine
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

Rock’n’roll royalty Stevie Nicks talks to Stellar about her fear of the pandemic, her close friendship with Harry Styles and the pact she made with bandmate Christine McVie at the beginning of their run with Fleetwood Mac.

How are you going in Los Angeles?

I’m as good as you can be in these circumstances. I really have been locked down because I truly believe that should I contract this disease it would kill me, or it would at the very least knock me down so bad I wouldn’t have a career anymore.

And at 72 years old, I may have my freedom but I don’t have much time, as Mick Jagger would say. So, even if this takes another year-and-a-half I’m going to get through this without getting it because I want to go back to work. I want to go back on tour. I want to come back to Australia, for god’s sake!

Your natural space is the stage. How are you handling not performing live for such an extended period of time?

Well, this was meant to be a year off for me, but I was still performing six shows and we probably would have added six more. I do miss it – I don’t feel like myself.

I look at these next six or so years as my last youthful years, when I’m going to feel like putting on six-inch heels and dancing across a stage for the world. Because, really, at some point you have to go, “OK, you’ll be 80 – just exactly how long can you cartwheel across the world?” I don’t have that much time left to be a rock star.

Although you can’t perform now, you’re releasing your most recent solo tour 24 Karat Gold The Concert in cinemas next week, so you’re still managing to keep busy…

Yes, this film was so lovingly made and I’ve also just released a song called ‘Show Them The Way’. These are projects I’m so proud of and in this time of strife for all of us, I’m hoping that both the film and the song might be something that will make people feel better and give them some hope.

I made a video for this song that’s mostly photographs but I shot a small portion of it in my entryway. I put on my boots for a couple of hours and for those hours I felt like myself again. I feel like Cinderella putting on her glass slippers.

At five-foot-seven, I feel incredibly powerful, at five-foot-one in a pair of bedroom slippers or tennis shoes, I don’t feel so powerful.

FLEETWOOD MAC ALBUMS CHART UPDATES - US, UK AU & NZ

Fleetwood Mac makes some significant moves on the albums and singles chart in these selected countries.

 

AUSTRALIA

Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' enters the Top 10 in Australia for the first time jumping 10 spots this week to number 4 from number 14 last week.  'Rumours' climbs up the Top 100 albums chart to number 11 from number 17 last week.

NEW ZEALAND

'Dreams' remains in the Top 40 in New Zealand on the singles chart moving up 4 spots this week to number 6 from number 10.  'Rumours' jumps into the Top 10 at number 6 this week up from number 10 last week on the Top 40 Albums chart.

UK 

In it's 100th week on the UK Top 100 albums chart, Fleetwood Mac's "50 YEARS - DON'T STOP" climbs back into the UK Top 10 at number 10 this week up from number 17 last week. 

- 100 weeks in the top 75
-  95 weeks in the top 40
-  69 weeks in the top 20
-  14 weeks in the top 10

'Rumours' moves up to number 18 from number 22. 

Finally, Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams re-enters the Official Singles Chart Top 40 for the first time since 1977, climbing 18 places to Number 37. The feat follows a surge in streams and downloads following the viral TikTok video of user Doggface208 skating to the track while drinking cranberry juice. Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks have each since responded with their own TikToks paying homage to the clip.

Dreams only peaked at Number 24 upon its original release in August 1977, however its success has endured over the years, racking up just shy of 100 million streams in the UK since streaming was introduced in 2014.

Dreams is Fleetwood Mac’s first UK Top 40 entry in seven years. In 2013, their 1988 hit Everywhere re-entered the Top 40 at Number 15 following its use in a TV advert.

IRELAND

In IRELAND Fleetwood Mac’s discography is being streamed strong, leading to a new peak for the band’s 2018 box set '50 Years – Don’t Stop'. Peaking at #5 previously, the collection advances to #4 this week. 'Rumours' returns to the Top 10, climbing to #6. 

USA / CANADA

Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' is the "greatest gainer" this week on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart dated October 17, 2020 as it explodes in sales and jumps up the Top 200 albums chart to number 13 from number 27 last week as a result of Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok video featuring 'Dreams'. 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 number 11.

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

DREAMS ROCKETS UP THE BILLBOARD HOT 100

'Dreams' re-enters the Billboard Top 100 singles chart at number 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!

Other Billboard Charts:

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.”