NEW INTERVIEW Stevie Nicks on why she recorded "For What It's Worth"

 

Buy/Stream "For What It's Worth"

Stevie joined Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss her cover of “For What It’s Worth.”

About Her History With Stephen Stills’ Song “For What It’s Worth”...

So, I'll tell you why I used it. Since 1966, when it was first written, I was a big Buffalo Springfield fan. So then, we moved quickly towards the future, and say 1968 is probably when I really started listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash. So, what happened was, is that then I really became a big fan of that song. And, even in those early days, that was right when I joined the band with Lindsey, it was 1968 in San Francisco. And, in my little head, thinking that, "Yes, of course this is going to work out." I said, "I'm going to record that song someday.”

Why She Decided To Release The Cover Now...

It took a whole long time to do it, but the reason that I recorded it was because a week after the Uvalde shooting, I recorded it. I just said... It just came into my head. Sometimes you're just sitting on the couch, and sometimes it'll just come into your head, and you didn't even look for it, and it just comes. So, I thought, okay, I'm going to record it. And, I called my favorite producer, Greg Kurstin, and I said, "I would like to record this." And, he goes like, "Okay, great." He recorded it, he played everything except the lead guitar solo by Waddy Watchel. And, I went in and sang it, and with this whole COVID thing, it's not all so easy to just do that, but we did it, and we wanted to put it through a record company, because it was early in the summer. And so, that of course then takes a while, and then I had to go back on the road. So, it was not ever a protest song. Stephen Stills wrote it about the kids on the Sunset Strip getting together to go to the Roxy, and Troubadour, and everything. And then, the police said, "Well, you can't be keeping everybody in the Hills awake. So, you have to be gone by 10 o'clock." And, of course, I don't go to bed till eight in the morning. So, just imagine. It's like, you have to be off the streets at 10 o'clock, and they're like, "Are you serious? That's not going to happen." So, it turned into riots. I mean, they were like, "You're not going to tell us when we have to go to bed. So, we're not going to leave." So, that's really what he wrote it about. I had no idea, but it is. That's the truth.

How She Approached Covering The Song and What She Hopes Fans Get Out Of Listening To It...

So, everybody has their own meaning for that song, but I just think that somewhere in Stephen Still's amazing songwriting, visionary, whatever you want to say, for what it's worth, he managed, in that song, to cover everything. To cover everything that everybody's complaining about, and fighting against, in the entire world. He managed, in that song, to touch on everything so subtly… you could have said, "Okay, is that song about gun violence? Is that song about women's rights? Is it about immigration?" You wouldn't have had any idea exactly what it was about, but you could take it all in to be about anything that you personally wanted it to be about. But, I know, if I'm going to sing some really famous rockstar guy’s song, I better sing it well, or I'm going to get totally panned. So, I put everything I have into doing an interpretation of a song written by a man and sung by a man... especially such a famous man and songwriter as Stephen Stills. So I really did try to stay as within Stephen's realm as I could. And that's really, basically what I tell the audience is, "This is a song I long wanted to record. This seemed to be the right time. And I hope that you, whatever you're..." I don't know if I ever said whatever your views on anything are, I hope that you can rise above that and take it for what it is. And also, I just hope you like the song.

The witchiest women in pop, the great Stevie Nicks Live in Bangor Maine

Stevie Nicks as talented and charming as ever in Bangor show

The Fleetwood Mac singer's set Thursday was wide-ranging and pulled primarily from her solo career.

BY ROBERT KER

Pressherald

Photo: @hachetommy

The autumn equinox officially brought fall to Maine on Thursday, and with it blew in one of the witchiest women in pop music, the great Stevie Nicks. Possessing an extraordinarily rich catalogue of music and a fashion sense so distinct that if you saw dressed-up concert attendees at gas stations you’d know exactly where they were driving, she charmed the Bangor crowd with poise, presence and a voice that improbably hasn’t aged a day since she climbed onto the tour bus with Fleetwood Mac in 1975.

Autumn’s arrival also brought a noticeable drop in temperature and scattered showers that dampened concertgoers just enough to add some bite to the cool wind. This didn’t have any noticeable effect on the crowd’s spirits, however. The audience at Maine Savings Amphitheater was on its feet and boisterous throughout, screaming wildly whenever Nicks stepped away from the microphone to take flight into her trademark twirls – a more delicate prospect at age 74, making the effort all the more endearing. Coincidentally, she also opened the concert with a medley that directly referenced the weather conditions, beginning with “Outside the Rain” from her 1981 solo album “Bella Donna” and featuring a silky segue into the Fleetwood Mac classic “Dreams” (featuring the “thunder only happens when it’s raining” line in the chorus).

Throughout the set, she dipped more heavily into her solo catalogue than her Fleetwood Mac catalogue. Indeed, there were almost as many nods to her friend Tom Petty as there were to Fleetwood Mac – she came out on stage to Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” playing over the sound system, performed their duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and covered his “Free Fallin’.”

Her solo material, combined with her Mac material, proved how far-ranging her songwriting is, almost as if she wrote songs specifically for a full and satisfying concert set. If you wanted synthesizer-fueled dance songs, you had “If Anyone Falls” or “Stand Back.” You had barroom blues with “Enchanted,” soft-rock with “Gypsy” and power balladry with “Bella Donna.” This range, performed with a polished backing band, was all exercised to draw maximum drama and contrast from the material.

This was most evident in the two songs that closed out the set: “Gold Dust Woman,” the final song from Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” and “Edge of Seventeen,” her biggest solo hit. “Gold Dust Woman” featured a long, drawn-out intro, before Nicks reemerged to the stage wearing a gold shawl. It also contained lengthy instrumental passages in the center and the end, with Nicks dancing with carefree abandon. At the song’s close, she stood with her back to the audience, raising her arms so that the shawl resembled wings.

On “Landslide,” the prior song, she sang the line “I’m getting older too” – a line she has been singing for nearly 50 years, with increasing pointedness with each passing year. Her songwriting balance of youthful energy, singular perspective and wise-beyond-her-years lyrics have aged remarkably, and she’s still interpreting her older material as if she wrote it yesterday, remaining endlessly vibrant even as we all grow older.

NEW STEVIE NICKS SINGLE "FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH" OUT SEPTEMBER 22ND

 NEW MUSIC... Friday September 22nd

Stevie Nicks announced via her social media sites that she will release "For What It's Worth" a cover of Buffalo Springfield track written by Stephen Stills in 1969 on Friday September 22nd.

She's been performing the track live on the current tour and initially announced it during a concert that it was coming soon.

iHeart Radio had the exclusive premiere September 21st airing the track on it's classic rock stations.

Look for the song on all streaming platforms where ever you are at midnight.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Asbury Park NJ Sept 19, 2022

Stevie Nicks unleashes ‘fairytale’ rock dominance

Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media

NJ.com

As the ocean breeze fluttered the scarves and chains dangling from her microphone stand, Stevie Nicks gazed out over the immense crowd — some 30,000 strong stretched a quarter-mile down the beach, a vision of late-summer Jersey Shore serenity — and described the scene as only she might: “a fairytale.”

“Is this the world of Bruce Springsteen?” Nicks asked early in her 90-minute performance, egging on the crowd. While The Boss did not appear, no shine was lost from Nicks’ emphatic set, which echoed effortlessly over the waterfront expanse and beyond the waves painted green, pink and blue by filtered lights. Attend enough festivals and you’ll learn some artists’ voices just don’t carry well in such monstrous settings. But Nicks, 74, was in full command, unloading a mix of solo classics and Fleetwood Mac staples, twirling in place and traipsing around the stage as her eight-piece band played on.

The night’s single-most affecting moment came, perhaps unsurprisingly, during “Landslide,” which Nicks tearfully dedicated to Tessa Fleetwood, Mick Fleetwood’s granddaughter and her goddaughter, who was in attendance. The crowd belted along, many eyes similarly dampened.

More explosive were the crashing renditions of “Gold Dust Woman” (with flecks of golden dust swirling on the big screen), and her synth-laden solo cut “Stand Back.” And of course, “Edge of Seventeen” ignited the audience once more. Nicks sang “Free Fallin’” as a tribute to her close friend Tom Petty, who died in 2017, with happy images of Petty and Nicks on the screen.

She also unloaded a sharp cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” preceded by a funny quip: “I hope you all like it, whatever, I love it.” I’ll take Stevie’s attitude eight days a week.

And the set finished with a rousing take on Led Zeppelin’s “Rock N’ Roll,” sending the audience off on a high. It was a propulsive performance, noticeably more high-octane than her solo tour I covered a few years back, and surely the most memorable headlining set in Sea Hear Now’s young history. Pure joy and power.

Sea Hear Now Festival in NJ Brings Stevie Nicks, Green Day and a Packed Lineup to the Land of Bruce

By Michele Amabile Angermiller

Variety

Photo credit Charles Reagan for Sea Hear Now

Not long into her headlining set on the first day of the fourth annual Sea Hear Now festival in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Stevie Nicks had a question for the thousands stretched across the beach.

“Is this the world of Bruce Springsteen?” she asked to enthusiastic cheers. “OK, we’re driving through, and there’s a street sign and I asked that same question and nobody really answered, at least like you guys just did.”

Springsteen is certainly a part of the tapestry of the town, and was well-represented in photographer/festival organizer Danny Clinch’s art tent. But the city has an ever-evolving musical scene, and the beachside setting was its own draw on a weekend of warm, beautiful days and picturesque nights, with an ocean breeze enveloping Nicks and her flowing scarves, creating an ambience — or as she described it, a “fairytale” — only Mother Nature can provide. A red crescent moon peeking through the overhead clouds added to the mystique on the final weekend of summer and beginning of the fall season, or as Nicks — in a nod to her fans donning witch hats and Stevie-attire on the sand — framed it: “it’s almost Halloween.”

“I would like to thank Danny Clinch for putting on this amazing festival,” Nicks said. “To have a festival right on the ocean is pretty spectacular. I live on the ocean so for me I feel like I’m right at home.”

Sea.Hear.Now electrifies the beach with Green Day, Stevie Nicks, and more

Photo credit Charles Reagan for Sea Hear Now

Time to run to the Surf Stage to see the legendary Stevie Nicks, for what we can only describe as magical and spiritual experience, seeing Stevie perform to a crowd of over 30,000 people at one of our favorite beaches was a bucket list item for us.

The icon took the stage and you could hear the roaring crowd for miles. The Sea.Hear.Now audience gave her the warmest welcome with the utmost energy and excitement, with people waiting at her stage dripping in Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks merch since the doors opened at noon.

'Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?'

Stevie performed Fleetwood Mac and her own classics during the hour and half set including, “Edge of Seventeen,” “Dreams,” “Landslide” and a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin.”

You could feel the energy in the air as she pulled out hit after hit, leaving the massive crowd stunned. Not to be predictable, but our favorite moment of the show was during “Landslide,” which she dedicated to Tessa Fleetwood, Mick Fleetwood’s granddaughter and her goddaughter, who was there to watch her performance. As soon as the first few notes played, the entire beach went silent and took in what was about to happen. All of the conversations and screams came to a halt as everyone softly sang together to a song that means so much to so many people. We’ll remember this performance for the rest of our lives.

GRIFFIN LOTZ FOR ROLLING STONE

RSD 2022 FLEETWOOD MAC THE ALTERNATE COLLECTIONS - VINYL AND CD

FLEETWOOD MAC

The Alternate Collection

Vinyl and CD Box Sets

Available for Record Store Day on November 25, 2022

Fleetwood Mac – The Alternate Collection

Limited Edition of 13,000 copies 

8-LP boxed set crystal clear vinyl

Fleetwood Mac – The Alternate Collection

Limited Edition of 16,500 copies 

on 6-CD boxed set

This collection features rare alternate Fleetwood Mac tracks from 1975 – 1987. Previously released individually for Record Store Day and RSD Black Friday events on vinyl, they will now be together in one boxed set on clear vinyl or a CD boxed set.  

Tracklisting below.

FLEETWOOD MAC Alternate 

Originally Released April 13, 2019

Side A:

1. Monday Morning (Early Take)

2. Warm Ways (Early Take)

3. Blue Letter (Early Take)

4. Rhiannon (Early Take)

5. Over My Head (Early Take)

6. Crystal (Early Version)

Side B:

7. Say You Love Me (Early Version)

8. Landslide (Early Version)

9. World Turning (Early Version)

10. Sugar Daddy (Early Take)

11. I'm So Afraid (Early Version)

FLEETWOOD MAC The Alternate Rumours 

Originally Released September 26, 2020

Side A

1. Second Hand News (Alternate)

2. Dreams (Alternate)

3. Never Going Back Again (Acoustic Duet)

4. Don't Stop (Alternate)

5. Go Your Own Way (Alternate)

6. Songbird (Alternate)

Side B

1. The Chain (Demo)

2. You Make Loving Fun (Alternate)

3. I Don't Want To Know (Early Take)

4. Oh Daddy (Early Take)

5. Gold Dust Woman (Early Take)

FLEETWOOD MAC The Alternate Tusk 

Originally Released April 16, 2016

Side 1

1. Over and Over

2. The Ledge

3. Think About Me

4. Save Me a Place

5. Sara

Side 2

1. What Makes You Think You're the One

2. Storms

3. That's All for Everyone

4. Not That Funny

5. Sisters of the Moon

Side 3

1. Angel

2. That's Enough For Me

3. Brown Eyes

4. Never Make Me Cry

5. I Know I'm Not Wrong

Side 4

1. Honey Hi

2. Beautiful Child

3. Walk a Thin Line

4. Tusk

5. Never Forget

FLEETWOOD MAC Alternate Live 

Originally Release November 26, 2021

SIDE A

1. SECOND HAND NEWS

2. THE CHAIN

3. THINK ABOUT ME

4. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU’RE THE ONE

SIDE B

1. GOLD DUST WOMAN

2. BROWN EYES

3. THE GREEN MANALISHI (WITH THE TWO-PRONGED CROWN)

SIDE C

1. ANGEL

2. HOLD ME

3. TUSK

4. YOU MAKE LOVING FUN

SIDE D

1. SISTERS OF THE MOON

2. SONGBIRD

3. BLUE LETTER

FLEETWOOD MAC Alternate Mirage 

Originally Released April 22, 2017

Side A

1. Love In Store (Early Version)

2. Suma’s Walk aka Can’t Go Back (Outtake)

3. That’s Alright (Alternate Take)

4. Book of Love (Early Version)

5. Gypsy (Early Version)

6. Only Over You (Alternate Version)

Side B

1. Empire State (Early Version)

2. Straight Back (Original Vinyl Version)

3. Hold Me (Early Version)

4. Oh Diane (Early Version)

5. Eyes of the World (Alternate Early Version)

6. Wish You Were Here (Alternate Version)

FLEETWOOD MAC The Alternate Tango In The Night 

Originally Released April 21, 2018

Side A:

1. Down Endless Street

2. Special Kind Of Love (Demo)

3. Seven Wonders (Early Version)

4. Tango In The Night (Demo)

5. Mystified (Alternate Version)

Side B:

1. Where We Belong (Demo)

2. Juliet (Run-Through)

3. Isn’t It Midnight (Alternate Mix)

4. Ooh My Love (Demo)

5. You And I, Part I & II (Full Version)

REVIEW Stevie Nicks Live in Detroit Sept 13, 2022

Natalia Holtzman

September 14, 2022

CONSEQUENCE SOUND

We’re in Clarkston, MI, at Pine Knob, where Stevie Nicks is kicking off her first tour in a handful of years. It’s Tuesday, September 13th, and the air smells like roadkill.

In the parking lot and the ticket lines, and the bathroom lines and the beer lines, you can practically taste the hairspray. The man behind me bellows, “Does anyone have any mushrooms?” The women in front of me are quite literally cawing at each other, and when one of the ticket lines ends up leading nowhere — a machine has died; long live the machines — a brunette says, “It’s ‘cause men are running it,” and then her friend says, “I need a coloring book and a safe space right now!”

At last, there’s activity on stage. Vanessa Carlton opens with a few bright, pop-y tunes, though it’s hard to hear her over the noise of the crowd. Everyone’s eyeliner is already running. Every inch of the lawn has been pasted over with sleeping bags and blankets, corners peeling back like damp postage stamps. A woman clutches a tiny dog in her hands. The breeze stinks with cigarettes and weed.

Then the lights go down and the band starts appearing on stage while Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” pounds out of the speakers. There’s someone on organ and someone on piano; others on bass and drums; a few guitars; background singers. Then, all of a sudden, there’s Stevie, center-stage, spot-lit; there she is with her mane of crimped, silver-gold curls, in heeled boots, a black velvet jacket and a tiered skirt.

Stevie opens with “Outside the Rain,” the background singers pacing out their coordinated sways and hand gestures. Her voice is as gravelly and combustible as a coal mine. She’s leaning hard into her lower registers — she always has, but her range has tightened. The background singers carry the high notes.

When the band moves into “Dreams,” the crowd loses its collective mind. “I keep my visions to myself,” Stevie sings, and I want to say something about the irony of this line performed for however many people are here, hundreds or thousands, I don’t know how to make those kinds of calculations — thousands, probably — but the thought won’t formulate, or it will but it’s too on the nose.

“I’m so glad to be here,” Stevie says. “It’s been a long time coming.” My date leans over to whisper, “She’s doing a retrospective!” And that seems accurate. Projected onto the screen behind her, old polaroids start to appear. Stevie in her youth: wide-eyed, big-haired, lips parted. She’s alternating the hits with some lesser-known tunes (“Enchanted,” “Wild Heart”) and a perfectly fine version of “For What It’s Worth,” which she introduces by saying, “If you’re a woman covering someone else’s song, better do it well or don’t do it.” Cheers.

There are moments when she fidgets nervously with the parti-colored scarves tied to the mic stand, or the streamers tied to her tambourine, and when she talks, there’s a kind of coyness, almost a shyness, that clings to her like fabric.

And while the audience skews more towards my parents’ age than my own, there’s a girl on my right who can’t be any older than 22 or 23 and who knows each and every lyric to each and every song and mouths along, one song after the next, her hands clasped over her heart.

Whatever Stevie gives them, they eat up. She pinches the corner of her skirt to twirl and bow and they go nuts. She acquires a shawl — she acquires a new shawl every few songs, because she is Stevie Nicks and she can have as many shawls as she wants — and she spreads it out like a pair of wings, and they go even nuttier.

The lead guitar is churning through some slow, creamy tones — creamy but jagged-edged, like chains dragged through butter — but he’s sticking close to the source; they all are. It’s not a night for pushing boundaries or trying crazy shit. They play the hits and they play them well; they play the hits the way the crowd knows them, the way they were recorded.

But the best thing happening on-stage is the harmonies Stevie’s stacking up with her background singers. They only do it once or twice, just possibly thrice. Each time, Stevie turns her back on the crowd to do it.

They play “Gypsy,” “Landslide,” “Edge of Seventeen.” Stevie introduces “Landslide” with a not-terribly-coherent dedication to Vanessa Carlton’s daughter? Who is maybe Stevie’s goddaughter? For whose birth Stevie was maybe present? Anyway, everyone’s singing along and weeping and I hear someone behind me sob, “This one’s for you, Mom!” and when I look back, she’s holding her phone up, taking a video, swaying tenuously back and forth. “I’m getting older, too,” Stevie sings, opening her arms.

They exit after “Seventeen,” but it doesn’t take much to get them back. Everyone hoists their beer in the air for “Free Fallin’” — Stevie’s been tipping her hat to Tom Petty all night, and to Prince, too — then it’s time for “Rhiannon,” and a nice gritty cover of Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.”

That’s the end, but before anyone can argue, the lights come up, and everyone goes home happy.

Setlist:

• Outside the Rain
• Dreams
• If Anyone Falls
• Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
• Enchanted
• For What It’s Worth
• Wild Heart
• Bella Donna
• Gypsy
• Landslide
• Soldier’s Angel
• Stand Back
• Gold Dust Woman
• Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)
• Edge of Seventeen

Encore:

• Free Fallin’
• Rhiannon
• Rock and Roll