BAM Magazine
September 11, 1981

Stevie - Fleetwood Mac's siren soars with her first solo album,
Bella Donna

Stevie Nicks: I'm always nervous about doing something new. I was particularly nervous about making this album because I knew I wouldn't have four other people to blame if it didn't do well. In Fleetwood Mac, if I fail I fail with four other people. Here, if I fail, I fail alone. It's always scarier to be alone. Fortunately, I had great people to work with who encouraged me constantly. The vibe I got from everybody was so positive that it made me feel strong.

Stevie Nicks: That's exactly right. It was very, very spontaneous. We did it in sort of a piecemeal way because we'd only get people in for a few days at a time. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers don't exactly sit around waiting for the phone to ring for session work. Russ [Kunkel] and Waddy [Wachtel] have impossible schedules. So we did the album around them. We'd get them for a couple of days and work fast.

Stevie Nicks: That's one of the reasons I wanted to see if I could do it myself. When you work with somebody who is that much in control, and who has always been that much in control--from, like, 1970 on--you forget that you're even capable of doing something yourself. I'd write my song and then Lindsey would take it, fix it, change it around, chop it up and then put it back together. Doing that is second nature to Lindsey, especially on my songs. He does better work on my songs than on anybody's because he knows that I always give them to him freely. It's a matter of trust.

Stevie Nicks: No, it was exhilarating! Instead of just sitting around hour after hour, I got to be a part of it. Working with Lindsey, it's so easy to just let him take it. On this album I didn't have to fight to do my songs the way I wanted to. The other players just did them they way I wrote them and they came out great. We didn't do a ton of overdubs. We didn't put on 50,000 guitars because we didn't have Waddy around long enough to do 50,000 guitar overdubs. We were lucky to get him to do one guitar part.

Stevie Nicks: Well, it represents ten years worth of songs. In Fleetwood Mac I usually get two or three songs on an album, but here I got to do ten. The album is sort of a chronology of my life. "After the Glitter Fades" was written in '72, making it the oldest song on the record. "Highway Man," "Leather and Lace" and "Think About It" were written in '75. The most recent is "Edge of Seventeen," which is also my favorite song on the record.

Stevie Nicks: Moderately? It's very prophetic! [Laughs] No, the lyrics are the same. Believe me, I'd seen a lot of glitter fade by the time I wrote that song, which was two years before Lindsey and I joined Fleetwood mac. That was a tough period for us professionally, because we were very serious about wanting to be professional musicians. And we'd done well in the Bay Area with Fritz, but moving to Los Angeles was a big step and it seemed that we were suddenly back at point "A" again. Also, our lives were so different from each other then. I didn't have friends in LA and he made lots of musician friends--Warren Zevon, Waddy, Jorge Calderon. And while he was making friends and playing music, I had to work.

Stevie Nicks: No, I'm not really. It was the only way we could do it. Lindsey couldn't be a waitress. He didn't know how to do anything but play the guitar and I did, so it was obvious I was going to be the one to do the work if we were going to live. And he didn't want us to play at places like Chuck's Steak House or Charlie Brown's. I would have gone for that in a big way, personally, because singing in horrible places like those four hours a night is a helluva lot better than being a cleaning lady. That was the only real rift we had then. He won. But I loved him. I loved our music, and I was willing to do anything I could to get us to point B from point A. It's hard to keep the sparkely going when you face so many closed doors. But somewhere in my heart I knew that it would work out and that if I kept making enough money to pay the rent, that Lindsey would hang in there and get better and better on guitar and keep learning about the business.

Stevie Nicks: Not really. I'm too close to it to know. Things that I know are in a song some people might not see. And then I never know how others are going to interpret my songs based on things in their own lives. I just hope people like it and it makes them feel good. My songs talk about problems everyone in the world has. They're not unique to me.

Stevie Nicks: It was very important that it found a place for itself. I love that song. It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I'd ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I'd ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing. Fleetwood Mac doesn't record that way. They record from a more technical standpoint. When I'm recording, I like to imagine that I'm at a concert singing in front of thousands of people. i record for feeling. I'm not good at the technical stuff. I don't like standing there in a room, after the tracks have been done, and singing the same song fifty times in a row. I hate it. I want to sing a song once, maybe twice, and if it isn't working, maybe go on to another song. Fleetwood Mac is the opposite. They labor over every detail. I care about the final feeling when you hear it on a car radio or at home on your stereo.

Stevie Nicks: That's true. Don't misunderstand me. I love the way Fleetwood Mac sounds. I wouldn't be in it if I didn't. I'm just saying that on Bella Donna we managed to make a really good record a different way. We went in and we just did it. Tusk took us thirteen months to make, which is ridiculous. I was there in the studio every day--or almost every day--but I probably only worked for two months. The other eleven months, I did nothing, and you start to lose it after a while if you're inactive. You see, Lindsey, Chris, John and Mick all play, and I don't. So most of the time I'd be looking at them through the window in the control room. After four or five hours, they'd forget I was even there, they'd be so wrapped up in little details. It was very frustrating.

Stevie Nicks: I never felt any differently about it. I was always up-front about it. I loved the songs for the most part. I even liked almost all of Lindsey's tunes, which were the most heavily criticized. I did not love sitting around for thirteen months and I never said I did. If Tusk had been terribly successful I wouldn't have taken the credit for it because I was not that much a part of it. It was out of my hands. I didn't want it to be called Tusk. I didn't like the artwork. I'm being totally truthful--I had very little to do with that record.

Stevie Nicks: I love individual songs. Of my songs, I like "Sara" and "Angel" the best. I liked most of Chris' stuff. Of Lindsey's songs, I guess I like "Save Me A Place" and "Walk a Thin Line" the most. Those are beautiful songs.

Stevie Nicks: No. I just write when I feel like it, which is a lot of the time. Sometimes I write every day, sometimes a few days will go by when I don't write anything. I get nervous that I'm drying up if I don't write often.

Stevie Nicks: [Laughs] It really could be, and they wouldn't have to sensationalize a thing! You have no idea of all the stuff that's gone on. It's been fascinating.

Stevie Nicks: I think that's probably true. I'm surrounded by men in this business so I need a little feminine comfort, and one way to find that is to write about how I exist in this world of men, how I deal with them and how they deal with me. And I tend to talk about it as "we" instead of "I." I'm no great women's liberationist, though. I found out a long time ago that that doesn't work, so--

Stevie Nicks: It's true. I get a lot further with the men in this business by being feminine and sweet and not aggressive and quiet. They let me in. They don't let in aggressive, pushy women. Say one word too much and you're out. Well, I didn't want to be out. I wanted to be friends with them. They're my peers and contemporaries. They're people I have to work with and I damn well am going to be part of them. It took me a long time to be anything to them besides just a "girl."

Stevie Nicks: I just keep writing, playing and telling people how important writing is. I tell writers that it's not important to me to be a sex symbol. I tell them it's not important to me what people think of me dancing around in gossamer clothing onstage. I happen to like wearing clothing like that. It's fine for Gelsey Kirkland [a top ballerina] but it's not fine for me. If I was a ballerina, nobody would say one word about what I wore, and they wouldn't talk about my sex life--which writers don't know anything about anyway. But put on a pair of platform boots and walk out on a rock and roll stage and--WOW! All people see is an image.

Stevie Nicks: Well, I've written for years and been influenced by lots of people, but I guess the stuff that really go me was Joni Mitchell's early songs. I learned so much from listening to her. In fact, I probably wouldn't be doing this if it hadn't been for her. It was her music that showed me I could say everything I wanted to and push it into one sentence and sing it well. Ladies of the Canyon taught me a lot. I remember lying on the floor, listening to Joni's records, studying every single word. When she came out with a new album I'd go crazy--"Don't bother me this week. I'm listening to Joni Mitchell."

Stevie Nicks: Right. I didn't want to play music like her. I couldn't if I'd wanted to--I can't play the guitar worth shit, and Joni's a great player. I just loved the way she was a very personal writer yet easy to relate to. She was doing what I wanted to do. I also loved all of Jackson Browne's records. Again, the could make the most intimate, personal things universal. This might surprise you, but I loved Jimi Hendrix as a writer--he put words together in really amazing ways. I loved Janis Joplin--the way she sang, the way she performed. I saw her one time and was completely riveted. I never forgot it. I have so many influences, but I can't really tell where they come in.

Stevie Nicks: I think a little turmoil probably helps. I don't go looking for it so I can write [laughs], but then I never sit down and write a happy song. I think there is something to that theory, because the person who is searching and never quite finding what he wants, who is constantly challenged, is going to write better songs than somebody who is blissfully happy. If you're blissfully happy, what else is there to say? And how many people are blissfully happy enough that they can relate to what you're writing?

Stevie Nicks: People don't mind a little misery, but they also like happy endings. It's nice to leave some hope at the end that things will work out. See, Lindsey won't do that. He'll say, "Go your own way," I wouldn't, most likely.

Stevie Nicks: I'm surprised, too. I always wanted to. It's strange. You would think he would ask me, but I think he really doesn't like my lyrics very much. They're too spacey for him. We think differently, I guess.

Stevie Nicks: I think we will write together eventually. You see, Tom and I aren't going out. Tom and I aren't in love with each other, or haven't been in love and out of love. We're really just good friends so we probably could write together. Lindsey and I have so much behind us that it would be difficult to sit down and intensely get into lyrics. As it is he asks me, "Who's that one about? What are you talking about in that line? What does that mean?" [Laughs]

Stevie Nicks: I have three songs as it stands now, but I think we may replace one of them with another song. I wrote one of the songs a long, long time ago, even before Lindsey and I moved to LA. It's called "It's Alright." It's very simple: Lindsey just plays some really nice guitar behind me. There's another song called "If You Were My Love" that I wrote about a year ago after I'd recorded "Outside the Rain" with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I spent a week recording with them and I had so much fun that I was really bummed out when it was over. That's when I wrote that song.

Stevie Nicks: It went smoothly. It didn't take us as long. I think right now everyone is into making a good album that doesn't take a long time to make.

Stevie Nicks: Fleetwood Mac couldn't stay together if we didn't want to, because we're all far too volatile and passionate that it would be unbearable if we didn't want to be together. Fleetwood Mac is never boring. If it ever becomes boring, we would stop it.

Stevie Nicks: That's right. We keep it going because we want to, because we obviously feel there's more good music to come out of us as a group. If that changes we'll be the first ones to recognize it.

Stevie Nicks: It feels wonderful. Now the trick is to keep my life going in a way where I can continue to do things outside of the group. I'd like to make more albums on my own. I'd love to do a record of songs aimed at children. I'd like to record songs by my grandfather, A.J. Nicks, who was a country singer. There's so much to do. Bella Donna is just the first step, but it was an important first step.

High Times Magazine
March 1982

STEVIE NICKS: That's what "Bella Donna" is about. I mean, the song "Bella Donna," which says "come in out of the darkness," was, as you said, what rock ‘n’ roll is. You live with somebody—well, it doesn't make for a terrifically strong and independent women. It doesn’t allow you to be that very much. I think the music industry is very male oriented. Although there are a lot of wonderful girl singers around, still I think it’s their world. I fought through six years to make this LP. In Fleetwood Mac, they would have done it. I wouldn’t have. And I would’ve let them make me as dependent as I have always been on them, because when somebody is dependent, they’re under your thumb. And they knew that I had to go and do this by myself because I had to prove to myself that I could exist on my own.

STEVIE NICKS: And what are you gonna do without them if they’re not there anymore some day? (Record producer) Jimmy (Iovine) expected a lot from me from the very beginning. Well, he did bring me back to some reality. My life had to change in order to do an LP with him. I had to change. I couldn’t be Stevie Nicks with Fleetwood Mac. I had to be much stronger and much more in control of myself, because he would not waste his time working with an out-of-control, flaky girl singer with Fleetwood Mac. He had no reason to be in the studio with that person and it was made very clear to me from the very beginning that if I was gonna do this, I was no longer the coddled, dependent baby of Fleetwood Mac.

STEVIE NICKS: He put it all together. But Don Henley (of the Eagles) and I did "The Highwayman" and "Leather and Lace" in 1975. Those duets were put together because they were done five years ago. And we have really wonderful demos of them.

STEVIE NICKS: I wrote it for them and I wanted them to do it. Waylon Jennings asked me to write a song called "Leather and Lace." That’s his title. So I did and I spent a lot of time on the psychology of the man and the woman in the music business both being stars in their own right and trying to live with each other and work and give Waylon a break and let him be a little weaker for a minute and let Jesse be a little stronger for a minute. This is a long time ago. This is what I was searching for even then. I mean, I was writing about Waylon Jennings and Jesse Colter, but I was writing about me and Lindsey (Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac). And I was, at that point, going out with Don Henley and I was writing about Don and me. I was writing about the few couples that I knew and what they went through to try and work it out. And I guess Jesse and Waylon sort of broke up around then. And I felt in my heart that either I had to do this song with Don, or Waylon had to do it with Jesse, or Waylon and I had to do it. Those were the only three possibilities for that song to be done. It was the most disciplined song I had ever written and I had to finish it.

STEVIE NICKS: See, that’s so amazing to me because I - This is the first interview I’ve done as just Stevie. It’s nerve-wracking for me too, because for the first time, I’m not forced to sit here and tell all the old stories. Even though I still tell them, and people want to know, for the first time, I’m free to talk about the particular songs that were - one-half of them were fully available to Fleetwood Mac. And for some reason, they weren’t done. I was very lucky, because these are really the perfect songs for this LP. I think that’s why this album seems to be very dear to people already, at least to my friends. They’ve lived it. This is my life. Every single thing that is written in this LP happened to me.

STEVIE NICKS: But it wouldn’t have been the same. See, my reception from these men that played on my LP - they were only wonderful to me because I went in there strong. Otherwise they would’ve said, "This is some flaky chick from Fleetwood Mac, which is what we don’t need to work with." And you can’t pay those guys enough to hang around.

STEVIE NICKS: These guys, they’d really rather sit in a room with a bunch of guys and play. But because I made an incredible effort to be there for them when they needed me, to be there for them when they needed to talk to me, to try to understand, to try to explain. To explain to Waddy (Wachtel) that "Bella Donna" was serious – I was not talking about a beautiful woman. I was talking about a beautiful woman becoming old and not beautiful. And skinny and too tired, the woman disappears.

STEVIE NICKS: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There’s a decision you make at a certain point whether you can go right on staying up all night and being very spoiled and very into your own world. Because the world that you live in has really made you do that. It’s very easy to become dependent in rock ‘n’ roll. My world was a phone call to tell me to get up, to get in the car, to get into the airplane, and a phone call to tell me that I had fifteen minutes before the concert.

STEVIE NICKS: Very easy. But I won’t ‘cause I won’t come out of it again.

STEVIE NICKS: Yeah, if I want to do this again, which I do, then I have to be strong enough to deal with my life in Fleetwood Mac and deal with my life alone. Because when I’m alone, I’m alone.

STEVIE NICKS: I would, I look forward to that. I love my performing and I’ll do that for another five or six years, but there will be a point in my life when what I’ll really want to do is go away and write. And I’ll write about all of this. I’ve already written thousands of pages. The story’s written already. I’ll want to add to it and I want to put it together and it’ll be an incredible book. It’ll be full of poetry and all of the songs that you’ve heard. All the real happy parts and all the sad parts. And the real difficult parts are there. And that’s what I want to do eventually. I’ll want to go and really put that together. But now I’ll work toward being able to tell as much of my personal life in my songs – that’s as much as I have to give right now.

STEVIE NICKS: I find it nearly impossible. Anyone that you meet is going to be in some way in the business. I don’t meet people who aren’t in the business. I don’t go anywhere to meet them. What am I going to do, sit in a bar? And at some point or another, my job gets to them. It’s easy to understand. "No, I can’t have dinner, I have interviews." "But we were in New York all week and we didn’t get to have dinner once." "I’m sorry, what do you want me to do, call everybody and cancel?"

STEVIE NICKS: When I was going out with Don, it was five years ago and I was much less busy; Fleetwood Mac was much less popular, we were just beginning. When I was with Lindsey, we lived together and were famous. It was the opposite extreme. I’ll never forget the day I was up at Don’s house having dinner with him and his manager, Irving Azoff, who is now my manager five years later, and Glenn Frey of the Eagles walked in and looked at me and said, "Spoiled yet." Like no mention of Fleetwood Mac. I was not even in the league of a singer. I was nothing more than a girl. My claws went out and I wanted to get out of there.

STEVIE NICKS: He’s witchy! And I love Glenn, and that was a long time ago. That was my first taste of what it was like to be a happening girl rock ‘n’ roll singer. Going out with a very famous man rock ‘n’ roll singer and have people not relate to me like I even had a job. I went out with John David Souther for a while, who is very, very, very male chauvinistic and very sweet and cute and wonderful but very Texas, and I found when I was with him, I didn’t mention Fleetwood Mac ever. It didn’t help my status with the man to bring up anything I did, so I didn’t. And then you start saying, "But I work too. I’m happening. I write songs, but you aren’t giving me a break."

STEVIE NICKS: That’s all it is, if somebody just knows and understands. My mother said, "Stevie, you were born guilty. You never lied, you never did anything bad, and you always looked guilty. But you were willing to take on the guilt of everyone else immediately." And I am that way. If I ever think that someone thinks that I did anything wrong, it’s a neon sign across my face that blinks guilty guilty guilty.

STEVIE NICKS: And you didn’t even do anything, but you wake up sick to your stomach the next day, thinking that you did. For whatever reasons—which aren’t important—my relationship with Paul (Fishkin, cofounder of Modern Records) stopped, he is the one man in my life that was truly good. Truly understood. I was in an emotional trauma all through that fifteen months. And he stood by and watched it, and was as much help as he could be. While the rest of the world questioned me constantly, including my very close friends. About everything.

STEVIE NICKS: They want you to be dependent. I always know what’s right, and when I get pushed into something—which I do a lot—that I knew wasn’t right from the beginning, I’m the hardest on myself and punish myself severely. I just lay in bed and think about it over and over until I can’t think about it anymore. I start to go crazy. Just now, I’m calming down with this album because this was the freest thing I’ve ever done—though I had a disciplinarian behind me with a little stick going nananananana. And not being treated as a child—being treated as a grown-up.

STEVIE NICKS: I absolutely love being thirty-three years old. I think it’s wonderful. You can see things clearer. You don’t have to get so crazy. You start making your own decisions. You’re a woman, not a child. You’re grown up and have to fend for yourself. You’re the only one who’s here and no one is going to save you. And nobody can tell you that, because my mom has been telling me that for years. And I call her sometimes and she’ll say to me, "I wish you’d let somebody take some of this pressure off your little bitty shoulders for a moment, Stevie." And that’s what I did. I gave it to Jimmy. I said, "Here it is, here’s the pressure, here’s my weird life, here’s how crazy it is. Now figure out how to make this album."

STEVIE NICKS: I dreamed only about giving a little fairy tale to people. That’s what the outfit is on my album cover, that’s what that bird is. (Reaches for the album jacket.) That bird belongs to my brother, that’s the only reason I could work with a wild animal. That’s Max on the front. With my clothes and the things that I wear, I have so much fun with them. I was talking to a lady today and were talking about dress-up and about how much fun dress-up used to be. And if there was a trunk in the attic, I was in it looking. And I would rather wear that drape than anything you could sell me from Bloomingdale’s. I don’t like all that stuff. I love the Muppets. Miss Piggy on the front of the TV Guide kills me with her portable TV, and Kermie in the back sitting, and with her little shoes. I just adore Miss Piggy to death. I collect marionettes and dolls so I have an incredible collection and I carry these things all over the world. They’re so real. See, that’s a fantasy. The Muppets are no different from my fantasy. My fantasy is giving a little bit of the fairy princess to all the people out there that maybe don’t have the Hans Christian Andersen books, and the Grimm’s fairy tales. If that’s the only thing I can do for them, well, that’s fine.

STEVIE NICKS: I don’t do that. That’s silly and stupid, and anyone that does that is making up their own character and has nothing to do with me. I love good witches. I like the good witch of the north, Glinda. Glinda is my friend, not the other one. And I don’t want them around. My love of that fantasy fairy-tale thing is the good part, and I’m a coward and I get very scared. I don’t go see any of those scary movies. I just watch old movies and good sad movies, but I don’t want to be scared and frightened.

STEVIE NICKS: My favorite old movie is Beauty and the Beast, the 1946 one, and I love Mary, Queen of Scots. I love those kinds of movies. I can watch these movies over and over again. I love anything that is wonderful, and it can have some sadness. I don’t mind that, but like evil, bad things, I don’t like them in my life.

STEVIE NICKS: I read a lot of Taylor Caldwell books. I get a lot of ideas for things that I’m writing. I just read anything that comes in my way that’s interesting. I pick up bunches of little old poetry books. I love serenity since I don’t have much of it in my life. The outfit I wear on the cover of Bella Donna is the same as the one I wore on Rumors, except it’s opposite, it’s white. It’s a strange turn-around that I’ve come from black to white.

STEVIE NICKS: It was my idea, six years ago. Margi Kent designed it. She just keeps making it longer. She makes everything, and these are my boots that my little Jewish cobbler who’s seventy years old makes. A five-foot one-inch-tall person needs six inches. Onstage especially. Standing next to Mick Fleetwood is ridiculous. Anybody standing next to Mick is ridiculous, so imagine a five-footer. You blend into his drums, which he loves because then he’s the star. So I say, "Wait a minute, Mick, I’m going to get tall." I get far on these boots. They are very out of style and I don’t care. I love them. They are beautiful suede and they are soft. I tried to get this boot a long time ago, and it was going out then. We searched London, and I found one pair that was like a size five, and I wear a five and a half or six, but I bought them anyway. I stuffed my little feet into them.

STEVIE NICKS: That was written in 1972 and Lindsey and I had never been on the road at all. We had certainly never had a one-night stand because we had been together and there were no one-night stands between Lindsey and me. That was a real premonition. I just had some idea about Fleetwood Mac. I wasn’t talking about one-night stands with a man. I was talking about your one-night stands in a concert where you run in, played, and left.

STEVIE NICKS: Yes. When you come back to your hotel, and you’ve been in front of fifteen thousand people...I would like to sit down in the audience and talk to them about what’s happened. Bring like a podium up and ask questions and have everybody tell me what they think. It’s very hard to just walk away from them. You certainly don’t go to sleep; you can’t. It’s like falling in love with somebody and having yourself turn into a pumpkin and you’re back mopping the floor. That’s the hardest thing—all that energy around you and walking away from it. You have much less than they do because you come back to a motel, they go home. If I could go home after every concert and have my puppies and my cats and my friends, whoever, it wouldn’t be so difficult. To go back by myself to a hotel room is a real downer.

STEVIE NICKS: It’s very easy for me to be dominated because I’m used to being part of a rock ‘n’ roll band that dominates your life.

STEVIE NICKS: The tracks are done and we worked for five days last week on one of Chris’s songs and it is fantastic, positive, wonderful.

STEVIE NICKS: Yeah, when I really love something that she does, I really get in there and help her with it. She can do it alone, she really doesn’t need anyone, but when she writes something that I really take to heart, then I go for it. I stay up all night with her and we work on it. I really work on it and I drag Lindsey and her in there and make them sing, because that’s what they forget—they forget that there’s three of us and how good we sing. I irritate them to death, it’s like a little bug. I keep saying, "Lindsey, you and I should sing this part. It’s important that we sing this part, it would sound terrific." And they eventually do it. Especially because I am not going to stand by and watch no singing go on this album.

STEVIE NICKS: That’s because they’re players, they get really wrapped up in the playing of it, and I don’t get to play. I don’t have anything to do. I sit around and watch them play—it’s boring. The thing I do real well is vocal production. I can really get them happening on singing, but if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be nearly half the vocals.

STEVIE NICKS: That was a discipline thing. I call him Slave-Driver Loggins. He cracked the whip on me for two days to get that particular performance. And I was downright angry at points where I was going, "I’m not going to do this." He said, "Yes, you are." He’s a real good producer, Kenny, he got exactly what he wanted. When it was done and I left, I was knocked out. I really had to keep my mouth shut and do what I was told. And it worked. He wasn’t interested in a dull vocal.

STEVIE NICKS: Yeah, that’s exactly what I do, I light a little incense. Jimmy did it for me too. If I get mad enough, he’ll say, "This is really uncool" over the talkback. We have the most hysterical video of him giving us a lecture telling us we were doing something wrong. We don’t answer him, we just talk to each other. He says it’s like tuning in on my mother’s poker game. He walks out carrying my little bottle of brandy that I use when I sing, which he hates because he doesn’t drink. I asked him for some and he’s swinging it at us as he’s talking. He said, "Okay, you want a little drink?" He goes into this incredible thing about us being magpies. And we’re totally ignoring him. We would turn to each other and forget what he said completely. He’d say, "Wait one second everybody, stop talking and listen to me." Then someone would make some sly comment about little girls who have been caught doing something wrong, and then we’d get back on the track. That was basically what Kenny did too. He let me kind of tangent off to a point and then he’d say, "That’s it, now we have to start doing this for real."

STEVIE NICKS: I was into singing but not into being trained. I never studied music. I took a few guitar lessons.

STEVIE NICKS: I’m not good enough. There’s no reason. If I was terrific, then maybe they’d find a part for me, but I’m not, so it would be for the look of it, and I’d be too nervous. I’d be so nervous, it wouldn’t look or sound good and then everybody would be mad at me, and Lindsey would be screaming at me that it was out of tune. And I don’t need that for sure.

STEVIE NICKS: If I have any discipline at all, it’s come slowly over the years. I was never trained. Nobody ever sat down and taught me how to play the guitar or write a song or play the piano. I love to do it to this day, it’s the greatest love of my life. That doesn’t take any discipline for me, that’s what I like to do. Where other people would rather go out and party, I would rather stay at home with my grand piano and candles and incense and a glass of wine and an idea.

STEVIE NICKS: I was always singing and they never told me not to sing. My granddad sang with me. We had a thing going always. By the time I got to be old enough for them to care, I was so heavily into music that they gave up. I mean, they knew I was on my way to something. The only thing my dad ever said to me was—because my dad was very successful and very ambitious—he said, "If you’re going to do this, you better be the very best." That was the only thing he ever said to me. "I don’t want to see you being second." And that was a pretty heavy thing to say to me. When I write my different songs and take them home, I’ll play them for him and he’ll say, "Well, that comes a little closer to what your potential as a songwriter is." And then he’ll give me a big hug. My mother says he’s very cool, he’s like Jimmy. He strives to get the best out of me, and you don’t get the best out of me by hugging and kissing me and telling me how wonderful I am. That doesn’t work. The best thing to do is really be serious with me and I’ll work hard.

Playboy
July, 1982
Vol. 29, No. 7

20 Questions: Stevie Nicks

playboypic.jpg

playboypic.jpgLadies and gentlemen, the reigning queen of rock - on recklessness, relationships and reincarnation

NICKS: I never tried to beat men; that's why I managed to do it. I tried to learn from them and be their friend and stuff. I didn’t want to be too pushy - no one likes pushy people, least of all guys who are in famous bands. It's much easier to worm your way in with kindness.

NICKS: At this point, people believe it's me. I just couldn't go on making this trip up if it weren't true. I love Halloween and fairy tales. I get wonderful letters: Kids say they love the songs and "Go right ahead and live in your fairy princess castle, because we need somebody to live there and make us happy, to take away some of the everyday horribleness that goes on."

NICKS: I think I spent a lot of time in old churches, like a monk. I'm very comfortable around that kind of music, with that kind of creeping around, with being very quiet. My ballet teacher believes that my head was cut off in another life, too. I totally give with my body except for my neck. Even if I go to the beauty salon, I can't put my head back. They have to hold it or it will drop. The same thing happens when I dance or get a massage. It’s very weird.

NICKS: It's not easy. But I can't do what I do if I don't retain some innocence and spirituality. You'd see a definite change in my lyrics if I became hardened. I'm not interested in existing on that critical level most people live on.

NICKS: If I had a family, I'd probably love it. Right now, I have my dog Sarah, two cats and a baby Doberman. But I wish I had a little girl. Even a little boy. Getting married would, of course, depend on the man; also on whether I cared enough. If I fell that deeply in love with someone, I'd have no idea of what to do. But I'd be willing to make whatever compromises were necessary.

NICKS: My interest in the music and everything else would have to drop off a little bit. But I don't fall in love that often, because it's sad when you fall in love and it doesn't work out. I know it’s better to have loved, because otherwise I wouldn’t have anything to write about. And there are different kinds of love. But if it were the bib love, I’d drop everything. I’d still have my job, of course, but I’d get in my car and drive across town in the middle of the night-which I will not do under other circumstances, because I don’t have a license. I’d go crazy, I suppose. It’s probably the most wonderful feeling in the world.

NICKS: It invades it. You can call up your boyfriend and say, "I'm sick; I can't go to dinner." But you cannot call in sick to Fleetwood Mac. So a certain number of my relationships are ruined, not because of the people involved but because of my other commitments. And so, every time, I'm just a little less interested in starting something up, because what has happened before is probably going to happen again. It's not a lack of interest on my part; it's a lack of time to be interested.

NICKS: Yeah, but I'm at the point where I realize that if my job is what I want to be doing, I'd just better stay out of the sea. I’ve been going with someone since I was 18 years old. I think I had a month between Lindsey [Buckingham] and Don [Henley, of The Eagles]. There has always been someone in my life. And I want my freedom at this point, because I really need to get to know Stevie again. I need to be able to paint all night without making someone feel horrible because he's waiting for me to come to bed.

NICKS: [Laughs] You were thinkin maybe a nice doctor or something, Maybe an eye-ear-nose-and-throat specialist? Maybe an analyst? A musical artist? I've certainly had that experience. It wouldn't be easy for me to deal with a guy who was as busy as I am. When I'm home one night, I definitely don't want to be alone. I'm not amused if he's busy. I'm no different, you know. If I met a guy who was able to put up with it, he'd have to be just as famous, have more money and be terribly secure within himself. Frankly, I have contemplated being single the rest of my life. But I said that in a radio interview once, and when I heard it back, it really freaked me out.

NICKS: Yes. I came out the stage door the other night and a girl was crying, hysterically. I can never walk away from someone in tears, so I asked what was wrong. She said, "Will you sign my arm?" I did. The next night, she was back-with her other arm tattooed with my name! I grabbed her and told her, "Don't ever do that again. Don't ever have someone take a knife and cut into your arm with my name. It's not funny. It's stupid and I'm not happy about it." Her reaction was more tears.

NICKS: Waiting. [Long pause and a smile] And I'm always late. It's the Gemini in me. Otherwise, just wrong things said at the wrong time. Like, "Oh, you gained a little weight around the chin." You know, right before a photo session. Some people have incredible tact and an intuitive feel for your feelings. Others don't. Some people can wake me up in the morning-they know how. Others, if I had a BB gun, they'd be on the wall.

NICKS: Are you kidding? Terribly. I hadn't been on-stage alone before. It's a whole different can of beans to realize that if you're not out there-if you have to run to the wings for some powder or to get your hair brushed or because you're dripping wet-there is no one on-stage who'll talk to the audience. But we had some truly spectacular moments, when the band and I were blown away at the response. At the last Los Angeles show, I must have looked like the bag lady of Bella Donna: I was bent over, because I had so many roses to carry. I was crying. Another great thing is that no one in the audience ever yelled out, "Where's Don? Where's Tom Petty? Where's Lindsey? Where's Fleetwood Mac?"

NICKS: You mean when reviewers asked, "Is she incredibly hip or incredibly silly," It didn't bother me. They said a couple of rhymes were stupid, but I know those words aren't stupid, so it doesn't hurt me. I think the bit about not being a departure from Fleetwood Mac is also ridiculous. Bella Donna is in no way like Fleetwood Mac records. They didn't even play on the record. On Bella Donna, Jimmy Iovine, the producer left the songs as close to the demos as possible, so it was really just me-which is what I've always wanted. Sometimes I don't mind my songs being changed around; sometimes it makes them better. But often, I would rather they stayed real simple, like Leather and Lace.

NICKS: I can be. I do not normally try to be. In fact, there have been some reviews-which I’ve loved-that said I didn't try to sell my show on sex, that I sang my show.

NICKS: I wouldn't like to be in movies. Movie people are strange. They live a different life than musicians do. They get up early and work in the day. And I really think they're much wilder than we are. One time, four movie guys walked up to me at a party after a show. I was looking good. And they took me apart with their eyes. I was so completely insulted that I never forgot it. They were so slick and smooth and suited up- it looked like they all had had face lifts with perfectly tanned faces. I'm just a hippie. I wouldn't fit very well into that world. Those guys gave me the creeps. The hair on my arms stood up.

NICKS: That's why I write. We need music very badly. The world is in pretty bad shape and it scares me. But I'm not one of those people, like Jackson Browne, who went up to the Diablo Canyon nuclear protest. I said to him, "But they could have broken your fingers-your beautiful fingers that write all those beautiful songs. Are you crazy? We need you to write songs. We don't need you to be in jail." He said it "had occurred" to him. I said it should have. I think it scared him. I'm not a martyr. I would much rather be around to write the story than die for it and leave nothing behind. I believe you should put your talent where your talent is and stay out of the rest of it.

NICKS: My dad said, "If you're going to do it, be the best, write the best, sing the best and believe in it and yourself." And as long as I didn't give up on that, it would be OK. It was great to have supportive parents, though I'm sure they really would have been much happier at one point if I'd done something else, because they didn't think I was strong enough. I was always sick and Lindsey and I had no money and whenever they'd see me, I'd be really down. My relationship with Lindsey was tumultuous and passionate and wild and we were always fighting, so I was never happy.

NICKS: That we are stronger than they know. And maybe if they fed that a little bit, all of this women's liberation would go away and everybody would be happy. If men gave us just a little more credit and an extra hug and said, "Good job," that would solve a lot of it. Women want to be beautiful, sweet, feminine and loving. But they also want to be thought of as intelligent and necessary. And even if your woman is not all those things, you should want her to feel good about herself, to believe in herself.

NICKS: We can't go anywhere. It's fine for all the guys, but if we go, like, down to Le Dome for a drink or to the Rainbow for spaghetti, we're immediately going to be classified as loose, roaming women. Me and some of the other female singing stars, like Ann and Nancy Wilson and Pat Benatar, can't just go out boogying with our girlfriends. Anyway, I wouldn't be allowed out. I'd have to sneak out. I'm way too recognizable. I've been securitied up to my neck for the past seven years, so I'd also be severely scared. I once tried to sneak out to a disco in Chicago with my girlfriend Christie, but we got caught. So the guys went with us. It was a bummer. Nobody in the disco would even come up to us. But people say it's for my safety. Women are getting raped all the time. And I don't need to get raped, because I'd never get over it. That's when my songs would stop. That’s when my belief in the world would die. I know it happens, but its happening to me is another story. It tends to take away one's spontaneity.

NICKS: I'm not afraid of it at all. But I try to get as much done as I can, because you don't know how long you're going to be here. That's why it's important that I type a page or two every night-even if that's at 11 A.M. See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don't think I'll be back. I think I'm done.

Rock Magazine

October 1983

(ROCK Magazine interview by Vicky Greenleaf and Stan Hyman)

Stevie Nicks has always been two performers. At times, she is the Gothic figure of tragedy, the enigmatic witch of "Rhiannon" who swirls her diaphanous black and white capes as she dances an ancient ballet -- her mystery heightened by her infamous exits while in concert with Fleetwood Mac.

Equally well, she plays the victim of love, the woman of "Dreams" who always wrongly trusts her man. Wrapping her arms around her lacey lingerie gowns, she confronts her audience with a blinkless stare while crooning "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," or any other of her love-hurts songs, with a throaty voice that has no match for pure sensuality. In either role, she projects vulnerability. In the past that image was a reflection of her career. Although recognized by the public as an equal member among a superstar group, she felt like "the one who was left out a little, the baby sister" never quite taken seriously by her fellow band members or other artists.

But a transformation in Stevie Nicks has happened. The pouty look has been replaced with a smile, the self-doubts by a new self-confidence. With good reason. Her first solo album, Bella Donna, topped the charts just weeks after its release and garnered critical praise. Nick's latest and followup LP, The Wild Heart, is following the same path, with her hit single "Stand Back." Nicks took time to speak with ROCK just prior to her tour to promote The Wild Heart. She reflected on her long-felt need for recognition as a soloist, her desire to expand musically into, surprisingly, country music, and the mystique that surrounds her. Above all else, she was intent in conveying that the "baby sister" of Fleetwood Mac is all grown up now. She wants it known now that Fleetwood Mac is no longer of paramount importance in her career. She's not determined to leave, but she's not willing to sacrifice as much anymore.

ROCK: How does The Wild Heart differ from Bella Donna, in your estimation?

Nicks: It's like Bella Donna's heart is wild all of a sudden. It has that James Dean/Natalie Wood feeling to it. It's just Bella Donna a little more reckless. She's just more sure of herself now, so she's taking a few more chances. I'm very pleased with the album because there are no holds barred on it. It's real strong and emotional.

ROCK: After the phenomenal success of Bella Donna were you intimidated to go back into the studio?

Nicks: I'm never intimidated to go on and do something else because what I do today doesn't depend on what I did last week. I write songs and sing them because that's the thing in the world that I love most.

ROCK: Is there any particular track on this LP which you are particularly proud of?

Nicks: "Sable in Blond" is my serious statement on The Wild Heart. It fits into a particular group of my songs; "Rhiannon," "Beautiful Child" and "Sara." It reflects the mood I was in when I moved into my new house last year. It was a time when I was learning how to live with myself. "Sable in Blond" meant to learn how to be a stranger, to learn to be with yourself, to learn to be one color. In the legend of Excalibur, the sword is there for protection, but you don't call upon it unless it's absolutely necessary. During that period in my life, I was learning how not to call on the sword.

ROCK: Are you as intrigued with mysticism as the public has been lead to believe?

Nicks: Not really. Everybody else [the press] made it into mysticism. I loved that mystical kind of dancing and that eventually carried over into my singing. I guess I'm just a dancing fool (laughs).

ROCK: It seems to be a pretty well-kept secret that Prince played synthesizer on "Stand Back." How did that come about?

Nicks: I called him up one day while he was filming a video and I asked him to come down and listen to a song. I didn't think he'd show up because he was so busy, but he did. As I was playing the song, he walked over to the synthesizer and began to play this amazing part with only two fingers. So we recorded it in the middle of the night, and it turned out great. It's my favorite cut on the album.

ROCK: You once felt that you hadn't received the recognition you had long hoped for from your peers. Do you feel respected as a songwriter?

Nicks: Pretty much. I've written down songs on a thousand pieces of paper for the last 10 years and thought, 'If only they would respect me as a songwriter,' That's all I ever really wanted. Performing and singing was a wonderful addition, but the thing I wanted most -- especially from Mac -- was them to say to me 'You're a pretty good songwriter.' It took them a long time to realize that I wasn't kidding around, that I'm very serious about my writing. It mattered to me what they thought and that they realized that I was striving toward a certain excellence. They had that excellence, but I had to strive a little harder for it and make them believe that I really cared that much.

ROCK: What is the status of Fleetwood Mac from your viewpoint? Will the group continue on as we know it?

Nicks: It'll all just depend on how understanding everybody is to everyone else's needs. If everyone is thoughtful, understanding, sweet and kind, then the band could go on forever. If everyone isn't, then that could cause a big problem. We've suffered through a long love affair and whatever our hearts tell us, that's what we'll do.

ROCK: Where do you fit into Fleetwood Mac?

Nicks: My relationship with Fleetwood Mac will never change. I will always be the baby sister, the one that is left out a little bit. My solo work allows me not to feel bad about it and enjoy them (Mac) for what they are, instead of worrying about not being included enough. That's what I used to get upset about. They were not even close to using my full potential. But now I know I have something else to go to.

ROCK: Did the success of Bella Donna satisfy your expectations toward a solo career?

Nicks: I was really kind of stunned. I never let myself believe that the best thing is going to happen. I just sort of let myself be very surprised if it does, but I don't expect it. So I didn't expect anything from Bella Donna. I just did the best I could and finished it. I had a wonderful time doing it. It was over in two and one-half months, like a flash. I didn't expect it to be the greatest record in the world or not the greatest. I just expected it to be what I could do. She flew out of the record stores without me. And it was very much out of my hands. There's nothing I can do to change it now. I'm having to get used to the fact that it isn't just mine anymore.

ROCK: Are you saying you wish that the album wouldn't have been so successful and that your songs wuld have remained basically unknown?

Nicks: All those songs I did over a long period of time. They're now out in the world, and everybody's hearing songs that I've been listening to for five, six, seven years. Don't misunderstand me. It's not that I'm not happy about this. I am. I'm just sort of adjusting to it slowly. It bothers me a little bit just because it [the songs] has been a part of me and it has been very private. But to get people to listen, you have to put it out there and explain a little of it. And it's nerve-wracking and difficult sometimes. I think people wonder why I'm not seriously jumping up and down. It's because I'm not sure how to deal with it. I've never really been alone before doing something. I've never had no one else to fall on. I've never had to do all the interviews myself. I could get crazy about it. The excitement is so strong that. . . it just makes me nervous.

ROCK: You seem to imply that there is an emotional strain working apart from Fleetwood Mac.

Nicks: Yes, but at the same time it makes you feel more independent. I am more independent now. I did the albums because I wanted to make sure that I could still do something for myself.

ROCK: Will it be hard to go back and work with a group now that you've cut another album on your own?

Nicks: It will only be difficult in that I'll get to do three songs instead of 10, and I'll be working less time. It's not enough for me. That's the problem. I write so much that I just get terribly backlogged all the time. And for me to work on an album that takes a long time like a Fleetwood Mac album and then have only three songs on it is frustrating. I don't spend too much time working [in the studio with Fleetwood Mac]. I sit a lot. I spent no time sitting on The Wild Heart. I mean I was on my feet the whole time. It's going to be hard for me to sit becase [in that situation] I'm not one of the players and that puts me on the other side of the mirror; alone, with them out in the studio. It's very lonely.

ROCK: How did the two duets on Bella Donna ("Leather and Lace" with Don Henley, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" with Tom Petty) come about?

Nicks: I just love singing with people and they know it. So when people call me up they know I'll come down 'cause I just love to sing duets. That's how the duets come about. "Leather and Lace" I wrote for Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter who were going to do an album five years ago. Waylon had asked me to write a song called "Leather and Lace" and I spent a long time on it. I tried to give it a little bit of Waylon, a little bit of Jessi and a little bit of what I knew it was like to be in show business, what it was like to work with your husband or your old man. But they (Jennings and Colter) broke up, and Waylon decided he was going to do it alone. But I said no, because I had put a lot of time into the psychology of the song and felt it was a mistake to do it alone. It's a wonderful song. So when Bella Donna came out, there was no reason for it not to be done just because Waylon and Jessi broke up. But I did want everyone to know I wrote the song for them. I didn't write it for myself.

ROCK: When did you originally decide to embark on a solo career?

Nicks: I decided to do Bella Donna when I came off the road with Fleetwood Mac at the end of the Tusk tour. I was really in terrible shape. I was so tired and sung out. I was so "Landslide-ed" out and so "Rhiannon-ed" out that I thought if I had to stand on stage for two and one-half hours and do that set one more time I was going to go nuts. The idea to do a solo album came when I was going out with Paul Fishkin [co-owner of Modern Records] about four years ago. We jut sat down one night and decided that it would be wonderful to start a record company that really cared about the artists and had high morals and principles and was special. And he did it. He moved the ferris wheel and started Modern. It was very difficult for both of us. Everybody was angry at us. But we really felt that it was important that we go ahead and do it no matter what.

ROCK: Several of the songs on your LPs seem to have a country flavor to them. Is that a fair assessment?

Nicks: Yes. I had a country grandfather and I write a lot of country songs. But nobody knows it. When I give a song to Fleetwood Mac they kind of take it apart and put it back together. So if it was country, it's not country anymore. You wouldn't ever hear the country in it. I don't mind it but if I really don't like it I tell them. I let a lot of songs be done in a way that I really wouldn't do them but, because it makes everybody else happy, I go along. I figure it's not going to make my song any better to have them play it the way I want it and have them play it terribly.

ROCK: From what you're saying, it seems that Iovine plays a key factor in pulling an album together.

Nicks: Yes. he has an intense way of making us mad enough without making us angry or furious. By doing that he made you feel like, 'OK, I'll show you.' And he got the most incredible performances out of everybody. For instance, once he was right in the middle of the room while we were recording. He had his headphones on and all of a sudden he turned the beat of the song around. He started looking up at Russ Kunkel and motioned him to change the tempo. And I'm watching Russ start to play what Jimmy's saying and I'm blown away. My eyes can't believe that they're seeing this little guy (Iovine) bouncing around the room looking like some kind of little elf, telling all these intense, famous guys what to do. And they're following his every move. It's incredible.

ROCK: The chemistry seemed to be perfect from what you're saying.

Nicks: The right people in the right room together. . . You have to look good with Russ, Waddy (Watchel), Roy (Bittan) and Michael (Campbell) of the Heartbreakers. With Tom Petty and Don Felder out there you're certainly not going to stand up there and be terrible. You're going to do the very best you can from the first time you sing. Even the worst vocal is going to be great. Also, you're so proud, that you don't want to look like a jerk in front of all these guys!

ROCK: Any plans for another album?

Nicks: I feel real content because I got 10 songs out. Now I don't have to worry about those anymore. Now I can go on to the next 10. I'd be recording all year 'round if I could. I wrote a song night before last. I've written two songs in the last month. I have two from the album that didn't make it because there wasn't enough room. I have three or four old ones I still want to do. That's not counting the songs that I'll write in the next couple of months. As long as I know I can every once in a while go in and knock out 10 songs I won't be a nervous wreck. That little bit of an outlet makes it okay.

ROCK: The melodies of some of the songs on the new album are reminiscent of your past work. . .

Nicks: My songs are really just continuations of every song. I can sit down and play you a medley of "Dreams," "Sara," "Outside the Rain," "How Still My Love" and "Edge of Seventeen" and they're all little pieces. Those are the only chords I know. I like all my melodies and the simplicity in which I write. So, I really don't try to change that much. I don't sit around saying, 'Oh, that sounds too much like "Dreams."' If I like it, I don't care if it sounds like "Dreams" or not. I just try to make it better.

ROCK: Do you have any idea who your audience is?

Nicks: I don't have any idea who buys my albums. I don't have any idea who The Wild Heart's audience is. I truly believe that the energy, the magic that surrounds a project like this is very important. It's as important as the music, as important as the songs.

ROCK: How did you come to choose the backup artists for The Wild Heart?

Nicks: Jimmy [Iovine, Nicks' producer] seems to always pick out the perfect people. He lets me work with the two women that I want to sing with; we've been singing together for five and one-half years. We could sing every song a capella because we'd been practicing for so long. We practice with the demos which is like practicing together. So even if Lori Perry would be in Dallas and Sharon Celani would be in Los Angeles and I'd be in New York, we'd be practicing to the same group of 40 songs. I always wanted to do a thing with two girls where we would sing and be like a girls' Commodores. I wanted to have background vocals sound like they were answering back and forth. After a while Jimmy would say that we couldn't do this or that. He'd say, 'Stevie, shut up and quit protecting them. Just back off and let me work with them.' It was a constant learning process.

This interview with Ian "Molly" Meldrum was broadcast in Australia in 1986.

Us Magazine

July 9 - July 23, 1990

(by Steve Pond)
(Number 132/133 July 9 - July 23, 1990)

On the eve of a mammoth world tour, Fleetwood Mac's dreamy chanteuse stands back and cuts loose on her struggles with the band, her indulgent past and her desire to have someone call her 'Mom'

"Once upon a time, there was a 16-year-old girl who was a senior at Menlo-Atherton High School. And she met a guy and sang a song with him, and didn't see him again for two years. Then he called her, two years later, and asked her if she wanted to be in a band. She'd never been in a band, but she said sure. And the drummer picked her up the next day, and she went to rehearsal, and the next thing she knew, she was playing every weekend. And 15 years later she was in one of the biggest bands that ever was."

That's the opening paragraph to a fairy tale that Stevie Nicks says she could write in one sitting. She could write it, of course, because she lived it. She grew up in Arizona, took after her footloose, country-singing grandfather, and began writing songs and playing music in her teens. She met Lindsey Buckingham at a party, and he became her bandmate and lover for seven years. And just before she gave up on a career in music and went back to school, the veteran blues band Fleetwood Mac asked Buckingham to join -- and wanted him badly enough that they grudgingly allowed him to bring his girlfriend into the group as well.

That was New Year's Eve, 1974. Fifteen years later Stevie Nicks is still in Fleetwood Mac, though she and Buckingham broke up in 1977 and he left the band three years ago. Fifteen years later, in fact, Stevie Nicks is the best-known member of Fleetwood Mac, with four successful solo albums on the side, and concerts full of fans who show up in Stevie regalia: scarves and shawls, chiffon and lace, boots and top hats. She's had love affairs with the likes of singer Don Henley and record producer Jimmy Iovine; she also had a short, ill-fated marriage to the husband of a close friend just after that friend died of leukemia. She writes meandering songs set in a fairy-tale world of crystal dreams, good witches and wondrous magic; her spaciness suggests that she sometimes lives in that world herself. She draws intense fans and astounded critics; doubters look at the layers of chiffon and the overwrought romanticism of Stevie's world, and ask, "Is she for real?"

She knows they ask, and she figures she's answered them by now. "After 15 years they all know it's not a joke," she says, and then she laughs. It's three days before her 42nd birthday, and she's sitting in the office of her Beverly Hills home, giving long, rambling, surprisingly self-aware and only occasionally mystical answers to almost anything that's asked. Around her is technology: a fax, a copying machine, an IBM Selectric, a Macintosh computer, a stereo system with masking tape labels that tell her which buttons to push. On the walls are her dreams come true: framed album covers, gold and platinum records and posters of Stevie in various gossamer poses. And in the rest of the house is a big mess: She's leaving the next day for the concert tour to promote Fleetwood Mac's new album, Behind the Mask, and dozens of equipment cases and suitcases are being filled with almost everything she owns. One large valise, for instance, consists entirely of tube socks and tights. "Basically," she admits with a shrug, "I take my world with me."

It sure looks like you're going away for a long, long time.

Well, it's two-and-a-half months, without a break. It's like, I just got home and I got enough time to look at my house, and unpack, and pack, and leave again. It's hard, because you hurt a lot of your friends' feelings. I mean, I have 52 dinner invitations tonight. I can't go on one of them, because I have absolutely got to make sure that everything is in perfect order to leave for the tour. And that angers people. And if you're a woman, forget it. I mean, everybody that I've ever gone with in my life -- rich rock & roll stars, poor guys that didn't have a penny, guys in completely other businesses -- they finally just look at me and say, "I really love you, and if you were ever around, that would continue. But I don't ever get to see you, and I can't dig the way that you live. I can't deal with the jealousy, I can't deal with the fact that the whole world seems to be more important to you than I am." I've had many really wonderful relationships, but they always seem to end up in that bag. That's the saddest part for me, I think.

So do you regret the life?

It's a choice, and I chose it. But at the end of this year I'm taking a break. And that's when I make my amends. I mean, I have to think about when I'm too old to be turning cartwheels and doing the splits onstage. I'm gonna want all my friends then, and I'm gonna need them. So I'm not gonna alienate the whole world just to be very famous. You know, a real good example is like, I suppose 15 years ago, if I'd have wanted to really go for it, in the same way that, say, Madonna did, I could have done that. And I could have been much more famous than I am now and much richer. but it never mattered to me that much about winning thousands of awards or having a hundred Number One singles. It has never mattered to me to be a sex symbol. [She points to the cover of the 1973 Buckingham Nicks album, a photo of a topless Nicks posed behind a bare-chested Buckingham.] I mean, that cover is about as close to selling the music on sex as you'll ever get, and I was crying when we took that picture. And Lindsey was mad at me. He said, "You know, you're just being a child. This is art." And I'm going, "This is not art. This is taking a nude photograph with you, and I don't dig it."

Could you have refused?

I tried. I tried to say no. We were really poor when we took that picture, and I went out and spent my last $111 on a really beautiful, very sexy blouse. And they agreed to do half of the session in the blouse, and I thought, "Oh, I'll win. They'll love this blouse, and they're gonna love the way I look." Well, halfway through the session, one of the photographers came over and said, "Okay, it's time to take off the blouse," and I died. It was awful, you know. And afterwards my father said to me, "Did you want to do this?" And I said no. And he said, "Then why did you do it?" And I said, "Because I was literally forced to do it, Dad." And he said, "Well, I'll tell you what you could have done. You coulda just said no." And he's right. I coulda said no. I have never forgotten that. And maybe that has a lot to do with why I went from that [points to the cover of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours LP, where she's in a long dress and veils]. Because I said, "All right, that's it. We're gonna work this out so that I still have an image and a vibe, but instead of going in the direction that a lot of the women singers are going in now, I'll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet. And nobody will know what I really am. I will have a mystique. None of these other people will have a mystique, but I will." And I have that mystique. That's one thing that I'm real proud of.

You once said that in Fleetwood Mac you always felt like the baby sister, that you didn't get much respect from the rest of the band. Is that still true?

Oh yeah. I don't have a lot of power in this band. I never have. I can jump and scream and threaten to quit and run out of the room and disappear and not accept any calls for four days, and it doesn't matter. And I really don't care. I pretty much let Fleetwood Mac be Fleetwood Mac, and I don't say too much about what they do. Or what we do. I mean, I think this tour is too heavy. I think there's too many gigs. But I get a fax that says, "This is where you're playing," and I don't send a fax back to Mick Fleetwood saying, "This is totally ridiculous, what are you doing, trying to kill us?" I don't do that. I just try to do my job and be as good as I can onstage, and be as loving as I can to everybody, and not get angry at the things they do that make me angry. Which are a lot of things. And I do a lot of things that make them angry -- for instance, my solo career -- and they are pretty cool about it. And we exist. We exist in fairly good . . . fairly good harmony. And the day that harmony is gone, that's when it will end.

I guess the popular image is that the rest of the band is more down-to-earth and you're floating above them in the ozone somewhere. . .

It's kinda true. I mean, yeah, I dress up for sound checks, you know? I do my hair and my makeup and I wear high heels, and everybody else is just grubbed out in jeans and stuff. So maybe the reason I'm in Fleetwood Mac is that I'm supposed to be the person that spreads a little fairy dust here and there. You know, they think I'm crazy. They know my life is completely strange: the strange clothes I wear, my hairdo and my makeup and the way I go about my life . . . but they need that, because otherwise they would be really way too serious for words. So if nothing else, we will probably go down in history as the most eclectic of bands. Which I like. I'd like to be remembered as a notoriously eclectic person: a collector and a dancer and a singer and a songwriter and a fairy-dust spreader.

But given the success of your solo career and the fact that you don't have much power in Fleetwood Mac, haven't you considered leaving?

Oh, I've been close to leaving Fleetwood Mac since I joined Fleetwood Mac. But so has everybody else. To be in Fleetwood Mac is to live in a soap opera. And it has been pretty scandalous and pretty incestuous, and pretty wonderful in a lot of ways. I threaten to quit all the time. I threaten to quit once a month. But I'm never gonna be the one to break up Fleetwood Mac. Somebody else will break it up, not me. And it's hard for me to imagine Fleetwood Mac ever breaking up. It's kind of like, you know, it's just an entity that just seems to go on and on and on. I figure Fleetwood Mac will go on until it doesn't want to go on anymore. Or until I decide I really do want to sit down and write that book [about the band]. Because I've certainly got the book to write. It would make Carpetbaggers look like Alice in Wonderland, if I were to ever write this book. [Laughs] Mick [Fleetwood] is writing a book, and my book is gonna be much better than his book, because I've been writing this for 15 years. I'll bury his book with my book, and he knows it. And he won't let me read his book. So I told him, "Mick, if you slander me, babe, I'll bury you. I will write down everything that you have ever done and put it out." We've been laughing about this for a week, because his book's coming out in about three months, and he still hasn't let one person in the band see it. It's turned into kind of a joke at this point. But it will not be a joke if this book comes out and I don't like what's in it. So I simply told him, "Well, I'll sue you. I'll just sue you for everything that you have, and then you'll just be poor and penniless again, and you'll be sorry." I'm laughing the whole time that I'm saying this and he's laughing, but we're really very serious.

Are you worried about his book getting into the drug and alcohol abuse, that side of the band? Or is that something you'll cover in your book, too?

Well, I'd write mine more like a novel. Because my life, the reading of it -- maybe not the living of it, but the reading of it -- would be every little girl's dream. I mean, I've gone out with all the big rock & roll stars, I've flown on Learjets, I've had a fleet of eight limousines, I've rented 727 airplanes that cost $25,000 a day . . . and that is glamorous. There's no getting around it. Just that part of it alone would blow people's minds. Example: Somebody sent a tiny little four-seater Learjet once to pick me up--I was on the road and he was on the road. It picked me up after my show, flew me into Atlanta. I stayed there for that day and his show, and then right after the show, that little cranberry red learjet sat on the ground and waited for me . . . .

No name?

No, I can't. Not that there was anything wrong with it, 'cause there wasn't. It was wonderful. It was one of the most romantic things that ever happened to me in my whole life. I mean, that's something that when I'm on my death-bed, the few things that pass before you, that will pass before me. Those are the things I'd like to tell people about. I'd write about the really neat stuff and lace it with the parts that were difficult.

It seems that, as big as the extravagances like Learjets were, the personal excesses were also that big.

Well, everybody was personally excessive. When you get famous that fast -- and I mean, we're talking overnight -- it's an incredible adjustment to make. I didn't join Fleetwood Mac until I was 27, and I never indulged in drugs of any kind, nothing. I didn't even drink. And then all of a sudden, bang! Overnight I was in this gargantuan rock & roll band, of which half the members were English and used to spending at least three hours a day at the pub. And you know, I was totally, completely enraptured with this whole thing. And in that era, everybody thought, "Everybody does it. It's fun, you can afford it, who cares? It's not addicting, it doesn't hurt you." That's what we were told. Nobody told us that it could completely ruin your life. But we lived through it. And to me, that's the most important thing. You know, at my age, what I've been through, I should look 65 years old. I feel like I look pretty good. And, uh, the excessive part of it no longer exists in my life, and hasn't for four years. What makes me angry with myself is that a whole lot of money went out for that, which we all could have in our bank accounts right now. Like, I lost a very good friend to leukemia about six years ago. And at this point in my life, I wish I had all that money to give to leukemia research. I watched a beautiful woman, my best friend since I was 14 years old, die over a year. I would have gone to the bank and taken out every penny I ever made in my whole life and I would have given it to research if it could have saved her life. I would have stopped singing. I would have stopped writing. I would have done anything.

Do you regret marrying her husband after she died?

I don't consider it a marriage. I married Robin's husband [Kim Anderson] because . . . Robin was one of the few women who ever got leukemia and then got pregnant. And they had to take the baby [named Matthew] at six and a half months, and then she died two days later. And when she died, I went crazy. I just went insane. And so did her husband. And we were the only two that could really understand the depth of the grief that we were going through. And I was determined to take care of that baby, so I said to Kim, "I don't know, I guess we should just get married." And so we got married three months after she died, and it was a terrible, terrible mistake. We didn't get married because we were in love, we got married because we were grieving and it was the only way that we could feel like we were doing anything. And we got divorced three months later. And I haven't seen Kim, nor have I seen Matthew, since that day. I suppose that Matthew will find me when he's ready. I mean, I am, really, next to Robin, his mommy. But Kim and I can't deal with each other at all. So when the baby's old enough, I have all of his mother's things, and I have her life on film for 14, 15 years. I have us on tape singing, I have a beautiful book that I wrote the year that she died. . . . I have a roomful of stuff for him. I have his mother to give back to him when he's ready.

After going through all of that, was the Rock a Little album a conscious attempt to lighten things up?

I think everything I did was a conscious attempt to lighten up. Because I was so devastated that I thought I was gonna die with her. I really did. It was hard for me to come back from the fact that I knew I wouldn't see Matthew again for many years. And so I moved to the beach. I moved to the beach for spiritual solace, for sanctuary. And it helped. For me to go out and just sit on a blanket and take my tape recorder and a pad of paper and a pencil and just look at the ocean and write. And give her up, you know? And, you know, if anything like that ever happens to me again, I'll probably move right back to the beach. Either that, or I'll go home to the desert. Because those two places are my strongholds. But I mean, I feel comfortable in this house, and I have a great little studio here where Harry Warren wrote "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and a lot of very famous music. And George Gershwin's piano is out there, too. I don't know how it got there, but I know that it belonged to George Gershwin. So to sit down at that bench and pluck out anything, you feel like you're in a magic place.

Talking about magic places, there's a perception that you're someone who tries to live her life in a world of magic and dreams and fairy tales. Is that accurate?

Well, I do really kind of live in a world of dreams and fairy tales. I mean, my life is a fairy tale, that's for sure. And I actually read fairy tales -- Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Anderson -- and a lot of my songs come out of that kind of fairy-tale genre, because of the reading that I do, and because when I was a little girl I loved to dress up and put feathers in my hair and sparkle dust on my face. You know, that's something that I just was kind of born with.

Can you foresee where this fairy tale is going from here?

Who knows? I could still very well get married, settle down, still do my music. I mean, I could marry any of several people if I wanted to get married; I just don't really want to get married. I could have a baby if I wanted to, if I wanted to get into it right now. And I may do that this year. Maybe my prince is going to walk into my life, some kind of saintly man who could possibly handle living with me, handle my life and everything else. You know, that would be wonderful. But even if it doesn't happen, I really would like to adopt a baby, because that's the one thing that I am very sorry about. That's the one thing I wish I had. I'd like to be sharing all these experiences, and that makes me really sad. But I figure God has a plan, and if I'm meant to have that baby, I'll have her. Or him. And if I'm meant to adopt one, I'll adopt it. Because my whole life has been that way. I mean, if you believe in destiny -- which I do -- it seems like my life was pretty mapped out. It seems almost like there was somebody up there moving the chess players. And I was the white queen, and I just went where I was moved. . . .

Details
August 1994

Stevie Nicks
Would you stay if she promised you heaven
by Lance Loud

Stevie Nicks: Maybe. But not with me or Christine or Lindsey. Christine and I will always be close; Lindsey just plain doesn't like me. I never had any musical training of any kind. I just had this innate ability to walk in, sit down at a piano, write a song in five minutes, and go to bed. It drives him nuts.

Stevie Nicks: Yeah, and if the book were to come out, a lot of people would cease to think of me as this eccentric, flaky girl. My journals tell the real story of what went on, like the way things changed after Bella Donna came out. No one in the band ever said a word to me about my solo career. They were keeping quiet for their own best interests. They knew if they ripped Bella Donna apart, I wouldn't give them any more songs. Remember, "Dreams"--which is just me--is the only gold single that Fleetwood Mac ever had.

Stevie Nicks: I have no illusions. When I'm sixty years old I'll still be writing songs and singing them. But will someone in the audience say, "Gee, what a sexy older lady-babe she is"? I doubt it. I mean, get a life, you know? If physical beauty is the only reason people buy my records, then I don't know why I'm doing this. One of our managers once yelled at me: "If you don't lose twenty pounds, your career is over." I told him I didn't need him in my life anymore. I would prove my career wasn't over. (laughs) Then ... I lost the twenty pounds!

Stevie Nicks: The sexual thing is pretty exhausted. Maybe a thesis on religion?

Stevie Nicks: Well, your heavenly origined angel is more like a princess. A street angel is not just a high-powered witch princess-- she can also go out and blend in with people. I've always felt that that’s the way I am: I can jump into the audience or go home with them. Then if I'm bored, I'm outta here.

Stevie Nicks: Mary-Chapin Carpenter. She's brilliant. And Elvis Costello. I put "Green Shirt" on every tape I make to go out on the road.

Stevie Nicks: I write about the gypsies of the world. People who, like me, are on the road all the time. People whose roots are blown away.

Stevie Nicks: And now they’re totally in style, thank you very much. If you don't see me in platform boots, you'll probably see me in my platform Reeboks. I wear them every day.

Stevie Nicks: Yeah, they were. Eight years sober and the stories still get passed around.

Stevie Nicks: Untrue. I haven't done cocaine for eight years. Unfortunately, it's just the way I have to live. Do I miss it? Yeah, I miss it. Would I ever do it again? No. The doctors told me that I'd have a brain hemorrhage if I drank or did drugs.

Stevie Nicks: Sandra's a comedian--she’s gonna make up stuff like that. But truthfully--no, I'm not bisexual. I like men too much.

Stevie Nicks: Smart, clever, fun--with a soul. I hate guys with too much machismo. As soon as a guy tells me what we're going to do tonight, I tell him what we're not going to do. (laughs) Actually it would be interesting to go out with someone who was a lot younger than me, 'cause I tend to have a really teenage personality.

Stevie Nicks: It just isn't the right time. But if a baby that I liked were made available to me and I thought it was definitely a destiny thing, then sure, I would take it immediately.

Stevie Nicks: What do you think? (laughs) Honestly, I never dabbled in the black arts.

Stevie Nicks: Let me state this here and now: We did not have a sexual relationship--I did not let that happen.

Stevie Nicks: When we were recording "Stand Back" I decided to be really blatant and call Prince up and tell him that I had been inspired to write the song while listening to "Little Red Corvette." I told him that I figured my song was half his. He came over to the studio where I was recording and listened to it--as I turned extremely white and started to shake. Then he walked over to the piano and put on a really incredible keyboard track. And not only did Prince make it up right on the spot, he played it with only two fingers. Then he left.

Stevie Nicks: Yes, when I was on the road a year or so later. I was sick, and Prince brought some cough syrup up to my hotel room. He was sweet--he walked around the room folding things, fluffing pillows, tidying up in general. Then he gave me a spoon of it himself. But when I asked for another spoonful he changed--he said, "I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!" Then he left.

Stevie Nicks: No. I was at the premiere of Purple Rain, and in the scene where he slaps Apollonia I freaked and had to go sit in the bathroom. Afterward I went back to see him, and when he asked why I'd left, I had to tell him, "When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain." He looked at me like it just killed him. We've never spoken since. (sighs) It’s a shame, really...we were alike in so many ways.

Stevie Nicks: Well, for one thing, we both liked wearing black chiffon around the house.

US Magazine
August 1994

Q&A
by Ryan Murphy

Stevie: Heck, yeah. It's no act. I wear the ones with six-inch heels, in every color. I have them all handmade. I wear the shawls and the boots to the grocery store, and people trip out. They look at me like I'm from outer space, and I know they're thinking, Well, it's really her.

Stevie: Around 30. They're piano shawls. Many go up on the ceiling - I have an artist friend who drapes them up there for me and makes French canopies out of them.

Stevie: The music. There were all those rock greats, like Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Rolling Stones. I loved listening to the radio then. Now I turn it on, and I spend all my time zipping down the dial trying to find something decent.

Stevie: I can't say I miss those because I still have them. Actually, they're wave lamps. Remember them? Mine are still functional.

Stevie: When I was little, my ballet teacher brought this to my attention - that I could not put my head back - and we came to the conclusion that I must have been put to death in a previous life, like Marie Antoinette. It's weird, this reflex. Like when I go into the beauty parlor, I can't put my head back in the sink for a shampoo.

Stevie: I hated posing for that more than life. And then, when I shot the video for "If Anyone Falls," the director wanted me to dance with this guy and throw my head back, and I couldn't do it. We had to call in a backup singer to do it. I called her my stunt neck.

Stevie: No. I really didn't do anything special. I'm just careful now with what I eat. My main problem used to be that I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and this voice would go off in my head that would order me to the refrigerator. Now I just swim regularly and eat healthily before turning in.

Stevie: I stopped perming it. [Laugbs] So the secret is out: All these years I've been a Lilt addict.

Stevie: Probably "Sara." It's about myself, and what all of us in Fleetwood Mac were going through at the time. The true version of that song is 16 minutes long. It's a saga with many verses people haven't heard.

Stevie: [Laugbs] That is true.

Stevie: He did. And I was in it before he finished it.

Stevie: That I was a wild and crazy black-magic witch. And that I was flying around my house on a broom. When I first heard this, I was touring and wearing black stage outfits, and I immediately mothballed them. I had two dresses made up, in pink and in blue. I called them my Easter egg dresses. The truth is, I believe in good spirits, not bad.

Stevie: No, I loved it. People think I don't have a sense of humor about myself, but I'm here to tell you that I do. A friend of mine made a compilation tape of all the shows Dave spoofed me on, and I watched it in hysterics. You couldn't pay for that amount of publicity.

Stevie: One thing that sticks out about that performance is something nobody saw, because it was edited out. We were playing the song, and Mr. Clinton walked up on the stage to join us. I started to move toward him, and he got this terrified look on his face like, "Oh my God, Stevie Nicks is coming toward me, and this is being watched by 18 million people." He looked so terrified and uncomfortable that I just handed him my tambourine and said, "Go to it, Mr. President." And he did - he rocked out.

Stevie: Well, for me, when I was standing onstage with nothing to do and feeling strange, I'd always grab one and start slapping it. When your hands are empty, a tambourine can make you feel very worthwhile.

Rolling Stone
Issue 691
September 22, 1994

Stevie Nicks Q&A
by Jancee Dunn

Stevie Nicks: I am funny. [Laughs] I crack up my band constantly. I could have been a comedian if I'd really wanted to. In Fleetwood Mac, I was pretty much told to be quiet at all times. I was so intimidated because I didn't feel like anybody really wanted me to be in that band and that they only wanted Lindsey [Buckingham] and me along for the ride.

Stevie: I love being on the road. I'm going on a bus this time, which I've never done. I realized that since I don't go to sleep until 5 or 6 in the morning anyway, it's stupid for me to go home from a concert and sleep, because I can't. And my bus is so comfy. I have my quilt and my fishnet hanging from the ceiling and all my special pillows -

Stevie: We're talking eight fabulous feather pillows. And, of course, my king-size quilt completely takes up the entire double bed, and my thing hanging from the ceiling completely takes up the entire room.

Stevie: We take it with us. I get it all back to Phoenix, and we give to a children’s hospital or to charities. I got a beautiful necklace that belonged to somebody’s grandmother last night. And I keep flowers. On the last tour I took all the flowers and dried them and made incredible potpourri and made little velvet bags and filled them with the petals for the crew. We gave them this fabulous little magic bag at the end of the tour. The crew are such guy guys, but they're so precious. They seem to love the little bit of a feminine touch that going on the road with me gives them.

Stevie: Yes, it is. It's fabulous, not because there's a lot of expensive stuff in it but because of all the neat stuff I’ve collected since I was in high school. There's a lamp that my mom bought for me when I first joined Fleetwood Mac. It's a blue Tiffany lamp, dark blue, and it's called the blue lamp. I keep a fireplace burning even when it's 99 degrees. I just turn the air-conditioning down. My mother goes crazy. She says, 'Do you know how much money you spend to keep this house cool, and then you bum fires in every single room? You're so weird, Stevie.' A fire creates ambiance. I need that fire. So back off, Mom.

Stevie: I called him and told him that I had recorded the song. I nearly finished it because I wasn't going to ask him to come down and hear an unfinished track. You just don't do that to Bob Dylan. You're very careful, everything you do and say around him, because he's really sensitive. You don’t want to frighten him.

Stevie: [Resignedly] I haven't talked to him since the inauguration We're really not friends. We're really not anything. We did not break up friends, and we have never been friends since. He is not really able to have any kind of relationship with me. I just bug him to death. Everything I do is abrasive to him. He's scary when he gets mad.

Stevie: You're kidding. How amazing! Wow.

Stevie: If they're willing to go to the trouble to do something like that, I'd have to go.

Stevie: About 25 pairs. I have them in rose pink and gray blue and mauve. I have three or four or five pairs I wear every night.

Stevie: You're gonna laugh. One of my favorite shows is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don't usually like science fiction. But I particularly like Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. When everything’s closing in on me, I can go to my living room at home, put on my surround sound, and the whole room sounds like we're flying. I have the Enterprise at my fingertips.

Stevie: In Arizona.

Stevie: I think probably that comes from the dancing me, because I love to dance, and I can do cartwheels, and I can jump down into splits. Yesterday my assistant was dying, because back here they have the ESPN hip-hop aerobics at 6 in the morning, and I’m doing this. She said, 'Nobody would believe this, Stevie. You're 46 years old." I kind of have a cheerleader side.

Stevie: Probably the last time I was in my ballet room in Phoenix. It has a really fabulous ballet bar that some fan carved for me. It has my name and the year. It’s wood, and it's just beautiful. I built this room around this bar.

Stevie: Both legs. I'm really limber.

Interview
March 1995
Issue #9504

A musical icon we've always loved hearing from talks to a musical icon in the making

Sarah McLachlan

Stevie Nicks: Hello?

Sarah McLachlan: Hi. I'm so bummed that we're not talking in person. Where are you now?

Stevie: In Phoenix

Sarah: Oh, right on.

Stevie: So, Sarah McLachlan. First, I have something to tell you. I go to bed very late, and when I finally do go to bed, about four o'clock in the morning, it's the only time I listen to the radio. And lots of times when I'm really asleep, something will pull me out of my sleep and the amazing thing is it's often Fleetwood Mac. I'll hear the bass and drums and it'll wake me up.

Sarah: Mmmm.

Stevie: Every once in awhile, somebody else will pull me out of my sleep. So this past February I'm sound asleep and all of a sudden this {sings} "And I will be the one." (SM takes a deep breath) Right?

Sarah: Right.

Stevie: And I'm going, "I love this." The DJ said, "That was a new, fabulous thing from Sarah that's called Possession." So I wrote down: Sarah, Possession. The next morning I said to my assistant, "You have to get this record that's called Possession. I don't know if that's the name of the album or the song. All I know is that this lady's name is Sarah, which of course, is my favorite name. And you have been a total part of my life since. I have to give you the greatest compliment that I could pay to anyone. You remind me so much of the first time that I went to the Fillmore in San Francisco. I was in a band that was the opening act on a show that had about seven acts in it. And there were red velvet drapes and you knew that Janis Joplin had sat in this dressing room, and there was something about your music that reminded me of how I felt about Janis. When I heard your music, I thought, Somehow this woman reminds me of the incredible music that came out of San Francisco when all of us were so knocked out to be alive.

Sarah: Whoa! That's pretty heavy for me.

Stevie: Well, it was heavy for me too, because I thought, Wow. She's ticked into an incredible thing here. Somehow she's new, yet she must be a very wise, old soul, because she's put it all together now, but she's still a little antique.

Sarah: Wow, that blows me away.

Stevie: When did you start doing this?

Sarah: I started singing professionally when I was nineteen. I got a record contract offered to me on a silver platter. A couple of years previous, I was in a band, and the first gig we ever did, a guy from a record company saw me and wanted to sign me -- when I was seventeen. But my mom kind of freaked out. And in retrospect, it was really a good thing, because I forgot about it and I went to art college for a year and was really feeling like I fit in someplace for the first time in my life. Then they came back to me and offered me a contract. I had never written a song up until that point.

Stevie: Really?

Sarah: For years and years, I had been playing other people's songs. It was always my biggest dream to be up onstage performing. It always seemed intangible for me, because my mom and dad were academics and wanted me to go to university, so it was like a dream come true and a big push for me to start writing myself.

Stevie: I never in a million years expected it to happen to me. I took typing and shorthand. I went to five years of college and I quit and also got into humongous trouble from my parents for that. (Sarah laughs) I moved to Los Angeles with Lindsey Buckingham, which was totally unacceptable to my entire family. Not only was I living with somebody, but I quit school. "What are you gonna do? Be in the circus for the rest of your life?"

Sarah: Yeah. "When are you going to get a real job?"

Stevie: Right. I also think that fame and fortune have a high price.

Sarah: Oh, no shit. Especially if you're not asking for the fame part. I just want to sing. I've only really become what you call a famous person in the past year. I'm lucky I had five years to get used to it in bits and pieces.

Stevie: The same thing with me. I was just singing with my then-boyfriend, Lindsey, and we had nothing, no money. And I worked. He didn't work. He furiously practiced his guitar every day, all day--and I backed that up. And then we got a call from a famous guy in a famous band who said, "Do you wanna join our band?" We actually went back and forth about it: "Well, maybe we don't. Maybe we just want to do what we're doing now." And between January and my birthday in May we became famous."

Sarah: Oh man!

Stevie: We got paid in cash, two hundred dollars a week each, so I had hundred-dollar bills everywhere. And since we hadn't spent any money in five years, we didn't know how to spend money. And I was washing hundred-dollar bills through the wash and finding them crumpled and detergented out, and hanging them on the line with the rest of our stuff. Well, Sarah, are you happy?

Sarah: Me? Yeah. I've been out on the road for over a year now, so I'm sort of at my wit's end with life and the world. But I kind of have a happy magnet. I can't stand being depressed, so I work my ass off to get out of it as soon as possible.

Stevie: It's so pretty here that it's hard to be in a bad mood. The desert's very healing, and I have just been setting up a Bosendorfer piano, which is the pride of my life.

Sarah: Oh, you lucky thing, you!

Stevie: And for the first time I moved my piano into the living room and I'm building around that piano. It's the reason why this house is here, the reason I'm here. It's kind of like if this house burns down, you will see me--

Sarah: Dragging the piano! (laughs)

Stevie: I've actually had some serious fire drills on the road. And I stand in the middle of the room and think, Well, I have to get my tape, because there's stuff that I've written that is nowhere else. And I have to run down twenty-four flights of staris with all my writing, all my tapes, a guitar, and two or three dolls--I collect dolls. I get to the lobby, and everybody's standing there, saying, "I can't believe you brought all that stuff with you." I'm saying, "Well, you can't believe it, but this is my life."

Sarah: When you're out on the road, you have so little that is familiar to you, so those things just become so important.

Stevie: And you travel on a bus?

Sarah: Yeah. We have two tour buses and we caravan.

Stevie: I had never gone on a bus in my life until this year. And I have never had such a great time in my whole life, because it was like getting on an incredible little traveling thing with my best friends.

Sarah: Oh yeah, it's like a candy store.

Stevie: I loved it so much that I was really sad to see that bus go. I thought, If I could just park this bus in front of my house and live on this and go in and shower and do my hair, then I could love this little space.

Sarah: I get nostalgic about touring after I've been away from it for a while. But on our European tour we'd been out for so long and together in such a confined space, we all started to regress. The last show of the tour in Paris was pretty frightening. I'd had laryngitis for about two weeks. I could hardly sing. Afterward we went to this restaurant and got rip-roaring drunk and made absolute fools of ourselves.

Stevie: Which is very easy to do over there, because everybody there drinks like it's water. When I joined Fleetwood Mac, I was twenty-seven years old and I had never ever drank, and these people were used to getting on an airplane at nine in the morning and ordering a double Bloody Mary.

Sarah: Oooh!

Stevie: Pretty soon I realized I can't enjoy being with these people, because they look at the world through a different pair of glasses than I do. Lindsey and I were California girls and boys. We were a strange group of three English people and two American people, and that was very hard on the road, because we were just so different. Christine McVie had Stevie Winwood carrying her books home from school, and Eric Clapton was best friends with Mick Fleetwood when they were sixteen, and I could not even relate to that. It was like, "You guys are too famous for me. And I'm getting really nervous."

Sarah: I can't be with people who are drinking unless I'm drinking too. I hardly drink anyway.

Stevie: That's OK, because we drank for you. We got it out of the way. You don't have to do it.

Sarah: Yeah, you people are why my mother had a bad attitude about the music industry (laughs)

Stevie: I bet. Well, my parents had no sympathy for it all. My granddad was a country and western singer, and he left his family and took freight trains and traveled all over, playing in bars and supporting himself by playing pool. So my mom and dad thought, Well, there she goes. She's gonna walk down the same road as her grandfather. And luckily I became a bit more successful than he was (both laugh). You know what? I would love to meet you sometime and sit down and just talk about your music and my music and share some of the mistakes I made that maybe you don't need to make.

Sarah: Well, I'd definitely love to bend your ear some more, because I have had very little opportunity to talk to anybody who's been in any position such as mine. Especially a woman.

Stevie: You can always call me. I have been through just about every possible thing that you could go through, and I've just given up everything you could possibly give up for this. And I wonder sometimes if I made the right decisions. There are a lot of things that I would love to tell you that might make a difficult time a little easier for you. I'll give you my phone number so that you can call me when you're in the middle of Toronto, bummed out, and I can tell you that everthing's gonna be all right

Stevie and Lindsey Interview on WZLX Radio
Boston, MA 100.7 FM
Friday, August 15, 1997

BAM Magazine
August 22, 1997

COVER STORY: Fleetwood Mac
by Jeff McDonald
(First appeared in BAM magazine, 8/22/97)

Redd Kross' Jeff McDonald talks to Fleetwood Mac singer and pop-culture icon Stevie Nicks about old Rumours, the new Dance and her life as a "Living Adjective"

Interview with Stevie and Lindsey
August 29, 1997
96.5 WTIC FM in Hartford CT
Craig & Company with hosts Gary Craig and John Elliott.

Spin Magazine

October 1997

Blonde On Blonde

COURTNEY LOVE: I was watching your new MTV special, and "Silver Springs" sent chills down my spine. It was like great opera, or like A Streetcar Named Desire. It was an absolute war between the sexes. And one of the things that struck me was how you epitomized the ideal gorgeous, California, in-you-convertible girlfriend. Almost. You can see the schism in your performance, where you check yourself and say, I am so much more than that. You filled that stage so much with your archetype, it was incredible. I just can’t imagine you as a 21-year-old waitress in San Jose supporting Lindsey Buckingham. It freaks me out. Hey, can I say what I’m drinking my coffee out of?

STEVIE NICKS: Yes, you can.

CL: I’m drinking my coffee out of a mug from the Betty Ford Center. It says BETTY FORD on it. I think that’s super chic. [Laughs]. I wish my rehab had sold souvenirs. They did, actually. They had sweatshirts, but I didn’t buy one because I had no money and they didn’t take credit cards.

SN: I think at Betty Ford they give you a cup.

CL: I bet they have lots of cool stuff there. So anyway, when I was very young I thought of you as the most pampered child of California. But then I heard "Dreams" and "Rhiannon," and I thought, Is she this thing or is she this other thing, this poet?

SN: You have to understand. I didn’t want to be a waitress, but I believed that Lindsey shouldn’t have to work, that he should just lay on the floor and practice his guitar and become more brilliant every day. And as I watched him become more brilliant every day, I felt very gratified. I was totally devoted to making it happen for him. I never worried about not being successful; I wanted to make it possible for him to be successful. And when you really feel that way about somebody, it’s very easy to take your own personality and quiet it way down. I knew my career was going to work out fine. I knew I wasn’t going to lose myself.

CL: How did you two meet?

SN: I met Lindsey in high school in San Francisco. We had gone to some party and he was sitting in the middle of this gorgeous living room playing a song. I walked over and stood next to him, and the song was "California Dreaming," and I just started singing with him.

CL: He was playing "California Dreaming"? Oh my God!!

SN: And so I just threw in my Michelle Phillips harmony and..he was so beautiful. And then I didn’t really see him again until two years later, when he called me and asked me if I wanted to be in his rock’n’roll band, which I didn’t even know existed. And within two or three months we were opening for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, all the San Francisco bands. Two years later, we packed up and moved to Los Angeles with about 12 demos.

CL: When you and Lindsey joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974, it sounded like you were really coming into your own. I mean, songs like "Rhiannon" and "Landslide." Those are profound. But here was a band that had been together a thousand years, right? They originally came from this time and place--Yardbirds, zeppelin, etc.--and while everyone had made it out of there, they were the dog with fleas. John Mayall was bigger than them. I mean, everybody. And then what happens? They get you and Lindsey, and here you are, this world-class beauty with a voice from heaven and these amazing songs, and it makes them huge. And you huger. And you’re just the girlfriend, the silent supporter of the tortured genius. That must have made everyone crazy.

SN: Well..my success was not easy for Lindsey, not easy for any of them. And I knew that, and I felt terrible about it. There’s a part of me that would have said, Let’s tell everybody to stop talking about Steve. Stop giving Stevie all this attention, because, guess what, it’s making Stevie miserable. Because I have to live with these other four people who know it’s not my fault, but they can’t help but blame me a little, and it’s killing me. But I also remember getting very upset with Lindsey one night when I realized that he and Christine [McVie] had written "World Turning." I had been with Lindsey all those years and we had never written a song together. Plus, I walked into the studio and they were singing it together.

CL: You never wrote songs together?

SN: No, no. I would sit down and play him "Gold Dust Woman" on the guitar, my simple little version, and two days later it would be recorded, and it would be recorded really well. He could take my songs and do what I would do if I had his musical talent. When he wasn’t angry with me, that is. That’s why there’s seven or eight great songs, and there’s 50 more where he wasn’t happy with me and didn’t help me.

CL: One thing you’ve always done, I realized recently, is write about these muses, these other females, these goddesses. These parts of yourself. You don’t write big, sexy love ballads about men. I wondered why that was for you? Because I do the same thing. I was listening to a song of Billy Corgan’s yesterday called "I Need a Lover." It’s sexy, okay. But I’m listening and I’m going, I can’t write like this.

SN: You know how else asked me that same question a long time ago: Prince. We were really close for a while--we never went to bed together, but we had something that was very, very special. And he always said, Why don’t you write songs that are more sexual? And I said, Well, because that’s no the way I am in my real life. I am not a person who walks naked through the house. I will always have something beautiful on. It will be beautiful, and it will enhance me.

CL: Maybe what Prince was trying to say is you should be more, "I want to fuck you, baby."

SN: But I believe that there is a certain amount of mysticism that all women should have, that you should never tell all your secrets, that you should never tell everybody all about you. I never have.

CL: Speaking of secrets, I’ve heard that you’ve kept a diary the entire course of your career.

SN: I have. It’s all written down.

CL: If you were ever to let those things out, I imagine that empires would fall.

SN: But you know what? Even in my journals, I don’t ever write about sex. I write around it, so that I know what I meant, but if somebody else read it, they might not understand. Nobody could ever get the real story unless I chose to share it with them.

CL: Tell me more about your love life.

SN: Well, when Lindsey and I broke up during Rumours, I started going out with Don Henley. And you know, I was like the biggest Eagles fan of life.

CL: "Warm smell of colitas..."

SN: [Laughing] Totally. And we went out, off and on, for about two years.

CL: That’s a perfect couple right there. I mean, that’s the California, the San Andreas Fault couple. He was really cute, too.

SN: He was really cute, and he was elegant. Don taught me to spend money.

CL: How did he teach you to spend money? I’ve never had a guy do that for me.

SN: Well, I just watched him, that’s how. He didn’t visibly set out to do that. I just watched him. He was okay with, say, buying a house like that [snaps her fingers], or sending a Learjet to pick you up.

CL: I had a Learjet phase for a little bit, but I couldn’t really afford it. While we’re on the subject, tell me about your rose Porsche.

SN: Me and a bunch of my friends were in my house in Phoenix, we were up all night doing lots of cocaine and watching that movie Risky Business. That’s one of my favorites. And I just made a call and that Porsche was delivered.

CL: You said "I want a rose Porsche"?

SN: I said, I want the same Porsche that’s in Risky Business.

CL: There’s a Porsche in Risky Business?

SN: Yes, there is. And I bought it. That morning.

CL: Wow. You know, I still think Don Henley is sexy.

SN: He is sexy. He’s such an interesting guy. Here’s one thing that Don did that freaked my band out so much. We’re all in Miami, Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. They’re recording at this gorgeous house they’d rented on the water. It’s totally romantic.

CL: Is it pink?

SN: It’s pink.

CL: Of course it’s pink.

SN: It’s like Mar-a-Lago. Anyway, he sends a limousine driver over to our hotel with a box of presents for me, and they’re delivered right into the breakfast room where everyone’s eating. There’s a stereo, a bunch of fabulous records. There’s incredible flowers and fruits, beautiful..

CL: Pomegranates and figs and dates, of course.

SN: Yes. And...

CL: Oh, I love him!

SN: The limousine driver is taking all this out onto the table and I’m going, Oh, please, please, this is not going to go down well. And they want to know who it’s from. And Lindsey is not happy.

CL: Gardenias?

SN: Yeah. So I started going out with him. And this is not popular. Sure, Lindsey and I are totally broken up, I have every right in the world to go out with people, but...I spend most of my time with the band, and it’s not real conducive to having a relationship. So, I went out with Don for awhile. I went out with [Eagles songwriter] J.D. Souther for awhile. We had an incredible time.

CL: But he wasn’t as famous as you. It must have been a lot more fun going out with somebody just as famous.

SN: Well, all those Eagles were an interesting group of guys. They were such good songwriters. I was blown away. I was totally awestruck. I mean, I was very, very famous, but it didn’t make me less awestruck with these men than anybody else. I was just as big a fan. And then..We’re just doing a condensed version of what happened with me. And then I fell in love with Mick [Fleetwood]. And that went on for two years. Never in a million years could you have told me that would happen. That was the biggest surprise. Mick is definitely one of my great, great loves.

CL: How was that between Lindsey and Mick?

SN: That was not good. That was not good for anybody else in the band. Everybody was so angry, because Mick was married. To a wonderful girl and he had two wonderful children, and I was horrified. I loved these people. I loved his family. So it couldn’t have possibly worked out. And it didn’t. It just couldn’t.

CL: And the drugs?

SN: The drugs didn’t help, needless to say. We did a lot of blow. I don’t remember how much we did; we spent an awful lot of money on it. You know, we were constantly on the road--the tour for the first album was almost a year long. Rumours was a year, and Tusk was a solid year. We never stopped, never took vacations. And with coke you can stay up way too late, you don’t sleep for three days.

CL: Did you keep your drug habits secret from each other? Like, in my band, when someone’s had a problem, it’s always been a secret from everyone else. We would never do it together, communally.

SN: Oh, no. No, no, no. It was much more of a family thing. And it wasn’t just us.

CL: Well, that’s in the spirit of the era.

SN: If this was 20 years ago, we would have sat here and done a gram of cocaine while we did this interview. I wouldn’t have known you previously, and we still would have done it together. It was just the friendly, fun thing to do. I swear to God, that’s how it was.

CL: I think the intriguing thing to a lot of people is that there’s never been a period in rock as debauched as the period after Rumours. Nobody’s touched it. I’m sure other people have done more drugs, other people have lived better, but no one, for one thing, was dressed as great. No one has ever looked as fabulous during their flushed-with-success period--not even the Beatles, maybe not even the Rolling Stones. Somebody gave me a [poster for my birthday; it’s a famous picture of you guys standing outside a chicken coop. And you all look amazing. You had such great hair. You still do. and back then, rock divas didn’t have high-end colorists.

SN: No.

CL: And you didn’t get free clothes from Doice & Gabbana.

SN: No

CL: You had to make your own clothes. You had to create your own divadom. like wearing black, which was a very fashion-forward choice for the ‘70s. Why’d you start doing that?

SN: Because as a blonde I looked better in all black. Plus it made things a lot easier; you could just have a bunch of pieces.

CL: But nobody wore all black in the ‘70s. You were just like Johnny Cash.

SN: Yeah. And I loved that. I still love that.

CL: It’s different now, ‘cause it’s very Barney’s, but black then it was pretty fucking bold. What kind of clothes did, like, the Eagles wear? Did they wear real expensive turquoise belt buckles and...

SN: No. They were very cool. They just wore beautiful jeans and silk shirts.

CL: Was Henley, like, rocking the Armani?

SN: You know what? When I was hanging around with them, I had no idea what kind of clothes they wore, except that they always looked good.

CL: I remember reading one description of you finishing "Gold Dust Woman" in the middle of the night wrapped in your black shawl. Was all that witchy, gothic stuff completely your thing yet?

SN: Oh yeah. Ever since I moved out of Mom and Dad’s. But in Fleetwood Mac I had to really calm that part of me down. I mean, they put up with my incense, let me do a little lighting, but I couldn’t bring a lot of my stuff in there.

CL: There’s a song of yours, what is it? It’s about--oh my God, it’s about...

SN: "Gypsy"?

SN: Me too, you know.

CL: So the band didn’t put up with that stuff?

SN: Well, I just have to be very careful and tasteful with them. I can’t be quite as Gypsy as I’d like. The downside of being in a band is that you can’t have everything you want.

CL: But the upside, the upside is incredible. The team/gang thing.

SN: It’s great. When I walk with my band up to the stage, I feel like an astronaut. [Laughing] I feel like we should be in slow motion, and the wind should be blowing.

CL: Being a movie star is pretty cool, but being a rock is just better. especially a lady rock star. I’m really grateful for it.

SN: So am I. Every day. And that’s something I don’t think goes away. It’s like, I totally appreciate being able to buy, say, this thousand-dollar cashmere blanket. I do. Because if I couldn’t, I would hate the act that I would have to go back to real, regular blankets.

CL: At Penney’s

SN: At Penney’s. [Laughing] and I never wanted to go to Penney’s even when I was a little girl.

CL: I didn’t want to go to Penney’s either. I knew, when I was in there, I knew I shouldn’t be in there.

SN: I am not in the right store, mom.

CL: There’s something wrong. This is wrong.

SN: Take me to the good store.

CL: Exactly [laughs] I want to ask about when you put out your first solo record, Bella Donna, in 1981. Were the guys pissed off?

SN: Well, it was a big deal, obviously. Going away to another record company at the peak of Fleetwood Mac was not a real popular thing.

CL: People should understand that at the time you made Bella Donna, you were one of the biggest starts on the planet. Certainly the biggest female in rock. It must have been so much harder back then being a famous woman in rock. You were entering this field almost by yourself. I mean, I always thought that Janis Joplin had a really hard road, because no one had ever been down it.

SN: And she didn’t make it down.

CL: But you did. You went much further than her. You were a pioneer. You were dealing with all these sexual politics, being a feminine woman who was doing this thing. I’m really surprised that you’re less schizophrenic than you are. Because you were right out in front, with the projections of the entire world put upon you. I mean, heavily. I had Bella Donna when I was in Japan, stripping. I was 15, I think. It was the year that Charles and Diana got married. And that’s what I listened to all the time to keep me sane. But you must have been feeling so many things then, because of your fame: the energy of young girls and older women using you, men using you. Did you start to feel a sense of magic about yourself? It’s hard to control the ego sometimes. I know. It’s hard to stay grounded.

SN: I think if I had just done my solo career and had been able just to be me, I probably would have been a lot more ego’d out than I was. Being in a group of five really does keep your ego in place. It’s not as easy to get totally conceited when you’re in a band.

CL: It’s not even conceit, though. I believe that it’s a product of energy being projected on you. I’m sorry, there’s a psychic transference that you have when you go to the bookstore and get recognized, and they treat you as your Stevieness or your Jim Carreyness or your Courtneyness or whatever it is they expect from you all the time. It must have been insane to be one of the first women out there in this art form. It must have been a battlefield. Is that one of the reasons you moved to the desert?

SN: Well, I’ve always lived there. My mom and dad are from there. That’s why I bought a house in Scottsdale, near Phoenix, so I could be close to them. Otherwise, I would have never gone to see my parents during those years; the cocaine years. I was too nerved out to sit and talk to my mom and dad; they were the last people that I would talk to.

CL: So, talk to me about "Gold Dust Woman." What’s it about?

SN: Well, the gold dust refers to cocaine, but it’s not completely about that, because there wasn’t that much cocaine around then. Everybody was doing a little bit--you know, we never bought it or anything, it was just around--and I think I had a real serious flask of what this stuff could be, of what it could do to you. The whole thing about how we all love the ritual of it, the little bottle, the little diamond-studded spoons, the fabulous velvet bags. For me, it fit right into the incense and candles and that stuff. And I really imagined that it could overtake everything, never thinking a million years that it would overtake me. I must have met a couple of people that I thought did too much coke, and I must have been impressed by that. Because I made it into a whole story.

CL: But it seems more like a sexual identity song or a romantic identity song. There’s some amazing lines in the song. Like, "Rulers make bad lovers / You better put your kingdom up for sale."

SN: I was definitely swept away by how big Fleetwood Mac was and how famous I suddenly was. Me, who couldn’t buy anything before, could now go in any store, and buy anything I wanted. And I wondered what that would do to me on down the line. I might be ruler, but maybe I’d be a lousy lover.

CL: I love the imagery in the song, when she’s a dragon, and a black widow.

SN: That just means an anger. The black widow, the dragon thing, is all about being scary and angry.

CL: But I think it’s more powerful than that. A dragon is the most potent and virile symbol you can use. So applying yourself to a woman, or to yourself, or to an archetypal alterego self is like this power, especially if you wrote it when you were frail and frightened and maybe not as powerful as you became later.

SN: You know what, Courtney? I don’t really know what "Gold Dust Woman" is about. I know there was cocaine there and that I fancied it gold dust, somehow. I’m going to have to go back to my journals and see if I can pull something out about "Gold Dust Woman." Because I don’t really know. It can’t be all about cocaine.

CL: No, I think you’re bigger than that.

Caption for pictures on center page: Portraits of a lady: cover of Buckingham/Nicks, 1973; Fleetwood Mac, 1974; Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie; a crystal vision, circa Rumours; Mac version ‘97.

! Online

1998

by Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith

Before there was Beverly Hills, 90210, there was Fleetwood Mac. The '70s supergroup, fronted by seductive blond siren Stevie Nicks, combined money, fame and chart-topping music with a real-life soap opera that would make Tori Spelling blush.

During their 10-plus years together, Nicks and the band came close to perfecting the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Their albums, like Fleetwood Mac and Tusk, supplied the soundtrack for many a Baby Boomer--including President Clinton, who asked the band to reunite for his inauguration in 1993. And their backstage antics supplied the intrigue.

Composed of single guy Mick Fleetwood and two couples--lovers Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham and husband and wife John and Christine McVie--Fleetwood Mac suffered from infighting and affairs (including one between Fleetwood and Nicks). Still, the band steadily managed to produce hits. Rumours alone spent a record 31 weeks atop the album charts.

A self-styled rock gypsy in leather, lace, chiffon and top hat, Nicks eventually left the group and launched a successful solo career. The hits kept coming, and so did the media, tracking her affairs with the likes of Don Henley, her 1986 stay at Betty Ford, her weight gains and losses, her voice troubles and more.

Now older (49) and wiser (or at least more willing to forgive and forget), Nicks and the rest of the Mac return to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Rumours. There's a new live album, The Dance, a home video, the recent MTV special and a 10-week, 40-city North American tour that begins in mid September.

Whether this lineup of Fleetwood Mac will again go its own way after all this, remains to be seen, but for now, Nicks is happy just to revive old friendships and enjoy the ride.

How's everybody getting along?
We get along really well. Not that we don't have disagreements. We do. But nobody is going to be stupid and childish and jump on anybody at this point. We're a lot smarter than we used to be. There've been lots of things that have come up that could have led us into a big argument, but we just haven't let ourselves go there. We know the things to stay away from.

Did you have to get to know each other all over again?
When you've known people as long and as well as we've known each other, you can be apart for years and then come back together and, after a few days, it's as if you were never apart.

You look great. Of course, last year the tabloids were trumpeting that you'd lost 60. Is that true?
I lost about 30 pounds.

Are you keeping a certain health regimen now?
I eat really well. I don't eat bread or pasta or cereal. I go on the treadmill as many times a week as I can possibly find the time, and stay on for 30 minutes to an hour.

We've heard you take your whole world with you when you tour. Is that still true, or are you going with a more stripped-down approach--as you did on your Street Angel tour three years ago, when you went out with a bus?
I loved the bus thing, which wasn't stripped down in terms of what I brought along. In fact, I was very disappointed that this tour is going to be a straight airplane thing. I really love the idea of having all your stuff in the bus, and only having to take in a few articles to the hotel.

So, what do you take along?
I have a packing case--like an instrument case--that has three big drawers. And in that, I'm able to pretty much take everything from extension plugs and shawls for the lamps to candles and incense.

What's the status of your next solo album?
It's on hold for the time being. And I don't mind that for the opportunity to do this with Fleetwood Mac. I spent the last three years writing for this upcoming album of mine--whenever I do it. I'll probably write a couple of songs on the road over the next couple of months, which will balance out the three years I spent writing quietly in Phoenix, you know? The songs will be an interesting mix. I kind of feel like whenever it happens, it will.

Is there anyone special in your life right now?
No. Doing a tour is so overwhelming. It does take over your life.

Do you still paint? Your paintings, like "Rhiannon," have raised thousands of dollars for AmFar and other organizations.
I do. That's just something that's there, and one day the time will be right and I'll do some prints and maybe a coffee-table book. It's just sitting there waiting, like the next album.

You told us a few years ago that you'd created your whole chiffon and suede boots image thing, and if you could change it now, you would.
That was probably just a passing thought. I know that whatever image you create in the beginning of your career, you'd better like it, because you're going to be stuck with it. I'm not sorry about mine.

I love my clothes. I kind of dress that way in real life. I'm not as cosmic as people probably think I am, but I do love beautiful fabrics and beautifully made things, whether it's a dress or a skirt or a set of drapes.

So, do you go grocery shopping dressed that way?
I DON'T GO GROCERY SHOPPING.

But you do go out.
Oh yes. I go out shopping. I go to all the malls. I go to all the fabulous stores. I just choose not to be recognized, and I'm not. If I want to be seen, I can be recognized. If I don't, I can just kind of put my head down, assume the shopper's pose and go.

When you went out on your final tour with Fleetwood Mac in 1990, you complained about not having much power in the group. How do things compare now?
It's better, but it's not better because I have more power. It feels like each of us is more able to be a team player than before.

Any special things you're doing to prepare for the tour?
We're taking a voice coach with us. I will do 30 to 40 minutes with him every afternoon before a show, so I'll actually be studying voice for three months, which is so incredible. There will not be any bad singing nights...

What does the coach do?
He works out your voice so you don't have to get used to singing when you walk out onstage. Your vocal cords are all warmed up, and you're in perfect form. Like, if you were a ballerina, you would half an hour solid before a performance. Well, we forget there are muscles used in vocalizing, just as there are in ballet. You wouldn't go out and do Swan Lake without a warmup. So, why would you sing for two and a half hours without one?

Years ago, you had a voice coach on tour who was concentrating on helping you raise your pitch.
And I did that, very successfully. Otherwise [drops into a gravelly, latter-day Lucille Ball style growl] I'd be talking down here. A lot of my vocal things went away when I raised my pitch. Now, the circumstances are special. We're doing 40 shows, and when you're doing that many shows, and two and three in a row, and a two-and-a-half-hour set--with "Rhiannon" and "Stand Back" and songs that are really tough to sing--you have to be like an Olympic athlete.

You've said you really don't like being on camera. Is that still true after so many videos?
I just don't like it. It makes you lose all your spontaneity. I can be effervescent with friends around a piano for hours, but the minute you bring out a camera, I go flat. And I think what I do onstage was not meant to be seen by me, it was meant to be seen by everybody else.

When I'm onstage, I'm not supposed to be thinking about how I look. And when I'm being filmed, I do think about it. Everybody does. It makes it hard to be as good as you could be at your trade when you're thinking: "Is this a good angle? Is the lighting good? That guy, that camera, is, like, right into my neck!" You freak out.

And now, well, it was Audrey Hepburn who said watching yourself on film is like watching the aging process. Every time you see yourself, you look older. I'd rather not see it.

Stevie Nicks Interview

WZLX in Boston, April 13, 1998

Stevie Nicks Interview

WXKS Kiss 108 Boston, April 14, 1998

Stevie Nicks Interview

WTIC in Hartford, April 14, 1998

San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, April 26, 1998

Stevie Nicks Chat on SonicNet/Yahoo

April 28, 1998

CNN

May 1, 1998

Entertainment Weekly

Rolling Stone Interview with Stevie Nicks

May 14, 1998, issue 786

Stevie Nicks - "You can only rock out so much. Then you have to go rest."

Stevie: Two floor lamps and some silky white panels to wrap around my pole bed. I'm not doing a lot because I'm really trying to rest. I started working on this box set the day I got home from the Fleetwood Mac tour. If you're a Stevie Nicks fan, you'll probably really like this.

Stevie: It's a lot of music, and it's all my intense songs. It's very heavy. You have to be in the right mood for it. I have to be in the right mood for my music. I tend to listen to slow jazz on the radio. The first thing I do when I get to a hotel is look for jazz stations, because I can dance around to that - I can be happy and sing my own words. I can't be intensed-out by rock & roll all the time. I have too much going on in my life that is intense enough.

Stevie: When I rock out, I usually play tapes I've made over the years - all the big songs through the Eighties and the beginning of the Nineties. I can't really listen to a whole CD. I'm gonna have two or three favorites and that's all. Hey, I'm almost fifty [laughs]. I'm an old woman.

Stevie: You can only rock out so much. Then you have to go rest. I also make [tapes] for the treadmill.

Stevie: I do, but "Miami Vice" isn't on quite as often as it was before.

Stevie: Well, I'm tired. I am tired. The tour was actually easier for me than coming home and doing two months of TV things. We did the Brit Awards, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, then the Grammys. I was the most nervous for that.

Stevie: It was an incredible experience. We played forty-five concerts, we made a lot of money, I think we made a lot of people happy. We never had any fights. It just went by like a whirlwind.

Stevie: Six months before we re-formed, I would have told you in my own psychic way that there was no possible way that Fleetwood Mac would have ever gotten back together. So I'd never say it's not ever going to happen again.

Stevie: He and I are probably better friends than we've been in a long, long time. We had some really nice talks and some nice moments that were sweet.

Stevie: This is going to be a different set than I'll ever do again. I'm going to put some of the cool things from the box set in it - some of the country songs, acoustic things, really neat stuff. We're going on the bus this time, and it will be a fabulous one, otherwise I won't go on it.

Stevie: People have been telling me that, and I don't know quite what to say. I saw her video, and, of course, I loved all her black clothes and the long, long, long black hair. And the birds were interesting. But I didn't immediately go, "Oh, how me." But some people are saying that, right?

Stevie: Billy is recording in L.A. When I get home next week, I'll go visit him. Both of us have been totally, totally working.

Stevie: Well, I spent three years writing songs after the "Street Angel" tour. I probably have six songs, so I'll come home to Phoenix in September to write the other six. I can do anything here. I can record, I can write. I can sit by the pool. I can draw. My house here is like my own little resort. At midnight, if I want to, I can go in, light candles and put a fire in the fireplace and spend two hours writing.

Stevie: We just crank the air conditioner.

Stevie: I do.

Stevie: Yeah, well, you never will [laughs].

Stevie: I get a black bathing suit and a fabulous black-lace sarong thing and kind of tie it around me. And there is never, ever, a man in the back yard. If there is, he is banished to the front of the house.

Stevie: It's not a question of weight. It's dancing across the stages of the world for two and a half hours for those three months. My body kind of changed from all the dancing. And, you know, the tambourine playing.

Rolling Stone on AOL

May 14, 1998

Bella Donna

Stevie Nicks: It's almost like I didn't ask for any of this; it just happened. I was truly starting on a record of my own when the whole world changed ... upside down.

SN: Yes. All of a sudden this thing about Fleetwood Mac happened, and as the days went by there was more talk, and then somebody from Warner Bros. actually came up and said [Lindsey Buckingham] really is going to put his record on the shelf to do this. I said, 'Well, I don't believe that,' 'cos he said that a million times before. So I called him and I said 'Lindsey, I need you to tell me what's happening, because if we really are going to do this ... I'm not even going to start my record and have to stop it.' And he said, 'No, I'm going to do it.' I said 'You're sure? You promise?' He said 'Yes.' And then, when I got home from the Fleetwood Mac thing, I was told Atlantic felt this was a good time to do the box set, since I was going to Warner/Reprise. So all of these things just sort of happened, to my surprise.

SN: I think probably it's fine and fairly easy for everybody in the band except Lindsey. I think it's hard for Lindsey because we started out together. I think he goes, like, 'When did you do all this? Why do you get this kind of reaction?' And I think that is hard for him. So I don't talk to him a lot about it. It's kind of like, what we do together is what we talk about. I don't want to make Lindsey unhappy. I care about him and want him to be happy.

SN: I don't have a sense of if and when, but I don't have a sad feeling about it. I feel that what we did this last year, it was great. Everybody had a great time. It was a little hard on Christine [McVie], but I think she will change her mind and she will get bored and say 'Oh, I want to do this one more time.' There's no way this band won't play again. I just know that when the time is right, it'll come back together. It'll probably be in two years, two and a half years.

SN: It was like going through the photo album that went along with all those records, that went along with my life. Those songs are the photo album of my life, because each one of those songs really was about something pretty heavy, for me to write a song about them. And when you put them all together ... it's a pretty tumultuous bunch of songs.

SN: Someone at Warner/Reprise asked me if I wanted to record it for Party of Five. I love the song and I've always wanted to do it, and they gave me a reason to do it. It fits right in; that's why Tom is my favorite writer. I kind of feel that if I had come into this world as a boy, I would have been him. I really do. I feel like there's a part of Tom's writing that I relate so easily to. He's doing another record now. I can honestly say that one of the things I'm looking forward to most of all is hearing these new songs of his.

SN: Lindsey says yes. Lindsey has said he will do it. See, I own half, he owns half. I can't put it out without his half. Plus, we don't have a record deal for it. So before the Buckingham-Nicks record would be released, we would have to do the whole thing to release a record. But he says he wants to now, so I would tend to say we'll do it and put it on CD.

SN: The title song is written -- "Trouble in Shangri-La." It's like Bella Donna; it's a definite concept album. It's about achieving Shangri-La and not being able to handle it.

SN: (Laughs) Oh, yes. I understand it all pretty well. Going through all these songs [for Enchanted] made me take a walk back through my life and made me think about things I'd forgotten and about experiences that were pretty strong and really touched and changed my life ... really see what were the good things and what were the bad things. Just wisdom, you know? I think I'm really smarter than I used to be, and I don't take anything for granted now.

SN: No, because the things that I've wanted to do that I haven't done, I will do. I want to do a children's cartoon movie. And I want to do a Rhiannon record with just the songs of Rhiannon -- 'cos there's Rhiannon but there's also nine other songs I did right in that period of two years, when I was reading the books of Rhiannon.

SN: I don't really need children. I have a niece who's six, who certainly fills my life up as far as a child goes. I'm gonna just work on my work. I don't think the world is going to have that much of a problem with me not being married or having a family. I don't think that's why I came here. I have something that's really important to do, and I don't think I've done that yet.

Stevie Nicks Interview
WEGQ FM Eagle 93.7 - May 21, 1998 - Boston

Access Hollywood
May 25, 1998

Stevie Nicks on Access Hollywood May 25, 1998:

Stevie: Um...that's a good word. Yes, it is. Uh, life is good for me right now. I'm pretty happy.

Stevie: Well, it was starting to be just a drag. Somebody told me that ..that I would..you know..if I didn't stop I was gonna..Something was gonna blow up in my head..

Stevie: Yes. And, you know, basically said, you know, the hole in your nose will destroy your head soon if you don't stop and that was really enough to scare me..absolutely scare me to death, and I went straight to Betty Ford.

Stevie: They made me aware of how precious live is.

Stevie: It healed a lot of wounds. There are some things, you know, that will never go away or never change. There's all the history that we have.

Stevie: Well, (pause) that's all about what was really there. Yeah, you know, I mean we're not there now, so.. but we are able to talk about it.

Stevie: Everybody's tired now. They need a break, so, I think that things will end up working out. In a couple of years, we'll get back together.

Stevie Nicks Interview
KLOS FM- June 1, 1998 - Los Angeles

Sounds of Summer Preview 98
ABC - June 6, 1998