Music publisher Primary Wave takes 80% interest in Fleetwood Mac star’s catalog
Stevie Nicks closed a deal to sell a majority stake in her publishing catalog late last month, on the heels of Fleetwood Mac‘s “Dreams” hitting the Billboard charts for the first time since 1977.
Music publisher Primary Wave purchased an 80% interest in the copyrights, which are valued at about $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal.
The deal, which includes hits “Edge of Seventeen,” “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” highlights the soaring value of music in the streaming era. Ms. Nicks’s sale coincides with recent buzz around “Dreams” fueled by a viral TikTok video of a man skateboarding while listening to the Fleetwood Mac former No. 1 single. The song, written by Ms. Nicks, landed at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October, logging its best-ever week of streams and download sales in the U.S.
Ms. Nicks and Primary Wave plan to partner on marketing, branding and digital strategies to generate more revenue from her catalog, according to the publisher.
Outlets for music are rising in new corners of the digital world, from videogaming to social media to advertising. Every time a song plays, that is revenue for the artist, or whoever owns the catalog’s rights.
Over the past five years, owning the rights to music has become more valuable as revenue from music streaming has grown. Vivendi SA sold a 10% stake in Universal Music Group to Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. for 3 billion euros, equivalent to $3.37 billion, late last year, valuing the world’s largest music company at more than $33 billion. Los Angeles-based investment firm Shamrock Capital Advisors LLC recently bought Taylor Swift’s early recording catalog for over $300 million — about what celebrity talent manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings LLC paid for the entirety of Ms. Swift’s former label, Big Machine Label Group LLC, a year and a half ago.
Songwriter catalogs have been commanding sale prices that amount to 10 to 18 times their annual royalties, compared with eight to 13 times in earlier years, according to people involved in the deals.
The coronavirus pandemic has fueled the frenzy in part because music has proven to be a stable, recession-proof asset that produces returns largely untethered from the broader economy. Older hits, such as those found in Ms. Nicks’s catalog, are commanding higher prices than they were pre-Covid-19, because they are generally perceived as the safest bet, thanks to a long record, and have seen a surge in streaming during the pandemic.
“Stevie’s music, while exceptionally well known, is still very undercommericalized and undermarketed,” said Primary Wave Chief Executive Larry Mestel. “There’s enormous upside potential for her songs to be reinvigorated and introduced to youth culture.”
Ms. Nicks laced up roller skates for her own version of the viral TikTok challenge. In the original, Idahoan Nathan Apodaca lip syncs to “Dreams” after sipping from a bottle of Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice while longboarding down the street. The song and various copycat videos were then featured in a commercial by the social-video platform.
Such visibility generates powerful spurts of interest in older music, helping drive streams on music platforms such as Spotify Technology SA, YouTube and Apple Inc.’s Apple Music.
As part of the deal, Primary Wave will also market Ms. Nicks’s name and likeness, and form a joint venture that will allow her to sign new songwriters.
Ms. Nicks is the only woman who has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice: first in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and again last year as a solo artist.
“Artists who are as talented and fortunate as Stevie to have such long and successful careers have the right to dictate the legacy of their music,” said Sheryl Louis, Ms. Nicks’s longtime manager, who helped negotiate the deal.
Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition) / Friday, December 4, 2020
Official Press Release
STEVIE NICKS PARTNERS WITH PRIMARY WAVE MUSIC!
December 4th, 2020
THIS NEW PARTNERSHIP WILL SEE THE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER ACQUIRE A MAJORITY STAKE IN THE LEGENDARY SINGER’S PUBLISHING COPYRIGHTS, AS WELL AS NAME AND LIKENESS
SONGS INCLUDE “EDGE OF SEVENTEEN,” “RHIANNON,” “LANDSLIDE” AND “DREAMS”
“The true rock legends change the game. Stevie Nicks, as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and later in her solo career, changed the game not only for women, but for what you could do in rock as a songwriter and a singer.” – NPR
NEW YORK, N.Y. (December 4, 2020) – As her hit song “Dreams” was re-entering the Billboard charts, the iconic singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks and Primary Wave Music were finalizing their partnership that will see Stevie join their family of legendary and iconic songwriters. This partnership continues to prove that Primary Wave is truly a home to the legends in music, furthering a year of incredible acquisitions and partnerships. Named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of all Time by Rolling Stone, Stevie Nicks is the only woman to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice – the first time in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac and then again in 2019 as a solo artist. Over the course of her unprecedented career, she has received eight Grammy Award nominations and two American Music Award nominations as a solo artist, as well as another five Grammy nominations and a win for Album of the Year as a member of Fleetwood Mac.
Primary Wave’s partnership with Nicks will see the dynamic publisher acquire a majority stake in her publishing copyrights, as well as representing the Grammy winner in brand alliance and brand marketing opportunities and will partner with Kobalt on administration for the catalog. The deal includes many of her timeless hits as frontwoman for Fleetwood Mac including the platinum hit “Landslide,” the Grammy-nominated “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back,” as well as “Dreams,” which recently saw a resurgence thanks to a viral Tik Tok video posted this October. The song, which was the second single off Fleetwood Mac’s critically acclaimed, 1977 album Rumours, recently went Top 10 on Billboard’s streaming chart, saw another 16 million streams bringing it to over a half-billion plays on Spotify alone, and gave Stevie the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 Songwriters chart thanks to her writing credit on the classic hit.
Additional terms of the deal include a strategic publishing alliance with the singer that will allow her to sign new songwriters to a joint venture. Stevie will also now have access to Primary Wave’s entire marketing, branding, Broadway, Film/TV, and digital strategy teams, as well as their licensing and synch departments.
Of this new partnership, CEO & Founder of Primary Wave Music Publishing, Larry Mestel said, “To say we’re excited to welcome the incredible Stevie Nicks to the Primary Wave family would be a dramatic understatement. If Primary Wave were starting our company today, Stevie Nicks would be one of the shining pillars, a true legend among legends.” He goes on, “She is a groundbreaking artist, and the longevity of her iconic career comes from writing songs, instantly recognizable and critically acclaimed, that stand the test of time.”
Sheryl Louis, Stevie’s long-time manager, and Jamie Young, her attorney, negotiated the deal on behalf of Stevie Nicks.
Legendary singer, songwriter and storyteller Stevie Nicks is one of rock and roll’s most successful, inimitable, and groundbreaking artists. As a multi-platinum, Grammy-Award-winning solo artist and member of Fleetwood Mac, she is the only woman to have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice and has collectively sold more than 140 million albums. Having captivated audiences for decades with her iconic live performances, distinctive songwriting, and constant cultural influence, Nicks continues to be an inspiration and mentor to younger performers. A member of Fleetwood Mac since 1974, the band’s enduring spirit stands for an incredible body of music – including Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time – that has connected with generations of people all over the world for more than 50 years. In October 2020, Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert was released at select cinemas, drive-ins and exhibition spaces around the world for two nights only. The sold-out film offered audiences a virtual front-row seat to the magic Nicks brought on her sold-out 24 Karat Gold Tour. Nicks also recently released her first new music in six years with the song “Show Them The Way” which also featured a stunning Cameron Crowe directed video. The song originally began as a poem and a track she calls “a prayer for people to unite; a prayer for people to get together.”
The new concert film can be streamed on-demand starting from October 29 through November 5
Premium video streaming access for Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert will begin October 29 at 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST, with purchase available through November 5, 2020 at 11:59 PM PST. The event will be available for replay for 48 hours following purchase and is not available for download.
The 48-hour viewing period will begin as soon as it is made available on October 29.
In the letter, which Stevie recites in a special video, she describes Tom as her best friend, one of the last people who truly understood her. A performance of Stevie and Tom’s 1981 hit single “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” covered by Margo Price and Lukas Nelson immediately follows Stevie’s tribute.
Read Stevie’s letter below:
On Tom’s 70th birthday, I asked myself how I do I feel about Tom being gone. Let me count the ways. He was my best friend that was a man, a peer, someone I could really talk to about pretty much anything.
When people say, “It’s lonely at the top,” they’re serious. There just aren’t that many people in our tribe. For instance, if Tom called, unless I was on stage, I called him back immediately. If he asked me to go on tour with him, I packed a bag. His first wife Jane said, “Besides me, you were the best friend Tom ever had.”
I wrote a song about him once that said, sometimes Tom’s my best friend, even when he’s not around. And the sound of his voice? Well, it follows me down and reminds me. I think that’s what he was to me…a moral compass. A person who said to me once when I asked him to help write a song, “Write your own songs. You’re a premier songwriter.” Not the answer I wanted. But how can you not love that?
He gave me a platinum sheriff’s badge with 24-karat pieces of gold scattered across it. It was not that long ago. Engraved on the back was “To the only girl in our band.” And on the front it said, “Honorary Heartbreaker.” After that, when I would ask him or his people for something, he would smile that mischievous smile and say, “Well, she has a badge.”
So, on this day, I can tell you, that I lost one of the last people I could truly talk to…who understood who I was, and what I stood for. One of the only people who truly had my heart and cherished it. A knight in shining armor. My world is just darker since he’s been gone.
Nicks discusses her ’24 Karat Gold Concert Film’ and returning to live shows in new interview
In another life, Stevie Nicks would have been a music-film editor. “I think I’m really good at it,” she says one Friday evening, calling from her home in Los Angeles. Her canine companion Lily is begging for her attention with a toy as Nicks reflects on her second life. “I can only say this about a few things.”
She’s had plenty of experience, working closely with director Joe Thomas on concert films for Fleetwood Mac (2004’s Live in Boston), her late friend Tom Petty (2006’s Live From Gainesville), and most recently, Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold Concert Film. Recorded during her 2017 tour stops in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, the film is getting a special release this month and being screened at select drive-ins, theaters, and exhibition spaces on October 21st through 25th. The set lists featured classic solo and Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac songs along with tracks off her 2014 album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault. For the music fans desperately missing live shows in the time of Covid-19, the film perfectly encapsulates the tambourine-banging, shawl-twirling, story-spinning magic that only Nicks can deliver.
Putting the project together with Thomas became one of two pandemic projects for the rock goddess (the other being her new song “Show Them the Way”). She flew out to Chicago in May with her assistant on a “full-on, fogged-out, Covid-free private plane” and lived in a house on a golf course that no one had been in since before lockdown had begun. Nicks would go to Thomas’ studio, masked up alongside everyone else (“I felt imprisoned by the mask, but I love the mask — I felt safe”), and got to work, diligently assessing the footage captured by all 12 cameras from shows in the two cities.
“I’m really the second editor,” she says of her uncredited job. “The fact is that if I don’t like a shot, it’s not going in.” She learned, as she had in past editing-room experiences, that men see women differently.
“We would rather see ourselves the way we see ourselves,” she says. “They kind of like us to be messy and a little bit like, ‘Oh, I just got here.’ And you’re like, ‘No, uh-uh. That is a terrible shot.’” That realization is part of what makes her think that working on concert documentaries for other bands could’ve been her other calling:
“Had I not been a singer and had the accidental grace to have been thrown into a situation where I was watching somebody else edit a rock & roll film of another band that had girls in it, I would’ve said, ‘I love this.’ Because you know why? I could’ve made it better.”
The process was a tedious one that paid off; there were tiny moments only Nicks could see that made the film all the more special. “I find shots that nobody else would look for,” she explains, citing one in particular where the camera was pointed over her drummer’s shoulder. “Nobody else would’ve thought to look at it, and it’s this amazing picture of me and Waddy [Wachtel, her longtime musical director and guitarist] standing and looking straight at each other. Waddy just slowly smiles at me, and you see the relationship that he and I have had since I first met him 1971.”
The less-fun tedium was when she had to sift through 46 minutes of storytelling, most of which served to contextualize the then-new songs she was debuting on the tour while also tributing her longtime friend Prince, who worked with her on “Stand Back.” Nicks admits that she slips “into [her] Valley Girl-ness” when she is in the throes of telling a really good story. “I talk to the audience as if you were seriously in my living room and I’ve known you for 50 years,” she explains. “So as I’m watching all these stories, I’m going, ‘Well, we have to take all the “likes” out because that’s dorky.’”
There were so many stories she had to self-edit even during the tour, ones that would’ve been too tangential even by Stevie Nicks standards. She laughs recalling another favorite Prince story of hers, one she left out of her tour monologues. In this tale, he picked her up after a Fleetwood Mac show in Minneapolis in his purple Camaro and drove an hour to his home.
“We finally got there and then we work on a song all night, and he barely gets me back, exactly on time, on the tarmac, at 20 minutes after 2 o’clock the next afternoon,” she says. The song itself has never been recorded or released, not yet at least.
“But if you tell that story and then everybody out in the audience says, ‘Well that’s amazing. So play us the song,’ which is exactly what would happen if you were sitting in your living room with your guitar or at the piano and had a couple of your best friends there that you’re running stuff by.”
Nicks’ stories got a little bit longer every night, she says, mostly because the response remained so enthusiastic. No one was upset that some of her many big hits were taken out of the set list to make room for her 24 Karat Gold tracks, all of which were written between 1969 and 1987. “I do have the right, at 72 years old, to play some of the songs that were written exactly at the same time all the other songs were written,” she says. “Everybody was really behind me on it.”
Of course, the performances themselves were the easiest to edit. Nicks compliments the direction of Wachtel, who “runs that band like a finely tuned Maserati,” and the singing of Nicks in tandem with her girl singers Sharon Celani and Marilyn Martin was flawless. Even with a few hiccups in the Indianapolis show, all was rectified by the time the band got to Pittsburgh.
“We knew on the second night that it’s going to be great,” she says. “Just everybody take a deep breath and understand that we don’t make mistakes. We play like we’ve been playing a thousand years because we have been playing a thousand years.”
Returning to her 2017 live shows proved to be a godsend for the star in the midst of staying home. She was already planning on taking the year off after back-to-back solo and Fleetwood Mac treks to finally work on a miniseries based on her song “Rhiannon,” which is inspired by the mythological Welsh witch of the same name. After a conversation with her friend and fan Harry Styles in February, the heaviness of not knowing when she can safely return to touring really hit her:
“He said to me, ‘I don’t think we will walk onstage again, Stevie, until the end of 2021, if then.’ And I’m going, ‘Oh, my God, this very, very young man is telling me this sage idea he has in his head.’ It was that phone call between a really fantastic artist in his twenties and me, in my seventies, going, ‘We as a music community of entertainers are screwed. Our lives as we know it is over.’”
Nicks is a realistic person, and she knows there is no chance she will step onstage and put her fans in danger until the coronavirus pandemic is fully under control. “The problem is we’re all hoping that some magical thing comes down and just cures all, like the president thinks is going to happen, but it’s not going to,” she says. “We know that. We have to dance around it and figure out what to do in the meantime.”
Nicks has a habit of making lots of things better, whether she realizes or not. For what can only be chalked up to cosmic reasons and her own crystal visions, her song “Dreams” for Fleetwood Mac has been given a second life during the pandemic. The song has been all over TikTok since the spring, helping Rumours get a major boost on the Rolling Stone 200 albums chart. As we were on the phone, the song reached a new apex when TikToker Nathan Apodaca (@Doggface208) went viral for the supremely chill video of him skateboarding, drinking cranberry juice, and singing along to “Dreams.” Everyone from Nicks’ bandmate Mick Fleetwood to Shakira have re-created it, and Nicks even joined TikTok to do her own spin on the clip, lacing up some roller skates as she sings over Rumours on vinyl. As she prepares to release a concert film built around her desire to tell and celebrate the stories of her past, a 43-year-old song of hers has taken on a life of its own. Outside of her music, her cursive-print love letters to fans that she has shared on social media every so often have spread far and wide, another glimmer of delight and hope as only she can provide.
“This is about the closest to a big, full-on concert that’s not 25 years old that you can see,” she says of her film. “You can feel the magic. Knowing that some day, when this is under control, the magic will come back. Because we’ll all come back.”
Brittany Spanos / Rolling Stone / Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Tom Petty’s peers and admirers will celebrate what would’ve been the late rock icon’s 70th birthday with a star-studded virtual festival on Friday.
Set to stream on Petty’s website and on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel, “Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash” will feature performances and appearances by Stevie Nicks, Beck, Adam Sandler, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Eddie Vedder, the Foo Fighters, Jackson Browne, Margo Price and Post Malone, among many others. Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, both of Petty’s long-running band the Heartbreakers, are set to perform as well.
The show, which organizers said will also include previously unseen live footage from Petty and the Heartbreakers, is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Pacific on Friday. Earlier that day, SiriusXM will air a Petty tribute with performances by acts including the Killers, Jason Isbell, the Raconteurs and Kurt Vile.
“Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash” comes three years after Petty’s death from an accidental overdose in Los Angeles in 2017. That year, fans held a birthday celebration in the musician’s hometown of Gainesville, Fla., that became an annual tradition; this year’s installment will take place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the Petty estate said in a statement that it intends to use the show to raise awareness and proceeds for Save Our Stages, which seeks to aid independent concert venues imperiled by the COVID shutdown.
Last week, the estate released a lavish reissue of Petty’s 1994 solo album “Wildflowers,” which the singer’s producer Rick Rubin recently told The Times was Petty’s favorite of his many projects.
Mikael Wood / Los Angeles Times / Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Stevie Nicks bought her first copy of Vogue when she was 25 years old. It was 1973, around the time of Buckingham Nicks, the first and only album she and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham ever released as a duo. Still a few years removed from the fame and fortune that would follow their recruitment into Fleetwood Mac, Nicks was earning just a buck fifty an hour waiting tables in a flapper girl uniform.
“I only had enough money for one magazine at that point, and Vogue was the first one I ever bought,” Nicks recalls. “I would scrape my money together and buy it every month.”
Five decades later, Nicks—who prefers using a landline and doesn’t own a computer—still finds comfort in her lo-fi rituals. “To this day my favorite thing is getting into bed at five o’clock in the morning with a cup of decaf coffee, playing some soft, groovy music, and reading my Vogue,” she tells me. “Me and my little dog Lily pore over every single page for hours, and it’s been that way since 1973.”
Nicks has spent most of the pandemic in her Pacific Palisades home with two close friends and the aforementioned Lily—a Chinese crested who sits dutifully on her owner’s lap during our call. “She has her back turned to me because she doesn’t really wanna be here. I just know she’s plotting her escape,” Nicks says with a raspy giggle. “It’s fine. My feelings aren’t too hurt…well, they are, but I’ll be okay.”
As Fleetwood Mac’s lovelorn frontwoman, Nicks crafted masterworks out of the sex-and-drug-fueled dalliances that almost destroyed the group (documented in real time on their 1977 breakup opus Rumours). Still one of the 10 best-selling albums of all time, Rumours made stars out of its new lineup, but it was always clear from the outset who the breakout was. With three songwriters fighting for space on each record, it wasn’t long before Nicks needed her own outlet.
“They said, ‘You can make your solo album and have a solo trip, but if we go into work, we’re gonna call you,’” she remembers. “‘Terrific, I’ll be there.’ That was always my promise to them.” 1981’s shimmery Bella Donna set the stage for a second career that made Nicks the first woman to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (once with the group in 1998 and by herself just last year).
2020 was originally meant to be a year off from the grueling lifestyle that comes with back-to-back arena tours as both Fleetwood Mac frontwoman and solo enchantress. With just one festival show a month, Nicks would slow down. Then the shows—her headlining slots at Jazz Fest and Governors Ball were early casualties—began to be canceled.
Music venues aren’t predicted to return to full capacity until summer 2021 at the earliest, but this month, Nicks is releasing two projects: 24 Karat Gold: The Concert, a filmed version of her 2017 solo tour, and “Show Them the Way,” her anthemic new single and first piece of original music in six years.
24 Karat Gold: The Concert begins with Nicks sauntering onstage in what’s become her signature all-black uniform: a chiffon wrap blouse, peasant-style skirt, layers of billowy caped jackets, and velvet platform boots. The look may be familiar, but she assures the crowd that nothing else will be: “It’s not the same Stevie Nicks show you’ve seen a million times, because I’m not the same Stevie Nicks you’ve seen a million times.”
Playing at theaters and drive-ins October 21 and 25 (streaming plans TBD; a live CD version is out October 30), the concert film was shot during Nicks’s 2017 24 Karat Gold tour and edited this past May. “At first I didn’t understand why I had to edit any of it. But then I’d listen and there’s always a thing here, a thing there, and a lot of likes,” she laughs. “That’s the Valley Girl in me!”
24 Karat Gold was a new album composed of old material pulled from Nicks’s “gothic trunk of lost songs,” with some dating all the way back to 1969. The tour marked the live debut of those songs and many others from her solo catalogue, including the Wild Heart title track, performed in the same key as a rare live demo that’s become a fan favorite. “I couldn’t have been more thrilled to walk onstage every night and be able to do all these other songs I love, but of course I’ll never get tired of doing ‘Edge of Seventeen’ or ‘Stand Back,’” she says. “Those songs were a part of my life for so long that I would never take that away from people.”
Nicks’s favorite performance in the film is “If You Were My Love,” a ballad written for her solo debut that she cut at the 11th hour. “It’s such a beautiful song and sometimes I just wonder, ‘Where did this come from?’ It breaks my heart when I sing it. You have to sing it in a way where you know people are feeling it,” Nicks says. “I know someone has a tear in their eye because it reminds them of someone they always loved or wanted to be in a relationship with who never knew. I feel that onstage and I see it.”
When I saw the tour the night before Halloween nearly four years ago, the fervor of the attending crowd rivaled that of a Pentecostal gathering. Many were dressed in their own form of Nicks-ian drag: layers of vintage leather, frilly lace, and drapey shawls. A few fortune tellers here, a handful of white winged doves there. A woman I spotted near the stage had even teased her hair to the gods, re-creating the cover look from 1989’s Other Side of the Mirror.
But Nicks had underestimated her own appeal. “We didn’t really have any plans to film anything, because in the beginning we didn’t think it would go beyond 25 shows,” she says. After the first leg sold out, the tour went on to book a total of 67 shows. Filming became a logical business decision. “It kicked me up into the next echelon for my solo career, which is amazing that it would be a tour with all those unfamiliar songs.”
Had Nicks gotten the chance to take the stage at Governors Ball this year, she would’ve shared headlining duties with a slate of artists who weren’t even born when Rumours debuted: Solange, Miley Cyrus, Vampire Weekend, and Tame Impala, who once participated in a Fleetwood Mac tribute album. Chances are one of your favorite artists has covered Nicks or cited her as an influence.
“Our parents would play her records for us in the house constantly, so we’ve been listening to Stevie’s music since we were born,” the Haim sisters shared via email. When Nicks invited the band to her home in 2014 for a T magazine interview, Nicks gifted the trio with gold moon pendants modeled after her own. “We’d heard about them from other friends who’d received them saying that they hold the power of the moon. Stevie said when we meet someone who is in need of healing, it’s our job to give it to them.”
A new single, “Show Them the Way,” is a different kind of gift to her devotees. The single, out now, began life as a dream that occurred while she was in Chicago editing a concert special in 2008. After spending all day in the studio, Nicks would go home and watch the Democratic primaries or marathon documentaries about the civil rights movement. “I was like a student of history,” she recalls.
One night, Nicks had a crystalline vision: She was invited to a political benefit attended by the civil rights luminaries; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led her down a hallway to a ballroom where John Lewis and John F. Kennedy awaited her. “I saw myself walking with Martin Luther King from the back, like I was standing on the other side of myself, and for the rest of my life I will have that burned across my heart,” she says now. “I walked down the hallway with him into that room with the Kennedys, and all the people surrounding the piano said, ‘Play for us.’”
Nicks wrote a poem about her dream and eventually set it to music. Over the years she’d stumble across her handwritten poem and consider tacking it onto a release like 2011’s In Your Dreams. It was just never the right time, she says, until now. Nicks considers “Show Them the Way” a “record unto itself.” One that needed to simmer for 12 years before she felt comfortable sharing it with the world in two versions: the original rock anthem and an acoustic piano ballad.
“When you hear the acoustic version and really know the words it’ll break your heart. At least that’s how it affects me,” she says. “Then I listen to the rock version and think it’s my best song since ‘Edge of Seventeen.’”
The release of the single coincides with Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” charting on the Hot 100 for the first time since 1977 thanks to a recent viral boost from TikToker Nathan Apodaca. A 22-second video of Apodaca gliding down a highway while lip-synching the song in between gulps of cranberry juice provided a feel-good balm for the quarantined masses, with “Dreams” streamed more than 36 million times in the past two weeks alone. Nicks paid homage to the TikTok for her debut post on the platform, spinning the track on vinyl while swapping Apodaca’s skateboard for roller skates.
“I’m not really on the internet. I hate it,” she clarifies. “Taylor Swift talks about all the haters and it’s too much for me. I’m afraid anything I say people will take wrong and I just can’t deal with that.”
Nicks would just rather listen to music anyway. Harry Styles’s Fine Line is a recent favorite, and she loves the new Haim record “to death.” She sings every night, and says dancing around the house to “Show Them the Way” is her “favorite exercise” right now. Nicks takes days to curate cassette mixtapes filled with her favorite songs she hears across the radio, name-checking everyone from Halsey to “the 1978” (sic) as current favorites. “I’ll listen to Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus, then mix generations and put in someone like Mariah Carey,” she elaborates. “Then I’ll throw Harry Styles right into the middle with ‘Watermelon Sugar!’”
Nicks has all but adopted Styles, who knows a thing or two about transitioning from supergroup to solo career. The former One Direction member first met his idol in London at a Fleetwood Mac show that happened to fall on her birthday. Styles piped her name onto a carrot cake and hand-delivered it to Nicks backstage, kicking off an unexpected May December friendship that now seems preordained.
“Stevie means so much more to people than their favorite song, or a concert they went to once,” shares Styles, whom Nicks personally selected to induct her at last year’s Rock Hall ceremony. “Her strength, fearlessness, and openness to feeling is something that leaves you feeling lucky to be on the planet at the same time as her. She inspires you to be bolder, in work, life, and love.”
Nicks can’t wait to perform with Styles again when this is all through. She wants to sing “Show Them the Way” in front of a crowd who’ll hopefully glean some strength from her vulnerability. “There’s a lyric from Mick Jagger that goes, ‘I have my freedom but I don’t have much time,’ and I’ve been saying that to people over the past two or three years,” Nicks says. “I know everybody just thinks I’m the Energizer Bunny, but I’ll be 80 in eight years.”
The state of the world has made music’s most romantic optimist question whether she’ll ever get to twirl across a stage again. “I wanna order this pretty little necklace and I told my assistant, ‘It could go with my stage jewelry…if I ever go onstage again.’ And I’m saying that all the time,” she groans. “Or how something would be perfect for my stage outfit…if we ever travel again.”
Nicks has been taking the pandemic seriously. Her biggest fear is what contracting the virus could do to her overall health but particularly her singing voice. She battled a case of Epstein-Barr virus in pre-lockdown 2020 and was hospitalized with double pneumonia the year before. “I really feel if the country doesn’t come together, we are never going to get rid of this,” she goes on. Nicks has also been posting on Instagram more frequently in recent months, urging her fans to stay inside and wear a mask. “Unlike other people who are continually having rallies and saying it’s fine to go indoors now without masks, we—the music community—give a you-know-what about the future of our industry and would never put anybody in danger.”
In the meantime, she’s hard at work on a multimedia project based on the character of Rhiannon, the “old Welsh witch” who inspired one of Nicks’s most indelible hits. She also wants to turn more of her poetry into music and, eventually, a new solo record. Fleetwood Mac isn’t recording new music anytime soon, but you can count on baby boomers and Gen Z to show up in equal measure for their next tour (whenever that is).
“There’s so many layers to each moment in life,” she says toward the end of our conversation. “I always climb into the next layer of my stories and have to pull it back when I see somebody on the side of the stage waving their hands yelling, ‘No! No! Stop!’” Nicks laughs.
“I’ll just have to tell all my other stories next time.”
Rock’n’roll royalty Stevie Nicks talks to Stellar about her fear of the pandemic, her close friendship with Harry Styles and the pact she made with bandmate Christine McVie at the beginning of their run with Fleetwood Mac.
How are you going in Los Angeles?
I’m as good as you can be in these circumstances. I really have been locked down because I truly believe that should I contract this disease it would kill me, or it would at the very least knock me down so bad I wouldn’t have a career anymore.
And at 72 years old, I may have my freedom but I don’t have much time, as Mick Jagger would say. So, even if this takes another year-and-a-half I’m going to get through this without getting it because I want to go back to work. I want to go back on tour. I want to come back to Australia, for god’s sake!
Your natural space is the stage. How are you handling not performing live for such an extended period of time?
Well, this was meant to be a year off for me, but I was still performing six shows and we probably would have added six more. I do miss it – I don’t feel like myself.
I look at these next six or so years as my last youthful years, when I’m going to feel like putting on six-inch heels and dancing across a stage for the world. Because, really, at some point you have to go, “OK, you’ll be 80 – just exactly how long can you cartwheel across the world?” I don’t have that much time left to be a rock star.
Although you can’t perform now, you’re releasing your most recent solo tour 24 Karat Gold The Concert in cinemas next week, so you’re still managing to keep busy…
Yes, this film was so lovingly made and I’ve also just released a song called ‘Show Them The Way’. These are projects I’m so proud of and in this time of strife for all of us, I’m hoping that both the film and the song might be something that will make people feel better and give them some hope.
I made a video for this song that’s mostly photographs but I shot a small portion of it in my entryway. I put on my boots for a couple of hours and for those hours I felt like myself again. I feel like Cinderella putting on her glass slippers.
At five-foot-seven, I feel incredibly powerful, at five-foot-one in a pair of bedroom slippers or tennis shoes, I don’t feel so powerful.
Is it true that you keep your shawl collection in a vault?
I do, and not just shawls. I have two or three temperature-controlled vaults because I can’t keep clothes that I’ve had since 1976 at my house – there’s just no room. I go into these vaults periodically and pull out something I’m going to wear on a tour that I haven’t worn in, say, 20 years.
There are also lots of skirts and gloves and little tops in there that I wore during the first few years of Fleetwood Mac. Some day, when I actually stop touring, I’ll give a lot of stuff to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame over here, and maybe someday I’ll do a museum show of all this.
Speaking of the Hall of Fame, last year you were inducted as a solo artist. Of all the artists you’ve worked with and known over the course of your career, why was Harry Styles your pick to introduce you?
What really made me choose Harry is that he’s so funny and so well spoken, and also that we’re just such good friends. I knew he would really delve into my history and that he’d put it together beautifully, because he’s a songwriter and he could tell my story.
I thought that of all the people who would get a kick out of me being the first woman in the world to go into the Hall of Fame, it would be Harry. And I’m so glad I did because he was hysterical, but he was also able to tell everybody who I really am behind the shawl.
You’ve been coming to Australia as a solo artist as well as with Fleetwood Mac for many years. What stands out as a special memory?
I have some very good friends in Sydney, including my best friend, Margaret. She’s in her 90s now and I’ve known her for 15 years. I walked into her store and I found a doll that I’d been looking for all over the world, then I found her.
She’s like a second mum to me. I haven’t called her in many months, though, so I’m sure she’s mad at me! But my best memories are from the times I’ve got to take her and her daughters all over Australia.
What’s one thing you think every woman should experience before they die?
Being treated as though they’re not a second-class citizen. My mother drilled the message of equality into my head when I was growing up. She was lovingly strict and back then I thought she went a little overboard, but now I’m so glad she raised me the way she did.
Christine McVie and I made a pact at the very beginning of Fleetwood Mac that we’d never stand in a room full of famous rock’n’roll guitarists and be treated like we weren’t as good as them. And if we were treated that way, we’d just get up, walk out, turn around and say, “This party is over.”
Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert will be in cinemas on 21 and 25 Oct. Find your screening at stevienicksfilm.com. The 2CD & digital/streaming releases will be available on 30 Oct.
Bree Player / Stellar Magazine (Australia) / Saturday, October 17, 2020
Stevie Nicks on how she wrote ‘Dreams,’ her signature style, book plans and not being able to tour: ‘This virus has stolen time from me’
To describe Stevie Nicks as a woman of many words — fascinating words — is a massive understatement. Whether it’s in the cosmic lyrics to classic songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (which is a bigger hit than ever, thanks to Nathan Apodaca’s TikTok skateboarding video); her eloquent, journal-like social media posts; her new fever-dreaming comeback single, “Show Them the Way”; or her utterly unfiltered interviews like the one below, Nicks is a brilliant thinker, a consummate storyteller and an absolute icon.
Leading up to the release of her film Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert — which will run for two nights only, on Oct. 21 and 25, at select cinemas, drive-ins and exhibition spaces around the world — Yahoo Entertainment spoke at length with the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee about the secret “magic room” where she conjured “Dreams” in 1975, how she came up with her signature look, her friendship with Harry Styles, her admiration for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, why she’s happy being single, her COVID-era fears about never being able to perform onstage again and her hopes of compiling all her wonderful words into a book one day.
Yahoo Entertainment: Lately, you’ve been writing some very beautiful, heartfelt things on social media, almost like essays. And one that really struck me was you were expressing your fears about being able to return to doing what you love, which is performing live. It must be bittersweet to be releasing a concert film in the middle of a time when there are pretty much no concerts happening at all.
Stevie Nicks: Well, first of all, last February I had a talk on the phone with my friend Harry Styles — I call him “H” — about when we could perform together again, because I had just sung with him at the Forum, and it was so much fun. And he said to me, in all of his 26-years-old-ness, “Stevie, I think it’s going to be a long time before we can walk onstage again. I don’t think that we will walk onstage again until the end of 2021, and maybe not until 2022.” And now I’m like, “Oh my God, this man is more psychic than I am!” Damn, if he wasn’t right. So the thing is, is that, are we sad? Yes, we’re devastated. I turn the television on for 15 minutes and it’s showing every single state and the upticks in every single state, still going up. Like, what the hell? This is terrible. We were hoping that by this time we would be at least getting closer to being able to go back out and at least do outdoor festivals. But you know what? We’re not Donald Trump. We can’t put people in danger, and we never will put people in danger because of that. We’re not going to take people into a big venue like the Forum and take the chance that they’re all going to come down with this virus in six weeks. So, honestly, I don’t know what the future holds.
As soon as I found out about [the coronavirus], I said to the world and to God and to everybody else: “Listen, I’m not getting this. I am not going to get those little blood clots that form in everybody’s organs. I am not going to have a stroke. I am not going to have a heart attack. I’m not going to have brain fog for the next five years of my life. I am not going to be made into an invalid at 72 years old.” So I have, like, put a thin plastic shield of magic safety around me, and I’m really super-careful. I immediately started out that way, stomping my foot and saying, “Not me!” … For me, as a 72-year-old woman, I feel like this is the last six or seven of what I call the useful years of my life, and I think this virus has stolen time from me. And that really makes me angry, because I thought I took pretty good care of myself, my whole life — I mean, I got to 72 and I’m still wearing six-inch heels, and I can still get away with wearing a short chiffon skirt onstage if I want. And now, guess what? You’re slammed into a house for two years and you can’t go out and you can’t do anything. How could this have happened? How in the world did we get here?
Speaking of social media, on the happier side of things, do you think that is why Nathan Apodaca and the “Dreams” challenge connected so widely right now? Obviously you won that challenge with your roller-skate video, but TikTok is flooded with people lip-syncing to songs. And yet, Nathan’s clip just exploded.
People needed a little bit of magic. I think it’s a little bit of magic. You know, “Dreams” really came right out of my R&B heart in 1975. And this is a story that nobody actually really knows. … When we recorded “Dreams,” we were up at the Record Plant in San Francisco and were almost done with the 12 demos. Everybody was working on something else in the main studio, and I had this idea. I was kind of wandering around the studio, looking for somewhere where I could curl up with my Fender Rhodes and my lyrics and a little cassette tape recorder. And this guy who I didn’t even know said, “Are you looking for a place to go and play?” I said, “I am. I have a song in my head and I want to record it.” And he said, “OK, now, you can never tell anybody, but I have a place where you can go.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, a magic room! Oh my God, I’ll never tell anybody.”
And so we went down the hallway and he takes a key and opens this door, and there is this full-on studio that none of us ever knew existed in this building — and we’d been there for like three months! I walk in and it’s a big studio with a sunken circular shape, actually like a lighthouse, like a circle, and there’s keyboards all around, a bunch of keyboards that went down this tunnel kind of thing. And then over to the side was this big half-moon circular bed with all black and red velvet. It sounds a little garish, but it was actually beautiful. And I said, “What is this?” And he said, “This is Sly Stone’s studio.” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? The Sly Stone? He wouldn’t care that I was in here?” And he goes, “I don’t think he’d care. He gave me the key. So you can stay in here as long as you want.” So I got up on that bed and sat there and just kind of vibed out for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I just started playing — and I started playing “Dreams.” And within about 20 minutes, it was written and recorded — I mean, super-simply, but nevertheless, I thought, “Thank you, Sly Stone and the spirits of Sly Stone and all of your band.” And so I walked out back down the hallway and I walked into Fleetwood Mac’s studio, and I said, “Listen up, everybody. I think I have something that you want to hear.” I played them a little recording of “Dreams,” and we recorded that song that night.
Wow. That’s so cool. Obviously that song is making the rounds right now because of the cranberry juice video, but I’ve always associated it with another viral video: When Lucy Lawless played you on Saturday Night Live, running a Mexican restaurant.
[laughs] The crazy thing is my mom probably made the best Mexican food in the whole world because we lived in El Paso, Texas, for five years — between the third grade and the eighth grade, that was a long time — and she learned to make the most amazing Mexican food. And she also told me that when she was pregnant with me, the only thing that she could keep down was enchiladas. So I’m like, “OK, Lucy Lawless, you’ve done it. You have psychically seen into something in my family.” I thought that was great. I mean, I’m always flattered when people take my songs and use them for something, you know, because that’s what they’re written for. They’re not just written to be sung onstage. They’re written to be carried with you and pulled out whenever you want them, to use for whatever you want. … A song could go far and wide and just belong to everybody. Once you let it go, once you put it out there, it’s like a baby. Once you let that child go, you no longer have a lot to say about it. It goes where it wants.
You say you’re always flattered when people in pop culture reference your songs or imitate you, so I assume you are aware of the Night of 1,000 Stevies annual drag/club events?
Oh, I am, I am!
Have you ever considered sneaking in — like, infiltrating it?
I’ve totally thought about it. I’d really been thinking about it like lately before this whole [pandemic] happened. I always thought how fun it would be to actually really disguise myself — like be me, but look like a bad rendition of Stevie Nicks, so that I could really actually be anonymous and just be walking around and just be talking to everybody. … And then at the very end, I’d just walk out onstage to a track of “Edge of Seventeen” and just launch into that song and everybody would all of a sudden stop and look up and freak out. You never know. I can show up at any time.
That would be amazing. Lady Gaga actually pulled a stunt like that on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Would you ever do that show?
I wouldn’t not consider it. Doing TV is not my very favorite thing, because you don’t have much control over it, and at 72 years old I’m always worried about the way people film you. You get a little bit more weirded out about that as you get older. But it’s not that I wouldn’t love to do that show, and it’s not that I might not do it. I mean, the older I get, I’m also more up for a new adventure than I was, say, 10 years ago. Maybe that’s what happens when you get older too, that you just go, like, “Yeah, sure. I’ll do it.”
People would go nuts! So, how did you develop your style? Because a lot of rock and pop stars, they’re more chameleon-like, but you have a very signature style. Everyone knows what the “Stevie Nicks look” is.
In the beginning, I went on the first Fleetwood Mac tour, which lasted about three months. … I had never done a tour, so I ended up leaving with just the few things that I had bought here and there, my normal s***ty clothes that I’d had for the last five years. I did have a friend that actually made me a couple pairs of really slinky bellbottom pants, like Janis Joplin pants, and some little tops that went with them. But the fact that [Lindsey Buckingham and I] had been pretty much starving for so long, we were really skinny. I was like, 105 pounds skinny. And so we get on the road and there’s room service. And so, guess what? We ordered room service and we ate and ate. I gained about 15 pounds in two weeks and all those clothes that I took didn’t fit, and there was nothing I could do. So when I got home from that tour, I met somebody who knew a designer, and her name was Margi Kent. She had little rhinestones under each of her eyebrows and hair her down to her knees almost. So I met Margi and I said, “Listen, this is what I want to look like.” And I drew a stick-girl with a little velvet riding jacket and a little skirt with little points. I said, “I want to look a waif in a Charles Dickens story.” I also wanted really heavy-duty, beautiful platforms, so they would be comfortable. I wanted two skirts and two jackets, one with long chiffon Rhiannon sleeves and one with normal velvet sleeves. I said, “That’s all I want. And I want two sets.”
What I wanted was a uniform. I didn’t want to have to think about what I’m going to wear. I just wanted to go, “It’s time to get dressed” and have that stuff hanging in the bathroom. And that’s how it started. And I looked at myself in the mirror when I put it on and I thought, “This is the best you’re going to ever look. So there is no reason to ever change this. You’re 28 years old. When you’re 60, this is still going to look good on you, unless you’ve gotten really fat. You can stay in black, because black is slimmer, so just never change into color because that won’t work.” And that’s what I did. I stayed in basically the same outfit and Margi just updated it every two or three years. I am still wearing jackets that were made 20 years ago, because they were made so well that they never wear out. They never look old. So that’s really it. I realized when I looked at that outfit, that it would last forever. … I can take one of my outfits from any size, all the way back to the beginning where I weighed like 110 pounds, and I can put that outfit on any of my goddaughters that are tiny or the ones that are 30 or the ones that are 40. Every once in a while, I’ll let them play dress-up in my outfits. And it’s like, it’s not just me. Everyone looks good in my outfit.
I’m curious though, that when you went with that original sketch to Margi and you had this very clear vision, where did that come from?
It was very specific, huh? I think that it did come from somewhere between Oliver Twist and Great Expectations and those kinds of stories that I read and love, even like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, those kinds of fairytale books. Those heroines were definitely specific in what they wore. But OK, I did see somebody kind of in that outfit. At one point when Lindsey and I did these four shows, we went to the Santa Monica Civic, and there was a girl that walked by and she was kind of in that outfit that I do, except it was a kind of mauve-y pink. She had cream-colored boots on and the pink skirt and a little jacket and her hair was all done up like a Gibson Girl with a button thing on her head, and I just thought, “Oh my God, if I ever, ever have any money, that’s what I want to look like.” That was 1969. So I remembered that girl years later. I remembered her kind of floating by me.
I wonder if she will ever know that she inspired you. It wasn’t a famous woman, right?
No, it was just some girl who looked really special. Like she was like really somebody.
Back on the subject of your social media posts, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, you wrote the most amazing tribute on your Instagram. It had me in tears. What inspired you to write something so lengthy and passionate?
You know, I definitely lived through the time when we were fighting for all that stuff. I was also in a family where I had a very, very strong mom who wanted me to be very independent and was wanting me to have my own choice on everything. … I remember women trying to find a way to get an abortion. I remember women going to Mexico and going to the back alleys. I mean, obviously that never happened to me, but I heard about it and I was horrified. And so when Roe v. Wade was passed, I was like, “Thank God that this has now been put back in the women’s hands, because each one of us should have the right to do what we want with their own body.” If you have a sick baby growing in your stomach and you can’t afford that sick baby, and you already have three others, I think that only you as the woman who is the mom can make that decision on what to do. It’s so not fair to put that decision in the hands of the government. And I so wish that Ruth — I do call her Ruth — had somehow made it up to this election, up to like a couple of weeks after the election. Because I think that this new judge [Amy Coney Barrett] is being set up to change everything. And if she does, we are all going be in a big heap of trouble.
I do love your posts, even the very sad ones. I would seriously love to read an essay every day.
I’m trying to actually write more than I used to, like with a pen and paper, and explain things. … Like, when I wrote about [COVID-19] being like American Horror Story and the black Victorian carriage with the beautiful, noble, but dying horses that would come for you if you get this virus — what I wanted to do there was put a face on the violence, so people would maybe start to think about this deadly virus as that carriage. When I write something, I really try to make it more understandable, in a more poetic way. But I have been keeping a big, leather-bound journal that’s as big as a coffee-table book since I can remember. And in this specific leather journal that I use right now, I’ve been keeping those journals since probably 1995. I have a truckload of them. … I try to write beautifully so that when I die, all of these journals will be left to all my goddaughters, my nieces, these young women that will take care of these journals, and we’ll publish all the things that they feel should go out. I might even be able to do some of that myself. … I am learning that people do like reading these things, after the few things that I posted. Like, I had to write something about Tom Petty last night. I was just supposed to talk on a tape recorder, but I said, “I can’t do that. I’ll just go off on some kind of tirade. Let me just sit and write it.” And it came out really beautiful, because I had written it. Tom’s family is really super-happy with it, because it was a moment in time that I wrote about with me and Tom. So I am getting to the point now where I’m picking up my pen and really writing stuff that I’m allowing to go out, because I’m starting to realize that a lot of people actually would like to see more writing. And I didn’t really know that before, because I never really put anything out.
Would you ever consider turning these writings into a book?
I am thinking about making a book, like a coffee-table book with my drawings, with a drawing on one side and then poetry and journal entries. I think it would be a really beautiful book, if I can get some help from all of my girlfriends who have been watching me write in these journals every night for a hundred years to sit and help me go through them all and pull out the pieces. I don’t really want to write a “book about Stevie Nicks,” an autobiography. But to put out the vignettes of my life, the great things, the great romantic moments … the really hard moments, the really sad moments, those things I’m not so up on putting out, the terribly awful things. Like, do I want to write a bunch of stuff about doing drugs? Not really. Go back and read all my interviews, if you want to hear about that, because it’s all out there. The things that I would want in that book would be the things that people don’t know about, but would love to hear. I know you would love to hear them.
I sure would! You say you wouldn’t want to do a straight autobiography, but I am sure you have been approached about a biopic, or a Fleetwood Mac movie.
[A Fleetwood Mac biopic] would be very, very hard to do now. I’ve always said I never wanted to make a movie about Fleetwood Mac. … You have to get everybody in Fleetwood Mac involved, and that would really not be easy, because everybody in Fleetwood Mac would have a different idea. “No, no, you can’t do it that way!” And then another person would be saying, “I think that your ideas totally suck, and this is what it should be!” It would be very hard. You’d have to have a mediator in there, keeping everybody from each other’s throats to actually work it out. So it’s a mystery to me, to quote a Fleetwood Mac record. But who knows what the future has to hold? Sometimes you make these like blanket statements of “I’ll never do that,” and then two years later, the right person comes to you and talks to you about it and you’re like, “OK, that actually sounds kind of good.”
You said if you did any sort of book, you’d focus on the positive, and you mentioned “great romantic moments.” You’ve had some high-profile relationships, but many men are threatened by women who are as strong as you, the way your mother raised you. That’s something I’ve definitely experienced in my life, in my own way. Why do you think this is?
Because I think that if you are really strong and you have a great job, then… like, what is your last name?
Parker.
Well, no guy wants to be “Mr. Parker.” And nobody wants to be “Mr. Nicks,” either. I have had a few boys that actually were really lovely and actually totally enjoyed my crazy life and and my crazy girlfriends and thought what I did was fantastic and were never jealous of me. And that’s the kind of man that we would want, but they’re far and few between. They do exist. They’re out there. It’s just finding somebody like that. It’s very, very hard. And when I actually did find a couple of guys like that, a long time ago, maybe if I had decided that I just going to stick with this one guy, I might’ve actually had a happy husband, somebody that I really was well-suited for. But I was so busy all those years, moving, moving, moving, always leaving and always on the road. And that was hard for the nicest and most understanding of men. It was like, “So, how long are you going to be gone?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. It could be six months, it could be a year, depending on how this record does. I honestly can’t tell you.” And then you drive away in a limousine and they’re like, “That so sucks.” And you can’t blame them, really.
I’m 72. It’s not that I’m not feeling romantic, because I can still sit down and write a really good love song. I always have hope. I always think, “Maybe around the next corner might be that perfect person who’s going to be your person.” But I’m not looking for it, and I don’t expect it to happen. But not in a bad way. I would be surprised and happy, but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life waiting to walk around that specific corner either. We’re women, and if we want to rule the world — which we do! — we kind of just have to take everything as it comes and be happy with what we have. I’m pretty happy. I have a good job. I have the most amazing dog. I have a lot of great friends. I love my music. I love my job. And I know a lot of people that are married and they’re not happy. They have kids, and they’re not happy. So I wouldn’t trade with them for anything, you know? I think that maybe most of us who really search for what we want, kind of get what we want in the end. There’s a few things we miss out on, but basically in the long run, it’s pretty great.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I think probably being the first woman to go into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for my own work — going in as Stevie Nicks last year, after already being inducted with Fleetwood Mac in 1998. That was probably my proudest moment, because there were 22 men that were in twice for their solo work and for being in bands, and then there were no women. So, now there’s one woman. And it is me. I feel like I broke a glass ceiling there and let it rain on all those guys who thought there’d never be a woman that would go in twice. That was one of the most fun nights of my whole life.
As you’ve mentioned, you have a real kinship with Harry Styles, who inducted you at the ceremony and performed with you that night. What other young artists do you admire?
I love HAIM, and I think their new record [Women in Music Pt. III] is exactly the record that I wanted them to make. I listened to it probably a hundred-thousand times when it came out. When I heard their record, I sent them this little video of me and my dog, Lily, squawking around listening to their record. I think their album is spectacular. I love Miley Cyrus; I love that she saw into “Edge of Seventeen” and it inspired “Midnight Sky.” She called me and asked me if she could use it, and I said, “Take it. I’m so happy that you were inspired by it. It’s fine with me.” I also really like Halsey, because she’s kind of crazy and weird and I just really like her for that. I really listen to all the current stuff. … So I think that music is in good shape. If only everybody can hang on and we can get ahead of [the coronavirus]. If we could get just get back to being able to play for people. We’re never going to get rid of this, this is never going to go away, if everybody doesn’t get in the game.
In the meantime, we have your concert film coming out, but also your first new song in six years, “Show Them the Way.” I know you wrote it many years ago, but that song is so perfect for right now.
I had the best time making “Show Them the Way.” I’m so proud of it. Putting that together made me go, “Wow, if we’ve got another year of this — and please, God, say I’m wrong — then maybe I might just make another record, like soon.” I might just start on something else, because it’s been really fun and I’ve really enjoyed it. Once again, I would like to say how proud I am of “Show Them the Way” because I did hold it back for almost 13 years, and then I thought I wanted it out three weeks before this election, hoping that it might become like a theme song — something that maybe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could play, something that was written for all the people that are running to take this country back. It’s the first time that I’ve really written a song that was not just a really good song, but it was a really good song with a purpose. And so I’m hoping that they keep playing it, and then it actually does what I sent it out into the world to do.
Lyndsey Parker / Yahoo Music / Saturday, October 17, 2020
On the eve of her new concert film, the Fleetwood Mac singer talks new solo material, Trump’s response to COVID-19 and the chances of a ‘Rumours’-era reunion
Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down. When Fleetwood Mac concluded their year-long world tour at the end of 2019, the 72-year-old singer songwriter decamped to her Santa Monica home with the intention of taking the year off from touring. Like the rest of us, she didn’t expect to be holed-up for quite so long. “I’ve been quarantined solid since March,” Nicks tells NME. “I figured that I’d probably do about ten gigs and then I was just going to work on a miniseries for Rhiannon but then the door slams and we have a pandemic.”
Out of these dark days, Nicks has kept a busy schedule. ‘Show Them The Way’, worked upon remotely with the help of Dave Grohl, is her first single in six years. She has also helped produce 24 Karat Gold The Concert, a spellbinding concert film from the 2016/7 tour of the same name, which in cinemas for two nights later this month featuring staples such as ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ alongside unreleased gems and deep cuts.
Whilst a viral TikTok video may have drawn headlines and pushed her song ‘Dreams’ back into the charts recently, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had other things on her mind when we caught up with her, including her issues with Trump, the lost ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album and why she is fatalistic if ‘Rumours’–era Fleetwood Mac are to never play together again.
Your first single for six years and the 24 Karat Gold The Concert film – this is turning into a very busy time for you…
“In a million years, I never thought I’d have two projects coming out within two weeks of each other. It’s been a lot of work over the last two months, let me tell you. I’m pretty excited and really proud of everything. I think the film is the closest anyone is going to get to a real, serious concert until the pandemic is over. And I think the song is ‘right now’ with what’s going on in our country. Our country is so divisive. We have gone back so far. It is very sad and very scary.”
You have been openly critical of the US administration’s response to COVID-19. You tweeted that ‘Nobody is leading us. Nobody has a plan.’ You called it ‘a tragedy’ and ‘a real American Horror Story’.
“You know that our President and his wife contracted the virus? It’s like, ‘wear your mask’, you know? It’s a simple thing to ask. Just wear your mask. Especially if you’re the President of the United States. It’s pretty simple. We’ve been told again and again and again that it’s incredibly contagious. I don’t take any chances. Nobody in my world does. For me, as a singer, if I get it and I get that terrible cough that never goes away; if it attacks my lungs and I don’t have my lung power anymore it would kill me. It would destroy my career.”
Do you feel that Trump been irresponsible?
“I think if you don’t wear a mask you’re irresponsible. I’m very sorry that he got it – I’m not saying anything like that – but he never wears a mask. Nobody in his circle does. And now they’ve all got it. It really proves something to the people in the US who view it as some political thing. Well, guess what? It’s not political. It’s dangerous and it’s contagious. But he [Trump] had to get it to know that? He couldn’t listen to the science? He couldn’t listen to all the doctors who probably said in private, ‘you need to take care of yourself and wear your mask’?”
Why do you think he hasn’t listened to the scientists?
“I think he just thinks he knows better. But what is he going to say now? This is like telling your children to be careful when they go out and then they don’t come home one night. All you can do is tell people and whether they listen or not is up to them. But that’s not my problem. I’m very sorry that they got it. But they knew better.”
You have a reputation for being forthcoming and open in interviews. I presume this is what you’re like in all aspects of your life?
“It’s the only way I can really be. I know that comes from my mum. I just am who I am. I know that sometimes my honesty is a lot for people and that it pushes some away, but if you can’t hear the truth then I can’t really hang out with you!”
In 24 Karat Gold The Concert, you detail difficulties you had making 1983’s ‘The Wild Heart’. You say you were ‘arrogant’ and ‘less of a team player’ than you were on your solo debut, ‘Bella Donna’. Why so?
“‘Bella Donna’ took three months to make. It was the first record in a solo career and I was not stupid enough to waste time and spend too much money. No self-indulgence. Then, after ‘Bella Donna’, I made ‘Mirage’ with Fleetwood Mac. That took a year and we went on tour for about another year. ‘Mirage’ was a big record and had a tonne of singles on it and so, when I came back, I was different. I could not consider myself a cleaning lady and a waitress anymore.”
How did this affect the recording of ‘The Wild Heart’?
“When I walked into the studio I was much more confident. I can call it arrogance or I can call it confidence. It was somewhere in between the two. I was much stronger in my ideas. For example, I wanted to produce. I just wanted to be more involved than I was during the first album. When I look back on that now, that was just me growing as an artist. I didn’t want it all done for me. ‘The Wild Heart’ was different. It needed to be different. Much like how, after ‘Rumours’, we [Fleetwood Mac] made ‘Tusk’ because we didn’t want to do ‘Rumours’ over. Even though the record company said we needed to, we just said, ‘We can’t do it.’”
Was your second album a personal turning point?
“‘Bella Donna’ kicked off my solo career but as I walked away from ‘The Wild Heart’ everybody knew that I had arrived as a solo artist. I was not going to just say, ‘That was fun’ and go back to Fleetwood Mac. I was going to be able to handle being in both bands. When Fleetwood Mac took vacations, I could go and make a solo album and tour. And then go back again. It worked out great for a Gemini: I had two worlds. Never a boring moment.”
Were you ever conflicted about offering songs to Fleetwood Mac rather than keeping them for yourself?
“No, I was never selfish with the songs. If I had ten songs that I had written, I would sit at the piano and play all ten for Fleetwood Mac. I would let them choose because if they chose the songs then they were going to be good. If I tried to shove songs down their throat, they weren’t going to be good. Who they go to is fine by me. It’s never been a problem. It kinda works itself out. The songs that are supposed to be on the record that you’re doing at the time jump out. And the ones that aren’t right for that particular time don’t.”
“Lindsey and I haven’t had any communication since his heart attack. If it’s ever meant to happen, it will”
Thinking of the revelations springing from the #MeToo movement, did you ever experience any difficulties of that kind over the years?
“Honestly… in Fleetwood Mac, Christine [McVie] and I were a force of nature. In the first two months I was in the band, Chris and I made a pact that we would never be in a room full of famous English or American guitar players and be treated like second class citizens. If we weren’t respected, we would say, ‘this party’s over.’ We have stayed true to that our entire career.
In my own career, I didn’t have Christine but I had Lori Nicks and Sharon Celani. My [backing] singers and my best friends. We wanted to be Crosby, Stills and Nash! Sometime we would try not to make my voice louder than theirs, so that we could have that three-part [harmony] going on. I had my girls: the three of us. They were my sound. Together, we were also very much like, ‘don’t mess with us, because we’re really good, we’re talented and we’re really nice women. If you don’t treat us the way we feel that we should be treated we won’t work with you.’”
Was the need for a pact, or strength in numbers, necessary because you witnessed mistreatment, or worse, directly?
“Sometimes I saw women treated in a way that I didn’t think was great. At 72 years old, I am totally behind MeToo. I support all those women, totally. I joined a famous band in 1975. I didn’t have to move to Los Angeles by myself and try to find a job in a band or try to find something to do with music all alone. I didn’t have to do what women who move to LA to be an actress have to do. I had a team behind me immediately. When I was with Lindsey [Buckingham], I had him. I was never out there alone having to talk to producers or men who were going to try and take advantage of me. I’m really lucky. It’s really unfortunate that most women in showbusiness do experience that, but I seem to have skated through it.”
The film features ‘Cryin’ in the Night’ from 1973’s ‘Buckingham Nicks’. This album has never been released in the CD era and beyond. Due to your fall-out are we further away than ever from a release?
“I don’t know. I think it should be released. It should just be polished up a little bit. I don’t think it should be remixed. I think it should just go out the way it was mixed when we released it. I hope it happens. Owning ‘Buckingham Nicks’ between me and Lindsey is like owning an old Mercedes. One person says, ‘let’s release it!’ and the other person goes, ‘I don’t wanna let it go.’ And then three years later it’s the other way around. That’s what’s been happening with ‘Buckingham Nicks’ since 1975!”
Have you heard back from Lindsey since you sent him a note following his heart attack last year?
“The heart attack was serious. All of us in Fleetwood Mac wrote to him and told him that he’d better get well. Being an ex-girlfriend, I wrote more than that. I said, ‘you’d better stay well and you’d take care of yourself’. The same old thing, right? But we haven’t had any communication. It’s OK. If it’s ever meant to happen, it will. If we’re meant to communicate ever again, we will. It’s not happening right now.”
Did he acknowledge the letter though?
“He’s acknowledged it, yeah. He wrote a kind of group letter to us all. None of us have had any communication with him since. You know, it lasted 43 years, so we had a really, really good run.”
Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert 2CD & digital/streaming releases will be available on 30 Oct.
