STEVIE NICKS INFO

Category: Icon/Style

  • Stevie Nicks talks gays, ‘Glee’ controversy, losing weight…with her own music?

    By Chris Azzopardi
    Pride Source (Issue 1918 – Between The Lines News)
    May 5, 2011

    Ten years have passed since Stevie Nicks released her last solo album, but she’s still the same gay-loved goddess of earthy rock she built her legend on. The new release, In Your Dreams, is exactly how the gypsy queen left us — with that uniform sense of mystical otherworldliness that’s made Nicks a go-her-own-way virtuoso since her days with Fleetwood Mac. White horses, vampire tales and ethereal love parables all seep into this set, Nick’s first all-new studio project after reuniting with Fleetwood Mac for 2003’s Say You Will.

    Nicks recently spoke with us about taking a trip to “the magical world of fairies and angels,” the dress drag queens love, and how her own music motivated her to lose a dozen pounds.

    Why did it take so long to release another solo album?

    Even though I haven’t made another solo record in 10 years, I’ve been making music solid since Trouble in Shangri-La. I came off the road from 135 shows in 2005 with Fleetwood Mac and was going to make a record, and the business people around me said, “We don’t think you should do it because the music business is in chaos” — you know, with Internet piracy, which was really hitting us in the face in 2005 — “and it’s just going to be a really emotional pull on you. We don’t think you should do it. Tour while you can, do big shows and sell lots of tickets, that’s what you can do.” And I just was stupid enough to kind of go, “OK.”

    When did you wise up?

    At the end of the Fleetwood Mac tour in 2009. We were in Australia, and I wrote the “Moonlight” song (from “In Your Dreams”) there, and when I got done with that song — I started it in Melbourne and I finished it in Brisbane — there was a piano. I stood up and I said to my assistant, “I’m ready to make a record now.”

    What was it like recording “In Your Dreams”?

    The whole year of recording this record was like this magical mystery tour that we did at my house. We recorded the whole thing at my house and (the Eurythmics’) Dave Stewart, and his entourage were there every day, and my girls and everybody were there every day. It was just a fantastic experience. We started in February and ended in December, and when it was over I was heartbroken. I didn’t want it to ever end.

    The concept of the video for the first single, “Secret Love,” is intriguing — it merges your older self with your younger self. How do you feel now versus then?

    That’s why the little girl that’s in the video, Kelly, is wearing the green outfit that was my first colored outfit made in 1976, 1977 — that’s when my designer, Margi Kent, started making my clothes. But my outfits were black, and that’s one of the only colored ones she made; it’s a kind of tie-dyed green outfit. The little girl that’s playing me, she’s 15 and she’s one of my goddaughters, she, like, fits into this and we’re looking at her going, “Oh my god, we were that tiny!”

    But anyway, that’s what I wanted. I wanted Kelly to be the 25-year-old Stevie, and then there’s the older Stevie. That song was written in 1975, so I wanted the spirits to blend. That’s why you see her leaving the white horse and then you see me leaving the white horse and then we’re both together, because in my dreams as a little girl that white horse was very important.

    That horse was so beautiful. (While shooting the video) we looked down out of my bedroom window and saw this horse — and there was a fog machine on and the actual sun was coming through all the evergreens in my backyard — and I was like, “That can’t possibly be real.” If that horse had a horn you would’ve thought, “OK, I’ve died and gone to fairyland,” because it was so, so mystical and so real in its magicness. This horse was like Guinevere.

    Let’s talk about those fairies, because you know a lot of gays adore you.

    I know. I’m glad. All these visions that I see, I love when people get them. Sometimes people don’t get it, you know, and I love when people do, because I think that everybody needs to move into that magical world sometimes. A lot of people do not ever move into the magical land of fairies and angels and they just live in the hardcore miserable world that this world is right now. It’s chaotic, horrible, there’s nothing we can do — it’s such a bummer.

    I can do benefits and go to Africa, but the reason I make music — the reason I’ve always made music — was to try to just make a record of songs that makes everybody, for an hour a day, feel better. We can all stay friends and we can all be in this world and we can rise above everything else for a minute. And that’s really the only reason I wanted to make music.

    When did you know you were a gay icon?

    When “Night of a Thousand Stevies” (a New York City-based salute to Stevie Nicks featuring impersonators) started happening 20 years ago, it was a clue. And you know, I always felt it was because I was not a fashion statement like Madonna was. I’m very different than her; she’s very chameleon-esque. That little outfit that Kelly is wearing is exactly the same as the black outfit I have on in the video. The eye makeup she has on is the makeup that I’ve been wearing since high school. I don’t change much.

    Right. You stay very true to yourself, and I think a lot of gay people can admire that because we strive for that, too.

    I do, and I think that brings a little bit of comfort to my audience. I still have the two girls singing with me, because I love them and they’re my dear friends. But I could’ve been changing background singers every year, and I chose to stay with Sharon (Celani) and Lori (Nicks) because the sound of the three of us is comforting to my audience. And those clothes are comforting to my audience.

    Any impersonators stand out to you?

    Well, I just think it’s very fun to see. When I was wearing my beautiful white Morgane Le Fay dress and my black velvet jacket, that dress just took off. I noticed how popular that dress was from the impersonators. (Laughs) I was laughing, and Morgane Le Fay was just tickled pink. So every time I’d do a little change, like in the “Secret Love” video with the long floor-length, we’re laughing — Lori and Sharon and I are laughing going, “We’re single-handedly going to bring back the Victorian ball gown.” There’s a whole new fashion statement coming out of the three or four or more videos that will come from this record, where we really stayed very Victorian.

    Drag queens will be all about that, you know.

    Yeah — I love it!

    “Glee” recently dedicated an entire episode to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album. How do you feel about having your work on a show that’s been so controversial regarding using other artists’ songs?

    You know, I went down there when they were doing “Landslide” and I stayed there for six hours and watched them film the whole thing. I watched Gwyneth (Paltrow) and Brittany (Heather Morris) and Santana (Naya Rivera) sing the song 50 times, and I had such a good time. What I was very touched by was that Lea Michele, who plays Rachel, said to me, “You know, in all the big songs that we’ve done, which is many, nobody’s ever called us or come down or even written a note thanking us for doing ‘Jessie’s Girl’ or a Journey song.” They do such great versions of all these songs; the original writers cannot fault them. They’re magnificent — every one of them. And she goes, “Nobody except you has ever come down and told us that they thought we were doing a good job.” And I thought that was so sad. Very, very disrespectful.

    As someone whose music has spanned many generations, how does it feel working with a new generation of performers — like the “Glee” cast or, for instance, Taylor Swift at the Grammys?

    I love that. A lot of the songs they love are songs that I wrote when I was really young. “Landslide” was written in 1973; I was 27. I may sing it now at 62, but I was 27 when I wrote that song. It’s not like they love a song that was written by a 62-year-old woman. They love a song that was written by a 27-year-old girl.

    So I’m thrilled, and I don’t write any differently now than I did when I was 27. I just go to the piano — inspired by something that happens to me — with a cup of tea, incense burning and the fire in the fireplace.

    Was your muse for “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” which was “Twilight”-inspired, Taylor Lautner’s abs?

    No. It’s nothing about him at all. The first and third verses were written about me and Lindsey (Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac) in 1976; the second verse and the chorus were written about Bella and Edward. It really is an amazing blend — an ancient story blending Lindsey, Stevie, Bella and Edward, and everything in between. It’s my favorite. And by the way, I have listened to “Secret Love” and “A Vampire’s Dream” for the last two-and-a-half months and I’ve lost 12-and-a-half pounds just from treadmilling to “Secret Love” and “A Vampire’s Dream.”

    No way. You treadmill to your own music?

    Way! And I have never gotten tired of either of those songs. I’ve just been listening to those two songs for two-and-a-half solid months, and I am thinner than I’ve been since 1989. I really attribute it all to those two songs.

  • Still dressing for Stevie

    Still dressing for Stevie

    STEVIE NICKS is the consummate tease. Fanning out her arms, which are veiled, as always, in chiffon, she seems about to fold her audience into an embrace. Yet when she turns away, raising those arms in a priestess-like gesture, that fabric acts as a curtain, shielding her from prying eyes.

    Her audience last month at Madison Square Garden, where Ms. Nicks sang with Fleetwood Mac, was clearly seduced by her come-hither/keep-back performance. Aging hippies and youthful rockers swayed and twirled in the aisles, their faces upturned to watch her shake her tambourine.

    Her stylistic persona is as rock steady as her sound. Part healer, part sorceress, at 60 she is still working the gossamer tunics and shawls that have influenced two generations of Stevie acolytes, and given her performances the feel of a Wiccan ritual. Now, as if timed to the vernal equinox, Ms. Nicks has resurfaced with two new DVDs and a three-month concert tour. As might be expected, troupes of leather-and-lace-clad Stevie clones are popping up like crocuses.

    They love her music, of course. “But time makes you bolder/Children get older/I’m getting older, too,” lines from the ballad “Landslide,” which she wrote at 26, can bring tears to their eyes. But they are besotted with Ms. Nicks herself. Never mind that the rock star is no sylph. She is the anti-Madonna — fragile and ethereal — and as constant as the tides.

    “She does her own, thing, always has done,” said Lily Donaldson, the celebrity model who attended the concert last month. “I love her music and her look, that whole flowing thing.”

    Anna Sui, who dedicated an entire collection to Ms. Nicks in the late ’90s and turns out Stevie-inspired handkerchief hems almost every season, admires her consistency. “She’s the iconic California woman,” Ms. Sui observed. “Everyone has their version of her.”

    These days Ms. Nicks is the inspiration for Web sites like gypsymoon.com, which offers Nicks-style top hats and shawls; and enchantedmirror.com, which sells tambourines, fringed shawls and a musky fragrance in homage to the singer. In February, Jill Stuart paraded Nicksian feathers, leather and lace on her fashion runway.

    Variations on her costumes were precursors, Ms. Nicks will tell you, of “that grungy girl who wears the little ballerina dresses and big buccaneer boots.”

    She will also tell you that the West Coast Ophelia look, all ruffles and belled sleeves, is the product of canny self-packaging.

    “I needed a uniform,” she recalled, one that would counteract the stage fright she encountered in the mid-’70s, when she first began touring with Fleetwood Mac. At the time, her brief to Margi Kent, who still designs much of her wardrobe, was to create “something urchinlike out of Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities, ” a chiffonlike, raggedy skirt that would still look beautiful with black velvet platform boots.

    “We came up with the outfit: a Jantzen leotard, a little chiffon wrap blouse, a couple of little short jackets, two skirts and boots,” Ms. Nicks said as she reminisced in her suite at the Waldorf Towers last week. “That gave us our edge.”

    And an effective disguise. “I’ll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet,” Ms. Nicks promised herself as a teenager. “And nobody will know who I really am.”

    Today she remains a woman under wraps, her legend as carefully tended as her wardrobe, which she stores in her home in Los Angeles. That legend encompasses the shaky vicissitudes of her romantic life — fans still speculate about the nature of her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and her long-ago lover — and her risen-from-the-ashes saga of drug abuse and rehabilitation.

    She is slow to detail the ravages of cocaine, which caused her voice to falter and her weight to fluctuate wildly over the years. But she does vow heatedly, “I will never do another line.”

    Wed briefly in 1983 to Kim Anderson, the widower of a close friend, she has never remarried. “I didn’t want to be held down by a relationship,” she said, elaborating only that she was simply not equipped for the responsibilities of family life.

    Her assiduously cultivated mysteriousness helps to keep her alive in the minds of fans. Yet at times she can appear guileless. Leaning in confidentially, she bemoaned the state of her arms. “They’ll never be what they were.” To tone them, she flexed a few times too many on her Power Plate machine, tearing a ligament. “When I’m pulling up my tights, I’m like dying,” she said.

    She was limber enough, though, to lay out on the carpet three variations of her favorite stage turnout: a cutaway jacket, a ruched and ruffled dress and chunky boots. Missing was the airy shawl that is part of her concert uniform.

    “A shawl is a great prop,” said the star, who is 5-foot-1. “It makes for big gestures.” Spreading her arms and whirling like a gyroscope, she added, “If you want to be seen at the back of that arena, you have to have very big movements.”

    Her reach extends to Hollywood as well. Lindsay Lohan hopes to buy the rights to her life story and to play her on film. Unmoved, Ms. Nicks responded: “Over my dead body. She needs to stop doing drugs and get a grip. Then maybe we’ll talk.”

    That candor endears her to fans, who evidently equate it with authenticity. “She’s not a trend or a fad,” said Nicholas Kalinoski, 30, the creative director of a fashion house in New York. “She’s an original, and people follow an original.”

    Standing in line behind him at Barnes & Noble in Union Square last week, Johanna Ramos, 21, waited stoically for Ms. Nicks to sign her DVDs, Live in Chicago and The Soundstage Sessions. “She looks like a sorceress,” Ms. Ramos said, “like someone powerful who owns the stage.”

    Indeed, with her back to the audience, Ms. Nicks projects the fervor of a tent revivalist. “There are times when she stands completely still, and then she’ll just put one hand up,” said Chi Chi Valenti, the founder of Night of a Thousand Stevies, an annual Nicks-inspired costume bash. “Especially with the backlighting, she almost looks like a religious statue.”

    Some 1,000 people lined up to greet Ms. Nicks in Union Square, bringing offerings of handmade greeting cards and amulets. There were boys in Nicksian top hats and urbane-looking women in black chiffon and crescent moon pendants.

    “You are my mentor and my inspiration, and I’ve loved you all my life,” one long-haired admirer in her 40s said. Ms. Nicks took her hand. Another, in her 20s, glided forward in a wheelchair, and Ms. Nicks squeezed hers as well, just as she did when a girl, 17, told her that she had given her the strength to stop using cocaine.

    Looking on, Liz Rosenberg, Ms. Nicks’s longtime publicist, was having none of it. “Stevie is the new kabbalah,” she joked. Then she urged her to step up the pace.

    (Photo caption: FOCAL POINT Stevie Nicks at signing event. Photo by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

    Ruth La Ferla / New York Times / April 8, 2009