Stevie Ladies and gentlemen, the reigning queen of rock — on recklessness, relationships and reincarnation

Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Stevie Nicks (whose album Bella Donna has sold more than 1,000,000 copies) just after the last show of her successful solo tour. Rensin reports: “We talked in the bathroom of her West Los Angeles hotel suite while her make-up was being applied for a television appearance. She looked great before. She looked great afterward. And she does her own lipstick.”

PLAYBOY: You’re part of the hugely popular Fleetwood Mac, as well as the proud mother of a number-one solo album. Do you still find you’ve had to work twice as hard because you’re a women trying to win at a man’s game?

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.

PLAYBOY: Magazine articles have mentioned your belief in ghosts and reincarnation; your being in a “magic kingdom” — the whole Rhiannon Welsh witch thing. Have people had difficulty taking you seriously?

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.”

PLAYBOY: What were some of your past lives?

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.

PLAYBOY: How do you maintain your cosmic connection considering the pressures of fame and wealth? And how do you handle the abusive lifestyle-the drugs, the drinking, the long hours of being the reigning queen of rock ‘n’ roll?

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.

As I get older, the abusive side is coming to a close. I’m slowing down. Besides, I have bronchial, spasmodic asthma now. And everything that I do is wrapped up in my lungs. I’m scared now. This sure is the fast lane, but I don’t particularly want to die in the fast lane. I want to get there gracefully.

I need rest real bad. I also need some exercise. I don’t want to be this romantically fragile character everyone thinks I am. The image is fine for an image, but it’s not too fine if you have to go to the hospital for it. For my asthma, I have to take these miserable pills that make you feel like someone put something weird in your Perrier.

PLAYBOY: Do you want to marry eventually and have a family?

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.

PLAYBOY: What compromises?

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.

PLAYBOY: It sounds as if your job would get in the way.

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.

So maybe it’s good that I haven’t fallen deeply enough in love to give up a good half of what I do. I wouldn’t want to be a bad mother. And how could I be a good one when I don’t even have time to go to the dentist? So forget the child. And forget the boyfriend. I have so many commitments that he would have to come fourth — and I don’t like making anybody feel he’s fourth.

PLAYBOY: Yet love obviously means a lot to you. In Sara, you wrote, “Drowning in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown.”

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.

Yet I know intimacy is something we all need. When you want to get back to the fireplace with someone you care about or watch a little TV, it’s important that you like the person a lot, that he makes you laugh and that he’s fun. I’m as envious of that as can be.

PLAYBOY: What kind of man would make you happy?

NICKS: [Laughs] You were thinking 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.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever encounter fans more spiritual or spaced out than you?

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.

Another night, one of her friends asked me to sign her arm. I said, “I did that the other day and the girl went out and had her arm tattooed.”

“Oh, she’s my best friend,” the girl said. So I told her, “I’m not touching your arm. And if I ever find out that you got my name tattooed on you anyway, I’ll sue. Don’t put that on me. That’s pain. I’m not here to bring pain. I’m here to bring you out of pain.” It bummed me out. I felt like I should have gone back inside, like I’d come out the wrong door.

PLAYBOY: What else upsets you?

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.

PLAYBOY: Were you nervous going on the road as a solo act?

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?”

PLAYBOY: Were you offended by reviewers of Bella Donna who questioned your intelligence or who argued that the album was not a significant departure from your work with 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.”

PLAYBOY: Do you think you’re sexy?

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.

On the other hand, I know I’m cute. I can dance. I don’t have a bad figure. I know exactly what I am. I’m certainly no great beauty. I know exactly how far I can go.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever considered acting, as many of your rock-‘n’-roll peers have done?

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.

PLAYBOY: Do you support activist musicians who give anti-nuke concerts or participate in demonstrations?

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.

PLAYBOY: You are very close to your father. What has he taught you that you’ve applied to your career?

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.

But my parents would hear me go into my room and sit there for eight hours with two little cassette players and sing and write and leave papers everywhere. I think they realized that I might not have been strong, but it was the only thing I wanted. My dad knew me well enough to know that I was just like him. So he told me that I should be what I want to be and not complain about it.

PLAYBOY: What should men know about women that they don’t?

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.

PLAYBOY: Your immediate entourage all seem to be beautiful young women. Do you and the girls ever go out together?

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 it happening to me is another story. It tends to take away one’s spontaneity.

PLAYBOY: Do you often think about death — especially since you believe in reincarnation?

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.

David Rensin / Playboy (Vol. 29, No. 7) / July, 1982

Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks tries on a new hat

When Stevie Nicks was cutting her first solo album, the just-released Bella Donna, she recalls, “I promised myself I wasn’t going to get crazy over it. I didn’t want to be devastated in case it didn’t work.” But after more than six years with the supergroup Fleetwood Mac, says Nicks, “I had all these tunes stored up. I really needed to know that I could do something on my own.”

She can. In just a month, Bella Donna jumped over Journey and raced past Rickie Lee Jones into the No. 1 slot, going platinum with sales exceeding 1.3 million. The single off the LP, the driving duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty, is Top Five and climbing. Obviously, Stevie’s solo career is hardly nix. But should she ever need job security, one of rock’s silkier safety nets awaits her: Fleetwood Mac has moved some 20 million albums since 1975, and Nicks has chipped in with soft-rocking gems like “Rhiannon,” “Landslide” and “Sara.”

It was Mac’s grueling globe-conquering itineraries that helped inspire her solo flight. Her vocal cords were scorched; the group didn’t record often enough to use all her compositions; and it had taken a siegelike 13 months to finish Mac’s 1979 LP, Tusk. “We had to grow up and stop being so self-indulgent,” she says. “That life can turn you into a desert. Rock stars never know where the hell they’ve been. I just got tireder and tireder, sort of spaced-out and cloistered. I was determined to find musicians who hadn’t been in a famous band for a thousand years, not stay up all night, and take better care of myself.” That, she knew, meant discipline, and her Bella Donna producer, Jimmy lovine, obliged: “He said, `We’re not paying good musicians to hang around waiting for you. This is no longer Fleetwood Mac–this is serious.’”

Nicks has never taken music lightly. Born to a Phoenix executive, she was attending San Jose State when she met guitar whiz Lindsey Buckingham. The romantic duo tried to team professionally too, but by the time they fell in with Mick Fleetwood and Christine and John McVie (since divorced), Stevie was hacking it as a waitress.

Fleetwood Mac’s staggering success led to a personal split with Buckingham in 1976. But Nicks’ romantic “poker game,” as she puts it, inspired some superb lyricism on the theme of love at the speed of rock. “I would hope I never fall in love with a big-time happening rock `n’ roll guy,” she says now. “I’d have my spies everywhere with all those gorgeous blondes around. It’s like dangling candy in front of them.” At the same time she’s found “being someone’s girlfriend on the road is worse than being a maid.” Having a nonrock boyfriend tagging along is also out: “You can’t even put them to work, like cleaning up, because they have room service for that.”

At the moment, Stevie’s friends tend to be sisterly confidantes. She lives in a modest two-bedroom condo in Marina del Rey. “I don’t need jillions more dollars,” she explains. “I’ve got enough wonderful clothes and boots, two Yorkies, a baby Doberman, two cars and a terrific family. I just need to have some fun.” Nicks says she may move to Manhattan to find it. “I’m perfect for the city. My fancy clothes just hang in L.A. I’d love to dress up, go out to the ballet and museums and meet some other kinds of people.”

Until Nicks comes East, she has ample time to make voluminous entries in her journal, the one sure anchor in her peripatetic life. The best, Stevie says, are written well past midnight, in the solitude of a hotel room: “I’ve written it all down–the very interesting, the boring, the wonderfully romantic, the terribly sad and the heartbreaking.” She found out just how much it meant one night on tour when a fire broke out in her hotel. “You know what I grabbed? My cashmere blanket and the duffel bag I keep all my writing in. Believe me, there was a lot in there, an awful lot for me to carry down 14 flights of stairs.”

Jim Jerome / People (Vol. 16 Issue 14, p117. 1p) / October 5, 1982

This article is not available.

S. Simels / Stereo Review (Oct 1981, Vol. 46, p94)

“Look, enough with these heavy interviews,” the guys upstairs told us. “Szasz, Anton Wilson, Leary, Turner, Bukowski. Give ‘em a break, give ‘em some gossamer. Mind candy. Set ‘em up for the heavy DEA informant rap next month.”

Okay, we say. We think music. We think lace and vaseline-soft images. Doll-houses and rainy-day dreams. Good witches. We think Stevie Nicks.

So we sent Liz Derringer, first lady of rock journalism and a specialist at corralling big names for us (Mick Jagger, June ’80; Pat Benatar, Jan. ’82). She tracked Stevie down to her penthouse suite at the Plaza Hotel and found the ethereal songstress just dying to talk about her solo career and her number-one album, Bella Donna. They sipped coffee and wine and spoke of many things: of shoes and discs and Fleetwood Macs and cabbages and kings.

HIGH TIMES: What I’ve gotten out of your album so far is your special way of combining vulnerability with strength—qualities that are hard to put together.

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.

HIGH TIMES: That’s the process of growing up.

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.

It was like he said, if you’re gonna come into my studio and there’s going to be ten of the best musicians in the world waiting for you, then you’d better damn well come in ready to work, and not two hours late and not fluffing in and expecting everyone to just forgive you, and too bad that you’re late, and it cost eight million dollars because you didn’t bother to show up, and they did two sessions and they made it over to the studio at seven o’clock. And I just realized right away that I wanted more than anything in the world to put these songs down and play them for all those wonderful people who seemed, for whatever their reasons, to love my songs. And I love my songs. That’s what I do — I write songs. I’m a tune writer. And I wanted this LP to be really wonderful. And without somebody like Jimmy, I could not have done it. Because I wouldn’t have been disciplined enough.

HIGH TIMES: Did he put together the duets?

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.

HIGH TIMES: Didn’t you write “Leather and Lace” for Waylon Jennings and (his wife) Jesse Colter?

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.

HIGH TIMES: With your success you must feel stronger now.

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.

I’m not kidding. It’s real serious. And I didn’t have to beg to do these songs. In Fleetwood Mac I have to talk them into it. I get it as soon as I write the song. I know what it’s going to be. If I don’t, nobody ever hears it. I don’t ever go with it to anyone. It was very important to me to let people know that this is something that I wanted to do for them, the public. I don’t need to make any more money. I’m fine, I’m comfortable. I’ve got all my wonderful little stage clothes that I can wear forever and my boots, and I’ve got enough jewelry and I’m fine. I don’t need to do this to make money. I need to do this to fulfill myself as a writer. I mean, it says, “come in out of the darkness.” That’s saying, save yourself and come back. And it’s a serious thing. I had to do that to do the LP. I had to stop being crazy, or it wasn’t going to be done.

HIGH TIMES: But they’d still do it if you came two hours late.

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.

HIGH TIMES: I don’t relate to you being flaky.

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.

HIGH TIMES: Is that what you consider some of the pitfalls that you said were written in “Bella Donna”?

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.

HIGH TIMES: Isn’t it easy to fall into that again?

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

HIGH TIMES: That’s where age and experience help.

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.

HIGH TIMES: You’ve said that in middle age, you’d like to be on top of a mountain with a piano and typewriter.

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.

HIGH TIMES: Do you find it hard to maintain relationships in this business?

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?”

It’s incredible. That’s why you wish for some time that you won’t be so busy. You end up really hurting people because you get angry. You have fifteen things scheduled and you would love to sit here and watch a movie with someone, but you can’t because you have to get ready. You have to do your hair and your makeup and take a shower and do all that, and that takes a long time. Then you have to get everything ready. And then when it’s over, you are so tired. You have been under so much pressure because you have been talking all day. Or you’ve been traveling all day, you’ve been to the sound check, you’re getting home and you thank God you have fifteen minutes to lay down on your bed before you have to start the whole thing over – the shower, the hair, do the makeup and get down there. So you’re down there an hour before the concert so you don’t feel like a jerk walking into the concert and you’re not vibed out at all, you just feel like you dropped by.

So you’ve got to make time, and what happens is you make the time for rock ‘n’ roll. You make the time for Fleetwood Mac, you make the time for the interviews, you make the time to go to the record company, you make the time to go stop by a radio station, but you don’t make the time for your boyfriend. And slowly that creeps into their head, that you are not making the time for them, but you make the time for everyone else. Because you can’t say no to everyone else.

HIGH TIMES: What about someone like Don Henley, who knows that? He’s in the same position.

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.

HIGH TIMES: I don’t know him well, but that sounds typical of Glenn Frey.

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.”

HIGH TIMES: I think that what keeps couples together is an understanding, you live your life and I live my life.

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.

HIGH TIMES: You feel the weight of the world sitting on your shoulders.

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, co-founder 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.

HIGH TIMES: I guess being a superstar, people want to get involved in your life and tell you what to do.

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.

HIGH TIMES: You become more together with age.

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.”

HIGH TIMES: Where does your fascination with witches come from? Did you dream about things like that when you were a little girl?

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.

HIGH TIMES: I couldn’t imagine you as a type that sits around and puts black spells on people.

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.

HIGH TIMES: Any particular movies you like?

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.

HIGH TIMES: Books, too? The same?

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 Rumours, except it’s opposite, it’s white. It’s a strange turn-around that I’ve come from black to white.

HIGH TIMES: Who designed it? You?

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.

HIGH TIMES: You mention in “After the Glitter Fades” that the one-night stand is hard to take. What are you talking about?

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.

HIGH TIMES: After a concert is over, do you feel sad?

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.

HIGH TIMES: On Bella Donna you seem to be saying how strong and confident you can be. Do you think you are a dominating person?

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.

HIGH TIMES: Is the Fleetwood Mac album finished?

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.

HIGH TIMES: You must have a great relationship with Christine McVie. You dedicated “Think About It” to her.

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.

HIGH TIMES: It sounds like there has been some dissatisfaction on your part in the past.

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.

HIGH TIMES: You did a duet with Kenny Loggins, “Whenever I Call You Friend.”

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.

HIGH TIMES: How does he get the performance out of you? Does he have to create a mood?

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.”

HIGH TIMES: When you were sixteen and received your first guitar, were you into singing?

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

HIGH TIMES: You never played guitar onstage?

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.

HIGH TIMES: How do you muster up the discipline it takes to do what you do?

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.

HIGH TIMES: Does that come from upbringing?

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.

Liz Derringer / High Times / March 1982