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Stevie Nicks to honor Prince on upcoming tour

NEW YORK (AP) — Stevie Nicks is trying to whittle down the set list for her upcoming solo tour, but one song that definitely made the cut is her 1983 hit “Stand Back” with Prince. Originally written as a compliment, now it will be a tribute.

The Fleetwood Mac singer, who heard Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” on her car radio and loved it so much she decided to write an answer song, hasn’t played “Stand Back” since Prince died in April.

“I will be singing it for the first time without Prince being on the planet,” she said. “That is going to be horrible, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to pay homage to my ‘Little Red Corvette’ friend. I’ll sing it forever for him now.”

Nicks’ two-month tour with The Pretenders kicks off Oct. 25 in support of her 2014 album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault.” She never got a chance to promote the CD since she spent most of the last three years on the road with Fleetwood Mac.

Nicks promises songs from “24 Karat Gold” as well as old favorites like “Dreams,” ”If Anyone Falls,” ”New Orleans,” ”Bella Donna,” ”Rooms on Fire” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

“Stand Back” will be there, fueled by the memory of her having lured Prince into the recording studio to play keyboards on the song he inspired. She said one of her deepest regrets is never getting him to join her onstage for a live version.

Though Nicks and Prince were friends, the two didn’t hang out much. One thing they disagreed on was drug use. “He hated them. And he hated that I did drugs and that’s probably why we didn’t hang out more,” she said.

“He was worried that I would die of an accidental drug overdose and my sadness is that he did die of an accidental drug overdose. He’s up there looking down, saying to me, ‘Sweetie, I can’t believe it happened either.’”

Nicks has no current record deal — “I’m free to do whatever I want” — after delivering “24 Karat Gold” to Warner Bros. It’s an album of orphan songs, demos mostly written between 1969-1987.

“These were written during the days when everybody was pretty high and crazy and there was a lot of love affairs going on and a lot of breakups going on and just a lot of emotion going on,” she said.

The 68-year-old singer-songwriter said that there were many reasons why the songs never got on any of her albums or those by Fleetwood Mac. In some cases, she didn’t like the arrangements and pulled them. Or they came out soulless.

So in 2014, she and producers Dave Stewart and Waddy Wachtel went to Nashville, Tennessee, and re-recorded the songs in a matter of weeks. When they were finished, she put one CD in a gold box, wrapped it in a red bow and delivered it to the front desk of Warner Bros. Then she rejoined the Fleetwood Mac reunion tour.

Now she’s getting ready to hit the road again, one of the few legendary acts like the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen to be able to deliver a three- or four-hour set because they never stopped making music.

“I am very aware that artists over 50 don’t — and are never going to — sell a lot of albums any more. It took me years to accept that,” she said. “Now we can just pretend we’re like 15 and start over and make records just because we want to.”

(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

September 13, 2016
Stevie Nicks on tour, Fleetwood Mac album, Prince regret

Stevie Nicks on crafting a setlist for 24 Karat Gold Tour, possible Fleetwood Mac album & wishing she’d performed with Prince

“I’m hoping that this will be as much fun for the audience as it’s gonna be for me,” Stevie Nicks tells Billboard about her just-announced 24 Karat Gold Tour. The two-month trek — launching Oct. 25 in Phoenix, with the Pretenders opening — supports her 2014 effort 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault, which marked her sixth top 10 album on the Billboard 200 chart.

The album was comprised of tracks Nicks had written and made demo recordings for decades ago but had never been included on any of her previous albums. Then, in 2014, she and producer Dave Stewart headed to Nashville with the demos and recorded entirely new versions of the songs to produce 24 Karat Gold. “I think this [tour] is going to be great,” Nicks says. “I think that all the fans are gonna have a ball. And I hope that they totally just dress up — as Wendy Williams would say, ‘Dress to the nines.’ And come to party, and sing.”

Stevie Nicks Announces Joint Tour With the Pretenders

Nicks says the setlist for the tour is still being shaped (it’s “about at 30 songs right now”) but will feature songs from 24 Karat Gold and possibly title cuts from some of her older albums, like “Bella Donna,” “Wild Heart” and “Trouble in Shangri-La.” She wants the show to “have its little explosions of fun” from the various parts of her career. Nicks also gives a hint to fans: “You know what, you might want to come to two shows, because you never know: There might be an alternative [set]list.”

It’s likely that familiar favorites like “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back” will both turn up in the setlist, and for Nicks, “Stand Back” has a new emotional weight. The track was “written to” Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” and she’s “brokenhearted” that she was never able to have him share the stage with her on the song. “Had I ever in a million years thought that we would lose him,” Nicks says, “I would have made sure that that would have happened. And it didn’t. So that’s just one of those things in your life where you so say, ‘I really missed out.’ Because he should have. That should have happened. So whenever I play ‘Stand Back’ from this day forward, Prince will be standing next to me. That is always going to be a joy.”

Nicks, of course, has a second career with the band Fleetwood Mac, which completed its triumphant On With the Show Tour in November 2015. The global run saw the classic Rumours-era lineup of the band — with a returning Christine McVie — play 120 shows on three continents. Now that the tour has concluded, might there be a new studio album from the famous quintet?

“You know what, I never know what’s going to happen,” Nicks says. “It’s like, I didn’t — in my wildest dreams — ever know that I was going to do the 24 Karat Gold record. And I certainly didn’t ever, after 16 years, think that Christine McVie was going to call up and say, ‘How would you feel if I came back to the band?’ You know, it’s like, are you serious? Is this a joke?”

With McVie back in the Fleetwood fold, fans are also holding out hope for a new album from the group. “I learned a long time ago to never say never. Right now, because of the fact that we know that people don’t buy records… it’s like, hard to sell records. So then you think, ‘Well, why do you do records?’ Well, the reason you do records is because it’s like we’re like kids again, and we can do anything we want. We have enough money. We don’t really have to work if we don’t want to. So we can do records for the reason that we actually did them in the very beginning — just ’cause it’s fun.

“Is it possible that Fleetwood Mac might do another record? I can never tell you yes or no, because I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. … It’s like, do you want to take a chance of going in and setting up in a room for like a year [to record an album] and having a bunch of arguing people? And then not wanting to go on tour because you just spent a year arguing? Or do you just go on tour because you know that you have fun up there and you love doing shows? And Christine’s only been back for [laughs] a year and a half.

“So you start to weigh your… ‘Why would you do this, why would you do that?’ And I honestly don’t know. But I never say never… that really is in God’s hands.”

Here are some excerpts from our conversation with Nicks:

Nicks recorded the 24 Karat Gold album just two months — and it was her final album owed to her record label, Warner Bros. Records. But she had to essentially put 24 Karat Gold away and not listen to it for over a year as she was about to head out on the road with Fleetwood Mac:

We finished [24 Karat Gold] in, like, two months — the whole record. And then, this is kind of what I did: It was like, metaphorically, I bought a gold box, I put the record in the box, I put tissue around it, I wrapped it, I put a red bow on it. I got in the car, we drove past Warner Bros., and I ran in, put it on the front desk and said, “Please give this to the president of Warner Bros.,” and I ran back out. Got in the car and went straight to Culver City to be at rehearsals with Fleetwood Mac at 2 o’clock. That was it!

Needless to say, me doing a record wasn’t exactly the most favorite topic of conversation at the Fleetwood Mac rehearsal. Christine had just come back in, you know, changed her life, moved to L.A. So that was it. I can honestly say, I never even listened to 24 Karat Gold again until we got home from the tour in January. Because why would I, you know what I mean? Why would I go and make myself feel bad by listening to my really beautiful, fun record of all my great old glory songs? [They] were the sex, rock & roll and drug songs that just almost made every single big record, but for whatever my reasons were, I pulled them. These weren’t songs that were kicked off the record by anybody; these were songs that I pulled off records.

So why would I want to sit around and make myself miserable? So I never listened to it once until we got home from the Fleetwood Mac tour. And then I said to my manager, “Well, I’m gonna think about this very carefully.” And the fact was… my little life-partner puppy dog that was almost 18 years old was seriously dying. And she died between December and July 5. So I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t take any vacations, I didn’t really do anything except be with her and kind of deal with that whole situation. But all through that, I was thinking, “You know, if I don’t do this now, we’ll miss the window that will make it possible.” If we go out for 24 Karat Goldright now, we’re actually going out with some product — not that I am going to necessarily sell records, because I don’t believe that people buy records, so that’s not why I’m going out. I’m going out to promote this record just because I want people to hear what’s on it. And I figured the only way I can let them hear what’s on it is to actually go out and play some of the stuff that’s on it.

Her manager asked if perhaps Nicks would just rather stay home this year after the passing of her beloved pet and spending so much time on the road with Fleetwood Mac:

I don’t want to miss the window. If I don’t go out until next year, we won’t go out until the spring, and then by the time we get out there, it’ll be the summer, and by the time I get home, it’ll be too late to do the 24 Karat Gold Tour. And it’ll just end up being Stevie going out to do another Stevie Nicks tour that has all the exact same songs that every other Stevie Nicks tour for the last 20 years has had. And that’s not what I want to do.

Nicks discusses what the 24 Karat Gold Tour setlist might include:

This will make you laugh, but it’s the truth. When I sat down a couple weeks ago to start figuring out what would be in here, I had decided that I also wanted to do “Wild Heart,” maybe do “Bella Donna,” maybe do “Trouble in Shangri-La.” So I wanted to do some title songs [from Nicks’ albums]. I mean, I thought, you know, this is laying open a whole new world for me… So my list is like about at 30 songs right now. And so Waddy [Wachtel, Nicks’ guitarist and music director for the tour], he said to me, “Just call me when [the setlist is] over.” Like, “Stevie, have you cut out any songs yet?” And I said, “Well, maybe two, so I’m working on it.”

So what I’ve done is, I’ve sent out all 30 songs [Laughs] to everybody in the band, saying, like, “We’re not going to do all of these 30, but we have to try some of these.” Because sometimes you don’t know. You might hear the song that you think is going to be the best ever, and it’s not. And then there’s the song that you think is going to be totally terrible and it’s great. So I said, “You don’t have to learn them for real, but just be aware.” So that we can spend a few days just playing bits and pieces of everything. So, yes, is [the setlist] going to be songs from 24 Karat Gold? Absolutely. But it’s also going to be some things from some of the other records also, because I’ll never get a chance to do this again. Until I actually do, like, the full-on acoustic set that will actually be three hours, where I can actually start with “Bella Donna” and go all the way up through… until I get to that tour.

So this tour, I want it to have its acoustic parts, I want it to have its little explosions of fun from all different parts. I want it to have the 24 Karat Gold demos, there’s two or three songs off In Your Dreams. I’d like to do the “New Orleans” song, I want to do “Soldier’s Angel” because that’s important to me right now — just, once again, with the whole political thing that’s going on, I think “Soldier’s Angel” is an important song to do. So it’s like, it’s gonna be a lot of cool stuff, and I’ll have about two hours and 15 minutes. So, I may — maybe — cut a couple songs down a little bit. Maybe I won’t do all six verses, you know? … Maybe if I do “Bella Donna,” maybe I’ll only do half of “Bella Donna.” I want to do “Wild Heart,” and that has never been done onstage, ever. Because that is a hard song to do. So I’ll give it a try, and if I can pull it off, I’ll do it.

On how so many of her old demo recordings ended up on the Internet and eventually back to the 24 Karat Gold album, and then to the 24 Karat Gold Tour:

At some point a suitcase of demos was sold, and out went all the demos to all these songs. … They all got sold. I mean, they just got lost. And in those days, we were so free with our music. It was like, “Sure I just wrote a new song.” And some of your friends are like, “Can I have a tape of it?” And you’re going, “Sure I’ll make you a cassette right now.” And then of course that cassette goes to their house and then somebody else says, “Gee, that’s so great can I have a cassette of that?” And they’re like, “Sure!” And nobody was ever selfish with music, one bit. But in the long run, unfortunately, it did release just about everything I’d ever done. Everything, probably, I’ve never done is out in the cosmos, somewhere.

But the thing is, [the fans] haven’t seen it done. They haven’t seen it played in concert. So that’s what I’m hoping, is that this can be the suitcase of demos that they didn’t ever see performed. And that this will be really fun for people. Because they are familiar with these songs. They’re familiar with all the songs on 24 Karat Gold. They’re familiar with almost every demo I ever made. So this is bringing them to life. And that’s what I wanted to do, you know? And I’m hoping that this will be as much fun for the audience as it’s gonna be for me, because I’m so tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again. I’m not that kind of person, really. I’m the off-the-top-of-your-head kind of person and always have been. And it’s very hard for me to just do the same thing every single night.

Nicks has performed “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back” more than 400 times each in her shows. Are there songs she’s tired of performing live?

Because I have two careers — the great thing is, is that I got three years off from doing “Edge of Seventeen” or “Stand Back,” because Fleetwood Mac actually used to do “Stand Back” and took it out [on the last tour]. So I haven’t done “Edge of Seventeen” or “Stand Back” in closing in on four years. … All those songs, if they actually were in almost all the sets, then you know I really like those songs. I didn’t do them because I had to do them. Because I could always put something else in instead.

Keith Caulfield / Billboard / Thursday, September 8, 2016

Read more articles by Keith Caulfield

September 8, 2016
The Wild Heart @ 30: ‘First he took my heart then he ran’

Kicking off Side 2 of The Wild Heart is Stevie Nicks’ massive hit “Stand Back.” Though it’s not her highest charting single (that honor goes to “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which peaked at No. 3 in 1981), “Stand Back” is clearly one of her most recognizable solo hits, having been performed on every solo tour and most Fleetwood Mac tours (that Stevie has been a part of) since the song’s release in 1983. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” is another song that has been performed on every tour since its release.

The story of “Stand Back” is now legendary among fans, but few know that, musically, the song was actually inspired by the opening chord progression of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”

‘Little Red Corvette’

“Right after I got married, I heard this wonderful song Prince had done called ‘Little Red Corvette,’” Stevie said in 1983, “And as soon as I heard it I went, ‘Boy, I love that.’ And I just started humming to myself, and in a matter of minutes, I had hummed along a very different melody than what Prince had done. Anyway, me being one of the more honest people you’ll ever meet, I immediately call Prince and tell him what I had written and how and he, against everybody’s thinking he wouldn’t, came down and played on this song! My intuitions are usually right and since he told me he was doing the video of ‘Little Red Corvette’ that day, and since I know videos and films always take a lot longer than anybody thinks, I didn’t think he’d show up. But [songwriter/musician] Sandy [Stewart] and I rushed to the studio anyway, thinking ‘what if he comes, what are we going to show him. We’ll both get out there live and try to play the song for him and start to giggle,’ right? I mean, no chance. So under pressure of fire, we did it in one take, one time, and that’s what you hear; me singing live, Sandy on her synthesizer, Prince playing that dahdahdahdahdah, very kind of ‘Edge of Seventeen’ thing, and a drum machine.

Stevie Nicks on the death of Prince: ‘My friend is gone…he was my dove’

Between then and now, Steve Lukather put an incredible guitar solo in the middle and David Williams, who played all over [Michael Jackson’s] ‘Billie Jean Is Not My Lover,’ played on this. Anyway, ‘Stand Back’ become a real anthem, a real ‘I’m tired of listening to all your great advice, ’cause it’s gotten me nowhere, so I’m listening to myself now kind of anthem.’ So it came slightly out of strength, slightly out of being in love, slightly out of being married, and ever so slightly out of hearing the first three chords of ‘Little Red Corvette!’”

‘My favorite song onstage’

“[‘Little Red Corvette’] just gave me an incredible idea,” Stevie said in 1991, “So I spent many hours that night writing a song about some kind of crazy argument, and it was to become one of the most important of my songs. I’ve been doing this song for years. Fleetwood Mac does it also, and I never get tired of it. ‘Stand Back’ has always been my favorite song onstage because when it starts, it has an energy that comes from somewhere unknown, and it seems to have no timespace. I’ve never quite understood this sound, but I have never questioned it. I become a different person, and I like that, because usually I make up my own characters, but the lady in ‘Stand Back’ was not my idea. By the way, Prince did come into the studio the night I called him and told him about this song, and he played incredible synthesizer on it. And then he just walked out of my life, and I didn’t see him for a long time. It was extraordinary.”

Musicians

OBX-A & DMX drum machine programming: David Bluefield
Drums: Marvin Caruso
Percussion: Bobbye Hall
Drum overdubs: Russ Kunkel
Guitar: Steve Lukather
Synthesizer, guitar: Prince (uncredited)
Synthesizer: Sandy Stewart
Guitar: Waddy Wachtel
Percussion: Ian Wallace
Guitar: David Williams
Background vocals: Sharon Celani & Lori Perry

Produced by Jimmy Iovine. Recorded at Studio 55, Los Angeles.

Billboard charts

Pop Singles: 5
Mainstream Rock: 2 (June 4, 1983)

Main version

Stand Back Live at the US Festival 1983

Lyrics

No one looked as I walked by
Just an invitation would have been just fine
Said no to him again and again
First he took my heart then he ran

No one knows how I feel
What I say unless you read between my lines
One man walked away from me
First he took my hand
Take me home

Stand back, stand back
In the middle of my room
I did not hear from you
It’s alright, it’s alright
To be standing in a line
(Standing in a line)
To be standing in a line
I would cry

La, la, la-la, la, la, la, la-la, la-la…
La, la, la la-la, la…

Do not turn away my friend
Like a willow I can bend
No man called my name
No man came

So I walked slow down away from you
Maybe your attention was more than you could do
One man did not call
He asked me for my love
That was all

Stand back, stand back
In the middle of my room
I did not hear from you
It’s alright, it’s alright
To be standing in a line
(Standing in a line)
To be standing in a line
I would cry

La, la, la-la, la, la, la, la, la…
La, la…
La, la, la-la la, la, la…
Ju-ju, ju-ju!
Oh…
La, la, la-la, la, la, la, la, la…
Da-da-da-da…
La, la, la-la, la…
Wa-ah!

So I walked on down the line away from you
Maybe your attention was more than I could do
One man did not fall
Well, he asked me for my love
That was all

Stand back, stand back
In the middle of my room
I did not hear from you
It’s alright, it’s alright
To be standing in a line
(Standing in a line)
To be standing in a line
I would cry

Feel I need a little sympathy
Well, I need a little sympathy
(Cry…)
Well, I need a little sympathy

Well, you could be standing in
(Stand back)
Well, you could be standing in
(Stand back)
Well, you could standing in
(Stand Back)

Take me home
Take home
(Stand back)
Why don’t you take me home

Well, I need a little sympathy
(Stand back)
Well, you could be standing in
(Stand back)
Why don’t you take…
(Me home)

Why don’t you take me home
(Stand back)
Take me home
(It’s alright)
Take me home
(It’s alright)
Oh, yeah…
Take me home

(Stevie Nicks/Prince Rogers Nelson) © 1983 Welsh Witch Music (BMI) / Admin. by Sony/ATV Songs LLC (BMI) / Controversy Music (ASCAP)

BONUS: Unreleased Stevie Nicks/Prince demo ‘All over You’

NEXT: I Will Run to You ~ Down whatever road you choose… >

References

Modern Records. (1983). Stevie Nicks: The Wild Heart [Press release].
Nicks, S. (1991). [Liner notes]. Timespace: The best of Stevie Nicks [CD].

August 31, 2013
Atlantic honors Stevie Nicks with lavish 3-CD ‘Enchanted’ anthology

A quarter-century ago, Stevie Nicks penned a tune about embracing a paradox, its music an upward spiral that predicted a corresponding descent, its lyrics contemplating the change that only comes from awareness of the unchangeable. The song ultimately celebrates the victory that arrives by agreeing to allow others to triumph.

On the eve of the release of “Enchanted” (Atlantic, due April 28) the engaging three-CD, 46 track retrospective – with eight unreleased cuts – of Nicks’ lengthy solo career, it seems the soon-to-be 50-year old sing/songwriter, who wrote the lovely “Long Distance Winner” as half of an early – ’70’s duo Buckingham-Nicks, has finally found the wisdom to learn from the intuition of her 25-year-old self.

“Back then, ‘Long Distance Winner’ was very much about dealing with Lindsey,” says Nicks, referring to Lindsey Buckingham, her artistic and emotional partner in the interval before their act merged with a subsequently revitalized Fleetwood Mac. “How else can I say it?” she wonders aloud, quoting a passage of the “Enchanted” track resurrected from the long out of print “Buckingham-Nicks” album: “I bring the water down to you/But you’re too hot to touch.”

“What the song is really all about,” Nicks confides, “is a difficult artist, saying ‘I adore you, but you’re difficult. And I’ll stay here with you, but you are still difficult” And the line ‘Sunflowers and your face fascinates me’ means that your beauty fascinates me, but I still have trouble dealing with you – and I still stay. So it’s really just the age old story, you know?” Meaning the inability to live with someone and the inability to live without them.

According to Nicks, who starts a 40-date US solo concert trek May 27 in Hartford, Conn., Buckingham’s stubborn but admirable streak lay in his unwillingness to compromise his composing to play in clubs, playing four sets a night in a steakhouse, whereas I was much more able to be practical.” That was then, and this is now, an era in which Nicks and the tempestuous Fleetwood Mac were able to set aside their collective differences, focus on teamwork, and reunite for the hugely fruitful “The Dance” live record and tour.

Stevie is quick to assert that the Mac now “plays way better than we did in the beginning” and readily agrees that the material selected for ‘The Dance’ boasts even better arrangements than the vintage renditions. Yet she admits her own personal and artistic intransigence of old: ‘Gold and Braid’, another song on ‘Enchanted’ is an unreleased track from my (1981) Bella Donna’ (solo debut) sessions, and it’s about Lindsey wanting more from me in our relationship. But wanting to know everything about someone, which goes hand in hand with being in love, was never something I’ve ever wanted to share with anybody. Professionally, everybody always wanted me to be their idea of what I should be. I’d flat-out look at people and say, “you know I’m not gonna do what you want, so why do you bother?”

“I’ve learned from mistakes,” she adds. “I got fat, and on the Dr. Atkins diet I had to lose 30 pounds I had been trying to lose for four or five years. But people have come into my career and wrongly told me, “Change your music, reinvent yourself! I just stayed what I am.”

Which is a real rock’n’roll character; a true one-of-a-kind piece of work. “Thank you!” she responds, erupting into giggles edged with her trademark throaty rasp. “People used to laugh at my musical style or my black handkerchiefy stage clothes, which make me look like an orphan out of ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ and say ‘Oh, that’s very Stevie Nicks.’But now people in the fashion industry (like designers Anna Sui and Isaac Mizrachi) are giving me these accolades. If you believe in something and stick it out, it’ll come around, and you’ll win in the end.”

Other familiar criticism of Nicks center on her devotion in both composing and common-day activities to a heavily mystical life view. Possibly the single most recurrent image in her material, as illustrated by the “Sleeping Angel” cut that “Enchanted” retrieves from the 1982 “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” soundtrack, is a supporting cast of heavenly spirits. “I am religious,” Nicks explains. I wasn’t raised in any religion, because we were always moving when I was a kid and didn’t get involved in any church. But I believe there’ve been angels with me constantly through these last 20 years, or I wouldn’t be alive. I pray a lot. In the last few years I’ve asked for things from God, and he’s given them to me. And there were things I thought were going to kill me, and he fixed them. I felt that because I was fat I wasn’t talented anymore; I was destroying this gift God gave me and asked for help. Now I’m happy, even outside my music, and enjoying my life.

Find out how Prince was involved in ‘Thousand Days’

Stephanie Nicks was born May 26, 1948, the daughter of General Brewing president Jess Nicks and the former Barbara Meeks. “My mother’s mom and dad were divorced very early,” says Stevie, “and her stepfather worked in a coal mine in Ajo, Arizona, and died of tuberculosis. She had a hard life, was very poor, was 19 when she got married, had me at 20. My dad went after a big job in a big company, got it, did very well, and liked to move around and travel a lot. My mom got used to it and had a lot of fun, but she’s much more practical, frugal – she still sniffs her nose at my dad’s and my experience tastes – and she wanted more than anything else for her daughter and son (Christopher) to be independent and self assured.”

“I didn’t want to be married or have children,” Nicks confesses, “because then I couldn’t have worked as hard on all this. I would have split the whole thing down the middle, and I wouldn’t have been a good mother, or a good song writer either. If I got a call from the love of my life and a call from Fleetwood Mac saying you have to be here in 20 minutes, I’d still probably go to Fleetwood Mac. And that’s sad, but it’s true.”

Over the years Nicks has overcome substance abuse, serious eye surgery, the Epstein-Barr virus, and a host of detractors eager to diminish her musical contributions. Yet “Enchanted” documents a resilience and a wry candor – “I’m no enchantress!” she pointedly exclaims on the albums “Blue Lamp” – as well as a parallel path to her Big Mac experience, characterized by productivity and solo success equaling or exceeding that of her talented bandmates. Nick’s work is un-apologetically feminine in the face of the boys’ club that is rock. Consistently tuneful and sure in its spell-weaving , Nicks’ music also has surprising staying power, as show by “If Anyone Falls,” one of the best and sexiest pop/rock singles of the ’80s, and Enchanted’s” frank “Thousand Days,” which could close the ’90s on a similar note.

“‘Thousand Days’ was written about my non-relationship with Prince,” says Nicks, who had earlier composed “Stand Back” with him – although she notes he’s never called her back “to set up his payment on 50%” of the latter. “Days” recounts an abortive, all-night ’80s recording session with him at his Minneapolis home during a Fleetwood Mac tour, climaxing with Nicks “smoking my pot – he didn’t agree with my lifestyle – and going to sleep on Prince’s floor in his kitchen. I like him, but we were just so different there was no possible meeting ground.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BYa603KYa8

With current colleagues/collaborators does she most admire?

“Alanis Morissette, Joan Osborne, Sheryl Crow (who co-authored “Somebody Stand By Me” on “Enchanted”), and Fiona Apple, who’s very young and angry. I care about her and hope she’s OK. Fame is dangerous ground when you are young. You have gotta pace yourself.”

Music to My Ears / Timothy White / Billboard / April 18, 1998

April 18, 1998