Stevie Nicks on Secret to Fleetwood Mac’s Longevity, Touring Like Prince | Rolling Stone

By Brittany Spanos
September 14, 2016
Rolling Stone

Ahead of 24 Karat Gold solo tour, singer-songwriter talks set lists, “sex, rock & roll and drugs” songs, and more

Steve Nicks discusses how her solo career helps keep Fleetwood Mac stable, and why she can no longer write "sex, rock & roll and drugs" songs. Kristin Burns
Steve Nicks discusses how her solo career helps keep Fleetwood Mac stable, and why she can no longer write “sex, rock & roll and drugs” songs. Kristin Burns

Stevie Nicks has been having trouble sleeping. The Fleetwood Mac vocalist wrapped up a year-and-a-half long tour with her band last November, but even as she’s begun rehearsing for a solo tour in support of 2014’s 24 Karat Gold that will launch in October, Nicks has yet to find herself on a better schedule.

“I’ve gotten into the habit of not going to sleep until somewhere between five and seven, and when I’m not working I can sleep until four [in the afternoon],” she reveals, blaming the tour routing schedule that had the band jumping between cities and time zones every other day. “I wish I had worked harder on it because now it’s gonna be harder for me to, but I’ll figure it out because I always do.”

Even though she doesn’t necessarily need to, the legendary vocalist and songwriter felt determined to get back on the road even after touring for so long with the Mac, who reunited with Christine McVie after a 16-year break. Just before McVie’s return, Nicks had finished recording 24 Karat Gold, based on a collection of demos from throughout her career that she had personally cut from the various Fleetwood Mac and solo albums they were originally intended to be on. She spent two and half months in Nashville with friend and producer Dave Stewart recording the songs, and the same day she turned the album into Warner Bros., she entered a rehearsal room with one of rock’s most iconic, formerly tempestuous line-ups. Continue reading Stevie Nicks on Secret to Fleetwood Mac’s Longevity, Touring Like Prince | Rolling Stone

Stevie Nicks to honour Prince during upcoming US tour | Daily Mail

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: Daily Mail
13:49, 13 September 2016

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.

FILE - This May 13, 2014 file photo shows Stevie Nicks, winner of the BMI Icon Award, at the 62nd Annual BMI Pop Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif. Nicks’ two-month tour kicks off Oct. 25 in support of her 2014 album “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault,” her sixth top 10 album on the Billboard 200 chart. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
FILE – This May 13, 2014 file photo shows Stevie Nicks, winner of the BMI Icon Award, at the 62nd Annual BMI Pop Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif. Nicks’ two-month tour kicks off Oct. 25 in support of her 2014 album “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault,” her sixth top 10 album on the Billboard 200 chart. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

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. Continue reading Stevie Nicks to honour Prince during upcoming US tour | Daily Mail

Stevie Nicks on Crafting a Setlist for 24 Karat Gold Tour, Possible Fleetwood Mac Album & Wishing She’d Performed With Prince | Billboard

8th Sept, 2016
Billboard Online
by Keith Caulfield

Whenever I play ‘Stand Back’ from this day forward, Prince will be standing next to me.”

Stevie Nicks, photo by Danny Clinch
Stevie Nicks, photo by Danny Clinch

““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.”

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.” Continue reading Stevie Nicks on Crafting a Setlist for 24 Karat Gold Tour, Possible Fleetwood Mac Album & Wishing She’d Performed With Prince | Billboard

Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History Book

Live In Limbo Literature
Mark Milner
September 6, 2016

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Few bands, if any, can lay claim to as colourful a history as Fleetwood Mac. Their founding guitarist went off the deep end, another quit to join a cult. Marriages splintered and relationships crumbled. And, just at the band looked to bottoming out, they literally stumbled on two performers who’d send them to their biggest successes.

Really, you’d think there’d be a Fleetwood Mac movie by now.

There’s about 50 years of Fleetwood Mac history to cover and in his new large-format book, Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History, writer and music critic Richie Unterberger (Allmusic, Mojo, Uncut) tackles their long, twisting career.

There’s a lot to cover, both stylistically and historically. For example, you could argue Fleetwood Mac is something closer to three bands. They started as a straight up blues band, playing Chicago-style electric blues in mid-60s England. Later, as the band’s personnel became a revolving door, they turned into a fairly standard classic rock band. And finally, with the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975, they became a commercial juggernaut whose infighting could fill another book. Each period has it’s own merits and drawbacks; each is really only tied to the other by the band’s rhythm section. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History Book

Stevie Nicks regrets taking drugs | Female First

6th Sept 2016

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The Fleetwood Mac star is disappointed that, in the past, she didn’t know she “had the energy to do an entire set totally sober”.

She said: “Yes, it [doing drugs] was a lot of fun between 1975 and 1990 – until it wasn’t. I walk onstage every night now and do a three-hour show with Fleetwood Mac, and I have a great time up there.

“I wish I had known that I actually had the energy to do this entire set totally sober and get just as excited. On one hand, that makes me feel great and on the other it makes me sad that I ever did my first line of coke.”

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Asked which other female artists she looks up to, she said: “I have so many favourites. I love Katy Perry and Adele.

The Fleetwood Mac legend loves the ‘Roar’ singer and admires the ‘Hello’ hitmaker – who has three-year-old son Angelo with her partner Simon Konecki – for being so successful that it doesn’t matter how long she takes to write an album, she will always be in demand.

And I’m so happy for Adele right now. And the 68-year-old musician has praised ‘Hello’ hitmaker Adele for believing in herself and feeling confident enough to take a hiatus.She’ll do what I did – she’ll figure out a way to stay in the business.

She told The New York Times newspaper: “If she needs to go away for three years, she doesn’t feel like somebody’s going to take her place. When you believe in yourself that much, you can take as long as you want.”

“The big difference between her and me is that she has a child, and that will change things for her, but I think Adele knows what she wants and I don’t think she’s in a hurry.

Meanwhile, Adele, 28, previously admitted she ended up “sobbing all over” the ‘Landslide’ hitmaker when they first met.

She shared: “I was sobbing all over her, oh my God. I don’t really like crying in front of famous people because it’s awkward and it can make them feel really uncomfortable. But I couldn’t contain myself.”

 

Stevie Nicks – 24 Karat Gold Tour: Press Release

STEVIE NICKS ANNOUNCES 27 CITY NORTH AMERICAN 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR WITH PRETENDERS

LOS ANGELES (September 6, 2016) – Singer Stevie Nicks, the multi-platinum, Grammy® Award Winning-music icon today announced The 24 Karat Gold Tour. Produced exclusively by Live Nation, the 27-city tour with Pretenders, will begin on Tuesday, October 25 in Phoenix, Arizona and will see the legendary Nicks perform throughout North America this Fall with shows scheduled in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta and more. A full list of tour dates follows this release.

STEVIE NICKS ANNOUNCES 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR WITH PRETENDERS (PRNewsFoto/Live Nation Entertainment)
STEVIE NICKS ANNOUNCES 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR WITH PRETENDERS (PRNewsFoto/Live Nation Entertainment)

American Express Card Members can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Wednesday, September 7 at 10:00 a.m. through Sunday, September 11 at 10:00 p.m. Tickets go on sale beginning Monday, September 12 at www.livenation.com.

Nicks, a multi-platinum selling artist – dubbed “the reigning queen of rock and roll” by Rolling Stone Magazine has had six Top Ten albums and 8 Grammy nominations. Her 2014 album 24 Karat Gold – Songs From The Vault debuted at No. 7 on Billboard’s Top 200 Charts. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, Nicks recently performed 122 sold out shows around the world during 2014-2015. Collectively as a solo artist and Fleetwood Mac band member, Nicks has sold over 140 million albums and won several Grammys.

The Pretenders cross the bridge between punk, new wave and Top 40 pop music more than any other band, with hit songs like I’ll Stand By You, Back On The Chain Gang and Don’t Get Me Wrong. The band has sold over 25 million albums and founder & leader Chrissie Hynde is one of contemporary music’s greatest songwriters. Chrissie most recently released the album Stockholm and a 2015 memoir, Reckless: My Life As a Pretender, hailed by the New York Times upon its release as “honest and distinctive…first and foremost, a love letter to rock and roll.”

24 Karat Gold Tour with Pretenders
*all dates, venues and cities below subject to change.

SN 24K Tour

Tour Dates

Oct 25, 2016 – Phoenix, AZ – Talking Stick Resort Arena Continue reading Stevie Nicks – 24 Karat Gold Tour: Press Release

Stevie Nicks on Her Fleetwood Mac ‘Team,’ Solo Joys and the 2016 Election | New York Times

New York Times
By Phoebe Reilly
Sept. 6, 2016

Stevie Nicks says that one of her favorite things to do is light a candle, sit at the desk in her Los Angeles home and write poetry. Ms. Nicks, the rock ’n’ roll mystic who constitutes one-fifth of Fleetwood Mac’s classic lineup and wrote several of its most beloved hits (including “Dreams” and “Rhiannon”), is so prolific that six years after joining that multiplatinum California band in 1975, she embarked on a solo career with “Bella Donna,” which featured the memorable centerpiece “Edge of Seventeen.”

Stevie Nicks is struggling to whittle down her long song list in preparation for a 28-city tour. (Credit Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
Stevie Nicks is struggling to whittle down her long song list in preparation for a 28-city tour. (Credit Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

“In the beginning, I actually sat down and said, listen, I am doing this because I have way too many songs,” Ms. Nicks said. “I get frustrated because one of you walks by me every time I sit at the piano and says: ‘Oh my God, there she goes writing another song. We only need three or four from you.’ So what am I supposed to do?”

Eight solo albums later, Ms. Nicks, 68, is preparing to go on the road in support of her most recent releases, “In Your Dreams,” from 2011, and the 2014 album “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault,” a collection of tracks written mainly between 1969 and 1987. A 28-city tour with the Pretenders as special guests begins on Oct. 25 in Phoenix. “I just woke up one morning and said I have two years off before Fleetwood Mac comes knocking on my door [for another tour],” she said. “Why would I want to sit around and do nothing?”

Fleetwood Mac has endured despite drug addictions and multiple intra-band relationships (and breakups) during the late ’70s, and recently completed a two-and-a-half-year, 122-date tour. (“I don’t twirl nearly as much as I used to,” said Ms. Nicks, whose past relationship with the guitarist Lindsey Buckingham provided a dose of drama.) When reached by phone, she was struggling to whittle down her set list. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

What’s the difference between touring behind your solo work and touring with Fleetwood Mac?

Fleetwood Mac is a team, and when you’re on a team everybody has the same vote — except in this particular team Lindsey has a little bit of a stronger vote than anybody else. I love being part of a team. We argue all the time, but we always have. In my band, there is no arguing. I am the boss. My solo career is probably the reason Fleetwood Mac is still together in 2016, because I was always happy to leave Fleetwood Mac, and I was always happy to come back, too. Continue reading Stevie Nicks on Her Fleetwood Mac ‘Team,’ Solo Joys and the 2016 Election | New York Times

Fleetwood Mac: The story behind Rhiannon | Classic Rock

04 Sep 2015 / by Bill DeMain

How a chance encounter with a fantasy novel inspired Stevie Nicks’ witchy hit and resurrected Fleetwood Mac

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It makes sense that what has become Stevie Nicks’s signature song was inspired by a kind of ancient magic. Bibliomancy, a mystical practice dating back to the 1700s, holds that if a book is picked up and opened to a page at random, the first word or sentence one sees will reveal some kind of epiphany. But the book that Nicks picked up in 1974 – one that would eventually help launch her into superstardom – didn’t exactly seem full of divine promise.

“It was just a stupid little paperback that I found somewhere at somebody’s house, lying on the couch,” Nicks says more than 40 years on. “It was called Triad [written by Mary Leader] and it was all about this girl who becomes possessed by a spirit named Rhiannon. I read the book, but I was so taken with that name that I thought: ‘I’ve got to write something about this.’ So I sat down at the piano and started this song about a woman that was all involved with these birds and magic.

Fleetwood Mac in 1975 (photo: Getty)
Fleetwood Mac in 1975 (photo: Getty)

“I still have the cassette tape of when I was first writing it,” she continues. “Lindsey [Buckingham, Nicks’s musical and then romantic partner] came in and I said: ‘We have to go to a park and record the sound of birds rising.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy. And I said: ‘Don’t you think Rhiannon is a beautiful name?’ And he said: ‘Yeah, it is a beautiful name.’” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: The story behind Rhiannon | Classic Rock