Fleetwood Mac may have just started a mammoth tour of the United States, their first with songbird Christine McVie in 17 years, but Stevie Nicks has still managed to release a new solo album, this month.
24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault, is a collection of 14 songs from Nicks’ enormous back catalogue of demos that never made it onto her records- songs which were written between 1969 and 1995.
The eighth solo album from the Fleetwood Mac songbird is subtitled Songs from the Vault. It’s a collection of spruced-up versions of demos that Nicks recorded between 1969 and ’87. From the uptempo Starshine to the ploddy AOR of The Dealer it all feels rather half-baked, with only the title track having an ounce of the Mac’s magic. It’s not solely a vanity exercise (Nicks’s raw, nasal delivery is still distinctive), but as with most of these endeavours, there’s a reason why they were originally left in the vault. (Warner Bros, out Mon)
The longtime Fleetwood Mac vocalist opens up about the making of her new solo album, her past pregnancy with The Eagles’ Don Henley, what drove her into rehab, getting older and how she felt going through photos for her upcoming photography exhibition.
Stevie Nicks readily admits she’s always been a driven woman. And, at the age of 66, she is showing no signs of slowing down. Nicks is about to hit the road with the original Rumours line-up of Fleetwood Mac — Lindsay Buckingham, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie (who left the band in 1998) — for the North American leg of their On With The Show Tour (which begins September 30 in Minneapolis).
Additionally, on October 7, while she’s busy belting out Mac classic such as “Rhiannon,” “Landslide,” “Sara,” “Dreams” and “The Chain” for loyal Big Apple fans, Nicks will unveil her latest solo record, 24 Karat Gold – Songs From the Vault, a collection of lost songs she had written between the late ’60s and mid-’90s.
“When (John McVie) got cancer, we had to cancel our tour of Australia so I had some free time, and I thought, ‘Maybe I should make a record,'” she told Billboard about the origins of 24 Karat Gold. “All over the Internet, there are songs I wrote but never released, and people keep saying, “Why don’t you record these songs for real?” I’d never had time to do that. Now I had an empty, precious three months. Continue reading Stevie Nicks is still going her own way | Digital Journal→
Stevie Nicks, 66, has spoken about the wisdom she gained over the years.
The 66-year-old Fleetwood Mac singer is currently promoting her latest solo album 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, which is compiled of new recordings based on demos Stevie sang between 1969 and 1987.
And upon reflection of her life thus far, the songstress believes she stressed out about far too many things as a young woman.
“Part of me is feeling extremely old now, and part of me is feeling extremely young. Because I look at these pictures and realise I worried about things that I shouldn’t have been worrying about,” she explained in an interview with Billboard magazine. “Like the fact that I had little marionette lines around my mouth when I was 29, and I was complaining about them. I wouldn’t go out to the beach without a sarong from my neck to my ankles.
“Now I see a picture of myself from that era in a bikini and I’m like, ‘You looked great. And you missed out on a lot of fun vacations, because you were so sure that you were fat.’”
Mabel Normand is one of the songs from her new LP that holds deep significance for Stevie.
The biographical tune is based on the life of the eponymous actress who died after struggling with a severe cocaine addiction.
“Give Mabel Normand a special listen. Mabel was an amazing actress and comedian from the ’20s, and she was a terrible cocaine addict,” Stevie explained. “She eventually died of tuberculosis, but it was really her drug addiction that killed her. I saw a documentary of her in 1985, when I was at my lowest point with the blow. I was watching TV one night, the movie came on, and I really felt a connection with her. That’s when I wrote the song. Less than a year later, I went to rehab at Betty Ford.”
The Independent (UK)
JESS DENHAM Friday 26 September 2014
Nicks took the photographs at home and on tour during the Seventies and Eighties
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks is displaying a collection of self-portraits taken on her Polaroid camera during the Seventies and Eighties.
New York’s Morrison Hotel Gallery will house the 24 Karat Gold exhibition, presented in accompaniment with her forthcoming October album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault.
Nicks credits her insomnia for the creation of the photos. “Some people don’t sleep at night – I am one of those people,” she said in a statement.
“These pictures were taken long after everyone had gone to bed – I would begin after midnight and go until 4 or 5 in the morning. I stopped at sunrise like a vampire.”
Nicks added that she “never really thought anyone would ever see” the images, which she stored in shoeboxes.
Fleetwood Mac welcome Christine McVie back in the fold, and plan a British return. “It’s all about you, Chris,” says Stevie Nicks…
The newly reformed 1970s blockbuster lineup of Fleetwood Mac starring Christine McVie will head to the UK for shows early next summer, singer Stevie Nicks tells Uncut, and their first ever Glastonbury is not being ruled out. “Chris is excited to come back to London. It’ll be soon, probably May,” says Nicks, as a rejuvenated Mac prepare to head out on their first US tour with the classic Rumours lineup since October 31, 1982, when the troubled five-piece played the final show of their Mirage tour. “Glastonbury? You never know. You have to weave festivals in [to the tour]. It’s being discussed.”
McVie, who quite the group in 1998, joined her former bandmates onstage for an emotional encore of “Don’t Stop” during their shows in London last September and became an official member again in January when the new tour, dubbed On With The Show, was announced. “The second people saw she was coming back, the tickets just sold,” says Nicks, “and I tell her: ‘It’s a good thing you’re in really great shape and you’re happy about this, because it is all about you.’ It’s fun to see it through her eyes, her being gone for so long, because she’s so excited.”
With the band not getting any younger, Nicks admits McVie’s return has plenty of benefits. “It’s less work when it comes down to it as Lindsey [Buckingham] and I don’t have to sing 50/50. Now we do a third each so it’s less singing and a little less physically difficult, so that’s nice. Her music is very different too, so it adds to everything.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac welcome Christine McVie back in the fold, and plan a British return | Uncut Magazine→
Uncut Magazine, November, 2014
by Piers Martin
Rating: 7/10
Fleetwood Mac star heads to Nashville, chasing the songs that nearly got away.
As if Stevie Nicks hasn’t done enough soul-searching during her 40 years in one of the world’s biggest bands… On her eighth solo album, Nicks immerses herself in her past, gathering 16 of her long-lost songs together like errant children and dressing them in traditional costume – the billowing robes and gypsy shawl – before sending them out, fullyNicksed, into the world.24 Karat Gold – Songs From The Vault finds the 66-year old getting her memories in order with the help of longtime associates Waddy Wachtel (he first played with her on 1973’s Buckingham Nicks) and Dave Stewart, producer of Nicks’ last solo set, 2011’s In Your Dreams, and a band of hired hands in Nashville who knocked out new versions of Nicks’ old songs in 15 days last May. In Your Dreams, somewhat tarnished by Dave Stewart’s sweet tooth, took 14 months. Fleetwood Mac records take far longer.
The songs in question stem from demos Nicks wrote at various stages in her career between 1969 and 1995, intended for her solo or Fleetwood Mac albums. One ballad, the bonus track “Twisted”, written in 1995 with Lindsey Buckingham for the film Twister, she felt deserved a wider audience. “When songs go into movies you might as well dump them out the window as you’re driving by because they never get heard,” she tells Uncut.
The Morrison Hotel Gallery, which specializes in music photography – not only photographs of musicians, but also photography by musicians – will present a show of self-portraits by Stevie Nicks from between 1975 and 1987. The pictures for the show were selected by Dave Stewart, the Eurythmics guitarist, who co-produced her “In Your Dreams” album. The show, called “24 Karat Gold” – also the name of Ms. Nicks’s new album (a version of which will come with a book of Ms. Nicks’s photographs) – is devoted entirely to selfies taken in the wee hours of the night, both at home and on tour, using Polaroid cameras.
Why self-portraits?
“I wanted to learn how to become a photographer,” Ms. Nicks said in comments forwarded by her spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. “And I don’t sleep at night, so I thought, who am I going to ask to stay up all night, and then do a show tomorrow? So I’m not going to get Christine,” she said, referring to Christine McVie, her colleague in Fleetwood Mac. “She’s going to say, ‘Are you crazy? I’m going to the bar. Bye.’”
In search of variety, Ms. Nicks used props and costumes, often tinkering with lighting and placement through the night. “I did everything,” she said. “I was the stylist, the makeup artist, the furniture mover, the lighting director — it was my joy. I was the model.”
She continued taking self-portraits for more than a decade, until, as she put it, “the Polaroids were just almost impossible to use, because there was just no more film and they all broke down.”
The pictures have not been exhibited before. Mostly, Ms. Nicks said, they were stored in shoeboxes, where she filed them soon after taking them.
The exhibition will be at 201 Mulberry Street on Oct. 10 and 11, and will move to the Morrison Hotel Gallery at 116 Prince Street on Oct. 13, where it will run for the rest of October.
Daily Express (UK)
Published: Sat, September 20, 2014
A collection of candid Polaroids taken of FLEETWOOD MAC star STEVIE NICKS 40 years ago are to be unveiled as part of a new exhibition in New York.
The 24 Karat Gold showcase at the Morrison Hotel Gallery will coincide with the release of the rocker’s new album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault, which will be released in early October (14).
Nicks reveals she took the self-portraits “long after everyone had gone to bed”, explaining, “Some people don’t sleep at night – I am one of those people.”
She adds, “I would begin after midnight and go until four or five in the morning. I stopped at sunrise – like a vampire… I never really thought anyone would ever see these pictures. They went into shoeboxes, where they remained.
“I did everything – I was the stylist, the make-up artist, the furniture mover, the lighting director. It was my joy – I was the model.”
Nicks’ photographer pal Dave Stewart, who also co-produced her new album and 2011’s In Your Dreams, selected the photos which will be on show to fans and the public at the gallery.
The singer reveals to the New York Times that she has boxes full of Polaroids of herself taken between 1975 and 1987 and only stopped snapping them when her Polaroid cameras “broke down”.
It’s a new song. Well, only sort of. “This is a song that has really stayed in my head all these years,” Stevie Nicks says of “Lady,” from her soon-to-be-released eighth studio album, 24 Karat Gold – Songs From The Vault, out October 7.
“Sometimes I’ll find myself humming it, or whistling it, and this has been going on since I wrote it…in 1971.” According to Rolling Stone, “Lady” was so sacred to Nicks that she buried the demo deep inside her mother’s vintage trunk for decades. Adding to its lore: Not a single one of her Fleetwood Mac bandmates had previously heard the final cut of “Lady,” or any of the tracks off the forthcoming EP. “Each song is a lifetime,” Nicks says of the tracks, all of which were written between 1969 and 1995. “Each song has a soul. Each song has a purpose. Each song is a love story. They represent my life behind the scenes, the secrets, the broken hearts, the brokenhearted, and the survivors.”
Of course, her bandmates will soon have the chance to get acquainted with the new material: On September 30, they’ll hit the road together as the originalRumours five (Christine McVie included), for the first time in 16 years, as part of the highly anticipated “On With The Show” tour.
Here, we deliver an exclusive first look at “Lady.”
And in the exclusive footage below, Nicks opens up about writing the song while living with bandmate and lover Lindsey Buckingham at legendary producer Keith Olsen’s house shortly after the couple moved to Los Angeles. According to Nicks, the song, in its original form, was “pretty perfect.” So what’s changed? “It’s just like, you know, better piano playing,” she says, her fingers effortlessly dancing to the melody that’s had her heart for 45 years. Magic.
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Fleetwood Mac singer 
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