The Fleetwood Mac singer makes a series of shock revelations in her new biography by Zoe Howe
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks has revealed her $1 million cocaine habit allegedly burned a hole in her nose.
The singer is also said to have almost overdosed and suffered regular blackouts and nose bleeds after becoming addicted to drugs, alcohol and sleeping pills when 27.
The 66-year-old singer admits in her new biography, Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams & Rumors, by Zoe Howe: “There was no way to get off the white horse and I didn’t want to.”
Stevie Nicks’ $1million cocaine habit, fueled by her wild affair with married Mick Fleetwood, burned a hole in her nose so big she took the drug through her private parts, reveals new book
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks was so addicted to cocaine, alcohol and Quaaludes she blacked out and nearly overdosed repeatedly
She wore gold and turquoise bottle inlaid with diamonds around her neck so she was never without coke
To avoid body searches by customs in Europe, they hired Hitler’s private rail car complete with the elderly attendant who served the Fuhrer
Things were ‘hot and heavy’ between married Mick Fleetwood and Stevie for two years
She also had an affair with Eagles’ Don Henley but his bandmate Joe Walsh was the love of her life
Stevie Nicks was 27 when she became the ‘Queen Bee’ of the British-American rock band, Fleetwood Mac.
Up until that time, writing songs and singing with her longtime sweetheart, Lindsay Buckingham, she hadn’t indulged in drugs. But that was all about to change.
She quickly descended into drug hell and became addicted to cocaine, alcohol, Quaaludes to sleep, and cigarettes – until her system broke down and she started having nosebleeds, falls on stage, blackouts and near overdoses.
She bought $1 million worth of cocaine and it burned a hole in her nose the size of a dime. Rumors spread that she had to have the drug blown up her derriere by an assistant.
‘There was no way to get off the white horse and I didn’t want to,’ the now 66-year-old Nicks said.
Besotted: Stevie Nicks has a two-year, off-and-on affair with married drummer Mick Fleetwood. Their passion was fueled by drugs and alcohol. Mick was still married to model Jenny Boyd at the time
Hot: Stevie and Nick made beautiful music together – both on and off the stage
The iconic singer releases a record amid fierce interest in her work and persona
Elio Iannacci
January 25, 2015
Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Getty Images
A night owl by nature, Stevie Nicks was unable to sleep on a recent Saturday night in Manhattan and had scheduled a late interview to help pass the evening. So 1:30 a.m. found her looking out on the terrace of her rented penthouse atop the Palace Hotel, with a hypnotic view of the Rockefeller Plaza. Amid a torrent of recollections—of her band, Fritz; of the duo she later created with former lover and Fritz guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham; and, of course, of Fleetwood Mac—Nicks began to hum a hip-hop tune. “Which rapper is it that I love who says, ‘Mo’ money more problems?’ ” she asked, pausing in the midst of Notorious B.I.G.’s biggest hit. “He spoke the truth. Don’t I know it!”
Nicks’s truth is peppered with tales of fate and near-fatalities: Fleetwood Mac’s opulent success, the long nights of work wrought with “enough alcohol and cocaine to guarantee years of addiction,” the speculative stories that followed them around for years (orgies and paganism were favoured topics).
The history is relevant; her recent solo album, 24 Karat Gold, reinterprets demos written before, during and after Fleetwood Mac’s rise. In it, Nicks doesn’t simply cover her own work; she acts as a musical necromancer who resurrects old sounds and personal stories of burned love, life on the road and facing demons. The song Twisted, first released on the soundtrack for the 1996 disaster-drama Twister, flicks at the appetite for danger all five band members shared. “It was originally written about a group of tornado chasers who dedicate their lives to hunting down storms,” she said. “The parallels to Fleetwood Mac are so there.” The mix of emotion, narcotics and creative egos brought forth a bounty of songs, and turbulent romances. Nicks ended her relationship with Buckingham in 1975, and had an affair with drummer Mick Fleetwood. Christine McVie, the band’s keyboardist-vocalist, left the guitarist for the sound engineer. “After the show, we wouldn’t go out,” Nicks said. “[Christine] would drink wine spritzers and I’d drink tequila alone in our adjoined rooms. The boys were angry at us [and] we had to see them in the morning to work.” Continue reading ‘When in doubt, be Stevie Nicks’ | Macleans.ca→
Stevie Nicks talks with Elio Iannacci on a recent cameo, a Fleetwood Mac reunion and a new solo album decades in the making
Elio Iannacci
January 23, 2015
Peter Kramer/NBC NewsWire/Getty Images
Q (Elio Iannacci):Your album 24 Karat Gold took more than 30 years to make. Has there been some sort of cathartic release now that the demos are re-recorded?
A (Stevie Nicks): I haven’t gotten to enjoy it at all. Rehearsal for the Fleetwood Mac tour started the sixth of August, and we made 24 Karat Gold in three five-day weeks in Nashville, and then came back to my house in Los Angeles and did three more five-day weeks.
Q:Rather than have a current photo of yourself taken for the album cover, why did you choose to use a photograph from the ’70s?
A: It takes away the conceptual thing of finding a photographer that you like, that’s going to shoot you right, that’s going to get a picture where you don’t look 9,000 years old. I have all these old Polaroids smashed together in shoeboxes. I pulled out one [photo] and said, “This is the cover; it’s a golden picture. That’s solved.”
‘I was the worst drug addict’: Stevie Nicks recalls her cocaine habit and discusses dating after 60 in Rolling Stone
Before Stevie Nicks checked herself into rehab in 1986, she had snorted so much cocaine it tore a hole through her nose.
‘All of us were drug addicts,’ the 66-year-old rock icon admitted in the new Rolling Stone on newsstands Friday.
‘But there was a point where I was the worst drug addict…I was a girl, I was fragile, and I was doing a lot of coke. And I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous.’
‘I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous’: Before Stevie Nicks checked herself into rehab in 1986, she had snorted so much cocaine it tore a hole through her nose (pictured in 1985)
The Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter opened up to Rolling Stone magazine about working with ex-boyfriend and bandmate, Lindsey Buckingham
Photograph: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images
Despite their onstage pretence to be close friends and inextricably linked, walking on hand in hand and singing to each other, Fleetwood Mac’s shawl-loving singer Stevie Nicks revealed that her relationship with bandmate and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham remains tense.
“Relations with Lindsey are exactly as they have been since we broke up,” said Nicks, in an interview with Rolling Stone. “He and I will always be antagonising to each other, and we will always do things that will irritate each other, and we really know how to push each other’s buttons.”
Nicks and Buckingham joining Fleetwood Mac was the precursor to their period of greatest commercial success, following the release of their eponymous album in 1975. By the time 1977’s Rumours was released, and spawned four hit singles that catapulted the band – complete with a poppier sound – to stadium-gig fame, Nicks and Buckingham’s romantic relationship had fallen apart, and was documented on the album in songs such as Nicks’s Dreams and Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way.
During the peak of their Rumours-era stardom, the members of Fleetwood Mac earned a reputation for enduring a series of volatile and tumultuous relationships and breakups. Founding member Mick Fleetwood discovered his wife had cheated on him, with his best friend. Bassist John McVie and songwriting keyboard player Christine McVie split, and Christine wrote the song You Make Loving Fun about her new boyfriend, who was part of the band’s touring organisation. Nicks and Fleetwood briefly dated.
“We know exactly what to say when we really want to throw a dagger in,” Nicks said of she and Buckingham. “And I think that that’s not different now than it was when we were 20. And I don’t think it will be different when we’re 80.”
Even with their personal ups and downs, Fleetwood Mac reunited in 2013 to record an album, and begin a series of tours. Christine McVie returned, after leaving the band in 1998, joining John McVie, Nicks, Buckingham and Fleetwood. The five-piece are currently on a North American tour. They are due to play London’s O2 Arena in May.
Album Review: Beauty and the Beast (live 1986 Radio Broadcast) by Stevie Nicks
Poor Sound, but it is a bootleg after all….
I was gifted this CD as an Xmas present and was curious hear the quality of this set, I did not expect a stellar live recording and my fears were as expected fully justified, the sound quality is poor for a ‘supposed’ official release (would rate this a B+ in the bootleg world) and the packaging is pretty average.
If you want to hear Stevie singing live I would suggest the official Soundstage set from 2009 is worth your hard-earned money, not this set that is really only a bootleg and i do wonder how the publishers get hold of these recordings and are allowed to sell them via Amazon, I suspect Ms Nicks sees nothing of the royalties here. Also bear in mind that if you look hard enough online or engage with Stevie Nicks fans online, I dare say that this recording (and others) exist as bootlegs that can normally be sourced for free.
Two stars out of five
Track List
1. Outside The Rain
2. Dreams
3. Talk To Me
4. I Need To Know
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Leather and Lace
7. Stand Back
8. Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
9. How Still My Love
10. Edge of Seventeen
11. Rhiannon
Old, half-finished songs picked up, dusted down and fully realised by Nicks in all her croaky, wizened glory.
With her first LP since 2011’s In Your Dreams, Nicks has decided to revisit some old demos to give them the full studio work-up.
Comprising songs almost exclusively written between 1969 and 1987, what could have been a rushed cash-in is instead a crafted, worthwhile document.
Raking over her earlier songwriting chops proves a canny move, and there’s plenty here that will appeal.
Her now gently burnished vocals lend appropriate weight to the weary, wistful casino worker in The Dealer, in which downcast guitar and piano back lines like “If I’d have known a little more I’d have run away,” while she croakily dispenses some hard-won wisdom from a scarred heart over gritty guitar in Hard Advice.
Although it outstays its welcome at 15 tracks, the range is wide enough to take in freaky Hammond organ solos on Starshine – the album’s galloping, bittersweet opener – intimate, stream-of-consciousness frustration and exasperation in Mabel Normand and a hard, funky guitar riff that Rage Against The Machine wouldn’t sniff at (the six-minute barnstormer I Don’t Care).
Her intimate delivery frequently disarms, be it alongside Mac-style vocal harmonies in Carousel, recorded for Nicks’ mother, or the soul-baring uncertainty of Lady, a simple acoustic ballad with plodding piano.
A slinky, upbeat Mississippi bar feel excites in Cathouse Blues and there’s an elegant drive to the title track.
In spite of its length, these reshaped, refined offcuts only serve to bolster Nicks’ impressive catalogue.
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)
You must be logged in to post a comment.