Stevie Nicks has paid an emotional tribute to her friend Tom Petty.
The singer was close to tears as she spoke about the Free Fallin’ star, who died last year from an accidental overdose.
Speaking at the MusiCares Person of the Year event in New York honouring her band Fleetwood Mac, she said: “The loss of Tom Petty has just about broken my heart.”
She added: “He was not only a good man to go down the river with, as Johnny Cash said, he was a great father and he was a great friend.
“He was one of my best friends. My heart will never get over this.”
Christine McVie said failed relationships in the band – including splits and affairs – put them all in the depths of despair in the studio
Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood onstage during MusiCares Person of the Year at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Friday (Image: Getty Images North America)
Rock royalty Fleetwood Mac got high to try to numb the misery of being together, Christine McVie has revealed.
The singer-songwriter said failed relationships in the band – including splits and affairs – put them all in the depths of despair in the studio.
They turned to alcohol, cocaine and even quaaludes tranquilisers to “cheer themselves up” and get through sessions.
Her candid words came as Fleetwood Mac were honoured at the MusiCares Person of the Year pre-Grammy event.
Christine, 74, said of wild drug use in their heyday: “Everybody was doing it. I don’t have any regrets at all.
“I would not change those days but you have to remember it was uniform – it was a badge of honour, and everybody was doing that kind of thing.”
Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks perform onstage during MusiCares Person of the Year honoring Fleetwood Mac at Radio City Music Hall on January 26 (Image: Getty Images North America)
Enjoyed this book and completed it in a few days over the Christmas / New Year period whilst free from work duties.
The book was thorough and covered Stevie Nicks’ life in detail up to the year 2017 and covered a few items that I was not aware of, however, the author as an experienced writer that has written books on other members of Fleetwood Mac and other musical figures the fact-checking here was not very good, which makes me wonder if anything that I did not already know about Stevie’s life is actually accurate.
It is a shame as this book had the potential to be the definitive biography of Stevie Nicks (until she decides to write her own autobiography) but the fact-checking and errors really let this down, so near yet so far Mr Davis, please review with your editors in more detail before completing your next book as these errors really let you and the book down.
As a recommendation, I would say this book is good and thorough, but for a recent book on the life of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac I would refer anyone to Mick Fleetwood’s recent memoir ‘Play On‘ that was released in 2014, at least you know that much of the content is accurate, or as accurate as Mick remembers, and of course he was there!
The Hutchinson News By Jody Feinberg Posted Oct 25, 2017 at 10:38 AM
“Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks” by Stephen Davis. St. Martin’s Press, 2017. 352 pages. $18.29 / £20.61
Stephen Davis has an unusual wish for a man prior to the release of his 18th rock book — a biography of Fleetwood Mac singer and solo artist and songwriter Stevie Nicks.
“The main thing is I want to be in the next issue of AARP,” said Davis, who wrote “Gold Dust Woman” out of his Milton, Massachusetts, home. “She’s almost 70 and I’m 70, and they send out something like 25 million copies (actually the magazine claims more than 47 million readers).”
Davis said he is fascinated by Nicks, who found stardom relatively late (for a rock star) in her 20′s and still fills an arena both solo and with Fleetwood Mac. She recently announced an 18-month tour starting in mid-2018 with Fleetwood Mac. Her 40 top-50 hits include “Don’t Stop,” the signature song of former President Bill Clinton’s campaign.
“The arc of the story is that initially she wasn’t really wanted in Fleetwood Mac and eventually she went out on her own and became a bigger star than Fleetwood Mac,” said Davis, who began researching “Gold Dust Woman” in 2012 and finished it in 2016. “When I started writing, I thought the book would be a valedictory thing about someone whose career is winding now. Now, I’m just trying to keep up with her and will need to update the book when the paperback comes out in a year.”
The track’s title came from a conversation the Fleetwood Mac star had wife Petty’s first wife in 1979
Music legend Tom Petty, who has died at the age of 66, spent his illustrious career collaborating with many other musicians ranging from ELO’s Jeff Lynne, George Harrison and, of course, Stevie Nicks.
Interestingly, the singer served as the inspiration for one of the Fleetwood Mac singer’s most famous solo tracks in a rather circuitous way.
“Edge of Seventeen,” released in 1982, was the third single taken from her debut record Bella Donna and while Petty may not have featured on the track, he and first wife Jane Benyo served as inspiration for its title – all thanks to a simple case of miscommunication.
After meeting Benyo, Nicks asked her when she’d met Petty to which Benyo replied “at the age of seventeen,” a comment Nicks misheard as “the edge of seventeen.” According to the singer, she originally planned to write the song about the couple – and was even willing to give Benyo credit for the inspiration – but, the death of her beloved uncle and John Lennon in the same week (December 1980) saw her find new inspiration for the song. The title, however, remained.
Petty married Benyo in 1974 when he was 24. The couple met in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida before moving to LA in an attempt to further his music career. Two years later, Petty would release his debut record – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – which featured the songs “Breakdown” and “American Girl.”
Stevie Nicks is one of rock music’s most iconic figures.
And the 69-year-old singer-songwriter has talked about her affinity for the gypsy-like lifestyle, instilled in her at an early age as a result of her father’s work as the vice-president of Greyhound Buses and president of a food company.
‘I was able to go into new schools and make new friends. My brother, on the other hand, didn’t cope with it so well,’ she told Stellar.
‘I was always that gypsy’: Stevie Nicks has talked about her affinity for the gypsy-like lifestyle, instilled in her at an early age as a result of her father’s work
This extended into her life on the road with Fleetwood Mac in 1975, and her successful solo career, which followed in the 80s.
‘So the thing is, am I still that gypsy? Well, I was always that gypsy,’ she said.
Even today, life on the road sees the Landslide singer travel around the world to perform shows.
The musicians collaborated on several songs in the 1980s / LILY GRAE (TWITTER)
It was Side A all the way when Tom Petty played the BST festival in Hyde Park on Sunday.
“We’re going to look at the show like it’s a giant one-sided vinyl,” said the star, “and we’re going to drop the needle all up and down the record.”
The set included nearly two dozen classics, such as Free Fallin’, I Won’t Back Down and Learning To Fly.
Stevie Nicks joined him halfway through the set for a special version of their 1981 hit Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.
“You know that Tom Petty is my favourite rock star!” said the singer.
Nicks had earlier played a support slot, running through her Fleetwood Mac songbook with renditions of Dreams and Gold Dust Woman, alongside solo hits Edge of Seventeen and Landslide.
After playing Rhiannon, the 69-year-old noted she’d played the song at every concert since it was released in 1975.
“It’s never not been done,” she deadpanned. “Rhiannon: You just can’t get rid of her.”
Nicks also delved into her pre-fame catalogue with the Buckingham-Nicks song Crying In The Night which, she noted, was written in 1970, when she was a struggling musician working as a waitress in LA.
The Fleetwood Mac singer believes her friend Prince was devastated by his prescription drug addiction after making it his life’s work to “preach about the downfall of people that do drugs”
Stevie Nicks fears that close pal Prince may have wanted to end his own life.
The legendary hitmaker died aged 57 in April last year after taking an accidental overdose of prescription drug fentanyl.
He had been battling chronic hip pain and Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie, who got close to Prince in the 1980s, says he was isolated.
She explains: “I don’t know in my heart of hearts whether he just took too much.
“Or did he purposefully take too much? Did he accidentally take too much?”
“When you get to be our age – and he was younger than me – and you’re like, ‘I’m not making hit records any more… I’m not able to really tour any more because of my health…’
“You’re not married, you don’t have children… you don’t hang out with a bunch of people because you’re really an isolationist.”
Stevie, 69, who takes to the stage at Hyde Park’s British Summer Time concert alongside her life-long pal Tom Petty tomorrow night, reckons Prince was devastated by his prescription drug addiction.
She adds: “Fentanyl is the worst of the worst of the worst; way stronger than heroin, morphine, anything – and he was having to take it because I think he was probably fractured from his neck down to his feet.
“I think when you’re in that much pain, and you’re somebody who has made it your life’s work to preach about the downfall of people that do drugs, that had to be [a burden]. I think that broke his heart.”
But Prince lives on in her song Moonlight which she regularly dedicates to him.
Turning her back on Fleetwood Mac. Teaming up with Chrissie Hynde. And ditching drugs with a little help from Prince. The rock icon confronts all those rumours
Now this is a treat. It’s Saturday night in a cavernous rehearsal facility in the San Fernando Valley, over the hills from Hollywood, and I’m enjoying a private concert from rock ’n’ roll’s greatest woman – a living, breathing, dancing, sunglasses-indoors legend. Ahead of an American tour, Stevie Nicks is running through a selection of hits from her multi-million-selling career as a solo artist and as frontwoman with Fleetwood Mac.
Rhiannon, Gold Dust Woman, Stand Back, The Wild Heart, Edge Of Seventeen: these are some of the best-loved songs of the past 40 years. And the woman who wrote them – more used to wowing arenas – is standing a few feet away, singing them to me, bashing a tambourine as if her life depended on it, swirling in a vision of black scarves and drapes.
Stevie Nicks has had her own well-publicised battles with addiction in the Seventies and Eighties
During a break, I sit down with Nicks and, as she cradles her beloved terrier Lily, she talks. And talks. At the age of 69, this warm, witty woman remains as irrepressible as ever. As is usual in the world of Fleetwood Mac, there’s a lot to discuss. One topic is her upcoming US shows with fellow icon Chrissie Hynde, in support of Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold album. Another is rumours of a Fleetwood Mac tour – a tour that’s possibly a farewell one.
But more pressing is the imminent release of Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie. It’s ostensibly a duo album from Mac guitarist Buckingham and keyboard player/singer McVie. In the set-up and billing, it feels like a successor to Buckingham Nicks. This legendary ‘lost’ 1973 album was made by Stevie and Lindsey – then a couple – before the Californians joined a mouldering English blues band led by drummer Mick Fleetwood and assisted by bass player John McVie.
Their duo act didn’t last, and neither did their relationship. But Nicks’ and Buckingham’s songwriting contribution – not to mention their split, as famously documented in their songs on 1977’s 40-million-selling album Rumours – helped rocket-power Fleetwood Mac to Seventies rock’s mega-league.
THE FLEETWOOD MAC SINGER DELIVERS HER GOLDEN RULES FOR LIVING.
1. MAKE LIKE A BOY OR GIRL SCOUT: BE PREPARED
I’m scared, that’s what I am. Before shows, some people – me, Mick [Fleetwood, [ drummer], we get panic attacks. I have always been terribly nervous before shows. So I am so rehearsed and ready that I could be dead and stand up there and still sing the right words and do the right thing. Cocaine almost killed me. It’s better to just not do it. Eventually you’ll have to stop so start saving your money for rehab now.
2. THE DRUGS DON’T WORK, THEY JUST MAKE IT WORSE
Touring with Fleetwood Mac in the ’70s, cocaine was almost part of the daily routine. But when I talk about it now, I would never want the kids of today to think that I’m saying it was something good. Cos it really wasn’t something good. It almost destroyed my life. It almost killed me, and almost killed a lot of people I know. So if anybody thinks it’s safe now – it’s not. It’s better to just not do it. Because you will eventually have to stop, so start saving your money for rehab now. It’s so expensive.
3. LYRICISTS! WATCH YOUR CUSS WORDS
I’ve been listening to The Weeknd’s records. I play them one after the other when I’m in my bathroom getting ready to go out, or just hanging out with myself. He’s brilliant. And his voice – he could have come straight out of 1975 – he could have been like Stevie Winwood. He’s over-talented. But if I were to meet him, I would probably say: “You say over and over again words that I would prefer you didn’t say. I think they’re unnecessary. However, even though I think a lot of your songs are super-dirty, I still really like ’em! So I’ve given you a pass on that!”
4. SINGERS! WATCH YOUR SYLLABLES
I saw Adele at the Grammys [Adele had to restart a performance of George Michael’s Fastlove], and that song was a very hard song to sing for George Michael. It’s all about the syllables. I have a song on my 24 Karat Gold album, Mabel Normand, that’s exactly the same. That’s the reason we’re not doing it onstage. Because if you take a breath, you get off the beat. You’re one word too late, you can never get back on, and you’re dead in the water.
5. YOU’RE A ROCK STAR – THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A SICKIE
Onstage is the one time you can’t bemoan how you feel. Even if you have pneumonia, you have to say: “I’m leaving that in the dressing room and I’m walking out and I’m gonna be great. And when I come offstage, then I can burst into tears.” Continue reading 10 Commandments from Stevie Nicks | Q Magazine→
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