Category Archives: Stevie Nicks

Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

The Last Word: Stevie Nicks Talks Aging, Addiction, Fleetwood Mac’s Future | Rolling Stone

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By Andy Greene
Rolling Stone

The singer on listening to her heart, turning 70 and why music comes before friendship

Stevie Nicks doesn’t have much sympathy for peers who are aging less gracefully than her. “I see lots of people my age, and lots of people who are younger than me, and I think, ‘Wow, those people look really old,'” she tells Rolling Stone. “I think it’s because they didn’t try.”

At 68, the legendary singer-songwriter is staying as busy as ever. In December, Nicks wrapped an extensive solo tour, and in July, she and her Fleetwood Mac bandmates will co-headline a pair of high-profile classic-rock fests in L.A. and New York. Nicks took some time recently to share her wisdom on drugs, relationships, aging and why her solo career was vital to Fleetwood Mac’s success.
What’s the hardest part of success?
I work very, very hard. I have a piece of typewritten paper here that says, “You keep going and you don’t stop.” You do your vocal lesson. I have a lot of friends from high school and college who want to hang out when I play in their city. I have to rest for my show. It breaks my heart, but what comes first? Don’t endanger my show. That’s been my mantra my whole life: Don’t endanger my show.

Who is your hero?
Michelle Obama, because she has such an optimistic outlook and she was able to move into the White House with kids and do such a beautiful, graceful job. That had to be really hard. After spending two weeks with my family for the holidays, which was long and emotionally difficult, I know that’s super hard. I think she’s wisdom personified.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
How about my early-forties self? That’s when I walked out of Betty Ford after beating coke. I spent two months doing so well. But all my business managers and everyone were urging me to go to this guy who was supposedly­ the darling of the psychiatrists. That was the guy who put me on Klonopin. This is the man who made me go from 123 pounds to almost 170 pounds at five feet two. He stole eight years of my life.

Maybe I would have gotten married, maybe I would have had a baby, maybe I would have made three or four more great albums with Fleetwood Mac. That was the prime of my life, and he stole it. And you know why? Because I went along with what everybody else thought. So what I would tell my 40-year-old self: “Don’t listen to other people. In your heart of hearts, you know what’s best for you.” Continue reading The Last Word: Stevie Nicks Talks Aging, Addiction, Fleetwood Mac’s Future | Rolling Stone →

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Stevie Nicks: Recording ‘Tango’ in my ex-boyfriend’s bedroom was ‘extremely strange | Miami Herald

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BY HOWARD COHEN
hcohen@miamiherald.com

On Friday, March 10 (re-scheduled till March 31), Fleetwood Mac releases a 30th anniversary expanded edition of one of its most popular and influential albums, “Tango in the Night.” The lavishly packaged reissue offers a remastered version of the original album, a disc of B-sides and outtakes, plus another disc of 12-inch dance mixes of its hit singles like “Big Love” and “Little Lies” and a vinyl LP.

The 30th anniversary edition of Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 album, “Tango in the Night,” hits retail on March 10. The album includes four Top 40 singles, “Big Love,” “Seven Wonders,” “Little Lies” and “Everywhere” and remains the last studio album to feature the original “Rumours” lineup. Warner Bros./Rhino

For Stevie Nicks, the group’s star attraction, recording her parts for the 1987 album proved difficult. After the completion of a ragged tour for her third solo album, 1985’s “Rock a Little,” she went into rehab at the Betty Ford Center for a cocaine addiction. After her release, she was misguidedly placed on a Klonopin regimen. Few in her inner circle thought rehab would stick unless she was dosed on anxiety medication. They were wrong.

Her first test: joining her Fleetwood Mac band mates for the 1986 tracking sessions for “Tango in the Night.” The band hadn’t recorded since the release of “Mirage” in 1982.

Nicks’ ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, the group’s guitarist, was co-producing the band’s efforts, again, but this time the tension was poisonous, even by Fleetwood Mac’s standards.

“When I started recording for ‘Tango,’ they were recording at Lindsey’s house up on Mulholland somewhere. He lived there with his girlfriend Cheri and this record was being recorded at his house and I didn’t find that to be a great situation for me. Especially coming out of rehab,” Nicks said in an interview last year. “And then I was on Klonopin and not quite understanding why I was feeling so weird and this doctor kept saying, ‘This is what you need.’ It’s the typical scenario of a groupie doctor. Discuss rock and roll with you, so in order to do that he would keep upping your dose so you’d come in once a week.”

John McVie (seated), Mick Fleetwood (standing), Christine McVie (on floor), Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks (on seat) in a photo shoot from the “Tango in the Night” sessions. The original album was released in April 1987 and was a worldwide hit, especially in England where it hit No. 1. In the United States the album spent 44 weeks in the Top 40. Warners Bros./Rhino

Nicks sets the scenario: “I can remember going up there and not being happy to even be there and we were doing vocals in their master bedroom and that was extremely strange. In all fairness, it was like the only empty room and they had a beautiful master bedroom all set up like a vocal booth but I found it very uncomfortable, personally. I guess I didn’t go very often and when I did go I would get like, ‘Give me a shot of brandy and let me sing on four or five songs off the top of my head.’” Continue reading Stevie Nicks: Recording ‘Tango’ in my ex-boyfriend’s bedroom was ‘extremely strange | Miami Herald →

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know | Rolling Stone

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By Jordan Runtagh
Rolling Stone Online
February 3, 2017

Why “Silver Springs” was left off the LP, how the band’s Rolling Stone cover shoot fueled Steve Nicks and Mick Fleetwood’s affair, and more

“Drama. Dra-ma,” was how Christine McVie described the recording of Rumours to Rolling Stone shortly after its release on February 4th, 1977. And that wasn’t even the half of it. Sessions for Fleetwood Mac‘s masterwork have all the elements of a meticulously scripted theatrical romance – elaborate entanglements, enormous amounts of money and mountains of cocaine.

The Rumours saga is one of rock’s most famous soap operas, but here’s a refresher course on the dramatis personae: Stevie Nicks had just split with her longtime lover and musical partner, Lindsey Buckingham, while Christine was in the midst of divorcing her husband, bassist John McVie. Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood’s extra-band marriage was on the rocks, leading to an affair with Nicks before the year was out. This inner turmoil surfaced in brutally honest lyrics, transforming the album into a tantalizing he-said-she-said romantic confessional. The musicians’ personal lives permanently fused within the grooves, and all who listened to Rumours become a voyeur to the painful, glamorous mess.

Drama aside, Rumours is among the finest work the band ever produced. “We refused to let our feelings derail our commitment to the music, no matter how complicated or intertwined they became,” Fleetwood later wrote in his 2014 memoir. “It was hard to do, but no matter what, we played through the hurt.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know | Rolling Stone →

Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info, UK Articles

Stevie Nicks: ‘I was so sick — I couldn’t shower. I almost died’ | The Times

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Will Hodgkinson
January 21 2017, 12:01am,
The Times

The Fleetwood Mac singer talks about her past lovers, drugs hell — and why, at 68, she’s not too old to get married

Stevie Nicks is coming to Hyde Park for a summer concert
GETTY IMAGES

If you have wondered how Stevie Nicks, at the age of 68, manages to tour the world with Fleetwood Mac, run her solo career and be an inspiration to young female stars including Adele and Florence Welch, here’s the answer. She’s scared that if she stops, she’ll shrink.

“A friend told me that when you retire, you get smaller,” says Nicks, who at 5ft 1in cannot afford to take that chance. “Small means old, so I fight it with a sword. I’ll be on stage, dancing around, thinking, ‘Now, let’s see . . . how old am I again? 110?’ And it blows my mind! But I would be so bored if I wasn’t doing this.”

It is one in the morning, and Nicks is sheltering from a rainstorm in her beachfront apartment in Santa Monica. Announcing that she rarely goes to sleep before the small hours because she is “the Cruella de Vil of the night”, she proves to be fighting the war against age valiantly. Her California gypsy fashion sense, first shared with the world on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 divorce-era masterpiece, Rumours, remains unchanged. Her weathered voice, sexy in a stayed-up-till-7am way, is the same as it ever was. And this July she will be sharing a Hyde Park headline slot with Tom Petty, the man who kickstarted her solo career in 1981, when Fleetwood Mac were at their Lear Jethopping height and nobody wanted or expected Nicks to break out on her own.

Stevie Nicks, photographed in 1978 — her California gypsy fashion sense was already established
SAM EMERSON/POLARIS/EYEVINE

“When I started work on [the debut solo album] Bella Donna I wanted it to be like a Tom Petty record, but by a girl. That led me to Tom’s producer, Jimmy Iovine, who did not drink, do drugs, anything,” says Nicks, who at the time was known for her cocaine-centric lifestyle; she even wrote a song, Gold Dust Woman, about it. Continue reading Stevie Nicks: ‘I was so sick — I couldn’t shower. I almost died’ | The Times →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info, UK Articles

Stevie Nicks says another Fleetwood Mac album is unlikely: ‘We’re not 40 anymore’ | Standard

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London Evening Standard
By Alistair Foster
Tues 17th Jan, 2017

The music icon says the band are more keen to focus on touring

Stevie Nicks says she does not think Fleetwood Mac will make another album together — because they are “not 40” any more.

The singer, 68, believes the band are more likely to focus on touring and doubts they will ever record a follow-up to 2003’s Say You Will.

She said: “If the five of us were to get together to make a record it would take a year, which is what it always takes us.

“It would be a whole year of recording, then press, then rehearsal, and by the time we got back onto the road, it would be heading towards the second year, and I don’t know whether at this time it’s better for us just to do a big tour.”

Iconic: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac perform (Getty)

The band has sold more than 100 million records and reformed with the classic line-up of Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John and Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood for a world tour, which ended in 2015.

Nicks said: “It’s every single penny we make divided by five, so the expense of making a record, which is huge, and then to get back on tour … we are not 40.

“We have to take that into consideration — how long can we do tours that are three-hour shows? Would you rather spend a year in the studio or get back on the road? I think that the band would choose to tour.”

Nicks, who is focusing on her solo career, is also reluctant to make new music.

Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info, UK Articles

Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks announced for British Summer Time festival | The Guardian

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The Guardian (UK)
13th Dec 2016

The American rock band return for their only European show in 2017, bringing the Fleetwood Mac star with them as support

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album release with a headline appearance at the British Summer Time Hyde Park series.

At the London event on Sunday 9 July, the American rock band will perform their only European show in 2017. Supporting them on the night will be folk-rock group the Lumineers and Petty’s longtime friend and former collaborator, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks. “In 1976, I’d been in Fleetwood Mac for about a year when I heard Tom Petty’s debut,” Nicks told Rolling Stone in 2010. “I became such a fan that if I hadn’t been in a band myself, I would have joined that one.”

Petty’s appearance will be the second visit he and the Heartbreakers have made to the UK in 20 years. Their last was in 2012, when they headlined the Isle of Wight festival and two shows at the Royal Albert Hall.

This year sees the anniversary of Tom Petty’s debut album with the Heartbreakers, a self-titled release which came out in November 1976. Petty has since released 16 albums, a number of hit singles such as Free Fallin’, Don’t Come Around Here No More, You Got Lucky, You Don’t Know How It Feels, I Won’t Back Down, Listen to Her Heart, Don’t Do Me Like That, and has earned 18 Grammy nominations through the years. As well as being part of the Travelling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, he and the Heartbreakers toured with Dylan as his backing group in 1986 and 1987. They also played on Nicks’s first two solo records.

James King, senior vice president of the event organisers AEG Live, described the evening as a “one-night-only experience direct from the music gods”.

“Tom Petty’s UK fans will feel blessed to see him and the Heartbreakers in such a rare appearance in this country,” King said. “Celebrating their 40th anniversary with them is their friend and true icon Stevie Nicks. Music does not get better than this.”

Also announced as headliners for the other nights of the series are Kings of Leon, Green Day, Phil Collins and Justin Bieber.

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks Wants a New Fleetwood Mac Tour, Not a New Fleetwood Mac Album | ABC News Radio

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Stevie Nicks is currently out on her 24 Karat Gold tour, promoting her recent solo album. But as far as recording a new album with Fleetwood Mac, Stevie believes the band shouldn’t waste their time.

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Before Fleetwood Mac launched their most recent tour, they worked on some new tracks without Stevie. While Mick Fleetwood suggested the tracks might be released with just Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie singing, Stevie doesn’t buy it. “You can never say never, but I don’t think that will happen,” she tells ABC Radio.

That doesn’t mean Stevie’s ready to join her bandmates in the studio, though.

“The only reason that I don’t really wanna do a record is because I think that, in a year and a half, we’ll probably go out and do another Fleetwood Mac tour, since Christine has come back,” she explains. Christine McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 2014 after a 16-year absence.

Stevie thinks touring is the better plan, simply because of Fleetwood Mac’s dynamics.

“Do we want to go and close ourselves up in a studio for a year, [and] make a record that’s really good but that probably won’t sell, because records don’t really sell that much?” she asks. “And then we’ll have been stuffed together for a year in one room, and…when you come out of that room, we may not want to go on a tour!”

The logical solution, Stevie says, is to skip making a new record, and simply hit the road.

“I think that we should choose the tour over the record,” she tells ABC Radio. “Because touring is much more fun than making a record when you don’t have any idea how that record’s gonna come out.”

Stevie has time to figure out her next move: her tour doesn’t wrap until December 18.

Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.

Press Kits, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks rockin’ 24 Karat Gold Tour adds 20 New Shows in 2017

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STEVIE NICKS ROCKIN’ 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS PRETENDERS ADDS 20 NEW SHOWS IN 2017 BEGINNING FEBRUARY 23 IN RENO, NEVADA

– New Dates Follow 29 Shows in 2016 Which Have Received Rave Reviews –

– Tickets on Sale Monday, December 12 at LiveNation.com –

LOS ANGELES (December 5, 2016) – As Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold Tour With Special Guests Pretenders winds down for the year with 8 shows left, Live Nation, the tour’s promoter has announced 20 new shows beginning February 23 in Reno, Nevada. A full list of dates follows this release.

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

Due to huge ticket demands and stellar reviews for the 24 Karat Gold Tour, the legendary gold dust queen Stevie Nicks, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and multi-platinum Grammy Award winning solo artist, has happily agreed to add the new series of shows and continue singing and dancing across the stages of North America performing her classic hits along with longtime fan favorites from throughout her entire career as a solo artist and member of Fleetwood Mac. Nicks has collectively sold over 140 million albums.

“It’s been thrilling to get on stage each night and sing some of my early gems from early in my career along with getting the chance to sing the material from my last two albums, “In Your Dreams” and “24 Karat Gold – Songs From The Vault,” says Stevie Nicks. Rhino Records has also recently released remastered deluxe versions of Nicks’ first two solo albums “Bella Donna” and “Wild Heart”.

RECENT RAVES FROM 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR

“Stevie cast a spell over Houston… Women danced. Men sang along. And Nicks in all her witchy allure proved she still reigns supreme.” – HOUSTON CHRONICLE

“Let’s face it, there’s something downright magical to Stevie Nicks… The sexiest voice on the planet.” – PHOENIX NEW TIMES

“Stevie Nicks enchants faithful fans at the Atlanta show… As women rock stars go, there aren’t much cooler than Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde… A whopping injection of female fused musical power – a love letter to the faithful.” – ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION

“Stevie Nicks doesn’t need Fleetwood Mac… I’m so happy she has the Mac but her solo catalogue does fine, filling two hours as she proved to a packed TD Garden. The golden goddess in gossamer has huge instantly recognizable hits… In the ‘80’s she had ten top 40 singles (not including her Mac smashes) but last night proved her “forgotten works have equal force and beauty .” – BOSTON HERALD Continue reading Stevie Nicks rockin’ 24 Karat Gold Tour adds 20 New Shows in 2017 →

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The stories behind the songs that Stevie Nicks is singing on her ’24 Karat Gold Tour’ | MLive

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Nicks, who performed at Van Andel Arena on Wed., Nov. 23 and at The Palace on Sun., Nov. 27, 2016, admitted this is not her typical solo tour. She called it a little darker than usual. This slideshow tells the stories behind many of the songs she performed. “It’s something different for me after all these years. I didn’t want to come out here and do the same Stevie Nicks stuff that you’ve seen 5,000 times.”

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Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders opened for Nicks, performing for one hour. They performed songs from their 10th studio album, “Alone,” and some classics including: I’ll Stand By You,” “Back On The Chain Gang”, “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” and “Brass in Pocket.” Hynde made sure to put a little more emphasis on the line “been driving Detroit leaning” from the song “Brass in Pocket.”

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Story behind “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”
Nicks brought out Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders for this duet, originally performed with Tom Petty. The song is from Nicks’ first album, “Bella Donna” from 1981. Nicks says it wasn’t on the album at first, but producer Jimmy Iovine said it needed a hit single.

“Do you want me to go home and write a single? No, I don’t because a friend of ours (Tom Petty) has offered to give you an amazing song. If you don’t take this song and get this single, your record may tank. We have to thank Tom, because without that single, I may not even be standing here tonight.” Continue reading The stories behind the songs that Stevie Nicks is singing on her ’24 Karat Gold Tour’ | MLive →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Nicks dusts off rarities for 24 Karat Gold Tour | Miami Herald

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BY HOWARD COHEN
27th Oct, 2016

For fans craving something fresh on the concert stage, Stevie Nicks’ new 24 Karat Gold Tour is truly golden.

Photo Credit: Kristin Burns
Photo Credit: Kristin Burns

She rehearsed 30 songs with her band to come up with the 20 that made the cut for the tour, which comes to Sunrise’s BB&T Center on Nov. 4 with opening act The Pretenders. Her goal was to include tunes she has never (or rarely) done live in a career that dates to the 1973 “Buckingham Nicks” album with then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham.

Fleetwood Mac’s recently reissued “Mirage” album from 1982 includes a disc of outtakes. One of the songs, Stevie Nicks’ “If You Were My Love” is featuring for the first time live on her current 24 Karat Gold Tour.

Rarities like “Bella Donna” and “Wild Heart,” the title tracks of her first two solo albums that are also being reissued in expanded versions this coming Friday, are in the set. So is “Crying in the Night” from “Buckingham Nicks” that predates the couple joining Fleetwood Mac.

Fans will also appreciate the live debuts for a couple of tracks from her most recent solo album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault” — “The sex, drugs, rock and roll glory songs between 1969 and 1987,” Nicks said of demos she polished and recorded anew in Nashville in 2014.

“I can never write those songs again. Those were songs I am very proud of. I pulled them off Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac records. The reasons were I didn’t like the production or I didn’t like the way they were recorded. I considered those to be my best songs so what I am going to do is go out with those songs and songs off “In Your Dreams” [her 2011 solo album] I didn’t do live, and it will be really fun.” Continue reading Stevie Nicks dusts off rarities for 24 Karat Gold Tour | Miami Herald →