Stevie's a stayer - Stevie Nicks on art, ageing and attraction: ‘Botox makes it look like you’re in a satanic cult!’
"still my favorite witch. only because she was the only one i met..... crazy crazy woman. had a voice for awhile ..."
Stevie Nicks: ‘I’m an independent woman, and that is not attractive to men.’ Photograph: Randee St Nicholas
At 72, the singer is still looking for adventure. She talks about her years with Fleetwood Mac, the abortion that made them possible, and her friendship with Harry Styles
Jenny Stevens @jenny_stevens Wed 14 Oct 2020 06.00 BST Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2020 21.17 BST
Stevie Nicks has been taking the pandemic even more seriously than most. She has barely left her home in Los Angeles this year. “My assistant, God bless her, she puts on her hazmat suit and goes to get food, otherwise we’d starve to death,” she says. She fell seriously ill in March 2019, ending up in intensive care with double pneumonia; after that shock, she fears contracting Covid-19 could end her singing career: “My mom was on a ventilator for three weeks when she had open-heart surgery and she was hoarse for the rest of her life.”
What would it mean to her to stop singing? “It would kill me,” she says. “It isn’t just singing; it’s that I would never perform again, that I would never dance across the stages of the world again.” She pauses and sighs. “I’m not, at 72 years old, willing to give up my career.”
It is nearly midnight in LA when we speak on the phone; not a problem for Nicks, who is “totally nocturnal”. The night she fell ill last year, she had just become the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice – an honour that reflects her wild success as one of the lead singers of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, as a writer and singer of raw, magical songs about love and freedom, including Dreams, Rhiannon, Gold Dust Woman, Landslide and Edge of Seventeen. Nicks is unabashedly funny, dry as a bone, often sidling into sarcasm.
I ask about her approach to spirituality. She says that, for all her fears about her career, “some people are really afraid of dying, but I’m not. I’ve always believed in spiritual forces. I absolutely know that my mom is around all the time.”
[...]
Women’s rights have been on Nicks’ mind since the death of her “hero”, the US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, last month. “Abortion rights, that was really my generation’s fight. If President Trump wins this election and puts the judge he wants in, she will absolutely outlaw it and push women back into back-alley abortions.”
[...]
The band’s problems incubated as the album was made, with their cocaine use reaching industrial levels: Nicks and her then boyfriend and musical partner, Lindsey Buckingham, broke up; John and Christine McVie, the band’s bassist and pianist/singer, got divorced; and the drummer Mick Fleetwood’s marriage broke down.
Nicks has been performing since the age of five, when her grandfather, a country singer in her native Phoenix, Arizona, dressed her in cowgirl outfits and hoisted her on to saloon bar stages to sing. She met Buckingham at the piano, in her final year of high school, when he started playing California Dreamin’ and she walked over to harmonise with him. The pair joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975.
Nicks brought glamour, stage swagger and tragic love songs to the band, her contribution complementing that of her fellow songwriter, Christine McVie. The band survived for 44 years – through Nicks’ affair with Fleetwood, Christine McVie’s 15-year hiatus and Buckingham’s departure in 1987. He came back, but was fired in 2018 (he filed a lawsuit, but later settled with the band). He was replaced by Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.
Has she spoken to Buckingham since he left? “No.” Do you really think you’ll never appear on stage with him again? “Probably never.” Really? “Uh-uh,” she says, indicating a firm no.
[...]
Nicks has been described by male colleagues as an “ego” who parades her heartbreak on stage. When her first solo album, the brilliant Bella Donna, topped the charts in 1981, she gave Buckingham a copy. He left it on the studio floor and never listened to it. “They were full-on jealous. And you know what? I should have cared less.” “They” as in the band members or the producers? “Oh, all of them. They hated that kind of confidence in a woman. People would say to me: ‘It would be very hard to be Mr Stevie Nicks.’ And I’m going: well, yeah, probably, unless you were just a really nice guy that was really confident in himself, not jealous of me, liked my friends, enjoyed my crazy life and had fun with it. And, of course, there are very few men like that. I’m an independent woman and am able to take care of myself, and that is not attractive to men.”
[LOLOL I like that.]
She remembers a discussion with her father in her family home, just after Bella Donna came out, when she was 35. “And just out of nowhere, my dad goes: ‘Stevie, you’ll never get married.’ If Christine was in this room with me right now, she’d tell you that we both made the decision not to have kids and instead follow our musical muse around the world. It’s not my job, it’s who I am.”
But Nicks did get married once, in 1982, to the former husband of her high school best friend, Robin Anderson. Robin was diagnosed with leukaemia while she was pregnant with her first child and died shortly after his birth. Nicks’ marriage to Robin’s widower, Kim, lasted three months. “That wasn’t really a marriage,” says Nicks. “We did it to take care of her son. And, three weeks later, we realised that that wasn’t going to work.”
Michael Gudinski to receive a state funeral after shock death at 68
Posted 2d ago
Michael Gudinski's sudden death has shocked the Australian music industry.(
ABC News)
Victoria will hold a state funeral for legendary music producer Michael Gudinski, who died suddenly this week.
Mr Gudinski died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Melbourne, aged 68.
Stars including Kylie Minogue, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Barnes and Archie Roach paid tribute to the pioneer, who founded Mushroom Records in 1972.
Mr Gudinski was just 20 when he set up Mushroom, and he went on to found Frontier Touring, bringing some of the biggest names in music to play in front of Australian fans.
He became one of the industry's most influential figures and has been remembered as a "passionate champion of Australian music", a "larger-than-life figure" and "always a music man".
He is survived by his wife Sue and two children.
Premier Daniel Andrews said Mr Gudinski's wife had accepted a state funeral.
"I went and saw Sue last night and offered her and the family a state funeral for an amazing Victorian," he said.
"It will be a celebration of his life; the details will be finalised in coming days.
"It's got to be COVID-safe of course, but I think we will be able to come together in an iconic venue and celebrate his life and the mark that he made and the legacy he leaves."
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