MacMan
02-11-2006, 11:09 AM
Courier Mail (Australia)
February 11, 2006
Section: Bam1 - First with the news
Still rocking after 30 years of fame
Alex Murdoch
Stevie Nicks has devoted her life to her music, writes Alex Murdoch
IT MAY be almost 30 years since Fleetwood Mac released Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time, but Stevie Nicks still rocks.
The 60-year-old singer-songwriter, who found fame during the 1970s and 1980s, might have sacrificed much for her musical career -- but she doesn't regret a thing.
Performing at Brisbane's Entertainment Centre, supported by John Farnham, on February 20, and alone at the Gold Coast Entertainment Centre two days later, Nicks credits her grandfather's influence for her life-long obsession with music.
She says her grandfather, a frustrated country and western singer, played his favourite music for her throughout her childhood.
``Even though he never really made it in the music business, he tried and he travelled around and played the guitar and played the fiddle,'' Nicks says. ``I was definitely influenced by him, because he loved to sing and play and he was a pretty good writer.''
Nicks says it was from these seeds that she began to believe performing for a living was a real possibility.
By the age of 10 she knew she could sing, and by 16 had written her first song.
``I was convinced I was going to be a huge rock star and I told my parents that -- I told everybody that,'' Nicks says.
But it wasn't until she met Lindsay Buckingham in her senior year of high school that she really found her musical direction.
The pair, who formed part of a band called Fritz and later became lovers, evolved to become one of the industry's rock power couples.
Nicks says while her parents were very supportive of her music, her grandfather's unsuccessful struggle meant they insisted she finish her college education before pursuing it full time.
She says they threatened to withdraw their financial support if she failed to comply.
``So when I quit and moved to Los Angeles (with Buckingham) they totally pulled the plug,'' Nicks says.
The pair had released a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful LP called Buckingham-Nicks and were on the verge of running out of money, admitting defeat to Nicks' parents and going back to college when Mick Fleetwood called and asked them to join Fleetwood Mac.
``There were many years before Fleetwood Mac that I was a poor starving artist, waitressing to support my music, but I could have given it up at any time and gone back to school and I know my parents would have set me up in an apartment and looked after my car,'' Nicks says.
She says despite those years of having nothing, ultimately she was grateful to her parents ``because they didn't make it completely easy for me.''
But times have changed since those heady days of Fleetwood Mac. Nicks says she and Buckingham -- who have long since broken up -- are still in touch, but the situation is almost surreal.
``Lindsay has three little kids, aged 7, 5 and 2 . . . you can't imagine how strange that is for me to say,'' she says.
``It's great for him and I'm really happy for him because his children are beautiful and they adore him and they will be his saviour.''
Nicks says she, on the other hand, has never regretted her decision not to have kids.
``If I did that, I wouldn't be able to do this,'' she says.
``I wouldn't have been a good person to have had a nanny to take care of my kids -- I would have been totally jealous of her and I wouldn't have been happy about it.
``So I would have ended up not having a nanny and that would have meant I would have ended up not having the time to do the work that I feel I came into this world to do.''
Nicks says even from a young age she didn't feel her reason for being on this Earth was to be a mother.
So what's next for Stevie Nicks?
She says Fleetwood Mac members would be meeting soon to discuss their future, to discuss the possibility of a reunion.
In the meantime, Nicks, who lives in LA, spends some of her rare days off visiting US soldiers wounded in Iraq and bringing them music programmed in Apple iPods.
``Whether you believe in the war or not, these boys are suffering,'' she says.
After being involved with the music industry for more than 40 years, she says the business was definitely one aspect of her life that had not changed for the better.
Nicks says she believes the Internet revolution is the worst thing to happen to music -- making it far more difficult to eke out a living.
She says fans who were shelling out for their favourite artist's albums were now illegally downloading their music for free.
``Take someone like Eminem, even if Eminem still has 10 million devoted fans, maybe two million of those devoted fans will go out and get it,'' Nicks says.
``Then those two million are just going to send that out to their friends all over the world.
``It's happening and it's going to keep on happening, and I don't know how they're going to stop it and as long as that is happening the songwriters of the world are in huge trouble.''
Nicks says she believes eventually budding songwriters will turn their talents in other directions where they have a better chance of making a living.
``And that's the most frightening thing of all,'' she says.
Nicks says everyone in the music industry, who was in it 30 years ago, wants it to be like it was ``because it was so terrific''.
``I know as a songwriter it makes me very angry to think that people can just get my music for free, because I worked real hard on it and as a writer -- that is not an incentive to keep writing,'' she says.
``At least in the old days we believed that if we had a certain talent and we just kept fighting, then we'd somehow win.''
Nicks, famed for her mystical chanteuse image, says the industry's tendency to pick artists based on their physical appearance is also endangering the development of the world's music.
``If a young singer-songwriter woman is really cute, she's five foot one (155cm), she's maybe 10 pounds (4.5kg) overweight -- but still little -- I think she's going to go, well I just can't do this,'' she says. ``And all that talent is going to be lost.''
Stevie Nicks plays Brisbane Entertainment Centre, supported by John Farnham, on February 20 and the Gold Coast Entertainment Centre on February 22.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herald Sun (Australia)
www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18107301%255E663,00.html
February 11, 2006
Section: NEWS1 - FIRST
Nicks happy going her own way
FLEETWOOD Mac star Stevie Nicks says she chose music over men.
``I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to get married, and I wasn't going to have kids because that would compromise my art,'' she says.
In an exclusive interview with Weekend Magazine, Nicks, 57, says her stardom always caused friction in relationships.
``Whoever I'm going out with ends up a little jealous because it's not easy being left behind.''
__________________________________
Fleetwood Mac star Stevie Nicks talks to Nui Te Koha about the dangers of drugs and love
AUNTY Stevie has certainly lived. So when the time came to impart life lessons to her 14-year-old niece, Jessi, rock star Stevie Nicks went hard on the truth.
There was so much to tell: a selfish early-career decision for an independent life, doomed romance, the perils of drug addiction.
But Nicks opened with a classic. Her former cocaine abuse has left a hole the size of a five-cent piece in her nose.
``It grosses people out, but I don't care,'' Nicks says, and chuckles.
``I have to get down and dirty when I'm discussing these matters. It's serious.
``See this gold ring?'' She flips her hand. ``I could hang this ring in my nose. Believe me, nobody needs that ability. Nobody wants that ability.''
Fleetwood Mac and solo star Nicks, 57, has a great singing voice. But drug use almost destroyed it -- and her life. Her advice to Jessi was sober.
``You are always going to have to quit cocaine, either in rehab or hospital.
``So it's better to walk by that chocolate cake and not take a bite. If you do take a bite, you'll eat the whole cake and be totally screwed.''
Nicks is eternally grateful she was warned against trying heroin.
``A wise soul told me, in the very beginning, that if I tried heroin it would feel like I could write the great American novel, and, after that, it would never be the same. I would spend the rest of my life trying to achieve that moment. That frightened me.
``But my generation was never warned about cocaine. We were told, `It's recreational, it's not addictive, it won't hurt you'. I needed somebody to say, `You will end up with a hole in your nose that could go to your head, cause a brain haemorrhage and kill you.
``If I'd known that, I swear to God I would never have done cocaine.''
N ICKS quit drugs in 1985, but, long before that, she had abandoned notions of being a wife and mother.
``I knew at a very young age that, if I had kids, I would not be a good nanny person. I would not be a good person to walk into a room and have my baby girl run into the arms of another woman.
``I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to get married, and I wasn't going to have kids because that would compromise my art.
``In a way, that's selfish. But in another way, it's not, because I chose to make art and music for the world. Somebody might be having a bad day, but feels better after hearing Dreams, or Landslide, or Rhiannon. I chose to affect people that way.''
Nicks says her hectic work life plays havoc with a relationship.
``Men are able to do it. All the rock-star guys I know are married with kids, and they manage.
``But it is harder when a woman is constantly saying goodbye to her husband, no matter what his job, rock star or waiter. `I'm leaving. And by the way, all the plans we had for the next two weeks are out','' Nicks says tenderly, play-acting the moment.
She quickly gathers her thoughts.
``I chose not to hurt somebody's feelings, I chose not to upset and, in the long run, I chose not to break somebody's heart.''
HER most famous relationship, with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, crumbled during, and fuelled the melodrama of, the Mac masterpiece, Rumours.
In the Mac's 2004 live shows, Buckingham, happily married with three kids, and Nicks hugged warmly for one song and slow danced for another.
But Nicks dispels any inference of rekindled love. For starters, she knows, to the exact second, the duration of the slow dance.
``Way back, Lindsey and I made a plan. We wanted to work to buy a beautiful house to live in, and have our music touch the world. So when we slow dance, we go back to the day we made that plan.
``We got our dream. It's good, it's sweet.
``But do I want to be married to Lindsey? No. Does Lindsey want to be married to me? No. I am only happy hefound somebody who can deal with the craziness of his life.''
Is Nicks still open to the realm of romantic possibility?
``I'm open to it, but it leaves me with too many questions. Do I want to give up my freedom? The couple of times I have been in love, I was willing to try to make it work. But it didn't work.
``For me, whoever it is I'm going out with always ends up being a little bit jealous and resentful, because it's not easy being left behind.
``It's not easy when that big, black limousine rolls up the driveway to get me. I'm excited and my bags are packed. But for the person left at home, it's not so great.
``I have no regrets. I'm not sorry I'm not married. I love my time alone too much. I love my privacy.''
That became clearer when she bought a house in Los Angeles in November.
``When I walked into it for the first time, I thought, would I like to be married or sharing this place with somebody else? And the selfish artist part of me responded.
``I plan to turn the third bedroom into my art studio, only for drawings. The library will be my recording studio, and the solarium will be my personal TV room for mornings.
``I am selfish,'' she says, laughing. ``I have become more selfish over the years. But I knew that when I was 25.''
Stevie Nicks performs solo, and with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, at Rod Laver Arena next Saturday.
February 11, 2006
Section: Bam1 - First with the news
Still rocking after 30 years of fame
Alex Murdoch
Stevie Nicks has devoted her life to her music, writes Alex Murdoch
IT MAY be almost 30 years since Fleetwood Mac released Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time, but Stevie Nicks still rocks.
The 60-year-old singer-songwriter, who found fame during the 1970s and 1980s, might have sacrificed much for her musical career -- but she doesn't regret a thing.
Performing at Brisbane's Entertainment Centre, supported by John Farnham, on February 20, and alone at the Gold Coast Entertainment Centre two days later, Nicks credits her grandfather's influence for her life-long obsession with music.
She says her grandfather, a frustrated country and western singer, played his favourite music for her throughout her childhood.
``Even though he never really made it in the music business, he tried and he travelled around and played the guitar and played the fiddle,'' Nicks says. ``I was definitely influenced by him, because he loved to sing and play and he was a pretty good writer.''
Nicks says it was from these seeds that she began to believe performing for a living was a real possibility.
By the age of 10 she knew she could sing, and by 16 had written her first song.
``I was convinced I was going to be a huge rock star and I told my parents that -- I told everybody that,'' Nicks says.
But it wasn't until she met Lindsay Buckingham in her senior year of high school that she really found her musical direction.
The pair, who formed part of a band called Fritz and later became lovers, evolved to become one of the industry's rock power couples.
Nicks says while her parents were very supportive of her music, her grandfather's unsuccessful struggle meant they insisted she finish her college education before pursuing it full time.
She says they threatened to withdraw their financial support if she failed to comply.
``So when I quit and moved to Los Angeles (with Buckingham) they totally pulled the plug,'' Nicks says.
The pair had released a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful LP called Buckingham-Nicks and were on the verge of running out of money, admitting defeat to Nicks' parents and going back to college when Mick Fleetwood called and asked them to join Fleetwood Mac.
``There were many years before Fleetwood Mac that I was a poor starving artist, waitressing to support my music, but I could have given it up at any time and gone back to school and I know my parents would have set me up in an apartment and looked after my car,'' Nicks says.
She says despite those years of having nothing, ultimately she was grateful to her parents ``because they didn't make it completely easy for me.''
But times have changed since those heady days of Fleetwood Mac. Nicks says she and Buckingham -- who have long since broken up -- are still in touch, but the situation is almost surreal.
``Lindsay has three little kids, aged 7, 5 and 2 . . . you can't imagine how strange that is for me to say,'' she says.
``It's great for him and I'm really happy for him because his children are beautiful and they adore him and they will be his saviour.''
Nicks says she, on the other hand, has never regretted her decision not to have kids.
``If I did that, I wouldn't be able to do this,'' she says.
``I wouldn't have been a good person to have had a nanny to take care of my kids -- I would have been totally jealous of her and I wouldn't have been happy about it.
``So I would have ended up not having a nanny and that would have meant I would have ended up not having the time to do the work that I feel I came into this world to do.''
Nicks says even from a young age she didn't feel her reason for being on this Earth was to be a mother.
So what's next for Stevie Nicks?
She says Fleetwood Mac members would be meeting soon to discuss their future, to discuss the possibility of a reunion.
In the meantime, Nicks, who lives in LA, spends some of her rare days off visiting US soldiers wounded in Iraq and bringing them music programmed in Apple iPods.
``Whether you believe in the war or not, these boys are suffering,'' she says.
After being involved with the music industry for more than 40 years, she says the business was definitely one aspect of her life that had not changed for the better.
Nicks says she believes the Internet revolution is the worst thing to happen to music -- making it far more difficult to eke out a living.
She says fans who were shelling out for their favourite artist's albums were now illegally downloading their music for free.
``Take someone like Eminem, even if Eminem still has 10 million devoted fans, maybe two million of those devoted fans will go out and get it,'' Nicks says.
``Then those two million are just going to send that out to their friends all over the world.
``It's happening and it's going to keep on happening, and I don't know how they're going to stop it and as long as that is happening the songwriters of the world are in huge trouble.''
Nicks says she believes eventually budding songwriters will turn their talents in other directions where they have a better chance of making a living.
``And that's the most frightening thing of all,'' she says.
Nicks says everyone in the music industry, who was in it 30 years ago, wants it to be like it was ``because it was so terrific''.
``I know as a songwriter it makes me very angry to think that people can just get my music for free, because I worked real hard on it and as a writer -- that is not an incentive to keep writing,'' she says.
``At least in the old days we believed that if we had a certain talent and we just kept fighting, then we'd somehow win.''
Nicks, famed for her mystical chanteuse image, says the industry's tendency to pick artists based on their physical appearance is also endangering the development of the world's music.
``If a young singer-songwriter woman is really cute, she's five foot one (155cm), she's maybe 10 pounds (4.5kg) overweight -- but still little -- I think she's going to go, well I just can't do this,'' she says. ``And all that talent is going to be lost.''
Stevie Nicks plays Brisbane Entertainment Centre, supported by John Farnham, on February 20 and the Gold Coast Entertainment Centre on February 22.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herald Sun (Australia)
www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18107301%255E663,00.html
February 11, 2006
Section: NEWS1 - FIRST
Nicks happy going her own way
FLEETWOOD Mac star Stevie Nicks says she chose music over men.
``I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to get married, and I wasn't going to have kids because that would compromise my art,'' she says.
In an exclusive interview with Weekend Magazine, Nicks, 57, says her stardom always caused friction in relationships.
``Whoever I'm going out with ends up a little jealous because it's not easy being left behind.''
__________________________________
Fleetwood Mac star Stevie Nicks talks to Nui Te Koha about the dangers of drugs and love
AUNTY Stevie has certainly lived. So when the time came to impart life lessons to her 14-year-old niece, Jessi, rock star Stevie Nicks went hard on the truth.
There was so much to tell: a selfish early-career decision for an independent life, doomed romance, the perils of drug addiction.
But Nicks opened with a classic. Her former cocaine abuse has left a hole the size of a five-cent piece in her nose.
``It grosses people out, but I don't care,'' Nicks says, and chuckles.
``I have to get down and dirty when I'm discussing these matters. It's serious.
``See this gold ring?'' She flips her hand. ``I could hang this ring in my nose. Believe me, nobody needs that ability. Nobody wants that ability.''
Fleetwood Mac and solo star Nicks, 57, has a great singing voice. But drug use almost destroyed it -- and her life. Her advice to Jessi was sober.
``You are always going to have to quit cocaine, either in rehab or hospital.
``So it's better to walk by that chocolate cake and not take a bite. If you do take a bite, you'll eat the whole cake and be totally screwed.''
Nicks is eternally grateful she was warned against trying heroin.
``A wise soul told me, in the very beginning, that if I tried heroin it would feel like I could write the great American novel, and, after that, it would never be the same. I would spend the rest of my life trying to achieve that moment. That frightened me.
``But my generation was never warned about cocaine. We were told, `It's recreational, it's not addictive, it won't hurt you'. I needed somebody to say, `You will end up with a hole in your nose that could go to your head, cause a brain haemorrhage and kill you.
``If I'd known that, I swear to God I would never have done cocaine.''
N ICKS quit drugs in 1985, but, long before that, she had abandoned notions of being a wife and mother.
``I knew at a very young age that, if I had kids, I would not be a good nanny person. I would not be a good person to walk into a room and have my baby girl run into the arms of another woman.
``I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to get married, and I wasn't going to have kids because that would compromise my art.
``In a way, that's selfish. But in another way, it's not, because I chose to make art and music for the world. Somebody might be having a bad day, but feels better after hearing Dreams, or Landslide, or Rhiannon. I chose to affect people that way.''
Nicks says her hectic work life plays havoc with a relationship.
``Men are able to do it. All the rock-star guys I know are married with kids, and they manage.
``But it is harder when a woman is constantly saying goodbye to her husband, no matter what his job, rock star or waiter. `I'm leaving. And by the way, all the plans we had for the next two weeks are out','' Nicks says tenderly, play-acting the moment.
She quickly gathers her thoughts.
``I chose not to hurt somebody's feelings, I chose not to upset and, in the long run, I chose not to break somebody's heart.''
HER most famous relationship, with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, crumbled during, and fuelled the melodrama of, the Mac masterpiece, Rumours.
In the Mac's 2004 live shows, Buckingham, happily married with three kids, and Nicks hugged warmly for one song and slow danced for another.
But Nicks dispels any inference of rekindled love. For starters, she knows, to the exact second, the duration of the slow dance.
``Way back, Lindsey and I made a plan. We wanted to work to buy a beautiful house to live in, and have our music touch the world. So when we slow dance, we go back to the day we made that plan.
``We got our dream. It's good, it's sweet.
``But do I want to be married to Lindsey? No. Does Lindsey want to be married to me? No. I am only happy hefound somebody who can deal with the craziness of his life.''
Is Nicks still open to the realm of romantic possibility?
``I'm open to it, but it leaves me with too many questions. Do I want to give up my freedom? The couple of times I have been in love, I was willing to try to make it work. But it didn't work.
``For me, whoever it is I'm going out with always ends up being a little bit jealous and resentful, because it's not easy being left behind.
``It's not easy when that big, black limousine rolls up the driveway to get me. I'm excited and my bags are packed. But for the person left at home, it's not so great.
``I have no regrets. I'm not sorry I'm not married. I love my time alone too much. I love my privacy.''
That became clearer when she bought a house in Los Angeles in November.
``When I walked into it for the first time, I thought, would I like to be married or sharing this place with somebody else? And the selfish artist part of me responded.
``I plan to turn the third bedroom into my art studio, only for drawings. The library will be my recording studio, and the solarium will be my personal TV room for mornings.
``I am selfish,'' she says, laughing. ``I have become more selfish over the years. But I knew that when I was 25.''
Stevie Nicks performs solo, and with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, at Rod Laver Arena next Saturday.