[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by David

She went out and worked while he stayed home and practiced his guitar, so the story goes.

She should have sent him out to work while she stayed home and practiced her piano. With a little serious work, she may have been able to be a genuine instrumentalist in the studio on those early Fleetwood Mac albums—the others might not have dismissed her or joked at her expense, and the experience for her may have been a lot more positive. (The others were very cruel: you can see it in the video footage.)

I've been teaching young adult and adult piano basics since I went off to college in 1983. I've never encountered anyone except Stevie who made literally no progress at the keyboard across a span of forty years (from the 1978 piano demos like Rhiannon and Mistaken Love to the 2015 Rolling Stone video of Gypsy on piano). If I didn't have these Stevie Nicks recordings, I'd say such a complete lack of growth was physically impossible. I know she had no practical reason to acquire any proficiency on the piano (after all, her band already had a fine keyboardist), but the fact that she never did, despite playing for fifty years and writing many of her songs that way, is absolutely unbelievable. No student I have ever encountered made zero progress across such an expanse of time. Even the way she holds her hands and fingers is emblematic of rank beginner. She must deliberately do this . . . but why? Part of her mystique?

I listened to the demo of Love Is for the first time in a while last night and wondered who is playing that? It certainly isn't her unless like you say she's sandbagging us.