Travels With Stevie; Rock and Roll Chronicler Embraces the Gold Dust Woman
A few years ago, after completing his biography of Carly Simon, author Stephen Davis was considering his next book. He didn’t want to write about a rock band, he had been down that road too many times, he thought. He wanted to write about another individual. When he decided it would be a woman again, there was only one name that came to mind: Stevie Nicks.
“She has a legend, and a myth and an epic,” Mr. Davis said in an interview at the home of his longtime friend Peter Simon. The two met as freshmen at Boston University, and collaborated on their first book, Reggae Bloodlines, published in 1977. Mr. Simon introduced Mr. Davis to the Vineyard and although he lives in Milton, he has had a long history with the Island, writing portions of several of his books here.
Gold Dust Woman: the Biography of Stevie Nicks, is available in bookstores beginning Tuesday. It is Mr. Davis’s 19th book.
He began his writing career at Boston University, then wrote about music for the Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone and the New York Times, before turning to books full time. His biographies have varied in style from ghost writing memoirs (Michael Jackson) authorized biographies (Aerosmith, Bob Marley) and unauthorized biographies, where the subject is not interviewed directly. This is the approach he decided to take with Stevie Nicks, in part because he was sure she wouldn’t grant him an interview.
“I hate rejection,” he said. “Plus you have total control. You don’t get to go on tour but who wants to do that, unless you’re a moron. You come home with tears in your eyes. It’s just no fun.”
He pauses, a smile appearing as he reconsiders his past. “Well, touring with Led Zeppelin was fun. And the Rolling Stones. And Bob Marley. And Aerosmith."
“But I was younger then,” he adds. “I’m 70 now.”
Although his touring days are behind him, he still revels in the research. And it turned out he had a huge head start with Stevie Nicks.
“When I started, back in 2012, I went to my archives and realized I had been clipping stories about Stevie Nicks since 1990.”
His obsession is understandable. Reading his book, one is struck not only by her superstardom but how long she has maintained that status. The book travels from her childhood in Arizona, to time spent working as a maid in Los Angeles while playing clubs and waiting for her big break, to sweeping floors and cleaning toilets again at the Betty Ford rehab clinic after she had become a huge star. Although her story is filled with the highs and lows of many a rock and roll lifestyle, the hits just kept on coming with Fleetwood Mac and during her long solo career.
Mr. Davis also had a major ace up his sleeve. He had written two books with Mick Fleetwood, the founder of Fleetwood Mac, and so in a way had toured with Stevie, back in the 1990s when hanging out with Mick.
“He’d recently gone through his second bankruptcy and needed cash,” Mr. Davis writes in his book, about being contacted by Mick Fleetwood’s lawyer to discuss writing a biography. He talked to nearly all the band members during that tour, but not to Stevie Nicks who kept her distance, friendly but removed.
“She really is a down-to-earth person,” Mr. Davis said of his time observing her from both near and far.
Mr. Davis said he didn’t get back in touch with Mick Fleetwood or other band members for this book, although he and Mick remain friends. Instead, he checked in with the roadies and security crew, the meat and potatoes of any tour.
“They have names like Earthquake and Dynamite and Blitzkrieg and are the only ones where weren’t so blasted at the time so they remember what happened,” he said.
Usually, Mr. Davis spends a year or more researching his subjects and then immediately begins writing. But for Stevie Nicks his creative process was upended when his wife became ill. She died in 2015 during the making of this book. He and his daughters scattered her ashes at the Gay Head Cliffs. “Her carbon spot,” he said, having visited earlier that morning, sad to find a fence around the lighthouse, effectively closing off the area.
His mourning process mixing with his writing process was actually helpful, he said. “I took a year off. I’ve never done that before, sat with the material like a good whiskey putting it in a barrel to let it age for awhile.”
He feels this is one of his best books because of this downtime, which allowed the material to percolate. One can’t discount the mood of the writer, either, channeling his own bass line to a rock and roll story of excess and determination.
“She had incredible ambition,” Mr. Davis said of his subject. “She was on a mission to make her fans feel good. The amount of incident and adventure on every page astounded me.”
Mr. Davis said he performs a ritual before each book comes out. He heads to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to say a prayer.
“I go to the St. Andrew’s Chapel there and I stuff 50 bucks in this tiny little slot and light 10 candles and say, please God, just one more best seller.”
The odds are good his prayers will be answered.
Gold Dust Woman is available at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.
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