Timespace Reviews and Interviews

[michelej1]

[Thought this could be a companion thread to the tour stories]

Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 25, 1991

Timespace - The Best of Stevie Nicks

Modern

Another greatest-hits package in time for Christmas shopping, this one brings together the solo singles from Fleetwood Mac's White Witch. Gossip fans will enjoy Ms. Nicks's notes about each song detailing her various love affairs, as each song was seemingly inspired by yet another boyfriend. Her musical tastes are just as fickle, running from the mechanical pop of I Can't Wait to her simply arranged duet with Don Henley, Leather and Lace, and her straight-ahead rocker with Tom Petty, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around. Her Jon Bon Jovi duet, Sometimes It's a Bitch, has been on rock radio for a while and it's the best of the three new songs here, including her unbearably self-important Gulf War tribute, Desert Angel.

[michelej1]

Lexington Herald, October 18, 1991

Stevie Nicks

Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks. Modern-Atlantic. **.

Stevie Nicks is the most potent distillation of that psychic blend peculiar to pop culture celebrities: titanic ego and an awesomely regrettable fashion sense.

Both trademark qualities are represented here, the cover photo capturing her in all her mystic, witch-like finery while the breathy solemnity of her notes on each song underlines just how seriously -- despite all the magical mumbo jumbo and mawkish sentiments -- Nicks takes herself.

More than any release that comes to mind, this project points to the laughable irony that has made best-of compilations the last resort of faded performers who didn't have far to fall in the first place -- something like "The Love Boat" of pop music.

But this album is a strikingly apt representation of the Fleetwood Mac superstar-turned-detox gypsy who inspired a generation of teen-age girls to wear silly, floppy hats and way too many scarves.

It has a few genuinely transcendent highs -- "Rooms on Fire," "Talk to Me" -- and a lot of dreadfully misconceived lows. That's especially depressing when one considers that the lowest of those occur on her new material. -- Tom Maurstad

[michelej1]

USA Today (USA),
October 16, 1991

Section: LIFE

STEVIE NICKS, SOUNDING LIKE A SURVIVOR : ROCK'S 'FUNNY LITTLE VOICE' SINGS A STRONG SOLO ON PAINS AND PLEASURES OF HER LIFE

Shawn Sell

ENCINO, Calif.

The French doors leading from Stevie Nicks' six-story manse to her pool are open to catch a breeze. But dusk's cool air can't relieve the singer's watery eyes.
"My allergies are killing me tonight," she sniffles, lighting a cigarette, then dabbing her big baby browns.

"My feet are killing me, too." She frowns at her size 6, copper-colored Nickels heels, kicking them off in favor of comfy white Reeboks - "and my white socks."

They don't go with her Betsey Johnson black velvet mini, but "it's OK," she quips, "there are no men here."

That may be a first for Nicks, 43. Hailed as the queen of mystic rock 'n' roll, the lyrical blond muse with the self-described "funny little voice" has had a wild 18-year ride, recording with bigwigs Lindsey Buckingham, Tom Petty, Mick Fleetwood, Joe Walsh and Don Henley.

Now, it's time for a look back at her decade as a solo artist. Her new album, Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, is a collection of personal favorites. Among new songs are Desert Angel, which she wrote for the gulf war troops, and Sometimes It's a Bitch, by Jon Bon Jovi.

The lyrics personify Nicks' pleasure-and-pain life:

Sometimes it's a bitch, sometimes it's a breeze

Sometimes love's blind and sometimes it sees

Sometimes it's roses, sometimes it's weeds.

"I felt that if (Bon Jovi) knew nothing else about me ... he knew I had a strong instinct to survive," writes the former Fleetwood Mac singer in her album's song-by-song liner notes. Nicks decided to reveal "a lot about my life ... things I've never told before," she says, "so that (people) might understand a little bit more why I am the way I am. And why I don't change very much."

Indeed, neither Nicks' ethereal image nor her wispy, indelible sound has been updated much for the '90s. She doesn't fret about the current crop of cookie-cutter female singers.

"They do what they do and I do what I do. I'm timeless. I got that Dickensian, London street-urchin look in high school. I'll never be in style, but I'll always be different."

Her trademark collection of chiffon and velvet dresses, platform boots, fringed capes and shawls - all painstakingly mended and cleaned by hand - is kept in an air-controlled closet. "I've had this one black skirt for eight years and I keep wearing it," she says. "I have to. It's like the ruby slippers."

Nicks' wardrobe was forced into flexibility. In her early days with Fleetwood Mac, she weighed 105 pounds; several years ago the scales shot to 130. "It's a lot of weight if you have teeny, tiny bones like I do," says the 5-foot-1 pixie.

Her fluctuating weight spawned rumors from health problems, to kicking her longstanding cocaine addiction, to simple overeating.

"I didn't gain it from (kicking drugs). I gained my weight from pneumonia during the (1987) Tango in the Night tour," she says. She was given steroid shots to keep her vocal cords from swelling, and to keep the tour going. "And I was on antibiotics the whole time, in addition to serious asthma treatments."

She talks softly, curled on a couch with her favorite white blanket. "I'm getting skinny now. I've lost at least 20 pounds. The only way you stay thin - and I'm not thin, I'll never be thin - is to change the way you eat.

"I haven't had a hamburger in four years. For me, not to have had a cheeseburger is like an amazing thing 'cause that was probably - sans drugs and everything else - my favorite thing in life."

No more burgers. No more drugs.

When she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, drugs were part of the rock 'n' roll life. "It was like being swept up on a white horse by a prince. ... There was no way to get off the white horse - and I didn't want to. It took over my life in a big way."

In 1986, a doctor friend scared her so straight she immediately checked into the Betty Ford Center. "Oh yeah," she recalls. "I made the famous pact with God."

She confesses she sometimes misses the drug lifestyle, "how crazy it was."

But she's proud to have stayed only 28 days at Betty Ford. "That's not very long to break a 12-year habit."

She does have an occasional drink. She offers wine while rummaging through cupboards for a little rum, which she can't find. She won't drink much, she says, " 'cause it's too fattening. I'd rather eat a piece of cake."

Dinner this evening is buffet style, chicken or steak. "Where's mine?" Nicks asks the five women - ever-present friends and aides - already at the rough-hewn kitchen table. "Get up and get it yourself," teases Wendy, the cook, and Nicks does.

Talk turns to the videos on a nearby TV. "Cher looks terrible in that red wig!" someone says. "But Madonna, she looks great," says another.

So does Nicks, in the many pictures that adorn her castle walls - portraits, paintings, family snapshots, album covers. On one wall of her white-on-white living room is a huge print of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album cover. It features Nicks and Mick Fleetwood, -for whom she wrote Beauty and the Beast.

After 15 years, her split from the band was less than amicable. "Mick and I are not speaking," she says, still miffed over a business dispute. Never, she says, will she record with him again.

She denies the rift occurred because of Fleetwood's tell-all 1990 autobiography, which detailed his liaison with Nicks. "I didn't read it," she says crisply. "I don't need to read about something I lived."

She lived, too, with former Mac member Lindsey Buckingham, for almost seven years. "I cooked and cleaned and took care of him. I mean, my mom and dad considered Lindsey and I married. So did I. So did he.

"(Now) Lindsey and I don't speak at all and I wouldn't bother to call because ... if he did pick up the phone and it was me, he would hang up."

"It's a sad way to end a long, wonderful relationship," she says. (Neither Fleetwood nor Buckingham could be reached for comment.)

Nicks is used to endings. "In almost every relationship I've had, my career has ruined (it). I will never be able to stay with anyone really long, because there will come a point when they say 'I can't deal with your life.' "

Maybe that's why she has considered adopting a baby girl. "I could do that on my own. I could spend a lot of time with her. Just because I have those shows at night doesn't mean that I wouldn't take all my other time and put it into that baby. This would never be a lonely or unhappy baby."

She concedes that adopting as a single parent is hard. "I don't know if it's possible," she sighs. "If I wanted to really have one, I could do that, too. But I'm booked up for the next couple of years. So someone would have to come into my life that is so intense that I'd be willing ... to make serious changes."

Her work future is easier to predict: a new solo album; possibly more touring; and a book of letters, poetry and photos. She's saving "the really serious biography for later. It's a little bit much now."

Still, Nicks isn't likely ever to swap her cape for a pen. "I love making people happy with music. I don't know what I'd do without that. You give up a lot to get a kingdom, but you get an awful lot back."

[michelej1]

Denver Rocky Mountain News, October 5, 1991

Stevie Nicks fans get more than a greatest hits album with Timespace. They get an explanation.

In the liner notes, the ever-mysterious Nicks reveals, finally, where her biggest hits (and there are some outstanding ones) came from and what they mean. Stand Back is about a "crazy argument," Edge of Seventeen is about the death of Nicks' uncle, and Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You was written to soothe the soul of Joe Walsh, who lost his 3-year-old-daughter in a car accident.

Casual listeners may not care, but the rabid fans of the bewitching Nicks can finally put meanings to her obscure lyrics.

In addition to the above, Timespace includes the stellar tracks Talk to Me, If Anyone Falls, Beauty and the Beast, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Leather and Lace, I Can't Wait, Rooms on Fire and Whole Lotta Trouble.

Also included are three unemotional new songs - comparatively awful against these illustrious hits. Without the new tracks, Timespace would be a tremendous chronicle of an intriguing, distinct and important pop icon. - Chuck Campbell;

[michelej1]

Richmond Times Dispatch, 10-3-1991

Is it the bleating of sheep caught in the midst of a prairie fire? No, it's Stevie Nicks with her tortured rasp of a vibrato. "Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks" (Modern/Atlantic) includes 14 songs, mostly old and a few new. "Sometimes It's a Bitch," "Love's a Hard Game To Play" and "Desert Angel" are the three new songs.

The first is a typical Jon Bon Jovi power-pop extravaganza, totally lame and completely hummable. The second is even more of a cliche. From the power-chord introduction to Miss Nicks' sliding key vocal approach, this song is a mishmash of trivial pop one-liners. The last of the three is dedicated to the men and women involved in Operation Desert Storm. It's a bit much as Miss Nicks offers her self-serving lyrics as a pompous token to the military. Other than that, it's business as usual with such past hits as "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," "Stand Back," "Talk to Me," "Leather and Lace" and "Edge of Seventeen" comprising part of this greatest-hits package.

[michelej1]

Dallas Morning News, September 30, 1991

Section: TODAY

The stories behind Stevie Nicks' songs
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS (DAL)
Kira L. BillikAssociated Press
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA PHILADELPHIA -- Stevie Nicks' new album, Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, is a first for the diminutive, doe-eyed queen of mystic rock 'n' roll. She has decided, after 10 years, to let her audience know what her favorite songs are about and for whom they were written.

In the record's liner notes, the former lead singer of Fleetwood Mac has explained the whys and wherefores behind her dusky-voiced classics like Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stand Back and Edge of Seventeen.

It was time to explain the songs, she decided, because "everybody's had 10 years to interpret them themselves.' The album contains three new songs, including one she wrote in tribute to the veterans of the Persian Gulf war. But the emphasis is on her old standbys, which she illuminates in the liner notes. "I spent about a month in Phoenix (her hometown) writing out all these 13 vignettes,' she said. "When I first started doing it, I thought, "Do I really want to do this?' and then I thought, "Yeah, I really do want to do it,' because I really do want people to understand a little bit about what this has been like for me.' The vignettes are tender, deeply personal tales about the songwriting process, the men in Ms. Nicks' life and the tragedi es she has experienced.

One of the most touching stories is the one behind Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You? from her third solo album, 1985's Rock a Little. It was written for and inspired by singer Joe Walsh after she learned of the death of his 4-year-old daughter in a car accident.

The death "has been an absolute taboo subject,' Ms. Nicks said. "I had to immediately call Mr. Walsh and clear it with him, or it could have never been printed, because that is not a subject that is talked about at all.' The vignette describes Mr. Walsh taking Ms. Nicks to a park where he and his daughter had spent a lot of time. He told her his daughter's only complaint was that she couldn't reach the drinking fountain to get a drink.

After his daughter's death, Mr. Walsh built a tiny silver - - drinking fountain in the park. A plaque on it reads, "Dedicated To HER And To All The Others Who Were Too Small To Get A Drink.' "As soon as we got there (to the park), I knew there was going to be a tiny little drinking fountain in that park,' she said. "Everybody thinks Joe was so nuts, and he is, but Joe has a sensitive side that goes far, far beyond that. I just knew that the one thing that she asked for was the thing that he would put in her park.' Ms. Nicks tells of another tragedy, this time in her own life, in her signature song, Edge of Seventeen, from her first solo album, Bella Donna, released in 1981. She decribes how helpless she felt when her uncle died.

In the song, she sings: "Well then suddenly, there was no one left standing in the hall/In a flood of tears that no one really ever heard fall at all/Oh I went searching for an answer up the stairs and down the hall/Not to find an answer, just to hear the call of a nightbird/singing, come away, come away.' Explaining it now, she says she and her cousin sat with her uncle and saw him "just slip away from us in about three hours.' "Nobody came, nobody was there, and I did go screaming out into the hallway, and there was no one there, so we just had to sit there with him and wait until somebody got there. Nobody in the whole family realized he was dead.' Afterward, she said, "I went straight home and wrote Edge of Seventeen.' The new songs on Timespace include her ode to the troops of Operation Desert Storm, Desert Angel, and two songs that were written for her, one by Jon Bon Jovi and one by Poison singer Bret Michaels.

Ms. Nicks left Fleetwood Mac after 15 years with the band and, at 43, credits sturdy genes and a "strong instinct to survive' with keeping her going through the stress of two careers, one with the band and one on her own. "All the women in my family live to be very, very old,' she said. "I had my picture taken with my great-great grandmother when I was in the eighth grade, and she was 106. She was the only survivor of the last Colorado massacre, the last wagon train that came over the Rockies . She jumped in a little trunk and just stayed in there for four days, and the soldiers found her. "I think maybe that's where I get it. You just can't kill us Nicks women off.' Ms. Nicks has never changed her image to fit the times -- she still wears lo ng, floating chiffon dresses and platform boots onstage -- and says she is thankful for her lack of trendiness. "I'm glad I'm not trendy, because I love all my things,' she said. "I will never be in style, but I will always be unique, and I'm happy that way.' Ms. Nicks titled her collection Timespace because she wanted to avoid a "greatest hits' or "best of' title. "I love titles and words that mean a lot,' she said. "(If) you put all these songs together, since 1981, that has been my own little particu lar timespace -- my space in time. What this really is is Stevie's favorite songs -- they weren't necessarily hits, they weren't necessarily anything -- they were just her favorites, and that's what I wanted.' Stevie Nicks put together her favorites song s in Timespace.

[michelej1]

September 30, 1991, Newsday

Nicks Nixes Pix

Don't expect Stevie Nicks ever to make a career move into the film world. The female rocker, whose "Timespace: Best of Stevie Nicks" collection has just hit record stores, says she couldn't become an actress "because I wouldn't arrive at work on time. I can't get up at five in the morning because I don't go to sleep until then." We assume Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese can sleep a little easier.

[michelej1]

Tulsa World, September 28, 1991

Section: ENTERTAINMENT

Queen of Mystic Rock Tells All in Liner Notes // Stevie Nicks: A Few of Her Favorite Songs

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Stevie Nicks' new album, "Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks," is a first for the diminutive, doe-eyed queen of mystic rock 'n' roll. She has decided, after 10 years, to let her audience know what her favorite songs are about and for whom they were written.

In the record's liner notes, the former lead singer of Fleetwood Mac has explained the whys and wheretofores behind her dusky-voiced classics like "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," "Stand Back," and "Edge of Seventeen."

It was time to explain the songs, she decided, because "everybody's had 10 years to interpret them themselves."

The album contains three new songs, including one she wrote herself in tribute to the veterans of the Persian Gulf War. But the emphasis is on her old standbys, which she illuminates in the liner notes.

"I spent about a month in Phoenix (her hometown) writing out all these 13 vignettes," she said in a telephone interview. "When I first started doing it, I thought, `Do I really want to do this?' and then I thought, `Yeah, I really do want to do it,' because I really do want people to understand a little bit about what this has been like for me."

The vignettes are tender, deeply personal tales about the songwriting process, the men in Nicks' life and the tragedies she has experienced.

One of the most touching stories is the one behind "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You?" from her third solo album, 1985's "Rock A Little." It was written for and inspired by singer Joe Walsh after she learned of the death of his 4-year-old daughter in a car accident.

The death "has been an absolute taboo subject," Nicks said. "I had to immediately call Mr. Walsh and clear it with him or it could have never been printed, because that is not a subject that is talked about at all."

The vignette describes Walsh taking Nicks to a park where he and his daughter had spent a lot of time. He told her his daughter's only complaint was that she couldn't reach the drinking fountain to get a drink.

After his daughter's death, Walsh built a tiny silver drinking fountain in the park. A plaque on it reads, "Dedicated To HER And To All The Others Who Were Too Small To Get A Drink."

"As soon as we got there (to the park), I knew there was going to be a tiny little drinking fountain in that park," she said. "Everybody thinks Joe was so nuts, and he is, but Joe has a sensitive side that goes far, far beyond that. I just knew that the one thing that she asked for was the thing that he would put in her park."

Nicks tells of another tragedy, this time in her own life, in her signature song, "Edge of Seventeen," from her first solo album, "Bella Donna," released in 1981. She decribes how helpless she felt when her uncle died.

In the song, she sings: "Well then suddenly, there was no one left standing in the hall - In a flood of tears that no one really ever heard fall at all - Oh I went searching for an answer up the stairs and down the hall - Not to find an answer, just to hear the call of a nightbird - singing, come away, come away."

Explaining it now, she says she and her cousin sat with her uncle and saw him "just slip away from us in about three hours."

"Nobody came, nobody was there, and I did go screaming out into the hallway, and there was no one there, so we just had to sit there with him and wait until somebody got there. Nobody in the whole family realized he was dead."

Afterward, she said, "I went straight home and wrote `Edge of Seventeen.' "

The new songs on "Timespace" include her ode to the troops of Operation Desert Storm, "Desert Angel," and two songs that were written for her, one by Jon Bon Jovi and one by Poison singer Bret Michaels.

Nicks left Fleetwood Mac after 15 years with the band, and at 43, credits sturdy genes and a "strong instinct to survive" with keeping her going through the stress of two careers, one with the band and one on her own.

"All the women in my family live to be very, very old," she said. "I had my picture taken with my great-great grandmother when I was in the eighth grade, and she was 106. She was the only survivor of the last Colorado massacre, the last wagon train that came over the Rockies. She jumped in a little trunk and just stayed in there for four days and the soldiers found her.

"I think maybe that's where I get it. You just can't kill us Nicks women off."

Nicks titled her collection "Timespace" because she wanted to avoid a "greatest hits" or "best of" title.

[michelej1]

Dallas Morning News, September 25, 1991

Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, Stevie Nicks (Modern/Atlantic) -- Stevie Nicks is the most potent distillation of that psychic blend peculiar to pop culture celebrities: titanic ego and an awesomely regrettable fashion sense. Both trademark qualities are well represented here, the cover photo capturing her in all her mystic, witchy-poo finery while the breathy solemnity of her notes on each song underlines just how seriously -- despite all the magical mumbo jumbo and mawkish sentiments -- Ms. Nicks takes herself.

More than any release that comes to mind, this project points out the laughable irony that has made best-of compilations the last resort of faded performers who didn't have far to fall in the first place -- something like The Love Boat of pop music. But this album is a strikingly apt representation of the Fleetwood Mac superstar cum detox gypsy, who inspired a generation of teen-age girls to wear silly, floppy hats and way too many scarves. It has a few genuinely transcendant highs -- Rooms o n Fire, Talk to Me -- and lots of dreadfully misconceived lows, a fact further depressed when one considers the lowest of those occur with her new material.

[michelej1]

Baltimore Sun (MD), September 20, 1991

TIMESPACE NICKS' 'TIMESPACE' KEEPS LONGTIME FANS IN MIND
Stevie Nicks (Modern 91711)

Greatest hits albums usually aren't a great deal for devoted fans, who end up paying for a set of songs they already have just to hear one or two new ones. But "Timespace," Stevie Nicks' new best-of collection, actually seems to have been assembled with the long-term fan in mind. Sure, it's full of old favorites -- "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," "Talk to Me," "Rooms on Fire" -- but augments those songs with liner notes in which Nicks explains how each song came to be written, and for whom. And, as expected, there are also a couple new tunes, including the feisty, Bon Jovi-penned "Sometimes It's a Bitch" and a spirited collaboration with Poison's Bret Michaels called "I Can't Wait."

[michelej1]

July 31, 1991, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Section: ARTS & LIVING

NICKS ENCHANTS BLOSSOM TONIGHT
JANE SCOTT PLAIN DEALER ROCK REPORTER
THE PLAIN DEALER

"The Voice" is back.

Song enchantress Stevie Nicks will be back at Blossom Music Center tonight with three new songs, her special black suitcase and will be the thinnest she has been in years.

The former co-lead singer of Fleetwood Mac is 43 and proud of it.

"People know that I joined Mac when I was 27, so there is no use hiding my age. Actually I love my age," she said in a telephone interview.

What she didn't like was her growing weight, up to 142 pounds a few years ago. "Some people can carry a lot of pounds, but I'm only 5 feet 1. I have a little heart valve that is slightly off. It doesn't close perfectly. So I couldn't use weight-loss systems."

That's where the little black bag comes in. She calls it her kitchen suitcase.

"Anyone can do this," she said. "I pack a tea kettle and herbal teas and instant oatmeal. All I eat otherwise during the day is chicken and asparagus and salad with dietetic Italian dressing."

Nicks has been working for months on her upcoming album, "Timespace," the first collection of her best solo work over the past 10 years. The album is due in stores next Tuesday.

Then she got two unexpected song offers, by Jon Bon Jovi and Bret Michaels of Poison. Bon Jovi's song, "Sometimes It's a Bitch," wound up as the single.

"I wasn't too keen on adding a new song, and I never would have used that one word," Nicks said. "And how could he write about what I had experienced in the past 15 years?. But when I heard the song, some of the sensitive lines got to me."

For instance, there's the line "I've laid down with love and woke up with lies."

"That's a perfect comment on relationships with people and with the record industry," she said. Back in 1972, a record label gave her and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham studio time and a big time producer, but later dropped the album.

She wouldn't have accepted Michael's "Love's a Hard Game to Play" if it had been heavy metal, but it was a pretty song, she said. "And I've got a special one on the album for the troops, `Desert Angel.'

It has been 10 months since Nicks and co-singer Christine McVie left Fleetwood Mac, at one time the top rock band in the world.

"Yes, it was a wrench," Nicks said. "Think what it would be like if you had been in an office with six people for 15 years and then left."

No, she said, drummer/leader Mick Fleetwood's recent gossipy autobiography detailing personal relationships within the band had nothing to do with her departure.

"Because I haven't read it," she said. "Why should I? I've been there. And it would just have made me upset when we were onstage."

What really determined her departure was a serious argument with Fleetwood, she said. "He wouldn't let me have a song I had written, `Silver Springs,' for my `Timespace' album. That song had come out on the flip side of `Go Your Own Way' in 1976. So I said, `Then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other,' she reported.

Arizona-born Nicks was the one who brought the struggling British group Fleetwood Mac into the limelight with her mystical song, "Rhiannon." Critics still write about the magic and enchantment of that song with a gold moon lit suddenly on the back of the Coliseum stage and the limbs of a dark tree silhouetted against it. Nicks appeared in layers of chiffon and black velvet, her voice almost a whisper at times. "Rhiannon" is based on an old Welsh myth.

"Actually I wrote it in Colorado on the piano, in about five minutes," said Nicks, who lives in Phoenix. She brought Fleetwood Mac its only No.1 song, "Dreams," in 1977.

Tonight she will bring bassist Mark Andes of Heart on stage as well as guitarist Les Dudek, percussionist Peter Michael (brother of Sheila E.) drummer Scott Craigo, guitarist Michael Lennon and two keyboard players, Cat Grey and Eddie M.

Her future? "I want to write; I want to paint, and I do photography. In another 10 years I may gracefully slip into serious writing," she said. "If I write a book it won't be about who goes with whom. It won't hurt anybody."

[michelej1]

[She never burns bridges, unlike Christine!]

Atlanta Journal and Constitution, July 22, 1991

NO CHANGE OF HEART: Stevie Nicks had vowed never to tour again with Fleetwood Mac, but she had left open the possibility of continued recording with the band - until now. She recently informed Steve Morse of The Boston Globe that she is angry with Mick Fleetwood for refusing to give back "Silver Springs," the Nicks-authored 12-inch Mac B-side that never made it onto one of their albums. Ms. Nicks wanted the song for her upcoming Modern/Atlantic anthology, "Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks." "I said if you don't give me back my song, then I won't write two new songs for your new record. . . . I never burn bridges but right now I don't think I'll work with them," she said.

[michelej1]

Baltimore Sun (MD), July 17, 1991

Section: Features

TRAVELING IN 'TIMESPACE' FOR MUSICIAN STEVIE NICKS, CREATIVE WRITING FILLS A VOID WHILE SHE'S ON TOUR

J.D. Considine Sun Pop Music Critic

Because life on the road can leave a musician with an acute sense of rootlessness, many rock stars insist on certain extras to make their hotel rooms seem a little more like home. For some, it's a matter of freshly cut flowers and organic food; for others, it's video games or a VCR.

What Stevie Nicks most wants to see when she walks into her room, however, is a typewriter.

It's not quite the accouterment her musical career would suggest. After all, it was Nicks who, during her 15 years in Fleetwood Mac, conjured up the Welsh witch in "Rhiannon" and invoked the lightning flash of "Gypsy," Nicks whose solo recordings have spoken of "Leather and Lace" and the white winged dove at "The Edge of Seventeen." To anyone who has seen her twirl across the stage (as she will tonight at the Merriweather Post Pavilion), trailing sheer silk scarves and layered lacy dresses, incense and candles might seem more in character.

As it turns out, Nicks keeps those on hand as well. But no matter how much their soft light and sweet scent might add to a room's atmosphere, what she really wants isn't a sense of comfort, but a chance to create.

"When I see that typewriter when I get in my room, it just makes me go, 'Wow,' " she explains over the phone from a hotel room in Charlotte, N.C. "If I feel like saying anything tonight, it's all there, it's all ready. I light the candles, and I light some incense, and put on some music for whatever mood I'm in, and it's my time. It's my special time alone."

Sitting alone at a typewriter doesn't seem a particularly romantic image, particularly when compared to the apparent glamour of rock stardom. But as Nicks puts it, "When you love to write as much as I love to write . . .

"We didn't get in until real late last night, until probably about four, and I typed for about three hours," she says. "I was so tired that I would put my head down on the typewriter and almost go to sleep, and then I'd wake back up and I'd type another couple paragraphs."

What she writes varies; sometimes it's poetry, sometimes merely poetic. "I go home from every tour with a binder full of journalistic prose of the tour, and then also a lot of poetry," she says. Some of the poetry may eventually become songs, and some of it may not. But her tour journals are meant for a specific audience -- her band.

"They don't know that I'm writing this every night," she says. "I don't show them until the end of the tour. Then I have it bound into a little book, and I give it to everybody."

Of course, the sort of writing Nicks is best known for always comes with music attached. Although she can envision a day when her creative output would be strictly poetry and prose, songwriting remains her chief interest and fascination. In fact, she says that when she writes her book about Fleetwood Mac, it won't focus on personalities the way Mick Fleetwood's did, but will tell "why the songs were written and how they were written and the circumstances underneath -- where everybody was at, how everybody felt."

(Although she never read Fleetwood's book, she says she was supportive when it came out; since then, however, things have soured professionally between the two, and it seems unlikely she will ever be a part of Fleetwood Mac again.

"I'm not a person to say, 'I will absolutely never do this again,' " she says. "But right now I'm not very happy with Mick, and it's over a pretty serious thing. He won't give in and I feel it's unfair, and since he's not considering my feelings and I've always considered his, for the first time in my life I can actually say, 'No, I'm not going to tour with them or work with them on this record.' Not them, but him, because he's done something that is unforgivable.")

Nicks will offer a sort of preview of her book with her next album, "Timespace." Due out in early September, it's essentially a greatest hits collection.

"I named it 'Timespace' because I figured that this last 11 years since 'Belladonna' have been my space in time, been my time in space," she says. "But I wrote about at least one typewritten page on each one of those songs. Which is something that I never did before, because I wanted people to interpret what I wrote into their lives. I didn't want to tell them what it was about to me, because then instantly that's what it is."

Now that most fans have their own emotional associations for the music, Nicks feels comfortable with revealing her side of the story in liner notes. "I wrote it in a very, you know, in a very poetic way, and it's real pretty," she says. "A lot of it's real sad. I want people to understand that these were really serious songs."

Just how serious these songs are becomes apparent when Nicks relates the story behind her hit "Edge of Seventeen." It was, she says, not about teen-agers or white winged doves, exactly, but about the deaths of John Lennon and her uncle, both of whom died the same week in 1980.

At the time, Nicks was going out with producer Jimmy Iovine, and was with him when news of Lennon's assassination first broke. "Jimmy was absolutely best friends with John Lennon," she says. "So when that happened, a hush came over the house that was so overwhelming that there was nothing that I could do to help. There was nothing I could say, there was no way I could comfort him."

Unable to help, Nicks flew home to Phoenix. "I went straight over to my uncle's house, and my uncle died that day. He died right there with me holding his hand, just me and my cousin, who's a little younger than me, sitting there on the bed and on the floor next to him."

Even over the phone, it's hard to hear her tell this story without wanting to reach for a tissue. It's not that her voice begins to quaver, or even suggest a suppressed sob; if anything, her matter-of-fact tone seems a stark contrast to the tale's emotional impact. But the hurt and helplessness she felt then are obviously still there for her.

"I have to deal with it every single night when I sing it," she says. "That's why I can (sing it). When that song starts, I go back to that week. And it's not like I try. I don't make a physical effort to do it. In my mind, my little timespace, I'm back in the house at Encino finding out that news, and when I sing it to everybody, I try to make them understand in a way what I was talking about without actually telling them.

"That's why I can sing 'Edge of Seventeen' just like I wrote it yesterday. Because it will never, ever lose its intensity. I will never forget how I felt when that happened to me. And when people read this, they're going to understand that this hasn't been so glamorous, and each one of these songs was one more chip off an already broken heart."

[michelej1]

USA Today (USA), July 8, 1991

Section: LIFE

STEVIE NICKS' ODE TO BON JOVI

Shawn Sell


Step aside Tom Petty. Rocker heartthrob Jon Bon Jovi is Stevie Nicks' newest pen pal.

Bon Jovi wrote Sometimes It's a Bitch for Nicks' new album, Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, out in September.

Nicks, obviously pleased about their new partnership, shares her thoughts about Bon Jovi - who also plays acoustic guitar on the single - on the album's liner notes:

"It was not a love song, which of course, I had expected it to be," writes Nicks, a former member of Fleetwood Mac. "It was much more than that ... to me.

"Bon Jovi had picked up on the fact, before meeting me, that there was no way he could know what I had lived through," says Nicks, who starts her U.S. tour Tuesday in Houston, "... so he dreamed.

"He dreamed about what the notorious Stevie Nicks had been like and what it had done to her ... the indulgences, the lifestyle. If he knew nothing else about me, he knew I had a strong instinct to survive."

Adds Nicks: "Someday, maybe all these people who did not go through this with us will understand; that considering the generation we come from ... we are lucky to be alive."

[Sanne2]

Tulsa World, September 28, 1991

Section: ENTERTAINMENT

Queen of Mystic Rock Tells All in Liner Notes // Stevie Nicks: A Few of Her Favorite Songs
.

"All the women in my family live to be very, very old," she said. "I had my picture taken with my great-great grandmother when I was in the eighth grade, and she was 106. She was the only survivor of the last Colorado massacre, the last wagon train that came over the Rockies. She jumped in a little trunk and just stayed in there for four days and the soldiers found her.

"I think maybe that's where I get it. You just can't kill us Nicks women off."



I love that part!

[BombaySapphire3]

106?! Hopefully she'll have a second wind of creativity somewhere in her late 70s or early 80s.

[vivfox]

106?! Hopefully she'll have a second wind of creativity somewhere in her late 70s or early 80s.

Maybe when she can no longer stand up she'll actually sit at a piano and play for us.

<a href="http://s220.photobucket.com/albums/dd169/cielosharon/?action=view&current=CA238LM3_FIXED.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd169/cielosharon/CA238LM3_FIXED.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[michelej1]

[Why won't the band members put those tour journals on Ebay! C'mon Carlos. They ditched you. Get your revenge, buddy]

Fresno Bee, July 26, 1991

Section: WEEKEND

CONTEMPLATIVE NICKS FEELS WRITE AT HOME * MUSICIAN'S FAVORITE TRAVELING COMPANION IS A TYPEWRITER.
J.D. Considine Baltimore Sun



Because life on the road can leave a musician with an acute sense of rootlessness, many rock stars insist on certain extras to make their hotel rooms seem a little more like home. For some, it's a matter of freshly cut flowers and organic food; for others, it's video games or a VCR.

What Stevie Nicks most wants to see when she walks into her room, however, is a typewriter.

It's not quite the accouterment her musical career would suggest. After all, it was Nicks who, during her 15 years in Fleetwood Mac, conjured up the Welsh witch in ""Rhiannon'' and invoked the lightning flash of ""Gypsy,'' Nicks whose solo recordings have spoken of ""Leather and Lace'' and the white-winged dove at ""The Edge of Seventeen.'' To anyone who has seen her twirl across the stage, trailing sheer silk scarves and layered lacy dresses, incense and candles might seem more in character.

As it turns out, Nicks keeps those on hand as well. But no matter how much their soft light and sweet scent might add to a room's atmosphere, what she really wants isn't a sense of comfort, but a chance to create.

""When I see that typewriter when I get in my room, it just makes me go, "Wow,' '' she explains over the phone from a hotel room in Charlotte, N.C. ""If I feel like saying anything tonight, it's all there, it's all ready. I light the candles, and I light some incense, and put on some music for whatever mood I'm in, and it's my time. It's my special time alone.''

What she writes varies; sometimes it's poetry, sometimes merely poetic.

""I go home from every tour with a binder full of journalistic prose of the tour, and then also a lot of poetry,'' she says. Some of the poetry may eventually become songs. But her tour journals are meant for her band.

""I don't show them until the end of the tour,'' she says. ""Then I have it bound into a little book, and I give it to everybody.''

Although Nicks can envision a day when her creative output would be strictly poetry and prose, songwriting remains her chief interest and fascination.

In fact, she says that when she writes her book about Fleetwood Mac, it won't focus on personalities the way Mick Fleetwood's did, but will tell ""why the songs were written and how they were written and the circumstances underneath -- where everybody was at, how everybody felt.''

[michelej1]

Houston Chronicle, July 11, 1991



Section: HOUSTON

Nicks has a night of rhythm, fun

MARTY RACINE

ROCK can be a pain in the rear. Just getting a tour launched requires top planning, coordinated logistics and plenty of rehearsal.

Yeah, sometimes rock is a "Whole Lot of Trouble," the working title of Stevie Nicks' current tour, which opened at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands Tuesday with the proper response: Go out there and have fun.

Out on the road all the hassles - such as last-minute rehearsals and guitarist Les Dudek breaking his arm - pass by in favor of getting the job done.

With the stage set up, at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday the road crew chowed down on grilled steaks, green beans, new potatoes, corn, rolls, dessert and salad. The star had veggies, baked catfish and meatless pasta.

Despite the heat and opening-night snafus (a failing microphone here and there), Nicks went out and sanded her pipes to a rough-hewn voice of experience. She took charge and prodded her new band into a hard-working and gleefully loose ensemble that played as if it had something to prove.

It did, in a way, as it was obligated to reinvent old material while Nicks' new album waits two months for release.

This wasn't as slick as Nicks' previous Houston show, two years ago at The Summit, but it had character. It also had rhythm, thanks to Peter Michaels' exotic and insistent conga playing.

Nicks used material from the Fleetwood Mac catalog, her solo career and an old Tom Petty chestnut, "I Need to Know", which she's been doing for years. "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" swayed mysteriously. "Edge of Seventeen", which closed the set proper, rocked out furiously as the guitars hovered over the groove. "Rhiannon" and, especially, the haunting "Landslide" filled out the encore with a dramatic presence.

Backstage after the 80-minute set, Nicks, dressed in an oversized gray cap, black low-cut dress and black lace gloves, amiably entertained visitors and friends and signed autographs.

"See that picture of Lindsey (Buckingham)," she said, pointing to an old Fleetwood Mac group photo. Buckingham, unsmiling, was looking away from Nicks and the band, which he left in turmoil several years ago.

"That perfectly sums up our relationship."

Apart from her rock star duds, Nicks exuded a down-to-earth appeal. Through the stage makeup she looked healthy, happy, purposeful. Giant red trunks stamped "Fleetwood Mac" were scattered about, including one that served as a closet for the lady's considerable stage wardrobe.

Often, the star is the last to know about the audience's response. She only works here, and she must pick up on little signals to gauge how the show is going over.

"You know, I really can't hear (the response) that well from the stage," she acknowledged. "There's like a delay between finishing the song and feeling the feedback."

But Nicks was assured the audience was right with her.