Stevie was to perform Go Your Own Way
 

I woke up this morning and saw Stevie trending on twitter. I think she performed in Houston last night and commented about Maui. There was a photo of Stevie on stage in the 1970s with an acoustic guitar. I think we all saw clips of her strumming with Fleetwood Mac. However someone posted that in February 1977 the band went into Rumours tour rehearsals and Lindsey was trying to teach Stevie the acoustic parts to perform live. However she could not cut it and the band was forced to hire Ray Lindsey. I suppose Ray would be forever grateful for Stevie not able to do the job. They actually posted the audio of Chris talking, Lindsey playing, etc. Stevie jokes that her debut is not debuting :lol:
Sort of surprising since she plays piano fairly well ;)

Hope this link works
https://twitter.com/morethanashoe/st...13929738444802

Stevie COULD play the piano fairly well if she actually prioritized it. Her playing isn't totally awful (her piano demo of Sisters is better than many others and shows her potential). I do think she tried to play better in the beginning what with her demos having to be presented to the band up against Christine's playing. But then she got famous and had all sorts of people to help her and she just got less and less motivated to play anything more than her two-notes with two fingers. Sad really. I think she was similar with guitar.

But the idea she was EVER capable of playing live onstage (no discipline and no consistency) and especially on one of LINDSEY'S songs is beyond laughable. :shocked:

Yeah I agree, this can’t have really been given any legit consideration by Lindsey. That acoustic part was so important to the song’s construction- I can’t imagine him really suggesting that she could handle this on stage every single night.

But they tried (if you listen to the video). Maybe she volunteered and it did not work. I don't think the acoustic strumming on GYOW is the most difficult part ever. However you definitely would need basic guitar knowledge.
Did she not receive an acoustic guitar on her 16th birthday. She should have went Eddie Van Halen all over them.

I would agree it really wouldn’t be that difficult of a part to play. What is it, three chords? But there was no way anyone was seriously going to take the song out on the road with her playing it. I’m not saying she was ever going to be Nancy Wilson wielding that acoustic around the stage like a dynamo, but I think her career would’ve taken a far more interesting path if she had spent any time learning how to play a guitar or piano with even some Credibility.

Are you saying she plays tambourine with no credibility?

There’s the famous mid-70s tour rehearsal picture of Stevie with a guitar (which first ran in Newsweek, I guess) and also the picture from the 1979 tour rehearsal in the People cover story of November 1979 (probably playing “Save Me a Place” with Christine and Lindsey also on acoustic).

She just did not have the chops to play seriously in front of a paying audience (for show, she used to play the electric piano on “Rhiannon” for thirty seconds on the 1983 solo tour). Wasn’t it some print interview where Christine said that Stevie should have built her chops and played onstage just to be thought of as “one of the musicians”? Stevie had every opportunity to do so in a fifty-year career and chose not to. (We know why: it doesn’t look alluring for the Welsh witch to have a guitar strapped around her shoulders. It restricts her flowing movements.) Her guitar playing is OK for someone’s living room (that may be her playing on one of her demos on the Enchanted box set), but her piano playing shouldn’t be foisted on any paying customer — except in a decorative context (where she puts candles on a grand piano and bangs out “Dreams” or “Gypsy”). She is practically hopeless on an instrument. Her voice is her instrument (and a good one it is).

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/fleetw...1823104572544/

Carol Ann Harris mentioned this in her Storms book. According to Harris, Nicks was the one who suggested that she play the acoustic guitar onstage, but Buckingham quickly grew frustrated with her inability to play the part sufficiently and ultimately decided against it.

I do remember that from the book. I can only imagine the intensity of those moments of her trying to do it right for him. :shocked:

He may have said some things out of frustration. Her response was "Would you say that to Eric Clapton."

chef's kiss

She plays a taped up tambourine with the most credibility one can have!

Actually, she even botches that. She’s off the beat and all over the map. But she looks good doing it, and that’s probably all that matters.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net...Fg&oe=64E0254C

Yeah. I don't think it was ever about the beat. It was a prop in her fantasy world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCdIN-02jYI

Stevie addressed the idea of her playing on stage once. I don’t think she mentioned what particular song she would play on. She just said that the question had come up, but for her to do it would just be for show, and it would only end up with Lindsey yelling at her when she messed up, so what was the point.

Well, in Lindsey's defense, if her guitar playing is anything like her piano playing....

You've been very anti SN lately and frankly that frightens me a little bit. LOL. But in all fairness IMO she played tambo and other percussion instruments perfectly on all the videos I have seen of her from 1975 -1982. I was shocked and still am to learn her tambo was taped for the Clinton Inauguration. I no longer play piano or tambourine but she was my inspiration to learn both. And I am very proud of that fact. Watching her play piano on the tv show 20/20 in 1980 was awesome. To this day even if I tried I could still never imitate her witchy sounding style on SOTM.

She was definitely not gifted in that area.

Charisma is her only gift.

Not entirely untrue.

And she was very, very smart in developing a lasting visual image (though again in this she got invaluable assistance from someone else, in this case Herbie whose love for her comes thru in his photos many of which are the lasting, iconic images of her to this day). Having a great visual image works for print and magazine and even now web-based stories... great pics to add to stories etc. Lindsey I think was much later to that game and Chris never really cared so much about it (and that''s not a criticism of her at all).

Stevie knew how to create a full, multi-faceted self-marketing package. She deserves credit for that.

But one of her super powers was finding people with far more talent than her and getting them to help her -- Herbie with the visuals, Margi with outfits, and most importantly- Lindsey with music. He said in an interview in recent years that legitimately many of her songs should really be co-writes (in other words, he contributed more of the music and arrangements than she did - she did the melodies but...). On youtube someone pulled out and posted the bit where she plays the 'music' for Dreams (footage from the IYD documentary) and boy it's.....soooooooo nothing. I mean it's really no wonder Chris would say "What am I supposed to do with this?" and then it fell to Lindsey to turn it into something usable.

Her ego would just never allow her to acknowledge help with her music, most especially his. Later, people like Benmont, Roy, Mike, Dave and others were not so easily charmed out of their contributions.

I like her guiro work on Rosebud, but her cowbell on “Tusk” didn’t add much. Thoughts on her tambourine shaking on “Ebony Eyes”? Pretty good, no?

If we should ever find ourselves in the same room at the same time, I’ll show you how it’s done.

Still baffling to me is why she played a little guitar in rehearsal in 1979 after her try at it in 1977 didn’t convince the others.

Check out this pretty “Save Me a Place” cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI34ULobYZs