New Interview/Solo Album
 

Going her own way
February 17, 2006


Stevie Nicks is a little scary, but she's a survivor.

By Michael Dwyer.

THE voice of the oracle echoes through the palace. It rings with the secrets of ages. Pilgrims stand motionless at her hem.

"I said, 'If it wasn't for you, I would not be standing here'," Stevie Nicks intones in a half-whisper. "You, in my opinion, are the greatest singer-songwriter ever.' "

The parable concerns the only meeting between Fleetwood Mac's sorceress chanteuse and the great Joni Mitchell. "Then I gave her a hug and I just walked away, 'cause I didn't even want her to start to say anything back.

"She's a little scary, you know," Nicks concludes in a more gossipy tone, "and I think it's because she's bitter because people get angry 'cause she won't do her old songs. I'm like, 'God! What's to be bitter about? Please!'"

The lesson ends, the TV crew pays its respects and vacates the chamber. Rock's Queen Mother does not rise from her armchair, but offers an elegant hand to the next supplicant to reach the 32nd floor of Crown Towers.

Stevie Nicks is a little scary too. On a nearby sideboard, eight lacy black hats hover like ghosts of past lives. Perched above the rest is a funereal top hat, an imposing presence of weathered velvet with a wide black band.

"That's my real Fleetwood Mac hat," she says, pointing with a blood-red fingernail. "That is the genuine article."

Plenty more remains from the Rhiannon video of 30 years ago. At 57, the same pixie sparkle sits in her liquid brown eyes. They shine under the same voluminous, dyed blonde fringe. And she's still dressed in black, from diaphanous shoulder to ankle, where faux snakeskin pants meet pointy boots in a flash of pink suede.

Nicks meets the press with rare grace. She's obviously aware of the cocaine-hoovering, home-wrecking, wood-nymph caricature that precedes her, and she retells the sordid details of her rise and fall with subtle humour, just as a seasoned performer deigns to play her old songs.

"I wish someone had warned me about cocaine," goes one unforgettable tune.

"I have a huge hole in my nose! I could put a pipe through my nose! It could have destroyed my entire head! They flat-out told me, 'The next time you do coke you could have a brain hemorrhage and drop dead'."

Then there's that epic track about life in the biggest, most dysfunctional rock band in the world, ever. "Oh, the big fight? That night something just snapped in Lindsay (Buckingham)," she recalls of one classic stage moment.

"He was real mad at me. The first thing was, he just walked over and kicked me. Then he turned around, took his guitar off - this was during Go Your Own Way - and he just threw it at me!"

She excels at star-crossed love songs. "I fell in love with Mick here," she sighs. "And that was just an accident. That was a late-night party where everybody was totally drunk and partying with the Australians, up very, very late. All of a sudden there's only Mick Fleetwood and I in the room, and need I say more?"

So much for her early stuff. She blames a Los Angles psychiatrist for her darkest years, a slow spiritual death by prescription that in effect erased her life between 1988 and '94.

"Cocaine was killing me physically but Klonopin almost killed my soul," she says.

"When I came out of Betty Ford (rehabilitation clinic) I felt fine, I looked good, I was happy, but my whole world was terribly worried I would go back to coke."

Same psychiatrist, six years later: "I said, 'Were you trying to kill me?' " she thunders. " 'Did you not notice that I went from 125 pounds to 165 pounds? Did you not notice the light went out in my eyes? Did you not notice that I was not writing songs any more, that I was just a miserable fat person?' "

Nicks agrees that the title of her latest solo album, Trouble in Shangri-La, might have been better saved for an autobiography. But for all her liaisons, addictions and wardrobe choices, music may be the thing for which she is best remembered if her ultimate ambition should come to pass. She's writing a series of "very long, formal, Iliad-style poems" based on the ancient Welsh mythological texts known as the Mabinogion, which comprise The Books of Rhiannon.

"When I allow myself to stop for a decent period of time, I'm really excited about sitting down at my piano and putting these to music," she confides.

"I don't think anyone has ever done anything like this before. I think the Rhiannon thing could end up being my ultimate solo record."That's cool. As long as she still does her hits.

Stevie Nicks plays the Rod Laver Arena tomorrow night with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Good stuff. I'm likin' it! :thumbsup:

thanks. it's great to see a little more positive news from Stevie.

Exactly! She sure has been a true Gemini lately, hasn't she? I can't wait to hear about the show saturday night!
Oh, and thanks to who posted this article! :thumbsup:

Ha ha scary Stevie, I love that!

You go girl, too bad she didn't really say that out loud to Joni. Now why don't you do some more of your old songs Stevie instead of the same ones over and over?


I want to see this outfit! And what's up with Stevie and snakeskin pants? A bit eighties wouldn't you say? How about those red ones she wore not long ago, heinous. Fire that stylist!


If I hear this one more time I'm going to **** bricks! Does she ever get sick of listening to herself say the same thing over and over? Although she does change it up a bit. Sometimes it's a belt through her nose or a pen, last time it was a ring, and this time it's a pipe. That's a new one!

So they shagged on the floor drunk and high and the rest is history? How romantic.

Blah blah blah...as awsome as this would be, I'm not getting my hopes up about another solo project although I do think it's possible. Man, this woman changes her tune more often than Paris Hilton dances on tables.

Putting aside how utterly ridiculous this woman is with her days-apart career-redefining inconsistencies:

I can't say I'm terribly interested in the idea of a "Rhiannon" concept album, at least on paper, though of course she could very well pull it off. What amazes me, though: Stevie Nicks writing formal Homeric poetry?! I'll believe it when I see it. But I do hope to see it.

Yeah, great. Thanks for that.

Stevie cracks me up with her refusal to take any personal responsibility for her drug problems, cocaine or Klonopin. And I say this as someone who has beaten my own addiction.

Anyway, I can see how she might have gotten grouchy in that other interview. Sounds like she's giving interviews nonstop and they are all asking the same questions.

Hope the poem project turns into an album! Thanks for posting the article.

Ah no. They were cool! A little confusing. But cool!

Im lovin all the interviews!!!

I think the more appropriate question is, do reporters ever get sick of asking her the same thing over and over? If you were asked the same question in every interview you ever did since 1987, wouldn't you come up with a stock answer? I mean, how many different ways can she say she had a cocaine problem?

AMEN to that!!!

Don't forget it's been 20 years since she's been back to AU solo, so maybe these reporters haven't had a chance to ask her anything... Maybe these reporters were wee little kiddies at the time... who knows. It's probably fresh material for them to ask her face to face instead of reading all the reports through the years... But then I guess in the reseach you would hope that these reporters would have done, they would have realized it's questions that have been asked over and over... But anyway.. to hear it from her directly probably gives them some sort of thrill...

I don't think so. I feel fairly positive that the majority of people in these recent interviews have never interviewed Stevie Nicks before so it is a first for them. And the same goes with a lot of the American reporters/interviewers with the exception of the regulars like Jim Ladd, etc.

Please, no. :eek:

Well, a rockstar talking of her drug problems gives you an article. She knows it, she knows exactly all the elements she has to give to have a reason ably long article and not just a "she's here, in these dates...".

Besides, I liked the interview Stevie's mood was great and the journalist obviously liked her.


Romy