[glitter_fades]

Originally Posted by David

Oh, well, even Homer nodded.

But seriously, glitter, what I was trying to say is that it's not "right" or "wrong" -- it's like the Devil citing Scripture for his purpose. For practically any Stevie Nicks song, you could dig back through interviews & articles & comments made onstage & find some sort of support for any supposition you want to make. Just because somebody writes a song doesn't mean that person remembers all the details that were put into it at a time when that person was in a different frame of mind. I think Stevie often sounds a little confused about her own songs in interviews, anyway. I have often thought that. Talking with Jim Ladd or other guys in the old days, she used to start talking about what she was doing while she was writing the song instead of what the song "meant" -- like with "Stand Back," the story she always tells is that she was driving along with Kim somewhere & they're listening to "Little Red Corvette" on the radio. Well, is THAT what the song is about?? That's just the circumstance she was in, the activity she was engaged in, when the song was being created (or was being thought about). Remember her story about "Dreams"? She was sitting in Sly Stone's sunken lounge with its dark, gaudy colors up at the Record Plant when she put that song together. But the song isn't about Sly Stone, Stevie! Or maybe it is . . . who the hell knows?

So all these songs are really about what the listeners see & hear in them. When you hear "Beauty," you obviously hear a tale of love between Stevie & ... Lindsey, I guess? I hear a song about Stevie & Mick & I see all those dozens of photos throughout the years -- the ones that used to appear in magazines like Hit Parader -- of the two of them, arms around each other, at some function or other, the top of Stevie's head going up to Mick's rib cage.

Somebody was wondering in another thread just how old the stories about their affair were, & people said it predated Mick's book in 1990, which is true. I remember a little photo of Stevie & Mick -- it could have been anything, like one of those awards ceremonies -- appearing in a trashy rock magazine with a caption: something about Stevie & Mick having recently "split up." I was a little fan back then (around 1980) & I didn't know much of the scoop, so I thought it was just a goofy caption that didn't really mean anything, or a mistake for Stevie & Lindsey splitting up, or the band split up, or something. And there were occasional stories that would surface through the years about Stevie & Mick, & the stories were pretty widely known among the rabids, especially at times when Stevie & Mick were hanging out together a lot, like 1986 (Mick followed her around in California to all her shows & played conga drums next to Bobbye Hall).

I agree with so much here, as usual. I think we agree a lot because we remember things as they were playing out and not from trying to piece together quotes left from back in the day. I know what I remember but it takes too much time to run around trying to dig up old articles we read 25 years ago before a few of these things were archived on the Internet. Hardly any of the rock press is archived and I didn't save all the old mags like some people did. I never envisioned myself needing to look up quotes someday.

ITA, hunting down quotes and articles will never result in much of a clear view. I also agree about Stevie having confusion on her own songs, but I disagree on her revelations about her writing process. It plays to her need to shade her honest feelings and emotions if she talks about process and not meaning. People run with her explanations of her songs and they often run the wrong way, imo, but so many people are buying into Stevie's confessional poetry style of writing because they think they understand her songs so much when she says she writes from her journals and writes the truth. Songs are personal to everyone and I don't really care what she was meaning to herself in her lyrics unless I hear her say one thing about a song then contradict that statement in another interview or within the lyrics of the very song she spoke about. I find that annoying and she does it all the time. I don't think it's because she wants to mislead people. I think it's for another reason. I think she should not talk about the meanings or inspirations of her songs if she wants to be ambiguos on the meanings. Nobody but she knows what she thought about 100% of the time while penning a poem. Like you said, I'm not sure she always knows either.