Matthew Anderson on BN.net board

[David]

Originally Posted by Cour

To be honest, I really don't know for sure. I always though it had something to do with the presumed ongoing romantic relationship between Stevie and Lindsey. I assumed the term was used for fans who wanted them to be together?

And that's a relatively recent phenomenon, by the way -- it started building steam with the reunion. Before that -- all the way back decades -- it was barely a blip on the fan radar screen. There may be a few scattered fans here & there who say they believed in the Stevie-Lindsey pairing, but it wasn't a "movement." Actually, Stevie Nicks fans (okay, many of them) were vociferously anti-Lindsey in the past, & many were anti-Fleetwood Mac. They were widely known to be such; many of them over the years were caustic & brutal about Stevie's bandmates (& some Mac fans were pretty brutal about Stevie) at concerts & elsewhere. Some of them used to say to me, "The others can go to hell."

What goes around, comes around. This band's fans have never been tightly knit in their love or of a mind with their devotion. That is a phony view of the reality; it never existed.

There is some confusion, too, about what it means to be a chiffonhead. A chiffonhead isn't synonymous with a Stevie lover. "Chiffonhead" is a sarcastic derivative of "Machead," & it was originally used to denote a type of Stevie fan who continually & inappropriately invoked the trappings of Stevie's image (the faeries, the unicorns, the stars, the fog, the magick, the pouty looks, the long white gowns, the New Age crystals) in their own lives & interactions with other fans. Chiffonheads were (are?) the people who talked to you -- with a straight face -- about the spirits speaking to them & who signed their letters & e-mail to you with "Much love" or "Magick unto ye" or "blessed be" or any number of silly phrases from Stevie's brand of Wicca & who addressed one another as "Angel" & who liberally peppered their conversation (such as it is) with lines from Stevie Nicks songs & interviews & who often turned into werewolves at the slightest artistic or musical criticism of Stevie herself. Such people did exist, regardless of whether you choose to believe it, & it was my experience that they existed in large numbers, & I don't need anybody telling me that I exaggerate it or concoct it or see it in a bad dream. Some of those people were extremely nasty (there's one in Kentucky who has alienated virtually the entire fan world for numerous reasons, & another one actually prevented a song from being included on a Stevie Nicks album after he stole it).

When I speak scornfully of "chiffonheads," those are the people I'm referring to -- not just anyone who happens to love Stevie.