Davis Stephen - Gold dust woman: the biography of Stevie Nicks

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Fan is short for fanatic. This biography is dedicated to all the fans of Stevie Nicks (and Fleetwood Mac) past and present, memor et fidelis. Non nobis solum nati sumus.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

Translated Daughter, come down and startle

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

W.H. AUDEN

Chiffon lasts forever if you take good care of it.

STEVIE NICKS

Back then shes a complete unknown, the new girl in an old band.

Shes standing on a soundstage in Los Angeles, about to make her national television debut. Shes trembling slightly as she waits on her taped mark while the director explains that if she steps away from the microphone, shell be off camera.

If shes scared, shes determined, she said later, not to let it show. While she waits, she holds the microphone stand with both hands to keep steady. She tells herself to clear her mind.

Its June 11, 1975, and semi-washed-up English blues band Fleetwood Mac is making its first video with its new-look Anglo-American lineup. The song theyre about to play is Rhiannon, written by the new girl in the band, Stevie Nicks. Shes about to sing her most important song to America for the first time.

She should tremble, other than from the excitement of the video shoot in front of a small studio audience. This Rhiannon performance is Make or Break for the not-young singer-songwriter. An elderly ingnue at the age of twenty-eight, shes been kicking around Californias booming music business for seven years already, with little to show for it other than a bulging songbook and an interesting boyfriend, whos standing next to her on the stage with his guitar, getting ready to inject a dose of Rhiannon into the American consciousness, like an enchantment from the misty mountains of farthest Wales.

Do or diebecause if this new iteration of Fleetwood Mac fails to catch on, for Stevie Nicks its back to waiting tables wearing a corny period uniform in West Hollywood. And the auguries arent great at this point. Her singing had been pannedput downby Rolling Stone magazine in its review of Fleetwood Macs new album. She also knew that she was only in Fleetwood Mac because her boyfriend told the band that if they wanted him as their new guitar player, they had to take her as well.

As the stage manager counts down the time, Stevie Nicks looks over at the boyfriendLindsey Buckingham. Linds. Hes a year younger than she is. Hes in his stage outfit, a floppy silk kimono top, very Robert Plant, with lots of visible chest hair and an ample fro of dark curly locks. He smiles at her and winkshes nervous, too. But this is their moment what theyve been after, for years. Shes all in black, her blond hair layered in a feathered shag perm with platinum highlights. Shes a breath over five feet, a tiny girl really, but the fashionably stacked heels of her black boots add an extra four inches. A lacy black cape made of light chiffon completes the ensemble. Shes wearing a lot of eye shadow. She looks amazing, made for television like all the rock stars. (The formal, witchy top hat will come later. This is pre- Rumours . One day in the next century there will be websites devoted to her collection of shawls.)

But now the red studio light flashes on, Stevie takes a half step back, and Lindsey starts the song, cuffing his electric guitar. Drummer Mick Fleetwood pulses the rhythm forward with bassist John McVie, whose wife Christine sits at her electric keyboards, stage left, playing bluesy chords. Now Stevie steps forward and speaks into the microphone her first-ever words to her future rabid fans:

This is a song, she intones in a western drawl, about an old Welsh witch. And then she lets Rhiannon cast her magic cathode-ray spell. The song lasts almost seven minutes. Stevie pushes the beat with an arm gesture, and Fleetwood kicks it. Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night and wouldnt you love to love her? She rules her life like a bird in flight, and who will be her lover? Stevie sways with the beat, in close eye contact with Lindsey by her side. She wails taken by the sky, taken by the wind, a powerful female spirit vanishing in the ether, leaving no trace except the pretty guitar licks, and this young woman dancing power twirls on her mark between the second and third verses. She sings lyrics slightly different from those on the records: Once in a million years / A lady like her rises. She and Lindsey and Christine all sing together the keening, breathy chorusRhiaaaaa-nnon. Rhiaaaaaaaaaa-nnon.

Lindsey is rocking out and smiling. Its totally happening now. Fleetwood Mac is nailing this. She is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?

Then the music softens as Christine plays a bluesy keyboard solo that sets up the sonic whirlwind to come. Stevie stretches her gauzy black cape out like a pair of wings, fluid stagecraft before the songs next movement. (Rhiannon in performance can be seen as a five-scene playlet.) At just after four minutes the beat recedes, and Stevie sings the midsection: Dreams unwind / Loves a state of mind. And then, with two minutes to go, the band launches into a militant 4/4 march with Stevie in a hieratic tranceshouting, yelling, wailing lyrics, waving arms, strutting and stomping, acting out, wild-eyed. Shes shaking and vibrating, screaming like a bloody Bacchant, ready to tear the soul out of your body, her gesturing fingers making portents and prophesies in the smoky air.

The song crashes finally to a haltYou cry / But shes goneas she lets out a final howl that lasts ten seconds, descending by octaves. Then Stevie bends way down into a deep floor bow, grasping the microphone stand with both hands to prevent an exhausted collapse. The performance is complete; the studio audience applauds, and the image fades from the screen.

* * *

When the Rhiannon video was broadcast months later on The Midnight Special, the syndicated (nonnetwork) rock concert program shown late on Friday nights in the seventies, it changed everything for Fleetwood Mac. The bands eponymous new album, released the previous summer, had been chugging along, selling the usual mid-chart numbers to the bands loyal audience, although the first single, Christines Over My Head, had gotten airplay on FM radios soft rock/adult contemporary format and had jumped to Billboard magazines #20 chart position.

Then the Rhiannon 45-rpm single was released in February 1976 and exploded like a radio grenade after the enormous rock audience saw Stevie Nicks celebrate the rite of the old Welsh witch on national television. Suddenly a million American girls went out and bought the new Fleetwood Mac album. Then a million more. The Rhiannon album track immediately jumped on every American FM rock stations playlist, while the remixed singlewhich sounded hotter on a tinny car radiocrossed from FM onto AM radio and into the A&W Root Beer drive-ins of middle America. The White Goddesss momentum turned into massive album sales, and to the shock of everyone (but the band), the Fleetwood Mac album hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Hundred, and stayed there for weeks.