Wednesday, September 30, 2020

NEW INTERVIEW Stevie Nicks Single “Show Them the Way” Due out Oct 9th

The moonlight confessions of Stevie Nicks

By AMY KAUFMAN - LA Times



Stevie Nicks was in her early 30s when her father told her she’d never get married.

She had just released her solo album, 1981’s “Bella Donna,” embarking on a second career that would fill any time she wasn’t spending with Fleetwood Mac. Her music, Nicks’ dad said, would always consume her.

She considered the possibility. She certainly was not a woman who liked to be told what to do. Still, the words stung: “No man would be happy being Mr. Stevie Nicks for very long.” Had he doomed her to a life of solitude simply by speaking the thought into existence?

“Nobody,” she laughs now, decades later, “dooms me to anything but myself.”

At 72, Nicks has had a few great loves. Some we know about — Lindsey Buckingham, Don Henley, JD Souther — and many we don’t. She did get married once, back in 1983, an ill-fated three-month relationship with the husband of her best friend, who had just died of leukemia. She would have considered taking another spouse, had she met the right person — someone who wasn’t jealous of her, who got a kick out of her crazy girlfriends. But ultimately, her father pretty much got it right: She has yet to feel more devoted toward a man than her muse.

Which is why, in part, this pandemic has hit her so hard. Two projects due out this month have, she says, offered a vestige of normalcy: “24 Karat Gold: The Concert,” a cinematic version of her 2017 solo show, and a politically minded new single, “Show Them the Way,” which will be accompanied by a Cameron Crowe-directed music video. She’s also decided that she wants to make another solo album and plans to spend the rest of quarantine turning the poetry from her journals into lyrics.

But with touring on hold, she’s bored and depressed, conditions she’s claimed to never before suffer from. She’s cripplingly afraid of catching the coronavirus, fearing that going on a ventilator would leave her hoarse and ruin her voice.

“I have put a magical shield around me, because I am not going to give up the last eight years — what I call my last youthful years — of doing this,” she vows. “I want to be able to pull up those black velvet platform boots and put on my black chiffon outfit and twirl onto a stage again.”

It’s 9 p.m. on a Saturday when Nicks first calls from her home in the Pacific Palisades, where she has been sequestered with a close friend, her assistant and her housekeeper.

She has always been a night owl, but has recently become nocturnal, typically going to bed around 8 a.m. She attributes the change in her sleep pattern to the news, which she says she watches constantly. Usually, she likes to open the French doors to her bedroom, but tonight it’s dark outside because of the wildfires — “and not like, foggy, romantic dark. It’s just weird dark.” The smoke and ash in the air triggers her asthma, so she is not even venturing into her backyard.

Nicks is speaking from a landline. She has a personal line that she dances around when it rings, wondering “Who could it be? Is this a two-hour call? Is this going to be a tragedy?” and an emergency line to which her assistant attends. She does not have a computer. She does have an iPhone, but it doesn’t have cellular service and she uses it only as a camera.

Despite her distaste for social media, Nicks has gone viral a few times in recent months. Earlier this week, the internet discovered a TikTok video in which “doggface208" skateboards while singing along to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” swigging from a container of cran-raspberry juice and generally living his best life.

After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nicks paid tribute to the Supreme Court justice, admitting her into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Life.” (Nicks is the only woman to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first with Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and then on her own in 2019.) The reactions to the RBG post were largely positive, but she saw one comment that ignored her sentiment entirely and instead lambasted her for her band’s interpersonal drama.

“They didn’t even care about what I had written about Ruth and went right to the breakup of Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham,” she says. “I was like, ‘We’re talking about the death of a great Supreme Court judge, and you are yelling at me about something that happened two-and-a-half years ago? What are you, insane?’ I’m reeling from it. But I’m also like, OK: I can never be on social media.”

Nicks’ troll was referring to the highly publicized 2018 firing of Buckingham, who joined Fleetwood Mac as a lead guitarist and vocalist alongside then-girlfriend Nicks in 1974. The group’s tumult is the stuff of music legend: After ending her on-off again relationship with Buckingham, in 1977 Nicks had a brief affair with then-married drummer Mick Fleetwood. Singer Christine McVie, meanwhile, was in the midst of her own clandestine relationship with the band’s lighting director, ultimately leading to her divorce from bassist John McVie.

With the exception of a decade-long hiatus to focus on his solo career in the ‘90s, however, Buckingham remained with Fleetwood Mac until January 2018, when he claims he was unceremoniously let go. Together, they’d made an indelible mark on music history. Hits like “Dreams,” “Rhiannon,” “Landslide,” “The Chain” and “Gypsy” are now rock canon. 1977’s “Rumours” was No. 1 in the U.S. for 31 weeks, and subsequent tours over the decades showcased not just an incomparable baby-boomer songbook but the scars left from the band’s never-ending soap operas — Buckingham and Nicks frequently shot eye daggers at each other in front of packed stadiums during renditions of breakup anthems like “Go Your Own Way” and “Silver Springs.”

When Buckingham was axed from the group, he sued for lost wages — claiming he would have collected between $12 million and $14 million in two months of touring with Fleetwood Mac. (He was replaced by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Crowded House’s Neil Finn.) In legal documents, Buckingham says his firing came days after the band’s appearance at the January 2018 MusiCares Person of the Year ceremony. He alleges that he was later told that Nicks thought he’d mocked her on stage at the event while she was delivering a speech; she was apparently so upset that she told the rest of Fleetwood Mac she’d walk if he wasn’t cut from the band.

Nicks is reluctant to discuss the details of that night, though she admits it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“I never planned for that to happen,” she says hesitantly. “Any time we re-formed to do a tour or a record, I always walked in with hope in my heart. And I just was so disappointed. I felt like all the wind had gone out of my sails.”

There’s melancholy in her voice when she discusses the split, which she describes as a “long time coming.” She was always hopeful that “things would get better” but found herself noticing she was increasingly sad with Fleetwood Mac and more at peace in the “good, creative happy world” with her solo band.

“I just felt like a dying flower all the time,” she says. “I stayed with him from 1968 until that night. It’s a long time. And I really could hear my parents — I could hear my mom saying, ‘Are you really gonna do this for the rest of your life?’ And I could hear my dad saying in his very pragmatic way — because my dad really liked Lindsey —‘I think it’s time for you and Lindsey to get a divorce.’ It’s a very unfortunate thing. It makes me very, very sad.”

She says she hasn’t spoken to Buckingham in a couple of years, though she did write him a note after his February 2019 heart attack: “You better take care of yourself. You better take it easy and you better do everything they tell you and get your voice back and feel the grace that you have made it through this.”

Nicks has cataloged the ups and downs of her life in journals — she estimates she has roughly one per year of her life — and she plans to leave many of them to her goddaughters, of whom she has 11 or 12; she can’t be certain. She chose most of her goddaughters at birth — asking their parents if she could fulfill the role — and relishes the way they keep her “totally young and up on everything.” She loves to spoil them all with gifts imbued with meaning, like a pair of pink strappy heels she found at a store in Australia and deemed “Cinderella slippers.”

Tokens are important to Nicks. In 1977, she began having gold moon necklaces made to give as gifts to those she felt needed them. Over the years, she’s bestowed them to celebrities (the Haim sisters, Taylor Swift, Tavi Gevinson), soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Make-a-Wish recipients. Members of the coven — her “Sisters of the Moon” — are told the moons are lucky charms and to pass them along to another in need, should the moment arise.

Nicks is wearing the signature necklace in “24 Karat Gold,” the concert special slated to play in theaters for two nights only, Oct. 21 and 25. (A CD version comes out Oct. 30; streaming plans for the film have yet to be determined.)

In May, Nicks flew to Chicago, where Joe Thomas, the film’s director, was finessing a cut of it. The final version features 17 songs, only four of which are Fleetwood Mac hits. The show emphasizes Nicks’ solo career — MTV standards like “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen.” Performing music from her “dark, gothic trunk of lost songs,” she tells the audience, makes her feel like she’s a 20-year-old embarking on a new career. “This is not the same Stevie Nicks show you’ve seen a million times,” she explains, “because I am different.”


Monday, September 28, 2020

Mick Fleetwood Releases New Music/Video - 'These Strange Times'

Rock & Roll Icon Releases New Recording of  
“These Strange Times”

Available on Spotify and Apple

Mick Fleetwood Official Website

September 25, 2020 -- Rock & Roll Hall of Fame drummer Mick Fleetwood released today a new recording and video for Mick Fleetwood’s Da*da*ism “These Strange Times,” available on Rhino Records. Originally released on Fleetwood Mac’s 16th studio album Time in 1995, the song was re-recorded adding thirty seconds of Peter Green’s “Albatross” to the end of the song and set to a brand-new video.

Inspired by an eighteenth-century painting, the newly released video and accompanying single artwork are centered around the idea of something greater than us, which lies at the core of our very human struggle to be our best selves.

“The project is about the energy of choice, of deciding if you want to be a part of the dark or the light when push comes to shove, which seems very apropos at this moment in history,” Fleetwood says. “It’s about how you read things, which is very important today. Everyone needs to be carefully paying attention to the information coming our way. There is subtext to everything and we need to be aware of that. When I first encountered the painting that inspired the photoshoot, it was a soul-searching exercise that I was driven to do but I didn’t know when would be the time to release it. Now I know why: the when is now.”


The spoken-word poem at the center of the song finds the narrator, Fleetwood, questioning his feelings and his thoughts, as he has found himself stuck between the dark and the light. The video is meant to be as thought provoking as the song is hypnotic, as the lyrics detail the struggle of the narrator.

“I hope the song conveys that life is about choice,” Fleetwood says. “God is everything, no matter what your belief system is. Being in love is God, no matter your creed. There’s a rejoicing at the end of the song when the narrator chooses the side of the light. The song is about all of us making that choice ourselves and the relief we feel when we are no longer caught in the middle.”

“This is something I wrote many years ago,” Fleetwood says, “and I want it to be nothing more than thought provoking. I want people to see and hear what they will in it. My hope is that by haring these thought-provoking moments in my world that I can somehow open the eyes of others to things in their world and to the existence we all share, which is more and more endangered with each passing day.”

Song Credits:

Title: These Strange Times


Artist: 
Mick Fleetwood’s Da * da * ism  
Composers: 
Mick Fleetwood, Ray Kennedy and Peter Green
Executive Producers:  
Mick Fleetwood and Carl Stubner
Produced by: 
Lynn Peterson, Mick Fleetwood, John Jones and Ray Kennedy
Recorded and Mixed by:
Lynn Peterson and John Jones
Additional Engineering: 
Jimmy Hotz 
Recorded in the USA 
 
Vocals: 
Mick Fleetwood & Bekka Bramlett
Lead Guitars: 
Rick Vito
Acoustic Guitars, Drums & Percussion: 
Mick Fleetwood
Bass Guitar:  
John Jones 
Keyboards: 
Ricky Peterson & John Jones 
Background vocals:  
Lucy Fleetwood


GOD IS NOWHERE/GOD IS NOW HERE

This statement is the essence of the artistic journey at the heart of Mick Fleetwood’s new single, “These Strange Times.” The song isn’t about God in any conventional way according to the tenets of any particular creed. Rather, God represents the divine, in other words, the idea of something greater than us, which lies at the center of every religious belief in one way or another and is at the core of our very human struggle to be our best selves. “The project is about the energy of choice, of deciding if you want to be a part of the dark or the light when push comes to shove, which seems very apropos at this moment in history,” Fleetwood says.

Inspired by an eighteenth-century painting, the photographical homage included in the album art addresses subtext and language. The phrase “God is nowhere” has been drawn on a blackboard by a devil-disguised Fleetwood, but interpreted by his pupil, an innocent child, as “God is now here.”

“It’s about how you read things, which is very important today,” Fleetwood says. “Everyone needs to be carefully paying attention to the information coming our way. There is subtext to everything and we need to be aware of that. When I first encountered the painting that inspired the song and the photoshoot, it was a soul-searching exercise that I was driven to do but I didn’t know when would be the time to release it. Now I know why: the when is now.”

The spoken-word poem at the center of the song finds the narrator, Fleetwood, questioning his feelings and his thoughts, as he has found himself stuck between the dark and the light, a condition he regards as a living hell. The beautiful video that accompanies the song juxtaposes images from nature evoking light and dark, the best and worst elements of man’s impact on Earth and the legacy we are leaving for future generations. It is as thought provoking as the song is hypnotic, as the lyrics detail the struggle of the narrator, lost and yearning to be in love, as he is led to the light in the end by the angelic voice of a child showing him that God is in fact now here.

“I hope the song conveys that life is about choice,” Fleetwood says. “God is everything, no matter what your belief system is. Being in love is God, no matter your creed. There’s a rejoicing at the end of the song when the narrator chooses the side of the light. The song is about all of us making that choice ourselves and the relief we feel when we are no longer caught in the middle.” 

We are caught in strange times indeed, growing stranger and harsher with each passing day. It is a time for looking within to find answers, and to make sense of the world around us. “This is something I wrote many years ago,” Fleetwood says, “and I want it to be nothing more than thought provoking. I want people to see and hear what they will in it. My hope is that by sharing these thought provoking moments in my world that I can somehow open the eyes of others to things in their world and to the existence we all share, which is more and more endangered with each passing day.”



Mick Fleetwood Releases Apt Video for ‘These Strange Times’

Nineties Fleetwood Mac track gets new recording featuring sample of “Albatross”

Mick Fleetwood shares new version of ‘These Strange Times’

"I didn’t know when would be the time to release it. Now I know why: the when is now”

Thursday, September 10, 2020

STEVIE NICKS to release The 24 Karat Gold Tour Live in Concert in October/November


LIVE IN CONCERT
STEVIE NICKS
THE 24 KARAT GOLD TOUR

In Cinemas Two Nights Only, October 21 & 25
Tickets are on-sale beginning on Sept. 23 at StevieNicksFilm.com


Trafalgar Releasing announced today that Stevie Nicks, two time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, legendary Grammy winning recording singer/songwriter supreme, will debut Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert, which will be released for two nights only on October 21 and 25 at select cinemas, drive ins and exhibition spaces around the world. With this film Nicks, long considered one of the most iconic live performers, provides music fans with a virtual front row seat to the magic Stevie brings to the stage in concert.

The film features a set-list of fan favorite Nicks songs from her solo career and as a member of Fleetwood Mac including “Rhiannon,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back,” “Landslide,” and more as well as rare gems from her platinum selling catalog. The film also reveals intimate storytelling and inspirations for some of the most famous and timeless songs and lyrics in music history which to this day remain part of the soundtrack to the lives of generations of music lovers. Directed and produced by Joe Thomas during Nicks’ fabled 67 city sold out 24 Karat Gold Tour, filming and recording took place in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh in 2017.

“The 24 Karat Gold Tour was my all-time favorite tour. I not only got to sing my songs but I was able to tell their stories for the first time. I love having the opportunity to share this concert with my fans. From me to you – 24 Karat Gold,” Said Stevie Nicks.

Kymberli Frueh, SVP for Programming and Content Acquisitions for Trafalgar Releasing said, “We are thrilled to collaborate with BMG and Stevie Nicks’ team on this landmark global cinema event which is sure to delight fans. Stevie’s legendary career has spanned over four decades, creating legions of fans across the generations. Her 24 Karat Gold concert tracklist features some of her greatest solo hits as well as Fleetwood Mac classics.”

The event will be screened in cinemas around the world on Oct. 21 and 25. Tickets are on-sale beginning on Sept. 23 at StevieNicksFilm.com, where fans can find the most up-to-date information regarding participating theaters and sign up for event alerts. Dates are subject to change based on the status of local cinema re-openings.

The 2CD & digital/streaming releases will be available on Oct. 30 via BMG, featuring 17 tracks of Stevie’s greatest hits live; including “Stand Back,” “Gypsy,” and “Edge of Seventeen,” as well as the first ever live recording of “Crying In The Night,” and other live rarities. The 2CD will be available exclusively at Target on Oct. 30, and the digital release will be available everywhere on the same day. A limited-edition 2LP 180-gram version will be available on “Crystal-Clear” vinyl exclusively at Barnes & Noble, while a 180-gram black vinyl version will be available everywhere.


The 2-CD & Digital


Available digitally October 30, 2020. 
Physical 2-CD version available exclusively at Target on October 30, 2020. Available at Amazon in other parts of the world.



CD1
Live in Concert Stevie Nicks The 24 Karat Gold Tour1. Gold and Braid
2. If Anyone Falls
3. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
4. Belle Fleur
5. Gypsy
6. Wild Heart / Bella Donna
7. Enchanted
8. New Orleans
9. Starshine
10. Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)

CD2

1. Stand Back
2. Crying in the Night
3. If You Were My Love
4. Gold Dust Woman
5. Edge of Seventeen
6. Rhiannon
7. Landslide


2-CD Available October 30, 2020 (Target Exclusive) USA
2-CD & Vinyl Available October 30, 2020 (Amazon) UK
2-CD & Vinyl Available October 30, 2020 (Amazon) Canada
2-CD & Vinyl Available October 30, 2020 (Amazon) Germany
2-CD & Vinyl Available October 30, 2020 (JB Hi Fi) Australia


2-LP 180 gram Crystal Clear Vinyl 
Available November 20, 2020 exclusively at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon

2-LP Black Vinyl Available December 4th or January 15th at Amazon

Amazon - US (digital album)
Amazon - Germany (digital album)
Amazon - UK (digital album)
Amazon - France (digital album)
Amazon - Spain (digital album)
Amazon - Italy (digital album)


DVD/2-CD Package Available January 15, 2021 - Amazon
Blu-Ray Version also available January 15, 2021 - Amazon




PBS is offering a 24 Karat Gold Tour Collection with a donation to PBS. Donation levels will get you either the DVD/CD or the 2-LP Gold Vinyl or the 11x17 Lithograph... Or all 3 together.


GYPSY



CRYING IN THE NIGHT