Friday, May 20, 2011

STEVIE NICKS: From The Beginning...


In My Dreams and In Your Dreams by Stevie Nicks 

For me the circus came to town in 2010. That's the year I wrote and recorded "In Your Dreams," my new CD. It was the year Dave Stewart returned to my life. He returned to my life after several years. He actually arrived at my front door, walked into my living room and we started writing songs for my new album.

It was glorious. We were two people extremely committed to having fun along the way. Every day was an adventure. Every day was a gala. The environment was magical. I've never worked harder in my life but it never seemed like I was working. It was a circus after all.

I've always tried to have fun making records with Fleetwood Mac and with my solo ones. I didn't succeed very often though certainly the music did. But this time, it was perfection. It was everything I always wished making a record would be. We laughed all the time. We were little kids in a sandbox. We were happy parents and the songs we created were our children. We were a big happy family – me and Dave, the engineers, Waddy, the girls, Glenn Ballard, my assistant Karen and my friend Kellianne who prepared elaborate dinners every night where we talked about music, art, politics and "the songs." Dave would have a martini. There was never a harsh word or raised voice. It felt pretty much like I imagine a Paris salon of artists who adored each other might gather in the twenties. If all that wasn't enough, I had the ride of a lifetime creating an album of songs that I am so proud to share with you. Did I mention that we dressed up in ridiculous outfits all the time?

Maybe it was destiny for Dave and I to come together and create "In Your Dreams." We'd met years ago – 1985 to be exact. We were going to work on the song "Don't Come Around Here No More" which he eventually completed with Tom Petty. Phenomenal song by the way. Wish I'd gotten to do it. Our paths didn't cross again until 2006 when Dave was working on a pilot for a TV show and I was a guest. We talked for two hours about everything. At the end, he suggested I play something at the piano…I did a 15 minute version of "Rhiannon." Dave joined in as if we'd been singing it together for years. I realized then that if I were ever to make a solo album again (believe me I had my doubts) - but if the day came, I knew I wanted Dave on board.

So beginning February into March and then April, three days a week, Dave would arrive with Ned Douglas the engineer. At the entrance to my house as soon as you walk in, you are greeted by two huge pianos, a black Bosendorfer and a white Steinway. Other special touches were added as we went along – a pair of black antique dancing shoes, a perfume bottle and of course a chandelier. Lots of atmosphere. We would work on the songs day after day. "Ned, how about some bass and add that drum part," I would say and he knew exactly what was needed. The living room of my home metamorphasized into our recording studio…We also set up a recording area in the curve of the big staircase where we did vocals and that's how we made "In Your Dreams."

On Tuesday and Thursday and weekends, I would work with the girls Lori Nicks and Sharon Celani, who are truly the backbone of the Stevie Nicks sound. We love to sing together. I have the utmost respect for their point of view on the music and they know when it sounds right. My good friend and sidekick Waddy Wachtel would be there as well. I've been with Lori, Sharon and Waddy since 1979. With me, they are the Stevie Nicks band. You can imagine the level of trust that we've developed after all this time.

Then Glen Ballard arrived at my door one day a couple of months later (he's Dave Stewart's partner). I call him "the beautiful quiet one." He is the voice of reason. The rest of us were all circus people who were running amok. Glen kept it all together. He could simply stroll over and start playing something on one of those pianos or pick up his guitar to explain something. He also arrived with Scott the engineer who took over from Ned. Scott was another magician in our midst. And now you have our merry cast of characters.

We all took time off in May when Dave went to London and I went to Hawaii where I wrote "For What It's Worth." By June 1st we had 13 songs completed – I co-wrote seven with Dave and five by myself. In the Fall, the circus moved to Village Recording for two weeks where we tracked and Mick Fleetwood and Steve Faroni came in to play.

I want "In Your Dreams" to have a big impact on people to give at least one moment of joy and hope to anyone listening. Well, even more than a moment. I wanted my music to make you feel like you wanted to dance around the house. That's what it does for me.

Let the show begin:

Thursday, May 19, 2011

WOW! Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart discuss the making of Stevie's latest album "In Your Dreams."

Stevie Nicks In Your Dreams EPK Exclusive



Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart discuss the making of Stevie's latest album "In Your Dreams." Listen to Stevie and Dave discuss making each track on the album and the history behind the album!

"In Your Dreams" is now available on iTunes: http://wbr.fm/StevieIYD


Stevie Nicks the rock icon reflects on past loves, present challenges, and her growth beyond Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks on Love, Loss and What She Wears
With her first solo album in a decade widely praised as her "best yet," the rock icon reflects on past loves, present challenges, and her growth beyond Fleetwood Mac

By Holly George-Warren
More.com

MORE: In an interview I did with you previously, you said that you saved all your old tapes from when you were writing or working on songs.

Stevie Nicks: I do. Two songs for this record were pulled right off of old cassettes. "Annabelle Lee" was pulled off of a demo I did in about 1995, and "Secret Love"--the single--was pulled from a demo from a cassette that I wrote in 1976.

More: You must be really organized to be able to find that.

Stevie Nicks: I'm not, but the people who have worked for me have been very organized. I bought a house in Phoenix in 1978 and from 1978 on, we have what we call "The Song Vault.” It’s a storage unit that's temperature controlled, and it's several big armoires that are shelf after shelf after shelf of everything from collections of tapes that I used to make-- that people make now for their iPods—to collections that I play when I'm on the road, starting when I first joined Fleetwood Mac. So I have all the old collections of whatever songs were hits at the time, and then there's just everything else I liked.

More: I love the new CD. Some of the songs are like short stories and some are like poems. There are certain themes that come across, like dreams, and ghosts and, it seems, memories of past relationships.

Stevie Nicks: Ghosts ... except the great thing is that they're not gone. Like in "The Ghosts Are Gone": the cassette ghosts remain forever.

More: What inspired that song in particular?

Stevie Nicks: I wrote that as a poem. I was on the road with Fleetwood Mac, I think it was the end of 2004. We were in London, and I met a singer-songwriter named Amanda Ghost. I just loved the fact that her last name was Ghost. So I just wrote that poem. It’s not about her because I didn't really know her, but the main inspiration was her last name.

Lots of time I'll get an inspiration, like "The Ghosts Are Gone"-- that's just a sentence. Then I have to write a story around it. And so "The Ghosts Are Gone" song actually was about the end of a relationship, in the way that you say, "I'm done forever. This can never be again.”

It's one of the most solid songs I've ever written. The ghosts are gone: all memories are gone, all feelings are gone, it's as if it never happened. And I don't write too many songs like that. I always have more or less a hopeful outlook, but in that situation it was like “you are gone to me.”

More: Saying that through the song, did that help you get your head out of the relationship?

Stevie Nicks: New 'Dreams' A pop rock muse returns with a bewitching new album


Inside Music: Interview
By Melinda Newman
Special to MSN Music 

Few women in rock inspire as hypnotically devoted a following as Stevie Nicks. For more than 35 years, through both her days with Fleetwood Mac and her solo career, she's mesmerized fans with her gravelly velvet voice and her bewitching songs and her ability to twirl.

Ten years after her last solo album, "Trouble in Shangri-La," she returns May 3 with "In Your Dreams," recorded largely in her Los Angeles living room and produced primarily by Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard. Both Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham play on the compelling set. And as MSN Music found, once someone is in Nicks' life, he or she seldom leaves.

MSN Music: You just came off the road with Rod Stewart in the Heart & Soul tour. Do you have a ritual for celebrating the end of a tour?

Stevie Nicks: No, not really. Everybody was starting to get sick. It was a lot of shows. The last night of the tour, Rod just had a new baby, his eighth, a little boy, so I bought him a little blue diamond shoe, little baby shoe, and then engraved it with Aiden's initials and my initials and the date and gave it to him and told him how much I had enjoyed it. [The tour] ended up to be a really great thing. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again, because it went very smoothly.

You told a Santa Barbara newspaper that you thought "In Your Dreams" would go down as your greatest work.

Stevie Nicks - A couple of pages from Magazines... In Your Dreams





Second Week US Sales for Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams" PLUS Fleetwood Mac [update]

STEVIE NICKS
Officially on Billboard Stevie's 'In Your Dreams' drops 10 places to #16 with 20,400 units sold for a two week accumulated total of 72,800 in the US.

On Billboards Top 200 Current Albums Chart the album drops from #6 to #15.

In Canada - 'In Your Dreams' drops down to #41 in it's second week on the chart for the week ending May 12, 2011. The album debuted at #24.

In Germany 'In Your Dreams' is one of the top three new entries this week on the German Top 100 Albums Chart debuting at # 37.

In Sweden 'In Your Dreams' in it's 2nd week on the Swedish chart moves up 13 places to #39.  This is Stevie's 7th top 40 album in Sweden.


Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams" - Week 2
# 16 - USA Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart - (Week ending 05/15/2011)
# 15 - USA Billboard Top 200 Current Albums Chart
# 05 - USA Billboard Top Rock Albums Chart
# 35 - New Zealand - (05/16/2011)
# 39 - Sweden - (05/20/2011)
# 41 - Canada - (05/12/2011)
# 57 - The Netherlands - (05/14/2011)

So far by Country... Here are the debut positions for "In Your Dreams"

# 06 - USA
# 24 - Canada
# 24 - Austrlaia
# 37 - New Zealand
# 37 - Germany
# 39 - Norway
# 47 - The Netherlands
# 52 - Sweden
# 90 - Belgium

________________________________________________________

FLEETWOOD MAC
In the US Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" album sprang back onto the Top 200 Album Charts last week at # 11 with roughly 30k in sales thanks to the GLEE episode.  This week it drops down to #38 with approx. 12,072 in sales which is really impressive for an album 34 years old.

Fleetwood Mac "Rumours"
# 38 - USA Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart - (Week ending 05/15/2011)
# 08 - USA Billboard Top Digital Albums Chart
# 02 - USA Billboard Top Catalog Albums Chart

"Rumours" in Canada drops from #16 to #61.

Also on the Billboard 200 Fleetwood Mac's 1988 Greatest Hits album remains for a second week after re-entering last week at #90 - moving down to #187.


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

#idol Recap of Haley Singing Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac a Stevie Nicks Penned Song

[From Wednesday's American Idol Show]

Haley Reinhart sings “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac on American Idol 2011.

RobotCeleb

Fleetwood Mac came back big on Glee a couple of weeks ago and last night Stevie Nicks was on Dancing With The Stars. Tonight, American Idol finalist Haley Reinhart channeled her inner Stevie Nicks as she performed “Rhiannon” live. Jimmy Iovine chose the song for Haley and despite it being a little windy on the Idol stage; Haley Reinhart did the song justice. Can she win American Idol Season 10?





By Brian Mansfield,


Watching Haley audition, I'm more convinced than ever that she's improved as much as any top-three contestant I've ever seen. The voice was there from the beginning, but she has learned how to use it better and how to present herself.

Haley says remembering the words will be a challenge as she sings Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon. "From the minute I met you, I felt you should sing a Stevie Nicks song," he says. Haley's a Stevie Nicks fan, via her mother.

Haley gets smoke and dramatic black-and-white lighting for Rhiannon, which begins with only piano accompaniment before kicking into a more Mac-like arrangement for the second verse, at which point a wind machine kicks up underneath her, blowing her hair and her dress every which way. More than Scotty or Lauren, Haley knows how present a song, and the show's producers are giving her every opportunity to show off that skill. Good performance, great TV.

For me, Round Two goes to Haley, too, though Scotty came close.

And, at this point, even the awkward banter with the judges is playing to her favor.

"You're in a zone right now," Randy says. "You're just having a good time right now. ... I would grow my hair out if I could have the whole wind thing."

"You remind me of why I fell in love with Stevie Nicks to begin with," says Steven.

"It was a really beautiful moment," Jennifer says, "and you looked really beautiful on camera. ... It was a nice contrast to what you did earlier."

From the judges, Round Two is a mixed result: Steven goes for Lauren Alaina, while Jennifer and Randy (and Jimmy) go for Scotty.

"It's going to be an interesting finish," says Ryan, pointing out that Neil Sedaka is sitting next to Jimmy.

Nicks Pics... Dancing With The Stars

Well these are pretty awesome! [Stevie Pics I mean]

Looks like these were taken possibly during rehearals prior to Dancing With The Stars airing... Not sure.


Happy as a clam! Met my goddess! on Twitpic Finally met #StevieNicks - yay! on Twitpic


Photos by Kamela Brewer at @kamelabrewer on Twitter

Stevie Nicks gets personal on her new album

The singer opens up about the inspiration for each song on 'In Your Dreams'

[If you buy the itunes version of Stevie's new album... All this song inspiration below is part of the cd booklet within itunes]

Stevie Nicks released her new album In Your Dreams last week and it's a hit, coming in at #6 on the charts. The veteran songstress recently sat down to open up to fans about the inspiration behind 'In Your Dreams' 13 tracks. Check out what she has to say:

SECRET LOVE - I love this song. I still do not remember exactly who it is about...I wrote it a very long time ago. Life was moving very fast in the late '70s...Love was everywhere. We were beautiful. I saw everything through a sort of stained glass window of perfection. It was a pretty spectacular time and I think the song represents many relationships, not only mine, but lots of people at that time. I was living in a pink Spanish house which belonged to silent film stars. I wrote a lot of songs there and this was one of them. I didn't completely remember the song and amazingly discovered an early version of it on YouTube.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH – Somewhere in the '90s – in my post Klonopin era (a drug that almost destroyed me)– I'd just come out of 47 days in rehab. I was trying to recover. I was petrified of life with no tranquilizers. I was afraid to come back into the real world. Someone appeared out of nowhere. An angel stepped in. He arrived and walked me through and he saved my spiritual life. I think it's a reminder for everyone that sometimes when you are filled with fear or pain, someone arrives and takes you by the hand and helps you on your journey.

IN YOUR DREAMS - This was another difficult time in my life and when I was on the road touring my sound engineer would hear me say, "I can't do it...I can't go up there." And he would say, "Stevie, I'm right at the other end of this cord." His words of assurance that I would sound good made me feel safe.

WILD SARGASSO SEA – This song is based on the book and movie of the same title. It is the precursor to Jane Eyre. It was about Mr. Rochester falling in love with Antoinette and how he felt the moment he met her on the island. They both went mad but Antoinette Rochester never recovered and was locked up.

PHOTOS | VIDEO: Stevie Nicks Dancing With The Stars

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, multi-Grammy award winner and living legend Stevie Nicks came to perform two songs. Loved how she got into the spirit of “DWTS” with her skirt of many fabrics and chain mail on her gloves, and that lasso move that she made at the end of her performance of her single “Secret Love,” which featured bare-chested Dmitry Chaplin making sweet ballroom love to Anna Trebunskaya on the judges table, as well as Peta Murgatroyd and bare-chested Damian Whitewood. Stevie followed that up with a rendition of the classic Fleetwood Mac hit “Landslide,” with Cheryl and Tony Dovolani in classic black and white doing a classic rumba on the dance floor. Did I mention how classic this was? Also instant classic: the fact that Stevie had chains on her microphone stand, which only solidified the “DWTS” rock star that she is.

Los Angeles Times | On The Red Carpet












Buy on itunes


Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Stevie Nicks on Dancing With The Stars

Well... She finally made her first prime time appearance promoting 'In Your Dreams'!... and the first prime time performance of 'Secret Love'. Stevie looked really great, wore the boots, was rocking the wavey hair she's been sporting lately and it looked like she was wearing a new skirt on the outfit... It was nice.  She sounds like she still has some residual of the flu and pneumonia that she caught on the day her new album was released (May 3rd). But I think she pulled it off! Plus given it was LIVE I'm sure she was a little nervous knowing the size of the Dancing With The Stars TV audience.  Vocally on 'Secret Love' you could hear a bit of a rasp in her voice and she may have been slightly out of tune in places... But like I said given that she's only just getting over the flu and pneumonia where she had to cancel shows and other appearances on the east coast - I think she did really well.

Landslide sounded much better vocally. The song was cut down for the show but still sounded like the great Landslide!

It seems it doesn't matter what TV show any of these live performers play on, it never really sounds right. Even on the award shows where there are a lot of live performances, you would think it would be perfect, but it isn't... there's just something missing... I'm sure it's the way it's mixed.










Second Week US Sales for "In Your Dreams" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours"

[update May 18th] Stevie's album will land at #16 on Billboard Magazine's Top 200 in it's 2nd week - not #17 as Hits Daily Double suggested.  Total sales numbers yet to be confirmed by Billboard.

Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams" second week sales in the US = 20,055. Hits Daily Double is showing the album drops down to # 17 with a 57% decrease in sales - which is somewhat typical for classic artists to take a dive in the second week.

Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" album that sprang back onto the Top 200 Album Charts in the US last week at # 11 with roughly 30k in sales will be at approx. # 38 on the Billboard chart when it's published later this week. Sales for this past week as reported by Hits Daily Double are 12,072 which is really impressive for an album 34 years old.