Stevie Nicks 12 Revelations From The Grammy Museum

Source: The Hollywood Reporter The singer talks Fleetwood Mac, her solo career and which one of her recent tunes was inspired by “The Twilight Saga.”

Stevie Nicks entertained and educated high school students and fans Wednesday, Oct. 19 at two sessions at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. She touched on everything from her childhood to her recently released album In Your Dreams, providing the audience with imitations of her Fleetwood Mac bandmates Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham, tales of poverty and success and revelations about her past. Here are a dozen she shared.

1. “Moonlight” — currently her favorite song on the new album In Your Dreams — was written after she saw The Twilight Saga: New Moon. “I saw it while we were on the road with Fleetwood Mac in Australia. I was so taken by the movie that I wrote a five-page essay after seeing it and went back to see it the next night in Brisbane. I had a piano in my room and I wrote (“Moonlight”).”

2. There is music in the vaults from the Fleetwood Mac and Rumours sessions. “Lots of stuff — lots of songs that turned into other songs. It could get released some day.”

3. On the making of Fleetwood Mac’s double album Tusk in 1979: “Tusk was 13 months at Village Recorders. Lindsey had tusks on the wall and all these weird Polaroids. I thought this must be what hell is like. With speakers. I felt like I was watching weirdo spirits. It’s a lot more fun to tell stories about that record than it was to live through it.”

4. Two non-music projects she would like to do are make a film of the mythological stories of Rhiannon and turn her children’s story/song “Goldfish and the Ladybug” into a cartoon.

5. In 2005, after the Fleetwood Mac Say You Will tour, Nicks wanted to make a solo album. “I was told by people in the industry now is not a good time to make a record. Your best bet is to stay on tour and get while the getting is good. I was so overwhelmed by that. It was the first time anyone had ever told me that I shouldn’t (make music). I was horrified. But if I had done a record then, maybe I wouldn’t have done this record (In Your Dreams).”

6. The first time she wore her “uniform” of black leggings, boots, vest/riding jacket and top hat was at a sixth grade talent show where she dance to Buddy Holly’s “Every Day.”

7. She would love to record a song with Lyle Lovett.

8. Key influences: Grandfather was a country musician; she loved pop-R&B she heard on the radio in the fourth, fifth and sixth grade; and her parents would play Mahalia Jackson records on weekends.

9. The practice of getting gifts — stuffed animals, flowers, scarves, etc., — from fans at the end of a show began on the tour for Bella Donna at the former Beverly Wilshire Theater in Beverly Hills. “Some times when I start a show I feel too tired to do it because sometimes it takes 15 minutes to go across the front of the stage. But even if my back is breaking I do it. And I’ll always do it. If it’s important to the fans then it’s important to me.”

10. Her traveling makeup kit has a photograph she took with George Harrison in 1977 in Hana, Hawaii.

11. Songs she wanted to sing when she arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1970s: The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danny’s Song.”

12. Her favorite venue on the recent tour was San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium. “I saw Janis Joplin there and Jimi Hendrix and I wondered how I was going to get from the floor to the stage. (The owners) know what they have and they have kept it (intact). You can feel the spirits of the past. I’d love to go up there and do 15 shows.”