The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks by Simon Morrison

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks by Simon Morrison A stunning musical biography of Stevie Nicks that paints a portrait of an artist, not a caricature of a superstar. Reflective and expansive, Mirror in the Sky situates Stevie Nicks as one of the finest songwriters of the twentieth century. This biography from distinguished music historian Simon Morrison examines Nicks as a singer and songwriter before and beyond her career with Fleetwood Mac, from the Arizona landscape of her childhood to the strobe-lit Night of 1000 Stevies celebrations. The book uniquely: Analyzes Nicks's craft—the grain of her voice, the poetry of her lyrics, the melodic and harmonic syntax of her songs. Identifies the American folk and country influences on her musical imagination that place her within a distinctly American tradition of women songwriters. Draws from oral histories and surprising archival discoveries to connect Nicks's story to those of California's above- and underground music industries, innovations in recording technology, and gendered restrictions.

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Check out all that stuff going on. Today we're going to be talking about an amazing artist you may know, Stevie Nicks. You may know her not only as a solo artist, but as an artist with Fleetwood Mac, and I think other iterations that she's contributed to. But we're going to be talking with the author of the newest book that's come out on her life artist with Fleetwood Mac and I think other iterations that she's contributed to. But we're going to be talking with the author of the newest book that's come out on her life called Mirror in the Sky, The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks by Simon Morrison. Just came out October 4th, 2022. And Stevie is one of my favorite, if not, I think she's my all-time favorite female

singer of all time. I just, I've always been just in love with her work and her music and the enthralling ways that she captivates and everything else. So we'll be talking about her day. In the meantime, go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, YouTube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, LinkedIn, Fortuness Chris Voss, all the properties we have across social media. Share it out. Refer to your family, friends, relatives. We certainly appreciate that.

So today we have Simon Morrison on the show to talk to your family, friends, relatives. We certainly appreciate that. So today we have Simon Morrison on the show to talk to us about his amazing new book. He specializes in 20th century music, particularly Russian, Soviet, and French music, with special interest in dance, cinema, aesthetics, and historically informed performance. This is based on primary sources. He has conducted archival research in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, London, New York, Washington, D.C., Copenhagen, and most extensively in Moscow. Hopefully he didn't stay on any stories that were above the bottom floor stories. You always want to stay on the bottom floor in Moscow, wherever you stay.

He's traveled to Tel Aviv, Beijing, what am I doing here? Hong Kong, Montreal, Moscow, Copenhagen, and Bangkok to give invited lectures and graduate seminars and devise a time between Princeton and Los Angeles. Welcome to the show, Simon. How are you? I'm very well. Thanks for having me and for that generous super generous introduction I don't know who you were talking about there but I'll take it I was reading your bio page on your website so yeah super great to be with you so whoever you had write that I mean they did a they did a good job so there you go but I'm sure you're living it so give us your dot coms where

we want people to find you on the interwebs to get to know you better. I have my own webpage, which is just simonamorrison.com. The reason I put the A in there, besides it being my middle initial, is that there is another Simon Morrison in this world. Somebody in the UK who actually works on dance club music. You can hire Hitman to do that. It's illegal. Well, the thing is, frequently he ends up being a specialist in ballet, and I end up being somebody who actually does a lot of rave events. But anyway, so yeah, simonamorrison.com, and that's some pictures and various things there.

So you've written several books on different music, the Russian opera, et cetera, et cetera. What made you write about Stevie Nicks as opposed to, say, Nickelback? Had to get my Nickelback jab in there. Reminds me, I was talking to this former BH1 and MTV producer,

Eddie Dalva, who actually said that we all had to suffer at various periods in our career with certain groups. And I said, which ones did you have to suffer with? He said sticks. But I would throw in, yeah, I know. I was like, what? Okay.

But anyway, how I got to this project was I, like you, I've listened to Stevie Nicks' music for a long time. She's been with us for a long time. And I was into Fleetwood mac a little bit as a kid and i was really into this uh experimental i guess double album there it's called tusk which came out in 79 i was really into that and um but i just listened to it was kind of like you know not off you know you go to the office and you teach you know symphonies and you come home and then you listen to music that you know you kind of grew up with and you really lovedphonies, and you come home, and then you listen to music that you kind of grew up with

and you really loved. And I had a conversation with a music editor at University of California Press, and she was really interested in the idea of a book about Stevie. And she raised the idea as a possibility, and I said, well, you know, it's not really my beat to do popular music research, but I'm really into her music. And because during COVID, when I was here in L.A. a lot, I took advantage of that.

And I took advantage of the fact that all these musicians were no longer on tour and they were hanging around at home. Got to go to the studios and so forth and actually spent a good chunk of time doing research for it and um yeah and worked up this book um which was kind of i guess a passion project labor of love etc etc about her career and you know with some points to make but basically really for i think unlike other biographies i tried to kind of like you know yeah talk about the music more in more detail and about all the you know bad behavior and rock and roll lifestyle. The rock and roll lifestyle. We kind of expect it from our rock and roll things.

She's always been an interesting character because she really embodies a lot of mysticism. There's something that's cloaked in it. The Eagles kind of have that same sort of ability to write that way with like Hotel California and stuff. So was it the music or was it just trying to – I know there's a few other biographies of her that are out. Was it just trying to write a better biography on her and something was closer to the mark? I just wanted to – when I read the other biographies I'm not somebody to criticize other people's stuff because goodness knows that's what we all do all day but I

I actually wanted to know more about how these great songs were written and what was going on in the studio and why somebody who actually generated so many huge hits for Flewett Mackinac on her own

was never, you know, in the biographies, even the biographies dedicated to her that seemed to be, you know, full of love for her, didn't kind of respect her musical talent. They respected her persona and the fact that she could captivate an audience and the, what you're referring to, the kind of mysticism, that appearance that she put on and adopted from various things she'd read and really liked. And so I thought, actually, this, you know, in responding to this California Press book, you know, they said, well, write something that, you know, everyone can read and, you know, enjoy, but also talk about the making of these hit songs. And that would be a contribution. And that would also do her talent, innate gift for Melody, you know, some justice. I think that was the kind of way I went about it.

There you go. So years ago, in the 90s, back when bootlegs were kind of half legal, there was kind of a weird Italian thing going on. They had to crack down on them before the Gantt. I think it was the Gantt Treaty. I'd bought a bootleg of the first album that her and the guitarist did together that was the impetus for them getting noticed by Fleetwood Mac's, I think, producers or engineer or something they referred to Mick Fleetwood. Do you start all the way going back to that, or is there a starting point?

Yeah, I start with, like, you know, when she was born. All right, so we go right back to the beginning. Really, back to the egg. No, her birth date actually is actually incorrect in some places. Might as well straighten that out. That'll be my contribution.

No, I started because her granddad was a country music singer in Arizona, and he rode the rails picking and singing. And she always talked about how important her grandfather was to her. And so she talked also, and various other people have talked about it, when she was a little girl, she actually hung out at a tavern with her granddad, and they'd do little songs together. And, you know, I, in my nerdy way, I got really obsessed with,

where was this tavern, where was this bar that Stevie Nicks started her career at? Oh, wow. I found it. It's actually here in Altadena. It's not in Arizona at all because her dad, for a while, owned a bar. Anyway, so I started there, then i i moved up through um she moved around a lot as a kid because her dad was a beer executive um lucky lager and all these other defunct brands and he really became a huge kind of food and beverage and you know kind of corporate executive type. And they moved around a lot. And so I sort of just followed her, you know,

and worked out the chronology of where she was and the various high schools she went to, more than one, various middle schools, and then talked about the fact that she got involved early on with this band called Fritz in the Bay Area, which was a really amazing group of kids who memorized a huge amount of music, their own and others. And she joined that group as the singer on request of her boyfriend,

who was Lindsey Buckingham. And so Lindsey Buckingham was this bass player, self-taught, and an amazing self-taught guitarist. And he signed up with this group out of high school, and they needed a singer and he brought her on board and that's how they got going and that led them after this group fritz sort of disbanded um but was noticed by keith olston that producer that led to that album you're referring to the bootleg of the album which was just the two of them buckingham nicks and uh which is a

really fabulous album. And everybody wondered, why isn't this reissued? Why isn't this available, you know, broadly? And, you know, you can go and listen to it online anywhere nowadays, but it's a really wonderful, charged album. It's unconventional. Some of the songs are very long, but, you know, you really hear the gift that she had and he had.

And guitar really dominates that album. But the two of them because they don't get along anymore can never able to agree on on people losing this record you know you know their their drama is is you know it's legendary as you know yeah i mean the the everyone's heard the the stories over and over again or should have heard you know of rumors and the breakups between her and the late Christy McVie and her husband, who was the bassist for Fleetwood Mac, and then Lindsay and Stevie. It's, you know, but you hear the pain and the loss and the, you know, it comes through the music. Great artists experience these cathartic events, loss, pain, and stuff, and they share that through their art with us, and we find a resonance in that in our own lives and our own losses. You kind of can look at that music and go,

rumors may not have been so great if it hadn't been for all the personal strife going on, maybe. Yeah, I agree. And I think that that was their kind of double bind. They, I mean, I can't personally imagine where you're in these intense relationships. And that band, they moved around. They had each other as boyfriend and girlfriend and then other people in the crew, you know. And then when these things broke up, as they did did with young people those things are very volatile and volcanic and and yet they were contracted to be in a studio together and it must have been terrible at times

as much as it sounds like so much fun you know all of them in the bed together um there was i know that from talking to ken calais was the producer of rumors and he can't listen to rumors because he said which was astonishing to me he said i i can't listen to that record he said i i i might put my whole life into that record six thousand hours you know six thousand hours and um and he just said that there were times when stevie nicks and lindsey buckingham would be at each other's throats and then they'd have to go into the studio to sing, you know, you were loving you. And likewise, and this went around and around.

So they had this kind of game face. And yet, as you point out, you know, it's like there's this whole joke about, like, 19th century music that's like songs that are ironic and making fun of people's sadness and sentiment. But somehow the pain is still there and the pain is still real. You know, that I think is the interesting thing about rumors. It's a lot of,

you know, go your own way, kind of F you kind of songs. And that's a big power anthem. We get that. But then a lot of the dreams, you know, that accidental masterpiece,

all of these other songs really come from a place of i don't know if you can say melancholia or the deep sorrow sure and a lot of regret and yet and then and then as you know famously um that they lindsey buckingham and stevie nicks broke up pretty early on as a couple they were not not with each other during Rumors, really, and they weren't with each other, but they still had this incredible bond of growing up together and going to high school together and learning music together that kind of pulls them together,

even though there's just such fundamental differences in their personalities. And kind of through your whole life. Most people don't go through, you know, it shaped their whole life. I mean, the song Landslide is, you know, largely about them. And seeing some of their solo performances or the performance they've done of it are really beautiful. And so they're kind of tied together through history. It's a really interesting kind of love story, romance story, breakup story. Still love someone, you know know throughout your whole life or you kind of have to because i can't imagine being

an engineer on that project and being like you see a huge fight where like you mentioned there in each of the throat and you're like hey can you guys uh can you guys go in the studio we need a cut of uh some lyrics uh some background uh can we can we all do that now are you done fighting we need to get along for five minutes while I cut this. Yeah, it was literally that. I said, get back in there, I think, at times. And if you don't have the motivation, here's a little bit

of magic. Gotta love the 70s. The 70s were when cocaine was thought to be totally healthy for you. There you go. Well, it has vitamin something in it. I don't know what. I don't know.

Vitamin C? But that's for cocaine. I don't know. There's a joke there somewhere. So you cover the albums. You talk about how the songs got built and everything. Is that correct? Yeah, I do that.

And I try as much as possible to, you know, she doesn't remember a lot of her past, but a lot of the lyrics do. And so I was able to actually kind of listen and think about the words she was using and think about, which tells you a lot about her inspirations and the things she read and the art she loved and, you know, even the historical things that she was into. And I was able to kind of really i tried to um um you know find this sort of whole texture of her creative upbringing and sources through the music and

and i also i actually really wanted to i focused a lot on demos i mean you mentioned bootlegs earlier and i actually because some of the songs that she really cared about um had a rough time getting on record because of other members in fleawood mac and logistics band politics i really and then even in her solo career when she was working with various producers like jimmy joveen and she was you know involved with prince briefly and and uh um. A lot of songs ended up not being recorded. There's all sorts of reasons. And yet I found in those demos some real gems and wanted to talk about those, the sort of raw kind of material.

Wow. And you talk about what kept them from getting on the albums and stuff? I do because there are some basic things. Like there's a song that ended up on a sort of B-side and then a later edition of Rumors called Silver Spring, which is a popular song of hers. And, you know, there's various stories as to why that didn't end up on Rumors. And one was that it's about Lindsey Buckingham and he was offended by it.

So we're going to not put it on. The other was that actually, no, we actually need to give all the band members and, you know, a chance to have their songs on the record and you have a couple. So that's enough. And in other words,

it was too long. And, you know, there's all, but, um, so, but there was also periods when I actually listened to some of the

songs, like the song she did for Tusk, Sarah. And the demo of that is like 16 minutes long. Really? Wow. Yeah. And then, but on the record, it's only five or four, Sarah. And the demo of that is like 16 minutes long. Really? Wow. Yeah. But on the record, it's only five or four, right, with a single. And like, well, what happened?

Like who cut it and what was lost, if anything? And so I tried to like sort of think about she's on her own with a cassette and a hot mic or live mic somewhere, and she records it. She writes out all this poetry. And it's maybe simpler music. It's not produced with 24, you know, 48 tracks as it would be.

But like, what is, you know, what, what is going on musically there that gets changed in the studio and gets kind of commercialized or, you know, put into this beautiful kind of applesauce harmonized kind of sound,

you know? So I was interested in that process as well. So I tried, I tried and answer your question. Were you to get uh any interviews with her or any anything like what i did with her was um i actually started i i heard um that that she has a really tight circle yeah in what um so it would be kind of pointless. But nonetheless, I persisted. What I did was I contacted, by chance, I actually met somebody who was close friends with her manager, Howard Kaufman, who's now dead, but a long time. And through that person got a hold of Karen Johnston, who's Stevie's day-to-day person.

And what I decided to do was just tell them that I'm going to write this book. I'm not interested in actually talking and interviewing and harassing you. I'm not going to do that. I'm writing an appreciation, but I will send you the material just to show you the kind of book it is. And just to sort of show that it was on the up and up and it wasn't going to be gossipy because what my understanding was from their side was that because of the ways in which um some of the the bad things that happened were turned into kind of tabloid stuff some of the muckraking journalism and And the fact that she, in terms of her troubles,

has given lots of interviews about those, they were very like kind of big. I think the idea was they'd been burned by other writers. So my approach was actually the back end. It's like, look, I'll find out all of this stuff about your upbringing and send it to you. So that was my back end. And then just sort of sending material as it went along and not expecting anything and and also realizing that um because you know like

all of us i mean i i don't remember very much of my teen years and earlier and you know that a lot of that stuff is forgotten or misremembered and things get confused that maybe i would just actually go at it as a kind of more, you know, archaeological kind of project and actually then actually dig up things and present them to her and actually just sort of try and earn the respect or trust, I guess, through actually showing that this was actually, again, an appreciation. Initially, there was a freak out from that side about the fact that,

oh, he's a music prof. So he's going to, like, come down on the fact that, you know, she doesn't have music education, right? Historically, all the greatest musicians are actually people that don't come out of conservatories and so forth. Isn't that interesting? Paul McCartney. Jeff Lynn of ELO doesn't read music. Neither does Paul McCartney.

Neither do a lot of the people that actually composed music before music notation existed. Wow. They didn't read music either. Anyway, so my sense is like some people have uncanny musical gifts, and irrespective of whether they can name chords and do that sort of stuff. And let's see, you know, what I can do to sort of try and bring that out in this, in this text. There you go. Hi folks, Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching,

speaking and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff.

With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com now back to the show so that you know i you've given me a new mission i gotta go find all these demos of hers i'm yeah i have a i have a ton of singles i think a ton of uh bootlegs that i bought

in the 90s uh i used to buy like all those things back in the 90s. You know, we've touched on Tusk. Tusk was an interesting thing in given, well, it was interesting from all sorts of aspects. Let's talk a little bit about that. One of my favorite tracks of Fleetwood Mac is Tusk. I don't know why I love it, but I just love it. And of course, Sarah, what a timepiece signature sort of song for her. Yeah, so Tusk is a great track. I mean, I love it too.

And actually when I got that record, that was the single. Sarah came along later and that was the one song I sat around with my rock and roll friends like, okay, what is this kind of like easy listening or weird record? This is a song, this is a track we can get into. And the Tusk, that was actually something that they used as a set break. When Fleetwood Mac was on tour, Mick Fleetwood would just get that going, that pattern going. And so he had it kicking around.

And what they decided to do was kind of fascinatingly for this, this record, you know, generated, you know, twice as much music as is on that album. And they decided to actually work that up into a kind of set break. break and um one of the things that uh mick fleawood got interested in um was actually bringing in you know make turning it into a kind of outdoor sort of marching tune and so they literally when the dodgers were out of town they actually booked dodger stadium here and uh worked with the superior marching band in los angeles which is usc trojans rather than the ucla group and um in a hot afternoon they they had the band sort of strutting around, and you see Stevie there twirling a baton in the video of the making of it, and they're all drinking Heineken at 1 p.m. And John McBee is out of town.

He was in Hawaii, so they just had a picture of him there. Oh, really? Yeah, they literally have a cardboard cut out of him there. And actually, they just had the band march around. And they, I mean, because Lindsey Buckingham is a very good harmonic here, he actually wrote up the chords for them to actually play over and over again. And they recorded that multiple times and then mixed it into this song that had this kind of primitive vibe.

And it was a song that, you know, it's got a raunchy undertone and tusk you know it's it's a reference to the male member and oh i did not know that i yeah i learned so that actually offended the the um christine and steve we were not happy about the title of that record wow tusk and um you notice they put on the cover there's that white dog is barking i was belonged to uh the producer that dog on the cover and and they meant to make it kind of look like the white album in terms of its weird experimental nature but that one track that one track was kind of the lad's track if you will and uh and um and you know obviously it's the second last song on the record

before Christine McVie's finals track comes on. And it was the single, and it was something that presented them with a problem on tour because of the fact that it required marching band. They had a hard time. Like, people wanted to hear that track, and, you know, how are you going to do it? It's like Queen doing Bohemian Rhapsody life you know yeah a real problem um but um yeah and then and then uh you know tusk tusk you know nowadays it's hard to believe this but because rumors sold like 40 million copies

quickly and because it was such a huge seller that it graced the annual report of warner you know they put that that was there and so they had you know they threw all this money at the band to kind of do the sequel to rumors which wasn't going to happen with lindsey buckingham in his space he was and the other members kind of splintering um And Tusk only sold only 4 million copies, and that was considered a bust. And 4 million is massive, but, you know, given what they were expecting. And I think that the one thing I heard about many times is when they turned in Tusk, you know, here's the record, here are the tapes. To the executives, they literally are like screaming and pulling out their hair

because, you know, where's the hit, where's the single, and so forth. And then the other problem Tusk had is one of the radio stations in L.A. decided to, the minute it came out, play the whole album without commercial break. Wow. So every kid in town could just record it on their cassette player and not follow them. Well, you know, one of the other interesting things about that album

was at the time it was one of the other interesting things about that album was, at the time, it was one of the highest cost produced albums. I believe $2 million, $1 to $2 million were the costs on it. And it was extraordinary. I think they were building their own fucking studio at one point. Well, they did. They renovated Village. I went there to see Stevie Nicks' bathroom.

She has her own bathroom here. Village Studios is here just on the edge of Santa Monica. Apparently, they have Christmas parties and things, and people love to use that bathroom because of Stevie Nicks. They renovated the studio. They put in Zebra.

Does it have a mirror sink? That's a joke there. Does it come with razor blades and a mirror sink? It's sparkly, and it actually has two toilets. I love you, Stevie. I'm not making fun of you. We've all done it.

It has Mick Fleawood's armchair, and it's got the zebra wood for acoustics. The whole thing is very cool. It's a wonderful, wonderful studio with a great history to it um all sorts of amazing albums were done in there and yeah they renovated this space but and you know they had the catering for you know all the fineries they desired and then private planes and all of that stuff but you know in the end um despite all of that being sunk into production lindsey buckingham kind of did a lot of that stuff. But, you know, in the end, despite all of that being sunk into production, Lindsey Buckingham kind of did a lot of that album at home.

You know, he kind of just retreated from the band and he would do weird stuff. Like he played some of the drum sounds and he'd go in his bathroom and just whack things. He wanted that resonance. And he, you know, he taped, you know, he lay on the line on his back and shouted himself hoarse and did all sorts of strange things. I mean, he got into a really bad kind of place making that record.

And so it was hard, I think, to assemble for the producers. And, you know, there were songs that, well, ended up on other records that they did a cover, a kind of Beach Boys-like song called Farmer's Daughter, which seems to be on the live album of Fleetwood Mac because it sounds live. But in fact, it was something they mocked up in the studio while they were doing Tusk, and then they just added some pretend live sounds

and stuck it at the end of their live record. So there was a lot of directions that record could have gone in. And I find it, because it's so unruly it's like the first track of tusk is um this slow kind of chill christine mcvee tune and it's all honeydew and it's kind of got this easy listening vibe and you think you're going to get sucked into this space and then the next tune is this kind of raunchy punk thing and it's like you know you're just getting whacked over the head by the thing you were supposed you thought you were actually going to be in this nice space and then you know you're just getting torn up you know it kind of assaults you that way it's somebody likened it to like a venus fly trap it just like grabs you as a

listener and then and then you're you know kind of thrown to the winds and then i imagine you cover how she moves you know kind of into her solo career and she puts out her first album and then i imagine you cover how she moves you know kind of into her solo career and she puts out her first album and then that kind of takes off and it becomes apparent that everyone's kind of starting to go their own way solo wise yeah um she was gone before tusk um and one of the oddities was they just they knew she was this huge superstar on her own and that she wanted to be on her own because she just wasn't getting the i suppose respect and attention due and so one of the mick fleawood who was the manager of fleawood mac kind of not so expertly proposed for a while that he would manage her as well as fleawood mac and she would do the band as well as a solo act but that splintered and in the end she

she signed up on Modern Records and began her solo career with Jimmy Jovian and actually then fell into that 80s sort of synth sound, synth pop sound, and actually became one of the first singers associated with that. She changed everything to actually fit into this new direction and where music was going. Yeah, and it just exploded too i mean between tom petty and uh uh don uh from the eagles don uh yeah yeah and just it was an explosive album just

this huge with belladonna and then the wild heart um and uh you know it's interesting so you talk through um you talked through her solo career and what kind of goes on in her life there's that moment where she comes out on letterman and everyone sees that she's put on a lot of weight and she got a lot of blowback for that i remember i was surprised by it because i'm a huge stevie nicks fan and no one has seen her in years and uh she's talked about i think in some different interviews and stuff do you cover that area of her life and i do um she um was not the worst cocaine addict in the band um i think that that honor dubious as it is goes to mick fleawood um they all talk about this themselves but yeah um she um was pretty badly um addicted and um that's not the reason why she put on weight.

The reason she put on weight was coming off of cocaine. Some doctor, I think Kieran Robertson, that she's never named, and that's a good thing for him because I think she refers to him as Dr. Fuckhead a couple of times. But he got her and started giving her Klonopin, and Klonopin and upping and upping and upping and upping the doses. And she gained weight because of that. And then coming off of it, where she had to go cold turkey and actually was in a facility, a Catholic facility for addiction. She went in there for about a month and it was harrowing

coming off of that and she described that as like you know like feeling like her skin was going to come off it's just horrible and they used part of the treatment was acupuncture and various other kind of uh means but but that's that's the reason for the weight gain and coming off of it was just completely hideous. And unfortunately, you know, you can hear the taxing of her voice and some of that, a couple of those records knowing that it's – and to look at some of the videos even to see somebody who's, you know, really, yeah, really has a problem. And the fact that she got over that and, frankly, they all did. I think getting old does and just realizing mortality

and you need to look after yourself and that she's now in her 70s and still singing with an amazing voice yeah an amazing voice shows you that you know she really did look after herself and had some people help her out you know you you you brought some to my attention uh street angel uh i like the album but uh i didn't like it as much as there was a lot of magic especially in the engineering recording that went on to Rock A Little. Rock A Little's a great album. It's a great album. Just start to finish. Rock A Little's one of those albums, and some of her

albums in, I think, Wild Heart and the first one. There's some albums that I've had that I don't... I'm just kind of singing the chorus. I have no idea what the lyrics are, because the music is just so good. I was that way for Steely Dan for like 10 years i never knew what a steely dan song meant i had no idea and then i started getting the lore of it i'm like holy

shit this is crazy but yeah they actually they are yeah there's some depravity there it starts with the name that's out of their band. But Stevie Nicks, I never realized it, but yeah, you're right. That's Street Angel. I wasn't sure if they just tried to amp her up in engineering and recording. Her voice to have that raspiness that is so iconic that she has a way of delivering it. And you can feel the pain through her voice more than you can, say, from other vocal artists. But, yeah, you're right. Street Angel, it's all coming back to me is how raw that really sounds in her voice.

Yeah, and there's a couple of tracks that she wrote that are about treatment. She wrote a song that ended up, I think, on Tango in the Night called Welcome to the Room, Sarah. When she checked in, she went under the name Sarah. Holy shit. And so, and you listen to that song, and it's, I mean, Lindsay fixed it up and made it work on Tango in the Night, but it's really, really great song. Wow.

And she, a couple of things, some of the songs she wrote were about movies she watched during that period and treatments books and things like that and um very very painful and uh and you know it's like yeah how do you talk about it you know you have to talk about the you have to talk about the context of it um and at the same time um you know you can't sugarcoat the fact that you know that there's a lot of things that she herself rejected about this but she wouldn't i think she doesn't play anything or sing anything from street age and probably wishes it it didn't exist or existed in a different way and so you just have to acknowledge that stuff and then talk about how you know what happened afterwards and

how she be she reasserted herself and was kind of researched, you know, in consciousness. And also because of all the influence she had on other singers, you know. Yeah, so many female artists look up to her. Yeah, because she paved the way for them. Yeah. You know, I imagine you talk in the book. What's interesting about a lot of her albums is sometimes they were produced or engineered by people she had relationships and love with.

And she was a great lover of men. I think she, I mean, what comes through in her music and her writing is she really, you know, was a passionate lover and she really cared. And so the breakups and, you know, the ups and downs of that, but working with people, you know, that are producing your albums and stuff, kind of created some issues for her. It did. And this is, you know, she had a relationship intense with Henley,

Joe Walsh, Jimmy Jovan, others, some that we know, some that we don't. And including, you know including relationships with people that surprisingly aren't in the music business and are just school teachers and regular people. One of the problems she has is because she's a superstar, it's hard for her to

go out on a date. And she has to she has a very private life and socializing means going over to a house of somebody she knows and having movie night at their place kind of thing. But anyway, I thought about this and I noticed that the people that she's been with her whole life and her closest to and trusts are generally women, girlfriends from the past and so forth. And relationships, you know, it's not our concern to see what goes on in a relationship, but there seems to be a lot more kind of transactional and shorter,

like in the moment kind of relationships besides Lindsay. And there's something like, you know, Jill Walsh, that relationship with him is very much about being on the road together and, you know, that whole experience. And although she said he had an amazing magnetism and i heard this from christine casey who was uh who wrote a book about him called rock monster she was a former um appropriate adult entertainer stripper and she uh she um became involved with him and wrote a memoir about how crazy that was. And she and I did a couple of book events together related to this.

But yeah, I mean, Joe seems to have had an incredible magnetism. Henley, obviously, is a great artist in his own right. So that relationship you can understand. But obviously, part of it was that she was above them in terms of her fame. And that, I i think was hard for some of those guys tom petty she really was drawn to yeah creatively more than anything else and i think that she probably you know had he been more open to hanging with her and bringing her into the heartbreakers fold that would have been a replacement for the whole fluid mac apparatus

but he kind of kept kept her at a distance. And, you know, they traded demos and things back and forth. But the thing I noticed was that, yeah, the relationships, they interfered. I mean, with the creativity in some instances, despite the fact that some of these guys she was with actually really kind of contributed to it. So, you know, stop dragging my heart Heart Around or Don't Come Around Here No More, which is a Tom Petty track, was actually something that she might have recorded. It was about Joe Walsh coming to her place and she's like kicking him out,

saying, don't come around here no more, you know. One of these artists, you know. So it's a lot of kind of weird kind of comedy about relationships that are built into some of these artists you know so it's it's a lot of kind of weird kind of comedy about relationships that are built into some of these stories but um tom petty that was i think the closest to a true love for her creatively that might have been you know a different kind of relationship but you know gypsy's always been uh there's some of her songs i've been singing all my life so i've dated all my life and so a lot of her songs, I've been singing all my life, so I've dated all my life. And so a lot of her songs resonate with me for my relationships and stuff.

And Gypsy was one that always resonated with me because of women who've come and gone in my life. And, you know, she is dancing away from you now. You know, there are times when you can see the mark where you've crossed that threshold of the relationship where you're on the downside and it's just a matter of time until it's done. And I'm sure that was her case with Lindsey Buckingham and others. But I didn't know until she came out or Don Henley came out and said that she'd aborted his baby. And that was where the child was enough line comes from in Gypsy. Did you find any resonance to that? Is that still true, or was it true?

I believe that's true. The basic story besides, I mean, Gypsy is, to some degree, it's about a childhood friend. And one of her closest childhood friends was a person named Sarah Raccord. You know, the song Sarah is partly Sarah Raccord, whom she was close with and ended up with Nick Fleetwood for a while and married him. But, yeah, the name of this child might have been Sarah. That's a story that she's confirmed. Yeah. and um you know it's it's um i think one of the one of the things i noticed um working on on this project and um

reading everything she said and thinking about it was that um and she's asked this a lot in interviews and really bristles. They're like, you know, you've never married and you've never had children. And she says, well, you know, so? You know, but somehow, like, have you lost something because of rock and roll or do you regret anything like that? And she actually, you know, I think her attitude is like, just because a relationship ends doesn't mean it's a bad relationship. That's true.

And just because she's technically single doesn't mean she doesn't have, you know, a huge family of people that are close to her and various adopted kids that some of those adopted goddaughters she's going to will her diaries to. So there's a lot of that there and i think also that um yeah i mean i just think that she kind of has earned not not just her privacy but also the fact that she actually became a superstar kind of against the grain and with a lot of male egos in the room and a lot of testosterone i have to get past all of that and i think the idea that she's going to be sort of defined by whether or not she's married or something is actually goes against everything that she struggled to achieve,

you know, kind of independence. And so I, it's interesting to think about that and to think about how, despite working primarily with male producers, only Sheryl Crow is the only exception, despite collaborating with men, mostly. There are a few exceptions to that,

but mostly men. She's all about being her independence as a female is foregrounded. And she probably should have stuck with men instead of doing the Cheryl Crow thing, this might be. I mean, there's a couple good cuts on there but you know that that

yeah that you know i i find that when she got involved with um dave stewart as producer as well crow that there's a couple of albums at the end there that just seem to be kind of ad hoc kind of mixed mishmashes of stuff and then recently when she did it's a few years ago now, 24 Karat Gold. Yeah. Which that to me is an amazing album because of a couple of things. One is that she did briefly marry this guy named Ken Anderson. And he got a hold of a lot of her demos. And apparently like put them on a garage sale.

And suddenly a lot of these demos were apparently put them on a garage sale. And suddenly a lot of these demos were on the Internet, old songs of hers. And she's not herself somebody who hangs out on the Internet. But she was told and heard, you know, like all this music of yours is out there. And she decided to reclaim it and actually go into the studio. And she went to Nashville with a bunch of musicians and recorded a lot of those songs, including some ancient songs from the 60s all the way up to some new stuff. And that

album is really an incredible survey of everything she went through and also shows how much that through it all, she still maintained this kind of country rock start. And I think that Fleetwood Mac, that wasn't what she was going to be as an artist. That Fleetwood Mac was this kind of corporate invention, a kindwood Mac, that wasn't what she was going to be as an artist.

Fleetwood Mac was this kind of corporate invention, a kind of FM sound that wasn't political music and wasn't the blues, but was this kind of chill out kind of suburban thing, California, et cetera, that she fell into and dominated through her mystic persona. But that fundamentally, because of that connection she wanted to have and had to some degree with Petty, that kind of was the sound that she was the most comfortable with, that country rock. And that's what that 24-karat gold recent album seems to be about, is that she's saying, this is really who I am, the whole enchilada. Yeah, and the live album she put out shortly after that,

or after that, I saw her at jbl and harman kardon every year they put on a private uh concert for a thousand people in a small venue uh the old hard rock hotel it's changed now i think it's called the virgin hotel maybe uh in vegas but i saw her and this is at the cusp of the pandemic we were just starting to see reports and stuff and so it was at the big show 2020 and so i got to see her and uh jesus who was the opening band it was pat benatar it was great it was incredible i mean i i just seeing the two of them growing up in the 80s with their music was incredible but she put on just a stupendous performance. Her voice didn't sound like it lost the beat. She was in great shape.

She was so great. And my biggest worry was that someone happened to her over COVID. And so I'm glad that she seems to survive that. She's touring now. Anything more we want to touch on or tease on on the book before you go?

Well, first of all, I'm grateful to be with you and to talk about it. I just want to come back to the fact that, you know, if any of your listeners or you want to go and find Joan of Arc or Night Gallery, if you remember that show from the 70s, Night Gallery, Joan of Arc, she wrote, these are demos that are out there. And I find then those two tracks in particular, although they're not fully realized, are probably among her best songs.

Wow. They're floating out there unrecorded, but you can just go and check them out. She also, she did music for an animated cartoon. Cartoon wasn't made. Cute song of the goldfish, know and um she uh she actually there was for a while um an interest in her doing a film kind of an animated film project but i will say that probably um she's going to release very soon um an album of songs related

to rihanna she's always been all about that rihanna story which is a very complicated set of Welsh legends and that's just one of the figures and for a while she actually wanted to do a kind of docu-music thing about Rhiannon with all of these songs but all of that music is written and I think that that'll be just a sensational record when it comes out

so she's touring with strangely for her fans and for me, a Billy Joel. Billy Joel, yeah. Billy Joel and these huge kind of arenas. Yeah. Kansas, the Kansas Stadium and so forth. There I had. We'll see how that goes.

SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Yeah. Big venues. And I think after that, though, I think we're going to be, we're going to have this amazing kind of collection of songs vis-a-vis Rihanna I hope she lives forever I was really bummed out about Christy McPhee

you know it's disappointing to see all your favorite rock and roll stars pass away in fact how is Joe Walsh still alive and fucking the other two members of the Eagles are gone like what the Like, what the fuck? Like, what the fuck?

Like, that guy had way too much fun. Oh, my God. I mean, well, it just tells you, right? You know, you can work out like a fiend, and maybe that will add five years to your life, but most of it is genetics, right? So he's lucky. Yeah, he must be drinking from the same well as the Rolling Stones, so

there you go. Yeah, I think Jimmy Page is now 78 years old. There you go. Is he still ripping off people's music? Oh, sorry, Jimmy! Oh! Oh! What's up? Hey, there's a lot of beatminer chords out there. You can

find them a lot of times. There you go, man. Wow, that's crazy. But no, Stevie Nicks, what an amazing woman. What amazing writing she's done. What an amazing body of work. You know, just extraordinary. I could listen.

There's something that is magical and mystical and entrancing and all those words that you could probably find in the Cesaris. I could listen to Sarah, Gypsy, Rhiannon, all of her big hits. I could listen to those over and over again. Like Rock-A-Little, I must have listened to the album Rock-A-Little like 50 trillion times before I was like, what do the words in this thing mean? Like just her music and her ability to deliver just are just so magical and i there are

a few artists of any caliber that have the quality it's just oh the question i had to throw to you real quick at the end here was uh do you think you know she had that raspy voice and so did tom petty tom petty had that ability to you know bring that pain through and that suffer shoe. You hear it in songs like Break Down! You can hear it in the... The emotion just comes through better. John Lennon, I think, kind of had a little bit of a rasp, if I recall rightly. There was something about his voice.

These unique voices that you can't copy anywhere else. Do you think that maybe that was why a lot of Trompetti's writing passed over to her pretty well, maybe? I don't know. It does, yeah. The blend, I mean, clearly her and Buckingham's voice blended, but he

changed his to match hers, but I think that kind of, if you will, what she called the sort of swamp dog kind of sound that Petty had, we loved that. And that, because people who study country music and they listen to those voices you have like the sorrows the hardships everything about that kind of you know american experience in these

tough places built in there and there's something about what's called the grain just like that sound it doesn't matter the notes the words it's just that affect is what projects and i think her she's managed on one hand, despite being this incredible superstar, super famous, sells her record catalog for $100 million, right? No one's going to feel sorry for you. Privileged kid growing up. And yet there's something about the pathos or whatever that she really resonates with her audiences. And that duality is really distinct.

And I think Patty got that across too. He too was a superstar, but he never lost that kind of like Gainesville, Florida kid sound. In fact, you mentioned that was a marsh, what would you say, called bog sound, marsh sound? Swamp Dog. Swamp Dog.

Their first band, I forget the name of it, I think it was Swamp or something like that. But their first band was out of the mud swamp sort of, you know, coming out of Louisiana sort of mud swamp sort of music in the first iteration of their band. Hey, you know, you mentioned Christine McVie, and she was in a band before Flew It Back, and it was called Chicken Shack.

That's right. That's a great band. One of my friends helps run Cobuz, the great music service that I just love and they put that up and I was like, what the hell? I didn't know about this. And I went

and listened to a couple of songs and they're really good. Chicken Shack, Fritz is great too. That's the other thing I say, go online and listen to Fritz, some of and they're really good. Yeah, yeah. Chicken Shack Fritz is great, too. That's the other thing. I say go online and listen to Fritz, some of that stuff. You can hear Stevie Nicks in high school singing Crazy Kind of Love. It's an amazing song. You got me. After I get out of this, man, we're digging for demos, man.

I'll get these demos. Yeah, not on Spotify, but everywhere else. Wow. Okay. All right, well, thank you very much for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Simon, give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs,

please. Sure. Simon a Morrison.com. There you go. Thank you. Appreciate having you on as well. Appreciate our audience as well. Thanks for tuning in.

We certainly appreciate you there. Go to goodreads.com. Force us, Chris Foss, youtube.com. Force us, Chris Foss, all the LinkedIn and all those crazy places we are.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time. Nice to have us out.