{"id":5147,"date":"2013-06-28T16:21:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T20:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/?p=5147"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:39:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:39:06","slug":"stevie-nicks-as-my-new-feminist-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/stevie-nicks-as-my-new-feminist-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Stevie Nicks as my new feminist hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fleetwood<\/a>
Fleetwood Mac Birmingham NIA 3 (Photo credit: ahisgett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n
\"Stevie<\/a>
Stevie Nicks (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n
\"Cover<\/a>
Cover of Rumours<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAt this spring’s New Orleans Jazz Fest<\/a>, amidst the hundreds of other performers on the schedule, one of the bands I heard the most people buzzing about was Fleetwood Mac.
\nIt surprised me that a band I have deep childhood memories of — my stepmom played Rumors so loud on our record player that the windows actually rattled — was the talk of an event filled with so many other acts. Shortly thereafter, New York magazine ran a lengthy profile on frontwoman Stevie Nicks<\/a>, so I dug in to see what the 65-year-old shawl-wearing icon might say about why Fleetwood Mac still has that effect on fans.
\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OiILox4WrdM]
\nWhat I took away from Jada Yuan’s piece, besides admiring Yuan’s work, was being taken by Nicks’ openness with the demons she’s wrestled and her comfort with taking the road less traveled.
\nYuan writes:<\/p>\n
\n

Onstage, she\u2019s still an aesthetic pioneer\u2014her near-butt-length hair, fingerless gloves, knee-high black suede platform boots, and finely tailored dress in tatters all adding up to what she herself calls \u201cthe Stevie Nicks thing.\u201d It\u2019s a persona she\u2019s said is drawn from the slinkiness of Grace Slick, the \u201chumbleness\u201d of Jimi Hendrix, and the attitude of Janis Joplin. Nicks had observed all three and opened for Hendrix and Joplin just out of high school in the late sixties as part of Fritz, her first musical partnership with Fleetwood Mac\u2019s<\/a> intense virtuoso guitarist Lindsey Buckingham<\/a>. Buckingham is, with toweringly tall oddball drummer Mick Fleetwood<\/a>, one of two ex-boyfriends Nicks performs with every night, a five-foot-one pixie singing with raspy conviction about her own heartbreak and resilience on the same stage as two men who\u2019ve caused her pain. Or is it vice-versa?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Fleetwood Mac is, to fans, not just a band but a riveting 40-plus-year soap opera involving the loss of members to schizophrenia and a religious cult; the arrival in 1974 of gorgeous, drama-filled young couple Stevie and Lindsey; and the cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled divorces and affairs behind 1977\u2019s Rumours, <\/i>which became the then-fastest-selling album of all time.<\/i> You don\u2019t come to one of their shows just for the music; you come to watch them masochistically stare down their past before a live audience. You come to watch Stevie and Lindsey\u2014who\u2019ve known each other since high school\u2014look into each other\u2019s eyes and harmonize on the songs they wrote about each other, in anger, long ago: \u201cDreams\u201d<\/a> (by Stevie, \u201cNow here you go again\u00a0\/\u00a0You say you want your freedom\u00a0\/\u00a0Well, who am I to keep you down?\u201d), and \u201cGo Your Own Way\u201d and \u201cNever Going Back Again\u201d (by Lindsey, and meaner). You come to see Stevie dance in front of Mick\u2019s drum kit, knowing full well she had an affair with him after her breakup with Lindsey, while Mick was married\u2014as Lindsey wails away on guitar and looks on. You come because you feel for the quiet, steady man on bass, John McVie (the only guy in the band Stevie hasn\u2019t slept with), who had to lay down the rhythm track on songs like \u201cYou Make Loving Fun,\u201d written by his ex-wife, now-\u00adretired keyboardist and singer Christine McVie<\/a>, about her affair with the band\u2019s lighting director and how she\u2019d never been so satisfied by a man before. You come because this is a band that has not tried to hide their genuinely fucked-up dynamic, which plays out deliciously onstage in banter about the state of \u201cthe war\u201d and in the way Stevie always leaves to put on her shawls right in the middle of one of Lindsey\u2019s blazing guitar solos. Has she just had enough of his ego? Or is she magnanimously ceding the floor, only to return moments later to show him how it\u2019s really done? To see Fleetwood Mac play live, knowing what you and everyone knows about their turmoil, substance abuse, and brushes with death, is to see layers of meaning in every gesture and to marvel that they\u2019ve survived long enough to make it to this very show.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Nicks shares an intimate view of her complicated relationship with Buckingham and tells Yuan they’re getting along for the first time in a very long time.\u00a0 I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to not only work with but tour with someone I’d had romantic drama with several decades ago, but they aren’t doing this because it makes sense to the rest of us. Yuan quotes Fleetwood:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey are \u00adabsolutely on a journey, and they have absolutely not given up. And it\u2019s nothing to do with being in love. It\u2019s to do with love itself and the premise of a huge underlying respect from whence they have come and from whence they started their journey together. And I think they truly advocate that: \u2018We can end our days saying, We didn\u2019t run away from this.<\/i>\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

I wouldn’t trade places with Nicks, who says she snorted so much cocaine she tore a permanent hole in her nose, then spent eight years hooked on Klonopin, before going into rehab for 47 days in 1993. While she’s a rock star sex symbol, there’s clearly a lot of pain fueling that creativity.
\nBut as a woman who chose not to have kids, who feels she has a full life with a career she enjoys and the love of friends, Nicks resonated with me. Feminism allowed her to opt out of motherhood if it wasn’t the way she wanted to spend her life. She realized there was another path, one that meant making herself a priority and not giving in to the societal pressure to settle down and get married.
\nI think real feminism is having that freedom to choose what’s right for you: getting married and being a stay-at-home mom; having a career and having kids; or being divorced but touring with your ex-husband and the coworker you slept with. You might not want Nicks’ life but she might not do well with yours, either.<\/p>\n

(Singer Vanessa) Carlton tells me that last year she asked Nicks to write out her \u201crules of engagement\u201d\u2014how to get what you want out of life and men. Nicks gave her a stack of hotel stationery with handwritten directives and the overall message that you shouldn\u2019t compromise on having a wonderful, interesting life just because it can be a challenge for some men, but that you should also be aware that that lifestyle can be a burden. Carlton reads one aloud: \u201c\u2005\u2018He must have a good job. He must be happy and satisfied with his own life. You are there to enhance his life, not take away from it, and he is there to enhance your life, not fuck it up.\u2019 That\u2019s my favorite one. Thank you, Stevie!\u201d<\/p>\n

\nFriends, including Fleetwood, have worried about Nicks\u2019s loneliness. \u201cMost women would not be happy being me,\u201d Nicks says. \u201cPeople say, \u2018But you\u2019re alone.\u2019 But I don\u2019t feel alone. I feel very un-alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything. I know women who are going, like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to grow old alone.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018See, that doesn\u2019t scare me.\u2019 Because I\u2019ll never be alone. I\u2019ll always be surrounded by people. I\u2019m like the crystal ball and these are all the rings of Saturn around me.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

\u201cMy generation fought very hard for feminism, and we fought very hard to not be labeled as you had to have a husband or you had to be in a relationship, or you were somehow not a cool chick,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m seeing that start to come around again, where people say to you, \u2018Well, what do you mean you don\u2019t have a boyfriend? You don\u2019t want to have one? You don\u2019t want to be married?\u2019 And you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, no, I don\u2019t, actually. I\u2019m fine.\u2019 And they find a lot of reasons why you\u2019re not fine. But it just seems to be coming back. Being able to take care of myself is something that my mom really instilled in me,\u201d she says. \u201cI can remember her always saying, \u2018If nothing else, I will teach you to be independent.\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\nI’d miss a huge opportunity if I didn’t say, well, Nicks goes her own way.
\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GE7sGbnbqxk]
\nYou should really fire up some Fleetwood Mac, put on a fringed shawl and read the full New York article<\/a> — because I’m not the only one who liked it. The Observer reported<\/a> that at Fleetwood Mac’s recent NYC show, Stevie Nicks dedicated Landslide to Yuan.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to dedicate this song to a girl, a lady. Her name is Jada and she wrote the most beautiful article about me,\u201d the Fleetwood Mac singer said.
\n\u201cShe got something that nobody that has ever written about me before has ever gotten,\u201d continued Ms. Nicks. \u201cAnd I just wanted to tell her how much I appreciate that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sMVBP_0OOZY]\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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