Stevie Nicks: The Urban Muse

The next day after the last show with her legendary band, Fleetwood Mac's front woman looked in her house to compile her own legacy: almost 50 songs in three CDs.

Defined by the Rolling Stones magazine as: "eccentric, spoiled, white witch, ex-Cheerleader, and poetress", Stevie Nicks has shown all through her career that her voice and quality is irreplaceable.

Phoenix, Arizona. Outside the heat it's no less than 30ºC and a woman writes and sings embraced by the warmness of the chimney, lighted by the soft light of candles. Absurd, it's true. But she's Stevie Nicks and she needs those kind of things to get inspired, and who cares if she must create artificial cold by turning on the air conditioning, if the result will be great songs?

Stevie Nicks is a living legend of North American rock and roll. She belongs to the kind of musicians that the other musicians respect, and in the pop world that's a lot. She walks through New York with the proud air of a Country girl, paradoxically vanguardist, and in province like a strange Urban Muse. Eccentric, spoiled, defined by the Rolling Stones magazine as "White witch, Gemini, ex-cheerleader, poetress, ex-smoker, unconditional fan of "Miami Vice", friend of Billy Corgan and Courtney Love...." She doesn't need to be like someone else.

She just turned 50. She is as old as her mom's fans (And she probably has hair longer than their daughters). "I'm an old woman. I can't rock like I used to," she says. She released her own legacy to rock, "The Enchanted Works of Stevie Nicks", edited by Atlantic records. It's a selection of 46 songs of her 6 solo albums, and a new song ("Reconsider Me"), poems, photos, and her own reminiscences.

"This is my heart. This is my work; it has been fascinating and I'd never change it." As the singer said, these works join all of her deepest songs. "It's very heavy. You must be in a very particular mood."

She started working on this compilation the next day after the last show of the Fleetwood Mac tour. The tour had her singing and dancing for three months, two and a half-hours a day. That was the regimen of life that left her apparently thinner although she said that she didn't lose a pound. Now she's tired and happy to come back to her home in Phoenix.

"It was amazing, we did 45 concerts, we made a lot of money and I think we left a lot of people happy. We didn't have a fight, and it passed over us like a twister." But Stevie confessed 6 months before this that she thought Fleetwood Mac would never be back again. The re-join supposes the emotional Impasse of working with her old boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham, but she passed through that too.

"He and I are almost best friends and we have been for a long time. We had very sweet conversations and some sweet moments that were very cute. The chemistry must have been very evident because in a conversation with a radio DJ in Boston, he commented that it looks like a great energy stills exists between Stevie and Lindsey. Stevie said that the relationship between them would always be intense, even more so when singing those old songs together on stage.

She said that she enjoyed the tour a lot, that they didn't get tired of each other and that the exaltation of the public was the same that they felt. "The best moment that I remember is the first night, when we were walking to LA, thinking that we hadn't sung together since 1983."

She confessed that her life was full of rock stars, and she said thanks to the "People" Magazine. She even flirted with the DJ and everything was fine until he talked about an article about her breast implants. Stevie recognized that the implants broke, but she denied that she kept the silicon in her house and she cut abruptly into the conversation.

The Reunion

Singer and songwriter of deep ballads. Just as respectable as Joni Mitchell or Kate Bush and something like the North American version of the British Annie Lennox, Stevie has been for almost 30 years the unquestionable natural leader of Fleetwood Mac. She has been outstanding in this group that was born in the late 60's. It's such a heroic fact, because the people who are around her have been considerate as genius in the music business.

Lindsey Buckingham's talent for example was solicited by "The Grandma of Rock and Roll" Tine Turner for her emblematic tour in 1993. When the British magazine "Mojo" ranked the greatest guitar players in the whole world, there was Peter Green, active member of the Fleetwood; he was in the 3rd place. John Mc Vie was one of the options to replace Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones.

Until last year Fleetwood Mac's fans thought that the group was over. They never talked about new songs and forgot about a new CD. Well the whole group almost passed the barrier of 50s. But the hybrid group, half-British half American didn't take the predictable and didn't just re-join, moreover they did one of the most successful tours of the year.

"The Dance", their last production, debuted as number one on Billboard magazine in the first week since the CD was released. The album, done live for MTV, was a homage to "Rumours" which was released exactly 20 years ago, and it was one of the greatest sales in the music history (almost 26 million copies). The Dance joined the most successful "formation" of the group with Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine Mc Vie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham who- separated since 1982- joined to record this special show.

"The Dance" is compiled of 17 of their bests songs. Curiously, years ago, when Stevie quit from the group, the rest of Fleetwood Mac thought about replacing her with an unknown voice. But they didn't do it. They knew that Stevie was irreplaceable. The group wouldn't be the same. "Let's face it," wrote the journalist Jancee Dunn for Rolling Stone magazine, "Fleetwood Mac's tour was just about Stevie Nicks."

Lourdes Andrés