Oregon daily emerald., January 21, 1982, Page 10, Image 20

DOES!
BY HABKY ALFONSO
The sun streams in and warms the soft
couch in Stevie Nicks' Marina Del Rev
condominium living room
Nicks is late She’ll miss the sun But
then, considering the shadowy,
mooo-struck feel of mam of her songs
k may not be surprising that mornings
don’t suit her best As the reigning
anymore to spend a whole evening sit
ting at my piano, so when I do see a
night coming when I'm not going to
have anything to do, I jump on it .. “
It's true that Nicks has had fewer
free evenings erf late More a happening
act than ever, her Bella Donna strfo
LP has been on the charts since late
summer and has passed the platinum
far from her mini
Nicks sits down at her piano and
begins to play a simple chord progres
sion and intone a few poetic frag
ments From this germ of an idea, she
explains, a song will grow "1 have
these lines written down on a big
pad," she says, tilting her head towards
the artist s sketch book placed on top
Things like mood and shades of
emotion arc much mote important to
Nicks' art than technical con
siderations At her best, her music has
an oracular qualm that makes ft seem
she's taking on the voice of some dis
embodied Other The most famous of
such songs, of course, s "Rhiarmon."
the tune that helped Fleetwood Mac
Good Witch of AM Radio, the Fleet
wood Mac songstress traffics in a
brand of mysticism that has given her a
Spirit of the Night image
There's a large smoked-glass cres
cent moon mounted cm a pedestal; an
old fashioned lamp with a patchwork,
fringe shade, a pair of children’s fairy
tale books on the coffee table before
me With a large video player and
stereo equipment surrounding me
also, the atmosphere here is half
antique, half-1980s
Nicks is up by about two o'clock or
so, dressed in a mosdv-purple neo
sorceress outfit “Sorry I slept so late,”
she offers I was up all last night writ
ing — I don't have that much time
mark. "Leather and Lace,’ her duet
with Don Henley, is currently ascend
ing the singles charts, likely to match
or surpass the success of “Stop Drag
gin My Heart Around," which paired
her with Tom Petty Naturally, a tour
was called for in the wake of the LPs
appeal, and so Nicks spent late
November through mid-December on
the road in the Southwest with
keyboardist Benmont Tench (of Petty’s
Heartbreakers), pianist Roy Bittan (of
Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band),
session guitar-whiz Waddy Wachtel
and other rock notables. Yes, Nicks
time is at a premium these days — but,
she emphasizes in our conversation,
her first love of songwriung is never
of her piano “I just pull lines out of
them and sing them to see what
sounds best. 1 record it over and over,
and the whole song happens from
there."
Benmont Tench, who completed an
unfinished Nicks tune, "Kind of
Woman,” for Bella Donna, added
some insights on Nicks writing pro
cess on the phone some time later:
' She writes in an almost two-fingered
piano style, very stream-of
consdousness The way she works is
fascinating — her songs are kind of
wild in structure and entirely instinc
tive. She’s not locked into the things
that musicians who know a lot about
chords and so forth are "
rise to the pinnacles of rock popularity
*n the middle of the Seventies
I>ramatizing the song on stage, Nicks
improvises new lyrics as she weaves
about in trance like fashion More than
any other of her songs, “Rhiannon"
defines Stevie Nicks particular niche
in pop music.
It s a very strange thing with that
song, she explains When I wrote it
back in 1974,1 hadn t read the legends
of Rhiannon, a witch in Welsh mythol
ogy I d read the name in a novel and
liked it — two years later 1 read the
books of Rhiannon It turns out that
Rhiannon was the goddess of steeds
and the maker of birds, and there s
birds all over my Rhiannon So, 1
don't know maybe old Rhiannons
up there and she wanted a song to be
written for her " Nicks flashes a pearly,
satisfied smile at the thought
When Nicks was writing, "Rhian
non," she and ex-boyfriend (and cur
rent partner in Fleetwood Mac)
Lindsey Buckingham were financially
depressed and near-disillusioned,
seemingh at a career dead end after
the release of their duo LP on Pohdor,
Hucktnffbam Micks, in 1973 Waitres
sing for a time, Nicks was writing the
.songs that would eventually make her
famous "It was probably' the lowest
point for Lindsey and me as far as our
belief in what we were doing goes,"
she remembers I was in a real slump,
period — I didn't think anything that I
was writing would be on anything a
that paint/' The course of Nicks and
Buckingham's fortunes changed
around New Year s Eve of 1975, when
Mick Fleetwood asked the two of them
to foin the newest incarnation of
Fleetwood Mac
With the muiti pbtinum records that
the Mac has earned has come well
publicized friction between the band
members, disagreements that Nicks
doesn't hesitate to discuss "Fleetwood
Mac changes all the songs 1 give to
them," she says "And marry limes,
they're changed into something 1 don't
like Ai that point, 1 usually com
promise — 111 grve up the whole idea
of something if I feel that somewhere
the essence shines through But when
that essence goes completely. I can't
handle a."
One sore point that irrtaaes Nicks to
this day a the exclusion of her "Silver
Springs ' from Fleetwood Mac's
Rumours album (the song can only be
found on the B-Side of the band's Go
Your Own Way' single). "The song
wem off the album because they said it
was too long." she fumes "Lindsey de
cided to put another one of mine. I
Don't Want To Know, in its place I 1*
erally had a nervous breakdown over
that 1 ran out into the parking lot of
the studio and screamed'" She laughs
and adds hemusedh That was not a
good experience at all ”
Bella Donna on the other hand,
features Nicks' wings more or less in
the same form they were originally
conceived; she was involved in the re
cording of Bella Ijorma every step of
the way, in contrast with her Fleet
wood Mac experiences Before. I ve
been banished to the control room —
on the Fleetwood Mac albums, they
play, I don't I never fought to be one
of the players, so that's my fault, ncx
theirs But with the solo album, my
producer, Jimmy lovine, didn't allow
me to be dependent 'in anybody He
said, If you want to do a song, you d
better learn how to play it real good
and go out and do it.' "
Nicks is currently in the posiuon to
pursue any career option she chooses
remain with Fleetwood Mac, go solo,
or attempt to do both
"The fame and fortune hasn't made
much difference," Nicks insists “If it
had, i would've quit if it had started to
kill my love of songwriting I don't let
the rest of the world in on that particu
lar plane of my life too much."
Whatever astral plane Stevie Nicks
music is created on, it obviously has
filtered down into the hearts of mil
lions of record-buyers It's reassuring
to know that as introspectivety whim
sical a person as she can make it to the
big time “I love atmosphere, to have
twinkly things around me that startle
me a bit Even when I’m on the road, 1
light a candle, put a drape over a lamp
and create atmosphere anywhere I am
I can make a hotel room into a real
groovy little place