Stevie Nicks Sees ‘No Reason’ to Continue Fleetwood Mac
William Burgess “This has been such a private thing,” Stevie Nicks whispers to me over the phone. “I never really expected to have this reaction to her.” Who is she?Perhaps a visit from the white winged dove holds the answer. Or we can just tell you: It’s a new Barbie dedicated to rock and roll’s highest priestess, which Nicks unveiled on Sunday during her show at Madison Square Garden. Like a certain bell ringing through the night, every inch of plastic is a reminder of Nicks’s inescapable music legacy. “I take a few photos of her in every city, which ends up being a two-hour photo session,” she says with a laugh. “I have hundreds and thousands of pictures.”
Nicks was methodical in her Barbie’s creation, starting with the sartorial decision to pair a Rumours-erachiffon skirt, matching wraparound blouse, and platform boots together. Other elements took a bit more time to get right (“My nose was not quite enough … my mouth was just a little tiny bit off”), but feathered hair was a given. The pout, meanwhile, invites your imagination into Stevie’s Barbieland. Is she about to go onstage and twirl to an arena of screaming fans with the tambourine? Or endure another lecture from John McVie about sailboats? “It makes me smile because I’m like, damn. I was totally right when I was 27 and said, This is what I want,” she explains of the doll’s final outfit. “It’s who I was, and who I still am.”
Nicks has toggled her 2023 between the spectacle of stadium dates with Billy Joel and solo performances, which will keep her on the road until the start of the new year. We celebrated these milestones with a short conversation about her new Barbie and her doubts about Fleetwood Mac’s future, along with a lingering Daisy Jones & the Six assessment.
Stevie Nicks Barbie is a vision of monochromatic elegance. Does she have a Ken?
Well, that’s a whole story. My Barbie has a great love of her life. Me and two friends have clothes and all kinds of stuff you can get in the Barbie universe, so we ordered a specific Ken doll. He was from the early ’80s. He arrives in the Elvis outfit — the white outfit. Not the black leather outfit that he wore to his first comeback Elvis concert, but when he started in Vegas. You can just close your eyes and you can picture it. It’s like a jumpsuit and it has gold cording going down from the high collar to the waist. He has dark, long hair. When I first saw it, I went, Well, this looks like Elvis Presley. But he’s mod Ken. He’s an old Ken but in really good condition. A tiny bit beat-up, but still fabulous. You’re going to think I’m so insane …
Never, please tell me more about their romance.
I named him Kenelvis, and I introduced Kenelvis to Stevie Barbie. I have photographs of these two that will absolutely knock the world’s socks off. They look at each other in a way that’s like they’ve been in love for centuries.
I was pleasantly surprised you’ve not only seen Daisy Jones & the Six, but likened your viewing experience to “a ghost watching my own story.” What gave you that mystical pat on the back while watching?
It was a very simple thing. It was the kind of snappy sarcasm between Daisy and Billy, who in my mind was like me and Lindsey. It was the back-and-forth between the two of them. It was so good. It was so real and it was really so right on. When two people capture the essence of something that reminds you of your life, it’s not like you go, They look just like us or They dress just like us. It’s something else. It’s a certain feeling that they got when they would look at each other after being in an argument and then they’d start to sing. It would blow your mind. I would be watching and be like, Well, there you go. That’s exactly why we did it. That’s exactly why Fleetwood Mac stayed together for 50 years. It was all for the music. It was all just to keep the music going, and the show got it.
Did you enjoy the original music, given the parallels of Rumours?
My favorite is the one that goes, “We could make a good thing bad.” That was my favorite. It’s a really good song. If it was another time, another day, and there had never been a Fleetwood Mac and I had watched that and I was a record A&R person, I would’ve said, We need to call them now. We need to sign them now. I really felt that. Considering that it seems like neither of them sang much before this, they did an amazing job.
The last time Fleetwood Mac performed together was in late 2019. With Christine McVie, your best friend, sadly not with us anymore, do you envision a scenario where the band can ever tour again?
We did go out on the road and do a year-and-a-half tour with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell. We had a really great time and it was a huge tour. That was there in the realm of possibility. But when Christine died, I felt like you can’t replace her. You just can’t. Without her, what is it? You know what I mean? She was like my soul mate, my musical soul mate, and my best friend that I spent more time with than any of my other best friends outside of Fleetwood Mac. Christine was my best friend. When I think about Taylor Swift’s song “You’re on Your Own, Kid” and the line “you always have been,” it was like, that was Christine and I. We were on our own in that band. We always were. We protected each other. Who am I going to look over to on the right and have them not be there behind that Hammond organ? When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this. There’s no reason to.
That’s the sense I had. It took two guitarists to replace Lindsey Buckingham because that’s how good he is on a skill level.
Yeah.
But Christine’s spirit is unquantifiable.
And her songs, you take out all of those songs. Christine was the pop star. She wrote all those really super pop hits. None of the rest of us could write those songs. What would happen is we’d have to take the songs out, like we did when she actually retired for 18 years. We couldn’t re-create those songs. So we became a much more hard-rock band.
One of my favorite facts about anything is that you have a shawl vault. What shawl has the most sentimental value to you?
It would have to be the “Gold Dust Woman” shawl. There’s only been two in total. The first one finally fell apart at some point. It lasted for about 25 years after the song was recorded. Then the one I’m wearing now is the second one. It’s stayed in good condition because all of these clothes are made really well. My clothes were made to last. Or rather, made to really take a beating and still look great.
