The Shakespearean web of drama made for strained interactions in the studio, even before they all started getting supremely drunk and doing drugs as the preferred mode of work. The McVies were divorcing after eight years of marriage, while Nicks had broken up with Buckingham and was on the cusp of an affair with a still-married Fleetwood. To put it conservatively: Rumours was recorded in a whirlwind of chaos. romantics flopped their way into a British blues-rock group. So Mick Fleetwood asked Buckingham to replace him Buckingham said he and Nicks were a “package deal.” (Fleetwood had already taken an interest in Nicks, anyway, after he’d noticed her rehearsing at Sound City.) Thanks to “Frozen Love,” two L.A. Later that month, Bob Welch became the latest in a long line of Fleetwood Mac guitarists to quit the band. But even as these parts converge and Nicks and Buckingham trade off fervent vocals, their lyrics paint an intimate image of a relationship gone cold. One night in December 1974, Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood visited Sound City Studios, where Buckingham and Nicks had recorded to demonstrate the studio’s power, producer Keith Olsen played him the Buckingham Nicks closer “Frozen Love.” The seven-minute folk-rock opus is indeed a flashy technical achievement, balancing strings, synth, and guitar across three separate musical movements. Nicks went back to waiting tables while Buckingham worked on music at home. He was singing the Mama and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’.” She harmonized with him and changed pop music forever.īuckingham Nicks was a critical and commercial failure, and Polydor Records dropped the duo shortly after its release.

The first song she wrote on guitar, at age 15, was called “I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost.” By high school, Nicks’ family had settled in Palo Alto, and there, at a session for young musicians, she encountered a boy named Lindsey Buckingham. She sang duets like “Darling Clementine” with her grandfather, a struggling country singer, in local saloons before discovering the aching hooks of girl-group R&B and Goffin-King pop. From her early days as half of the hippie-folk duo Buckingham Nicks, into the blockbuster soap opera of Fleetwood Mac, and through her dynamic solo career, there has always been something bewitching about Nicks’ vision of pop.īorn Stephanie Lynn Nicks in 1948 in Phoenix, Arizona, she moved often through her childhood, through the Southwest to Salt Lake City and finally on to California. Draped in black chiffon, a high priestess of Los Angeles bohemia with practically clairvoyant emotional insights, Nicks is a star unlike any other. Trying to get through it.Stevie Nicks is the ultimate rock’n’roll mystic. 'Gold Dust Woman' was my kind of symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship, doing a lot of drugs, and trying to make it. In an interview for VHI's Classic Album series, Nicks offered further insight into the song's meaning: I'm going to have to go back to my journals and see if I can pull something out about 'Gold Dust Woman'. I know there was cocaine there and that I fancied it gold dust, somehow. You know what, Courtney? I don't really know what 'Gold Dust Woman' is about. When asked about the song in an interview with Courtney Love for Spin in October 1997, Nicks said: To date, the track has only been available on the film soundtrack album. Nichole Kidman and Sandra Bullock vehicle Practical Magic. Nicks recorded this with close friend Sheryl Crow as part of the early sessions for her 2001 Trouble in Shangri-La album, but the track was chosen as the theme song for the 1998 Warener Bros. On the 2004 2-disc special edition release of Rumours, two demos of 'Gold Dust Woman' are included, one of which features vocal melody and lyrics in its coda which would later be developed into the stand-alone single 'If You Ever Did Believe' in 1997.

Just before and during that final take, Stevie Nicks had wrapped her head (though not mouth) with a black scarf, veiling her senses and tapping genuine memories and emotions. The take chosen for release on the 1977 Rumours album was reportedly recorded at 4 a.m., after a long night of attempts in the studio. It is often regarded as Stevie Nicks' signature song with her recordings with Fleetwood Mac. It was written and sung by Stevie Nicks and released a B-side to the songs 'You Make Loving Fun', 'Rhiannon', and 'Dreams'. Gold Dust Woman is a song released by Fleetwood Mac on their 1977 album Rumours.

Gold dust woman fleetwood mac live 1982