Gold Dust Woman

by Stephen Davis

  As for Sheryl Crow, she took a hard look at Stevie’s life: near total freedom, international fame, growing respect as a wise woman of rock, a legend in the Hall of Fame. Crow came to the conclusion that for a female rock star, staying single and childless wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

  *

  For most of 1999 Stevie’s year-old Yorskhire terrier, Sulamith, sat on the studio sofa and listened as Sheryl Crow helped her mistress develop new songs. (Sulamith was adorable, but there were those who were less than enchanted with the grating, squealing “voice” that Stevie used to communicate with the puppy, and vice versa.)

  These hard-won tunes were a mixture of ancient melodies from Stevie’s past and some new ideas by other writers. The former included “Candlebright,” a mandolin-and organ-driven ballad about a wandering dreamer seeking that beckoning candle in a window. It started out as a journal poem called “Nomad” in 1970, continued as a demo for the second Buckingham Nicks album, and was considered for Fleetwood Mac, but they used “Rhiannon” instead. Similarly, “Sorcerer” had been first written in 1972. Buckingham Nicks played it live under the title “Lady from the Mountains.” It was also made into a demo for Fleetwood Mac but not used. Now “Sorcerer” became a blazing anthem proclaiming visions of star-streams and snow dreams, propelled by a ringing guitar pattern from Sheryl’s Telecaster. It was also a song about Lindsey and control. “Sorcerer—who is the master?”

  This was an important song for Stevie, as she later commented: “I always think some of my songs are premonitions, and [“Sorcerer”] is one of them. It saw the future. The lady from the mountains was the lady from San Francisco who moved to Los Angeles to follow her dream—which was to make it as a rock star—and a rock star she became.”

  Sheryl Crow also had major involvement in “That Made Me Stronger,” a churning, Beatles-influenced song about Tom Petty telling her to pull herself together and write her own stuff. Stevie put her words on a demo track by other writers and Sheryl pulled it together in a rocking arrangement. Sheryl also contributed one of her own songs, “It’s Only Love,” which Stevie sang in a voice that expressed great sympathy for the passion of Sheryl’s lyric.

  When Stevie sought a song from Sandy Stewart, someone who never let Stevie down despite some conflicts and disappointments, Sandy sent her “Too Far from Texas,” a hard-rocking love song that Sheryl got deeply into, and to which Mike Campbell contributed lead guitar. They recast “Too Far from Texas” as a duet between Stevie and Natalie Maines, the spitfire singer from the Dixie Chicks. Then they got most of the Heartbreakers to play on the track, with Steve Ferrone on drums and Sheryl on bass guitar. The song was about a girl in Texas missing her man in England under questionable circumstances, and it was by far the best production Stevie Nicks had been involved with for years. Another track coproduced by Sheryl Crow was “Touched by an Angel,” which appeared in the 2001 movie Sweet November. Another was a rethink of Stevie’s ancient (and prophetic) song “Crystal,” with Stevie singing this time in place of Lindsey Buckingham.

  They worked on this new music until the end of 1999. But Sheryl Crow was booked through 2000, and she regretfully had to leave Stevie’s new album in the hands of other producers. Stevie and her band embarked on what was called the Holiday Millennium Tour, playing mostly her hits in California and the Southwest.

  *

  Stevie then spent most of the year 2000 shuttling between a dozen different studios in Westwood, West Hollywood, and the Valley as she wrote and rewrote, pulling new music out of her workbooks and ledgers. The musician-producer John Shanks, who was associated with singers Bonnie Raitt and Melissa Etheridge, now became Stevie’s arranger and friend. They started working on the title track, “Trouble in Shangri-La,” building a militant choral wall around Stevie’s wordy text about a lover getting between her and her friends. Then they cut “Planets of the Universe,” which was written during the 1976 Rumours sessions, when Stevie first realized that she would leave her relationship with Lindsey. “Planets” was a complex song about vengeful feelings of being wronged. “You’ll never rule again / The way you ruled me.” (The accompanying guitar lick echoed Lindsey’s distinctive style.) “Planets” was also about a woman’s resignation to a different romantic existence: “Yes, I will live alone.” The original version had some especially spiteful lyrics. An angry verse would be removed by Stevie at the last minute before release, after she decided the song as it stood would be too hurtful to Lindsey.

  “Fall from Grace” was another collaboration with John Shanks, and one of Stevie’s fiercest expressions of her will. A furious lyric paired to an incendiary guitar track, “Fall from Grace” was written in a Nashville hotel suite at the end of The Dance Tour, when Stevie felt she wasn’t getting the respect she deserved. The song reminds a lover—or a band—that she was the reason they made it this far. “Maybe the reason I say these things / Is to bring you back alive Maybe I fought this long and this hard Just to make sure you—survive / Just to make sure you survive.” (Another song from this period and subject matter was “Thrown Down,” which was filed away for future use.)

  Stevie’s new song “Every Day” was given a cushion of violins and cellos by John Shanks. Then Stevie turned to another musician-producer, David Kahne, for help with “Love Changes,” a ballad in blank verse, like beat poetry. Stevie’s pretty and wistful “I Miss You” became a lush ballad under the baton of old friend Rick Nowles, who also added a liquid string section to a questioning song about relationships and travel. Lindsey Buckingham was persuaded to add guitar to “I Miss You,” his first-ever appearance on a Stevie Nicks solo album. When she saw Lindsey in the studio, Stevie warmly congratulated him on his recent marriage to his girlfriend, Kristen, thirty. (Lindsey was fifty-one.)

  Stevie wrote and produced “Bombay Sapphires” herself. It was a moody piece that echoed with samba feeling, conjuring the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Oahu, where Stevie visited between recording sessions. Stevie’s manager asked that his client Macy Gray, the soulful pop-blues singer, appear on the track. Stevie reportedly didn’t much like Macy Gray’s voice but acquiesced to Howard Kaufman’s earnest request.

  One of the last tracks completed was recorded in Paris. This was “Love Is,” a languid ballad about being awed by love’s power. Stevie was joined on “Love Is” by Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan, then thirty-two, who had founded the Lilith Fair, an important, all-female summer music festival. Stevie and (very pregnant) Sarah had bonded over drawing in the studio: Stevie with her stained-glass angels, Sarah with Celtic figures and lettering. Later Sarah would draw the initial “S” in Stevie’s name on the album jacket, in the shape of a dancing Welsh dragon.

  *

  At the end of the year 2000, Stevie Nicks went home to Paradise Valley for an Arizona Christmas, satisfied that she and her six producers had made her best record in years. “Trouble in Paradise” became Trouble in Shangri-La. Stevie had to prepare for the new album’s release and promotion, and then another tour with her own band after an absence from the stage of three years, since the Enchanted Tour. But first, Fleetwood Mac reconvened (without Christine McVie) and played for Bill Clinton one last time before he vacated the White House after eight years of peace and prosperity, and a noxious whiff of sex scandal as well.

  The first half of 2001 was spent in further production. Stevie was photographed in gauzy taffeta and chiffon on an elaborate, sepia-toned studio set by rock-fashion photographer Norman Seeff, who achieved his trademark foggy effects by stretching a sheer woman’s stocking over the lens of his darkroom enlarger. They made two expensive videos, primarily for the cable channel VH-1, MTV’s sister station for (supposed) grown-ups. Sheryl Crow returned to appear in the “Sorcerer” video. Sheryl strummed her guitar and smiled while Stevie sashayed in major red lipstick and a low-cut black dress. (The director, Nancy Bardawill, shot the entire video in five hours.)

  Stevie hated her next director, Dean Carr, who seemed to take five years to make
the “Every Day” video. This was a big production with a water feature, dancers, and a pair of mated black swans. Stevie was in a dire-looking Morgan le Fay dress and long, curly hair extensions; she curtly refused when directed to lie down in the water with the swans. She shouted at the director that she was not getting in the water with the fucking swans. “He hated me,” she commented later. “I was so unpleasant.” She pointed out that swans mated for life, but even the swans were quarrelsome and mean to each other while they were making the “Every Day” video.

  *

  Trouble in Shangri-La was released by Reprise Records in May 2001. Stevie was fifty-three years old. Her sixth solo album had been mixed and equalized by Chris Lord-Alge, who had to make the work of seven separate producers into one seamlessly flowing and sonically apposite Stevie Nicks album. It was a success. Trouble debuted at #5 on the Billboard chart, Stevie’s best showing since The Wild Heart in 1983. “Every Day” was a Top 20 single on the “Adult Contemporary” charts, and then “Sorcerer” got to #21. But “Planets of the Universe,” thunderously extended and remixed for the dance floor and issued on two vinyl LPs, got to #1 on the “Hot Dance Music/Club Play” chart. Stevie’s music, sometimes remixed without official authorization, had been steadily growing in the discos. There also was this thing, “The Night of a Thousand Stevies,” now an annual fetish rite in lower Manhattan, where fans from all over the world danced late into the wee hours wearing costumes based on Stevie’s wardrobe. (Rhiannon-looking witches were huge; also Arthurian princesses, Scarlett O’Haras, Ladies from the Mountains, and other personae. Some came as White Winged Doves.) Sometimes at these events, Stevie’s male fans outnumbered the ladies. Every year, the organizers implored Stevie to attend, but she always declined, sending loving messages of support instead.

  Trouble in Shangri-La has been credited with saving Stevie’s career. Her comeback was helped by a new liaison with VH-1, which made her its Artist of the Month in May, putting all her videos back into max rotation and booking her for episodes of its hit programs Storytellers and Behind the Music. Then People magazine named her to its “50 Most Beautiful People” list, which led to Stevie being in demand for TV appearances and award shows. The hottest female group in America, Destiny’s Child, sampled the “Stand Back” guitar riff for their hit single “Bootylicious,” and invited Stevie to appear in the video, miming Waddy’s now classic single-note guitar stutter.

  *

  The Trouble in Shangri-La Tour began in July 2001 and wound its way around the country, with Sheryl Crow joining Stevie onstage as a guest artist on several concerts in major markets. Stevie’s set began with “Stop Draggin’” and continued through “Dreams” and “Gold Dust Woman” before introducing “Sorcerer.” Sheryl came out to sing “My Favorite Mistake” and stayed for “Every Day.” “Rhiannon” came in the middle of the show, then “Stand Back” and “Planets of the Universe” in a dance floor arrangement. Sheryl came back for “Everyday Is a Winding Road” and a brace of new songs from the Trouble album. Stevie gave “Fall from Grace” a ferocious interpretation, leaving some fans wondering what she could appear so angry about. “Edge of Seventeen” ended the concert, with “I Need to Know” and “Has Anyone Ever Written” performed as encores.

  But there was trouble with Stevie’s voice: the doctors said it was acute bronchitis, and several concerts were canceled. This upset Stevie terribly, because of disappointed fans and a blemish on her reputation with the agents and promoters who ran the concert business. Too many canceled shows could mean no tour next time. Waddy Wachtel then got sick, and then the stage monitors began to fail in the middle of shows. Was this tour also somehow cursed?

  By the end of August, the tour was back in a groove. Stevie was unusually chatty with the audiences on this tour, spending long minutes on random monologues and more focused warnings about medication and addiction. She started enjoying the fellowship of the road, even the nightly makeup sessions that began with her naked face and progressed through a base layer, foundation, spot concealer, under-the-eye bag concealer, cheekbone sculpting with three types of blusher, eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner and—finally—lipstick, until a full performance mask was achieved. But she was mainly proud that she had fielded one of her best bands ever. But then something happened that cast a long shadow over the whole enterprise.

  8.5 Terrified

  Stevie’s Toronto concert had gone well, with waves of cheering even for new songs and an audience that didn’t want to let the evening go. Stevie and her girls did a quick postshow run to the big black SUVs that carried them to Toronto International and Stevie’s private jet. It was September 10, 2001, a quiet Monday night.

  Stevie slept a little on the short flight to LaGuardia Airport in New York, where the Trouble in Shangri-La Tour would continue at Radio City Music Hall. Stevie was also booked on NBC’s Today show, a crucial appearance for the success of the tour. More black cars took them through sleeping Queens after midnight and on to the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Park Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan. At two in the morning, Stevie checked into one of the hotel’s presidential suites near the top of the building. She changed into her black lounge clothes while snacks were prepared in the suite’s galley kitchen. They chatted about the night’s concert, Stevie drawing in her journal, eyeing the grand piano in the suite’s wood-paneled living room. Shawn Colvin’s new album was playing. Stevie thought about writing a condolence note to Gladys Knight, whose niece Aaliyah had been killed in a plane crash while making a video in the Bahamas. The television was on, sound off. They watched the sun rise over Long Island to the east, a moving display of shifting light. It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

  Stevie was thinking about going to bed when someone shouted, and she turned on the television’s sound. An airplane, a passenger jet, had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Then another plane pierced the second tower. The images shown on TV were riveting and obscene. Stevie was glued to CNN, the cable news channel, which broadcast images of people jumping from the tallest buildings in New York. Some of the people appeared to be on fire. Then another jet smashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. And another plane—all had taken off from Boston—was missing, presumed hijacked, and down somewhere. Then the Trade Center’s South Tower collapsed. A bit later, the North Tower went, too. The TV announcers said the towers were full of people and firemen when they fell. A building across the street then collapsed a few hours later. The air in the hotel suite became degraded as the drifting dust from the collapsed towers spread over New York City like a toxic pall.

  America was under attack. Stevie Nicks was very frightened. To calm herself down, she opened her journal and began to take notes on what was happening.

  The air was getting worse as a death haze loomed over the city. The hotel staff told the guests to close all the windows and to stay off the streets. The Waldorf went into the lockdown mode used when presidents stayed there, with only one entrance open and guards posted. They heard early that the Radio City concert was canceled. The area’s three main airports where closed while Air Force jets buzzed low over Manhattan, prowling for intruders, letting people know the battle was over—for now. Even some of the bridges were closed. The Trouble in Shangri-La Tour was stuck in Manhattan, for the time being.

  At a quarter to five the following morning, an emotional Stevie Nicks took up her journal and wrote: “We are a devastated city I feel I am part of this city We are a strong, brilliant city We are watching a piece of history We are living through a tragedy / Like no one—has ever seen.” The wife of one of her favorite Warner Bros. executives had been on one of those planes from Boston, where she’d left their twin daughters at college.

  Stevie noted in her journal that the sun rose at 6:10 on 9/12. She wrote, “So today is both beautiful and frightening, looking out from 36 floors up, can I tell you how unimaginable it would be if I looked up and saw a big jet flying toward me, in this country? My question—how
could this happen?” And a bit later: “Well, I think I have to sleep now. We are all traumatized. God bless everyone that lost someone … and all of those … that are gone … I am so sorry …—Stevie Nicks, 7:06 in the morning … P.S. The room is still glowing pink.”

  When Stevie woke up in the late afternoon, she wondered if she should cancel the tour out of respect to those who died. Her managers advised that she already had canceled some shows when she was ill, and that she should keep going if she was able. So they packed up and drove to Atlantic City for a show at the Borgata Hotel that Saturday. Then it was on to Columbus, Ohio. The fans were turning out for her, selling out shows that still had plenty of availability before the planes hit the buildings. But she was anguished about being on tour. She wanted to be home. She called Don Henley. The Eagles were recording, he said, but everyone was having a bad time.