Stevie Nicks: "I came to think that I was not worth as a singer"

Stevie Nicks in June 2017 at the Los Angeles Film Festival.Gregg DeGuire / WireImage

Every night since he was 16, Stevie Nicks (Phoenix, 72) sits down at a sizable notebook, his journal, and writes.

Sometimes, what he tells precedes a song, because only after doing it does he notice something throbbing and comes back, he composes a poem and sits down at the piano and turns it into music.

And others, she tells the story of how a lighting forced her to, for example, back down when she was going on her honeymoon (1982) because she had come up with a better melody and lyrics for

Prince's

- which transformed into one of his first

solo

,

-, or to sketch, sitting on the carpet of the house of a millionaire couple that sheltered her when she landed in Aspen (Colorado) following Lindsey Buckingham, her still barely boyfriend then (1972), the melody of the legendary

, in the at which point he was about to throw in the towel.

His iconic broken voice sounds charmingly warm on the phone.

She calls from Los Angeles, from her “nice house”, to which two friends have moved these days who, like her, are also alone.

She asks if she can read aloud something she wrote in her diary in 2008 that led to the recent

, her first

in six years and, according to her, “the best” she has done, musically speaking, “ in the last 20. ”She reads an excerpt of what a scene from a novel looks like that places her in Chicago on a cold night, watching television, curled up on the couch with her dog, watching a documentary about the presidents of the United States. "I had a dream not too long ago that connected me to that night, and I went back to the newspaper and wrote a poem. In the dream, I was surrounded by all the politicians who have been important in the history of the United States. A kind of party was being held. , and I played the piano, "he says. The song he has composed is both a piece of his life and a prayer-like political plea that pleads for some kind of" light at the end of this tunnel we are in. immersed ”.

His first 'single' in six years is both a piece of his life and a political plea that pleads for some kind of "light at the end of this tunnel."

More than muse, motor, beacon for many of the women who have felt since the seventies - her first album, in duet with Buckingham, dates from 1973 - the instinct of the musical, Nicks confesses how important it was for her his mother.

“A strong woman who always believed in me.

He allowed me to follow my instincts but at the same time he asked me to study so, whatever happens, have a good job and not depend on any man, "he says.

And about her grandfather she recounts: "He wanted to be a country singer but couldn't, and he saw something in me since I was a child; he left me all his records, and in the sixties he gave me all the

made by girls." "From the nine years ago I was clear that I was going to be someone great. I remember the first time I bought clothes at the second-hand store where Janis Joplin used to buy them, which was precisely called Velvet Underground. I left there wearing it and people would walk away by the street, thinking it must be someone, and it was, I knew it already was, ”he recalls.

She has not had children, although in the eighties she took care of the son of her best friend, who died shortly after giving birth and even tried to marry her husband, but it did not work, but she has a lot of friends, and She feels like "the funny aunt" of all her children, and in part she writes those diaries, she says, so that they know her.

"I never say anything but when I'm gone and all this comes to light they will see everything I thought," he threatens, and laughs.

For example, she is now less concerned than usual about her country because she believes that Donald Trump "is not going to win the election."

"He's the weirdest guy in the world, everything he does leaves me speechless, how can someone like that even exist?"

In less than a week, on the 21st, the retrospective concert

opens in cinemas all over the world and with a single date

, which will also be released in disc format at the end of the month, and which is at the same time a handful of songs - of all time - and a lot of confessions about it, including his obsession with the

saga

, and the song he dedicated to its protagonists, Bella and the vampire Edward,

.

Donald Trump is the weirdest guy in the world, everything he does leaves me speechless, how can someone like that even exist?

His interest in the occult remains, then, intact.

She is still haunted by rumors of witchcraft, with which Ryan Murphy built one of the best seasons of

,

, and that she loves.

"Oh, for a time I bought a lot of black clothes, which I had to stop wearing because I started to scare people," he admits.

Shortly before, she had held three jobs as a waitress and cleaned her producer's house twice a week to pay the rent.

“He barely made me 80 bucks!

I came to think that it was not worth it, ”he recalls.

His only Me Too dates from then.

“In all these years I have only done one thing that I regret and for which I felt humiliated for not saying no.

He had bought me a beautiful blouse, which had cost me 200 bucks, for the photo shoot for the cover of

, our first album, and the photographer wanted us to pose naked.

It didn't seem right to me, but Lindsey said, 'Don't be prudish, it's art!' And I didn't stop it, ”she recalls.

It took him four months to show the record to his parents.

“I hid it under the bed.

When they saw it they asked me why I hadn't said no, and I told them I didn't want to screw it up.

This is how these things work.

You're on a moving train that you think you're going to stop for saying no.

But then I found out that the train doesn't stop when you say no.

With Christie — McVie, her partner at Fleetwood Mac — we reached an agreement.

We weren't going to do anything we didn't want to, and as long as we didn't feel respected, we would leave the room we were in, surrounded by guys, because that was music then, a bunch of guys.

And it worked for us, ”he says.

He doesn't say much about Fleetwood Mac, just that he liked everything more when it was just her and Lindsey.

The duo format is something that fascinates him even today.

Regarding the possibility of one day recording his own canon, as Johnny Cash did with his

, he assures that he would love it but also that “as Mick Jagger says, we may now have more freedom, but we have little time left, and we have to think very well what we want to do with it ”.