CONTENTS Neal Preston
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MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MAY 2011 CONTENTS Neal Preston COVER STORY STEVIE NICKS BRUCE HORNSBY 40 The rock goddess talks frankly about her new album, 48 This restless keyboard innovator never revisits the her amazing history and the future of Fleetwood Mac. same musical terrain twice—and that’s just the way it is. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE HERB ALPERT 26 Chris Walla reveals the painstaking process behind 62 One of pop’s best-known trumpeters and businessmen the making of his band’s electronic-minded new album. is still seeking new adventures in the music world. RAY DAVIES SUSAN TEDESCHI AND 38 One of rock’s great tunesmiths revisits his classics 66 DEREK TRUCKS with a few high-profi le—and often unexpected—friends. The guitar world’s royal couple explains why they fi nally decided to join forces onstage as well as off. 4 M3-Vol2-Mag-beta24.indd 4 6/2/11 1:52 AM MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM Sweet Dreams Rock goddess Stevie Nicks opens up about unexpected inspiration, a fruitful new partnership and the future of Fleetwood Mac By Chris Neal Kristin Burns Kristin M3-Vol2-Mag-beta24.indd 40 6/2/11 1:06 AM M3-Vol2-Mag-beta24.indd 41 6/2/11 1:06 AM MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MAY 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM t is December 2009, and Stevie Nicks is sitting in a movie in-law Lori Nicks—all of whom she has worked with since kicking theater in Melbourne, Australia, watching The Twilight Saga: off her solo career with 1981’s classic Bella Donna. Other familiar New Moon, the second in the popular gothic romance series. faces were present as well: Buckingham played guitar and sang on The movie’s protagonist, teenaged Bella, is feeling lost “Soldier’s Angel,” and Fleetwood Mac co-founder Mick Fleetwood Iand alone without her paramour, a vampire named Edward—and played drums on several songs. something about her reminds Nicks of a song she began writing, Recording continued for several months at Nicks’ home, followed but did not quite complete, in 1976. “I started reciting these words by 10 days of overdubbing at the Village’s Studio D—the very room during the movie,” she recalls. “I was spellbound. It was almost like I’d in which Fleetwood Mac famously spent two tumultuous years and a written these words about what was going on in this movie.” Nicks’ million dollars recording 1979’s Tusk. The making of the most recent original song fragment had been inspired by the alienation she felt Mac effort, 2004’s Say You Will, was also diffi cult—which is why Nicks after moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1972 with then- insists that she wants Stewart and Ballard behind the board for the boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, two years before both of them joined group’s next studio effort. She reports that Buckingham, who has legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac. After the movie she returned typically held sway over the group’s productions, has already endorsed to her hotel room and, after 33 years, fi nally completed the song that the idea. “Lindsey doesn’t want to produce the next Fleetwood Mac would inspire her to make her fi rst solo album in a decade. When record,” she says. “He is absolutely not into that. I think it would be a she fi nished writing “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” Nicks stood pleasure for him to be able to sit back, play his parts, write his songs, up and announced to her assistant, Karen Johnston: “I’m ready to have fun and not be worried all the time.” do a record now.” But for now Nicks’ focus And she knew just who is on In Your Dreams. Like she wanted to help her. Nicks “Moonlight,” the first single, had performed with musician, “Secret Love,” was also rescued songwriter and producer from Nicks’ vaults—she made a Dave Stewart (formerly half demo of the song in 1975, but of the Eurythmics) on a pilot didn’t present it to Fleetwood for a planned TV interview Mac because she deemed it series. The show didn’t fl y, too personal. “My songwriting but the collaboration did— never changes,” she says with Nicks says she knew on the a chuckle. “Waddy laughingly spot that she wanted to work says, ‘She just writes one long with him. She gave him a call. song.’” That song now stretches The two met up at Nicks’ back more than three and a half home in the Pacifi c Palisades decades, and its infl uence on at Neal Preston area of Los Angeles and least two generations of female set about doing something singer-songwriters has been who loves their records as much as I do and puts as much work Were you nervous? the singer had never done profound. “And I love that,” says into them as I do, it was such a horrible scenario to put a record I was like, “Uh, OK … ” Because I’ve never written a song with before: writing a song with a the Arizona native. “I love that out and have 300,000 of your diehard fans buy it—and then those anybody in my life. We’re in my living room, we have a Pro Tools partner who was actually in all these young women who are 300,000 people send it out to another 10 million people. I wasn’t unit, we have a microphone hanging down over the coffee table, the same room. While Nicks really good are interested and a computer person and I’m still not today. I don’t follow all that, so he’s on the chair next to the fi replace, I’m on the couch and we’re has shared many co-writing feel I have created a world for I don’t have all that knowledge. But I do understand that the piracy looking at each other. He’s playing his guitar, he gives me the “Let’s credits in the past, she and them to come into.” thing has cut our publishing royalties down to a fourth of what they go” signal, and in an hour we had written a good song from one her collaborators always Nicks, 62, isn’t fi nished used to be, which is devastating and violating. of my ancient poems. At that moment the golden doors opened. worked separately—Tom building that world just yet. I realized why Lennon and McCartney wrote together, or why Petty and the Heartbreakers She’s eager to collaborate with Yet you made the new album. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together. Dave knows thousands guitarist Mike Campbell, Stewart again, whether on a solo Because I’m not really making it for anybody else. I don’t care of chords and I don’t. I had all these long poems and he didn’t. What one of her most frequent project or with Fleetwood Mac, who says what about it. we gave to each other was songwriting partners, has and she has plans to exhibit The fact was I’d written an amazing trade-off. So for three decades sent her Sherwood/NBCVirginia Universal Photo Bank her drawings and to write a a song [“Moonlight”] that we wrote seven songs. If instrumental demos to which screenplay based on her 1975 I thought was great and ‘Making an album with Fleetwood I wanted to write seven On NBC-TV’s Today, 2007 she adds lyrics. She and Mac classic “Rhiannon.” “I can’t that the world would love. songs by myself it would Stewart used a set of 40 wait to rent a castle somewhere So I said, “I don’t care, I’m Mac is angst-ridden. This was not take me a year and a half. I typewritten Nicks poems as a basis, eventually spinning out seven in Wales, lock myself away for two months and write this whole story,” making a record.” know about fi ve chords, so new songs in quick succession. “We sat down with an acoustic she says. Nicks spoke to us at her L.A. home about her new songs, her angst-ridden.’ I would just sit at my piano guitar, which I’m used to doing and she’s not,” says Stewart. “We astounding history, her views on the modern music industry and her still- How did you and Dave and grieve and cry. had a song in 10 minutes. We did that a few times, and eventually vital creativity. “I’m forever inspired and tickled about what’s to come,” get started? this album started to appear.” she says. “I’m just going to keep doing this, because this is what I love.” He sent me a song—he’d written the chorus and asked me to write the What’s Dave like as a producer? Nicks, Stewart and Glen Ballard (noted producer and Stewart’s verses, so I did. Then right after the Grammys he came to the house. He loves it—and when somebody loves what they do, you can’t help longtime production partner) set up recording equipment in her home Why so long since the last solo record? We sat and listened to what I had written on his song [“Everybody but be drawn in. He doesn’t have an ego. He can tell if you don’t to capture the songs that now make up In Your Dreams, Nicks’ fi rst I came off the road in 2005 after doing 135 shows and a record Loves You”], and he liked it.