Still Twirling — The Gold Dust Woman Rocks On…

To feature a woman on Nightcharm’s front page she must be a creature who mirrors the pagan, crystal vision that inspires our staff to conjure all of the high quality juju we offer up to you, dear reader, week after week.

And who better to feature this week than the earth and moon-inspired blond witchy woman herself: Stevie Nicks.

When I caught Camille Paglia on tour recently she mentioned how the entirety of her new book Break, Blow, Burn was written with Nicks’ Trouble in Shangri-La spinning in the background.

Paglia considers Stevie Nicks a nature poet, a poet of the earth and sky: The planets, sun and the moon (and then some). A few audience members balked at Paglia’s statement, but I nodded my head in agreement while fingering my love beads.

As Joyce Millman from Salon reminds us: “The women in Nicks’ songs are free birds and gypsies: independent, unafraid to be alone, uncaged. In the manly world of rock ‘n’ roll, Nicks articulated a yearning female spirituality. She put her womanliness right out there, undiluted.”

Nicks, who turns 60 this year, has just released Crystal Visions, a double-disc collection of her best songs and videos that I can’t stop playing or watching. Most of them are well known hits but there are some rare hard-to-find gems included as well.

Who can forget the eye-popping image of Nicks swathed in white chiffon and clomping in 8-inch platform boots atop a neon-trimmed treadmill in her 1983 video Stand Back?

Well, it’s here on the set’s DVD disc, as well the original version of the Stand Back video, which featured a kitschy Scarlett O’Hara takeoff where Nicks is riding atop a horse that nearly killed her. Nicks’ voice-over commentaries on the videos are piquant and smart and she doesn’t pull punches, often saying things like “What the hell was I thinking when I made that video?”

Within the pantheon of rock and roll chanteuses Nicks remains unique. I like how she never surrendered any of the lacy, mystical elements of her identity along the way. It’s expected that a female rocker must take on some sort of hard-boiled persona to succeed in the male dominated rock world, but Nicks always remained all things Rhiannon — a blond, ethereal compliment to, say, Cher‘s dark-haired gypsy vamp or Tina Turner‘s raw, stomping earth mama. Nicks remains a nature poet, a rock goddess willing to be “taken by the wind.” Let’s just hope she stays around a bit longer to see Nightcharm’s staff through the next decade.

“Dreams unwind…Loves a state of mind…”
 

And now prepare to receive every minute of Nicks’ fabulous, 80s-drenched, Solid Gold dancers-infested, Stand Back video: