“Her great initial success was with lover Lindsey Buckingham. In 1974, they joined Fleetwood Mac and by 1977 the ‘Rumours’ album had churned out four top 10 singles – including Nicks’ megahit ‘Dreams,’ the group’s only U.S. No. 1,” Roura reports. “By 1981, she began a solo career with the album “Bella Donna,” but she continued to record and tour with Fleetwood Mac; the band’s latest studio album is 2003’s “Say You Will,” for which Nicks wrote the title track.”
“Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Fleetwood Mac in 1998, the now 62-year-old rocker worries about the future of the industry she loves,” Roura reports. “‘The Internet has destroyed rock. Children no longer develop social graces. They don’t hang out anymore,’ she complains. ‘I’m financially stable. I’m okay. But what about the kids trying to make it in this business? If you’re not an established band, if you don’t have a hit single, they’re gonna drop you. There are a lot of people out there as talented as we were, but they can’t sustain being in a rock ‘n’ roll band for long without success. We were able to, but we’re going to die out.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First John Cougar Melonhead, now Stevie Nicks. Proof that you can’t teach an old dog (no offense, Stevie) new tricks, but, trust us, the kids’ll be alright. Times change and new paths to success surely do emerge:
Imagine there’re no labels
It’s easy if you try
No need for greedy album bundles
A brotherhood of bands
Direct to the people
Buying iTunes tracks
You may say that we’re dreamers
But we’re not the only ones
We hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
@spinoza2
without drugs we wouldn’t have sgt. pepper
Picasso was really really wealthy. In his own time.
sorry stevie, but it’s the no talent coddled youth trying to emulate what they see in the video of our youth and the non-discilne of kids… ok if you grow your hair long… ok… sure you can joint a band… want a Vintage Gibson SG and a Marshall Stack? no prob… want to join a band instead of getting a job… you go kid… it has nothing to do with the medium. there’s a lot of good new music and you’re not looking in the right places.
@@speedyg or anonymous spineless, actually I am 50. I love new Rock and Roll bands like Electric Six, Detroit Cobras, King Kahn and the Shrines, Hank 3, Those Darlins etc. but those has been dinosaurs, that keep milking the hits they had 30 years ago are just down right blah!
Sure I loved Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, T Rex, they all had their time, but R&R moves forward. These bands sold their souls and they aren’t satisfied with their paydays. They are like Disney extending their copyrights beyond the life it was meant to have, where’s my gravy train they ask. Hey it pulled out when you stopped making innovating. Think of them like microsoft.
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I was a huge dead fan, followed them for years, they understood that it was the live music that made our hearts sing on the wind, not the paycheck from residuals.
I released my (now defunct) band’s material on iTunes, Amazon and several other outlets using Tunecore.com, no label required. We’ve had decent sales, even without any touring, publicity or advertising, enough to pay for the service, anyway. Ms. Nicks makes several good points, btw. At least she didn’t trot out the ridiculous assertion that Analog (tape and vinyl) sounds “superior” to digital, like most dinosaur rockers feel compelled to do.
MDN, you disappoint me again. Stevie has a point, whether you want to agree or not. It’s her opinion, so the least you can do is respect it.
How juvenile of you to intentionally misspell John Mellencamp’s name. That very well destroys your credibility on the subject.
I’m no expert on the music industry, but it does indeed seem to be harder for a working musician to truly make a good living. Sure, there will always be the corporate-backed, pitch-corrected pop “artists”. There will always be the popularity TV shows. The internet will always allow the average musician to post his music for all to hear.
So how much money is the typical talented YouTube musician making? How about hard-working “internet musicians” like Jonathan Coulton, who had the balls to quit his day job and start touring full time, and post one new song every week during 2004-2005? That’s the perfect example of a talented musician who is payin’ his does. Ever heard of him? What, you didn’t subscribe to his podcast? MDN, are you going to investigate, or are you just going to take swipes at Stevie Nicks, who has infinitely more talent than you’ve ever dreamed of?
Right. I thought so. It’s so much easier to pan the words of a person who knows than it is to actually prove them wrong.
Times change and industries come and go. It’s only natural for those who have come up in one era to be critical of the changes. It’s also to be expected that younger people will not understand the criticism being leveled at them and their ways.
Ultimately there is truth in both points of view.
The internet has “killed” quite a few art forms. Digital media has killed the art of painting, for instance. Someone mentioned Picasso in an earlier comment. Can anyone name a living painter of Picasso’s importance? Can anyone name any living painters at all? Can we blame the internet? Sure – to some degree. Paintings once provided a window into the minds of artists and into another way of seeing the world. No one needs paint to do that anymore. We are overwhelmed by digital imagery that provides us with more than enough visual stimulation. Paint on canvas is now as quaint as a letterpress book.
Rock&Roll; killed the Big Band Era, and in turn Rock has been killed by whatever the public decides to consume next.
So the question isn’t so much whether Stevie Nicks is wrong or not – I actually think she has a point – but that’s not what matters.
The truth is that it is no longer possible to “make it” the way Fleetwood Mac did, and yes, the internet has a lot to do with it. And – yes – the internet takes away and the internet gives back. The old avenues are closing and new ones are opening up. But in the end, having a global audience for your work doesn’t pay the rent these days because the vast majority of that audience is not paying. Also, the overwhelming volume of music and other media available on the web means that anyone who wants to be visible has to work really hard to stand out. So really not a lot has changed. It’s just a lot cheaper to get nowhere.
It costs very little today to make your music available to the world. But you still don’t get paid.
It was never “easy”. Anyone who thinks it’s ever been easy to be an artist for a living has their head up their a$$. It’s not easy now. It wasn’t easy then. But it’s hard in a different way.
Yes, I’m a musician. I make my living teaching music. The internet is extremely useful to me and I wouldn’t want to go back to the past. But there’s no need to be arrogant about the differences of opinion on this issue. Just get that times change.
Stevie baby I love you but the guys from OK-GO and a hundred other bands that made it because the had a following on the internet (Linkin Park) will disagree with you.
973974
Peter Green left the band in 1970, Stevie Nicks joined in 1975
McVie in between moved into overdrive
Rock used to be empowering for young people dissatisfied with what life had to offer. It was new, fresh, thrilling, creative, inclusive… Now it is just a product that fits neatly into our corporate culture. Its mysteries and power have been defused by repetition and accessibility. Maybe Stevie Nicks was lamenting the loss of a culture of rock, where artists dragged themselves from one place to another in order to play for people and make a name for themselves. Perhaps she feels that in the past rockers paid their dues in order to get the fame and now they need a novelty hit on YouTube to get catapulted into the public consciousness.
Life isn’t fair, evolution doesn’t take feelings into account, making a living is not easy in any profession, and my favorite, dinosaurs are supposed to die out, that’s why we call them dinosaurs.
Allow the future to happen with you, because swimming upstream all of the rest of your life to stay where you were when you were 20, is kinda stupid.
Maybe it’s as simple as people just aren’t interested enough in their music anymore to pay for it. http://bit.ly/9NwQEj