- Our pal Sandra Bernhard, who's due to be giving birth
to her first child next month,
finally got to interact with one of her all-time idols
recently, when we escorted her up to Hartford, Connecticut,
to catch a solo concert by Fleetwood Mac's chiffon goddess,
Stevie Nicks.
As moments go, this one was sheer magic.
- [Announcer] Ladies and gentleman, Miss Stevie Nicks.
(crowd cheers)
- We're about to see Stevie weave her magic,
change, gypsy shawl, shake her tambourine,
and cast her spell in Hartford, Connecticut.
This is Stevie Nicks's opening night.
I'm Sandra.
We're here to send love and magic back to Stevie.
Stay with us.
(crowd chattering)
Are you ready?
Oh great, fabulous, MTV's ready.
It's incredible. - We are ready for MTV.
- Hey, baby.
The concert rocked.
- Thank you, Sandra.
- I mean, this has been such an incredible year for me
because I'm pregnant and I've seen you with Fleetwood Mac
and I've seen you solo and my baby has heard you,
so it's like - I know it's just going to be something magical
and fabulous that's gonna happen when the baby's born.
- Know my voice.
- Yes. The show was great, how'd you feel tonight?
'Cause I saw you before the show
and you were a little bit nervous, which was -
- I'm always really nervous. If I wasn't nervous,
if I walked in and was totally blasé
and just was happy and smiling,
I think that would be time for everybody to worry
because I kind of have to go through that bitter, tormented
20, 30 minutes before and as much as I hate it,
like, it's not there now, I'm OK now.
- [Sandra] Right.
- But before the show, when I saw you, it was there
and at that point, I'm not feeling good
and at that point, I'd like to just go home.
- I don't believe that for a minute.
- Well, no, it's an overwhelming feeling.
It's why some people don't do this,
except that I can manage to get through it to the minute
when I walk out on stage and then I'm OK.
Then everything's fine.
- [Sandra] I was hoping you were gonna, like, jump
into the mosh pit at the very end.
I was kind of disappointed,
I thought you were just gonna throw yourself -
- [Stevie] Throw myself out there?
Well, in another time, I may have thrown myself.
- [Sandra] I think by the end of this tour,
you're going to.
- 'Cause I'm not afraid that anybody would drop me,
you know, I know I would be OK.
- Oh, you know they would support you and love you,
and give back all the love that you give.
- [Stevie] And so all the ex-grunge people would say,
"Wow, look, she's being passed around the audience."
It would be OK. - Stevie is a true rocker.
But you've created a whole genre, I mean,
you're one of the founding mothers of rock and roll.
And then you see all these young girls coming up.
What's the advice?
What would you tell some of these girls,
the Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple-esque,
Lilith Fair chicks, you know what I mean?
It's a rough road to hoe,
do you think most of them will stick around?
- Some of the girls, and I say that really lovingly
when I call them the girls. - Of course you do.
- It will all depend on which ones
of them want this bad enough.
A friend of mine said to me a couple of days ago,
it finally hit her that, she was thinking,
"I'm going to do music, too," and she said it finally hit her
that she wouldn't die if she didn't do it.
And that's how you have to feel about this business.
You have to say, "I would die if I didn't do this."
That's how serious it is to me.
- So you're on the road and you get back to your hotel
and you're, like, just hanging out,
are you inspired when you're in the middle of performing
to write new songs?
When does that come to you?
What initiates that emotion and that feeling,
when you just channel down, you know, a brilliant -
- What happens is, when you're on the road,
it's much more easy to be really creative.
When you're home, there's too many problems going on.
Things are going on with your house, it's leaking.
El Niño is ruining the beach.
That's all happening.
It's very hard to go to rehearsal and do all that
and come home and find a moment to be creative.
On the road, since we've been here in Hartford
for three days, I have written a song,
since we've been here and I'm really excited about it.
So, I left something in Los Angeles,
I left it all there and came here and I have a clear mind
and everything is inspiring me.
The guys inspire me, the girls inspire me,
the music inspires me, it all inspires me.
At home, I can't rise above everything else.
But out here, I'm really open to being inspired,
to being inspired.
- [Sandra] And this is your whole life, too?
- Yeah. - [Sandra] It's encapsulated.
There's no responsibilities outside -
- No, there isn't any responsibility.
It's a very great, easy way to live.
You know, you don't have to get phone calls about stuff
that's going on that you don't want to talk about
because you can say, "I have a show."
- [Sandra] Is that why - - [Stevie] I can't talk.
- [Sandra] Is that why it was easy for you to segue
right from doing the Fleetwood Mac thing, right into this?
You probably didn't want it, you didn't wanna stop, right?
- [Stevie] I didn't stop.
I didn't physically want to stop, either,
because I didn't want to go through
what I had to go through to build up
to doing this last year.
So I didn't ever let the level drop.
So I stayed pretty strong.
- [Sandra] And you just had your birthday.
- I just had my 50th birthday.
- [Sandra] We're putting no limitations on you.
It's a number, 'cause you look gorgeous here -
- And I did hear, I have to say,
I heard somebody was interviewing Madonna the other day.
And they said, "Will you still be doing,
like, 'Material Girl' when you're 50?"
And of course she said, "Well, no, you know, I won't,"
because it's the same thing that if somebody had said to me,
"Will you still be doing 'Stand Back' when you're 50?"
I would've said, "Probably not."
The fact is, is that it's interesting
what you can still do when you reach a certain age,
it's all up to you.
If you don't want to be able to do it, then you can't.
- That's right. You put the limitations -
- Then you can also turn around and say,
"What else would I do?"
There's nothing else that I love that much.
So what else would I do but perform for people
and watch people grow, watch the world grow?
That seems to be the reason that I'm here.
- [Sandra] I have a little gift for you for your birthday.
Well, actually, I bought this when we did a MTV thing
at Christmastime and we went out on the road
to buy, like, gifts and stuff.
- This is cute.
Oh, it's a mirror. - Oh!
Now, if that's not Stevie -
- I like that. - How Stevie is that?
- How much is that?
- ♪ And the landslide will bring you down ♪
That could be fabulous.
It's not bad, $46.
- I think we can afford that.
- I'm gonna get that for Stevie.
And also there's a tape in there of a song
that you inspired.
- Really?
That Mitch [Kaplan], my keyboard player, and I wrote.
It's in my show, which you still haven't come to see.
And here's the birthday card.
- You know, if I had one day off,
I would come to see your show.
- I'm opening on Broadway in late October.
So hopefully, you'll have off a month off.
- [Stevie] I'll be off the road then, so I will be there.
- This is the other side of the mirror.
- It's kind of a plum-colored daisy.
Wait 'til you see the bus, which is this color.
- Well there you go, and you can actually, like -
- A daisy mirror in plum.
- Isn't that cute, it's suede.
- It's fabulous, no, you're gonna laugh
when you see our new bus, that we ordered all these colors
from across the United States.
- [Sandra] To decorate your bus?
- To decorate the bus without seeing the bus or the things.
- [Sandra] Has anybody ever written anything for you?
- You have.
♪ In your darkest hours ♪
I used to play that in my car over -
I just put it on rewind and listen to it over
and over and over, that song
and drive down the Ventura Freeway weeping.
Love you. - All right.
- Thanks, honey.
Right on.
- OK.
Are these her roses?
- [Sandra] Beautiful, sweet.
- [Stevie] You have to come look at our bus.