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No, Stevie Nicks has not seen Stereophonic, David Adjmi’s hit Broadway play about a fictional (but very Mac-like) ’70s band recording what will become its (very Rumours-like) masterpiece album.
In fact, the singer who shared vocals (and decades of triumphs and tribulations) with her Fleetwood Mac bandmates Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie has never even heard of the Broadway smash.
In a new Rolling Stone interview promoting her latest song “The Lighthouse” (which she performed on Saturday Night Live earlier this month – just four blocks from the home of Stereophonic), Nicks was asked whether she had seen the play, which, among other storylines, chronicles the crumbling of a relationship between a Stevie-like singer and a Lindsey-like guitarist.
Here’s the exchange:
Rolling Stone: Have you seen the Stereophonic play?
Nicks: What is that?
Rolling Stone: It’s an insanely successful Broadway play about a band on the cusp of stardom as they record their new album in Sausalito. So it’s basically … about you … and Fleetwood Mac.
Nicks: Really?
Rolling Stone: Yes.
Nicks: How in the world have I gotten this far without knowing about this?
For the record, Deadline hears that Nicks isn’t alone among the former Macs in not seeing the show. Christine McVie, of course, died two years ago, so she couldn’t have seen the fictionalized account of her own doomed marriage to bass player John McVie, but her ex-husband, along with Buckingham and drummer Mick Fleetwood are all very much alive. None of them have stopped by the Golden Theatre to see the Tony-winning play.
Nicks says she has seen Daisy Jones & the Six, a TV adaptation of a Mac-like band, and she enjoyed it. “Riley [Keough] doesn’t look like me,” Nicks says in the interview. “She’s much snappier than me. I couldn’t be as snappy as her in Fleetwood Mac. Christine and I couldn’t do that, because we were the peacemakers….But as far as her character went, it was very similar to me. And I instantly wanted to call her and meet her, and I did.”
Stereophonic runs on Broadway until January 12, so there’s still time…
One person associated with Rumours who most certainly is aware of Stereophonic is sound engineer-turned-music producer Ken Caillat, who wrote a 2012 memoir (with Steven Stiefel) called Making Rumours. Earlier this month, Caillat filed a lawsuit against Adjmi and the show’s producers, claiming portions of his memoir were used without permission.
Adjmi has consistently emphasized that his fictionalization is a work of imagination, and that he drew on various band histories for inspiration. In a New Yorker article last month, he addressed the matter head on: “When writing Stereophonic I drew from multiple sources—including autobiographical details from my own life—to create a deeply personal work of fiction. Any similarities to Ken Caillat’s excellent book are unintentional.”