Shatter your illusions of love
Fleetwood Mac - 'Gold Dust Woman' (Rumours - 1977)
It is 4 am. It is 1976. Stevie Nicks is wearing a black scarf around her head, preparing to record another take of the last track of the following year's Rumours. She is trying to cut off her other senses to get into the right frame of mind to unlock the Gold Dust Woman.
In Mick Fleetwood's book My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac, he explains that it took Nicks eight takes to get the vocal right, and was hunched over a chair and was nursing a sore throat with lozenges, water and Vicks. By the end of the take, Nicks will have recorded a haunting vocal line in which she almost sounds like a demon has possessed her1.
Nicks wanted to get this vocal nailed. Cris Morris, a recording assistant on the sessions, explained in Q magazine that it seemed directed at Lindsey Buckingham, and she was letting it all out. The moaning, the animal noises and the broken glass were added later. Yes, the broken glass, to underscore Nicks's vocals, Fleetwood broke sheets of glass. According to producer Ken Caillat;
"He [Fleetwood] was wearing goggles and coveralls — it was pretty funny. He just went mad, bashing glass with this big hammer. He tried to do it on cue, but it was difficult. Eventually, we said, 'Just break the glass,' and we fit it all in."
Morris also told Q:
Five or six months into it, once John had got his parts down, Lindsey spent weeks in the studio adding guitar parts, and that's what really gave the album its texture."
In an interview with Courtney Love2 for Spin in October 1997, Nicks confirmed that "gold dust" was a metaphor for cocaine. Anyone familiar with the recording of Rumours will know that if ‘Gold Dust Woman’ was originally a metaphor or an imagined apocryphal tale of a groupie that Nicks was singing about, it soon became closer to home as “doing a little bit” turned into a lot and overtaking her. Ultimately it would make the song more symbolic of her struggles with addiction, if not literal.
Looking at the lyrics, it is clear with all the references to gold dust, black widows and a pale shadow of dragons what it is about, even without all these interviews confirming it. There’s the pointed mention of a silver spoon and the privilege associated with it and the potential for snorting yourself into an early grave. Most of the barbs feel like they are pointed at Buckingham - a lot of the album is members of the band sub-tweeting each other - or inward at Nicks herself. “Rulers make bad lovers”, she trills and juxtaposes her success in the music industry with her less successful love life.
The song is also the closest thing to free jazz on the record; Lindsay played a dobro to add that metallic twang to the acoustic guitar elements alongside a harpsichord (and the broken glass). There are plenty of big, big songs on the album, and I don’t personally put this up with the top tier ones. However, I’d invite anyone to listen to the swirling cacophony of the last couple of minutes and not get drawn into it.
Rumours would go on to sell tens of millions of copies, including several thousand on vinyl each year and provide a viral moment as recently as 2020 when that dude skated down the freeway to the album’s ‘Dreams’ and inspired the band’s drummer, Mick Fleetwood to do the same in response. I think we can all be glad that he went with that track and sipped on the cranberry juice rather than recording a tribute to the album’s final song.
On Fleetwood Mac's 2014-2015 tour, they did an extended version of this song that often stretched past 10 minutes, with Stevie Nicks losing herself in the music during the extended instrumental break. She would often feel the effects the next day, as the dancing took a toll on her back.
Hole covered the song the year before.
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