Gold Dust Woman Gypsy Fleetwood Mac

Gold Dust Woman Album: Rumours (1977)
Gypsy Album: Mirage (1982)
by Fleetwood Mac

I was once a Romanian by marriage. She kept the Romanian house... so I guess I ain't a resident no more!

Stevie Nicks wrote Gold Dust Woman and sang lead. While Nicks has never been clear on the meaning, you can make a good case that it is about cocaine, which the band was consuming in quantity during the Rumours sessions. The lyrics, "Take your silver spoon, dig your grave," can be seen as a reference to a spoon holding the drug.

Nicks' relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham may also have influenced the song, as they had broken up and were going through some very difficult times, using songs as a medium for expressing their feelings to each other.

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 they were recorded early in the morning. Fleetwood described Nicks as "hunched over in a chair, alternately choosing from her supply of tissues, a Vicks inhaler, a box of lozenges for her sore throat and a bottle of mineral water."

Cris Morris, who was a recording assistant on the sessions, explained in Q magazine: "Recording 'Gold Dust Woman' was one of the great moments because Stevie was very passionate about getting that vocal right. It seemed like it was directed straight at Lindsey and she was letting it all out. She worked right through the night on it, and finally did it after loads of takes. The wailing, the animal sounds and the breaking glass were all added later. 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."

Lindsay Buckingham played a dobro on this track. The dobro is an acoustic guitar with a single resonator with its concave surface uppermost. The inventor of the resonator guitar, John Dopyera, together with his brothers Rudy, Emile, Robert, and Louis, developed the dobro in 1928. They named it as a contraction of Dopyera Brothers' coupled with the meaning of "goodness" in their native Slovak language. Gibson acquired exclusive use of the dobro trademark in 1993 and the guitar corporation currently produces several round sound hole models under the dobro name. One of these ornate guitars is featured on the cover of Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms.

This was used in the 1996 movie The Crow: City of Angels and also in the 2018 episode of The Americans, "Dead Hand."

Stevie Nicks performed this song with Foo Fighters from time to time, including at a show on September 21, 2015 at the Forum in Los Angeles with Haim singing backup. After Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters died on March 25, 2022, Nicks Tweeted a photo of them together and wrote: "He always came to my shows. He and his best friend Dave [Grohl] even let me be a Foo Fighter for a little while. We recorded a kick-ass version of 'Gold Dust Woman' (live) and at the end of the song I yelled out 'Best Gold Dust Woman ever' - and I meant it."

Stevie Nicks wrote Gypsy and planned to include it on her 1980 solo album Bella Donna. She didn't have room for it on the album, so she held it over for Fleetwood Mac's Mirage album. By this time, her friend Robin Anderson was dying of leukemia and the song became a tribute to her.

Shortly after Robin Anderson died, Stevie Nicks married her husband, Kim Anderson. In a 1990 interview with US magazine, Nicks explained: "Robin was one of the few women who ever got leukemia and then got pregnant. And they had to take the baby [named Matthew] at six-and-a-half months, and then she died two days later.

Fleetwood Mac recorded this at Le Chateau Studios in France, which was known as the "Honky Chateau" - Elton John recorded there and named his 1972 album after the studio's nickname.

Fleetwood Mac was an early adopter of music videos, making some even before MTV launched, since there were shows in Europe that would play them. Once MTV went on the air in 1981, they put more effort into their clips. The "Gypsy" video was directed by Russell Mulcahy, who directed the Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star." Mulcahy wasn't familiar with the tribulations of the band members' love lives, so he paired up Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in some scenes. They had ceased to be a romantic couple six years earlier and had since become a contentious one. Still, they danced together in the video.