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An annual tribute to Stevie Nicks takes place at a Greenwich Village club where patrons wearing suede boots and beaded shawls swirl across the dance floor.
By HELEN A.S. POPKIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 21, 2002
NEW YORK CITY -- "She's mysterious, she's real. She's as deep as you can get."
Kevin McGregor is explaining the enduring half-life of the annual Night of a Thousand Stevies. He's been to 11 of them.
Yes, yes, mystery and depth, but there's more. "Stevie Nicks stands between the threshold of Heaven and Hell and interprets God for us," says Belladonna, a drag queen and professional Stevie impersonator from Santa Barbara, Calif.
Early in May, in a packed, smoky Greenwich Village rock club called Don Hill's, we are all Stevie in spirit. What began in 1991 as a small party with only four performers has grown into an annual event that attracts fans and Stevie impersonators from as far away as Europe and Australia.
The smoke machine kicks on. The music begins. Standing at the foot of the stage, McGregor recognizes the song immediately. It's Rhiannon, by Nicks and Fleetwood Mac.
It's not the original recording, McGregor tells a companion. Is it the '81 live track? Or the '82 acoustic version? The debate ends only when a woman in a blond wig and black dress twirls on stage, opens her mouth and lip syncs: Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night and wouldn't you love to love her.
McGregor and the rest of the crowd sing in unison, stretching their arms to touch the woman on stage. It doesn't matter that she's not Stevie Nicks. Or that any of the 20 other "Stevie interpreters" -- both drag queens and "genetic females" -- are really her.
The Stevie interpreters each do one song. Between songs, masters of ceremonies Hattie Hathaway and Chi Chi Valenti, both dressed in their Stevie finest, auction items once owned by the real Stevie to benefit a Sept. 11 fund.
A Thousand Stevies was originally conceived as a one-night stand, "but it definitely touched a huge nerve," says Valenti, party co-producer and former owner of Mother, the New York nightclub infamous for its theme parties.
Word spread quickly among fans over the Internet, and it became almost an obligation that the party live on. The real Stevie Nicks knows about the event and mentions it often in interviews.
Although she's told Valenti she might show up one year, Nicks has yet to make an appearance. Valenti understands. "She might pass unnoticed, but it would be just too much to be in a room with so many people dressed like you."
Stevie's personal masseuse is here, however. And he brings with him several of Stevie's personal items for the auction: a pair of Stevie's stage boots, an autographed tambourine and original Stevie artwork.
Those platform suede boots and tambourine are just part of the Stevie style. The beaded shawls and capes, the fairy gowns, the twirling and leg kicks and crouching, her songs of witchery and love, are all part of the Stevie repertoire that makes her especially appealing to impersonators.
Belladonna lounges backstage in a blond wig, black gown and beaded shawl that reflects Stevie's 1990 Live at Red Rocks video look. Next to Belladonna is the Enchantress, a genetic female who tours the South doing Stevie as part of a Stevie tribute tour, the Blue Lamp Tour. She complains that her own look is not 100 percent accurate.
"I'm dressed as theBella Donna era," the Enchantress says of her white gown. She's referring to the 1981 album (not the drag queen sitting next to her). "But my hair didn't come in on time, so I had to wear this," she says, pointing to her wig of frosted curls.
Belladonna gives a small frown. "That's Tusk-era hair," says Belladonna, referring to the Fleetwood Mac song and 1979 album of the same name. "Her biggest hair ever."
Both agree that the clunky black sneakers on the Enchantress' feet -- a respite from the white laceup platforms she wears onstage -- are acceptable. "Stevie wore those platform Reeboks off stage," says Belladonna. "It looked hideous, but she did it."
Some fans can't resist dressing up themselves. A few men in blond wigs and towering platform shoes mix with bleach-blond women in Renaissance gowns and top hats. One man dresses in black coat and pants, as a dancer from the 1983 Stand Back video. Another comes in band uniform and hat, for the USC marching band featured on Tusk.
For McGregor, who wears only a sweater and slacks, it's enough to love Stevie. "I was there through (Stevie's) fat years, the drug years and the Grammys in '97."
The opening riff to Edge of Seventeen begins, and McGregor leaps on stage. It's nearly 4 a.m. and the evening is coming to an end. Performers and fans crowd the stage for the finale: the Battle of a Thousand Stevies waged to the music from Edge of Seventeen. They sing, "like the white winged dove" amid a riot of shawls, baby's breath and blond wigs.