"I WAS A HIGH PRIESTESS IN EGYPT"

It’s May 1989 and Steve Sutherland is meeting up with Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac who is promoting her fourth solo album – The Other Side Of The Mirror. Will either of them remember the encounter?

- Stevie Nicks

Just so you know, Ms Nicks is not at her best today.” This is the lady from the record company press office, prepping me for the arrival of Ms Nicks who, in a few moments, will enter the Monte Carlo suite of the Mayfair Hotel in London where our interview is to take place. It’s 5.30pm and she’s an hour or so late, having overslept. She’d spent all day yesterday in lace and high heels shooting a video at some country house and now, I’m told, her feet are killing her.

Anyway, here she comes and, yeah, she does look a little blurry, a mite puffy, her hair not quite a rat’s nest, her make-up so-so. She’s shorter than I remember and she’s clutching the dregs of a glass of iced tea. The first thing she does is goes to the sofa and puffs up all the cushions. Then she sits and pats the space next to her for me to come sit down and join her.

Considering the state she’s in, I venture that calling her new album The Other Side Of The Mirror is quite a brave thing to do. After all, mirrors can be cruel reminders of the ravages of passing time.

“It’s very interesting you say that,” she says, her voice a little cracked and squeaky. “If I was an interviewer, I would think that profound. But I never think much of looking in the mirror and getting older. I guess that’s because, if you look in the mirror every single day, you don’t notice it so much.”