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Fleetwood Mac - Gold Dust Woman (1977)
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The final track from the Rumours album. Written by Stevie Nicks, this is among the band's and Nicks' most dark and ominous tunes. It sounds like a scary folk song, which is what it ultimately became despite the original concepts that got it started. According to Wikipedia: "The take chosen for release on the 1977 Rumours album was reportedly recorded at 4 a.m., after a long night of attempts in the studio. Just before and during that final take, Stevie Nicks had wrapped her head (though not mouth) with a black scarf, veiling her senses and tapping genuine memories and emotions. Many unusual instruments were used in the recording, including an electric harpsichord with a jet phaser, which was marked with tape so Mick Fleetwood could play the right notes. To accentuate Stevie's vocals, Mick broke sheets of glass."

The premise was originally about cocaine use and the fear of where it might lead to. Stevie Nicks told Courtney Love in a 1997 interview: "You know what, Courtney? I don't really know what 'Gold Dust Woman' is about. I know there was cocaine there and that I fancied it gold dust, somehow. I'm going to have to go back to my journals and see if I can pull something out about 'Gold Dust Woman'. Because I don't really know. It's weird that I'm not quite sure. It can't be all about cocaine."

I would suggest that in the end it had almost NOTHING to do with cocaine, although maybe it did in the first draft of the lyrics. In any event, somehow tumultuous and personal romantic relationships got into the mix and a whole lot of real pain. This I believe was the actual working model and that the "cocaine" as a sort of "gold dust" became a more incidental starting point part of the story. Unraveling the actual "story" will probably never happen as this appears to be fragments of feelings and experiences and real personal fears of the future (Nicks' future) pulled together to form a whole.

Ultimately, the listener can make whatever story out of this song they want to or think they hear in it. The ending is very ominous and quite hopeless as the lyrics attest.

The "Gold dust woman," I believe in this case, is a woman of privilege and eventually power, born with a "silver spoon" in her mouth, who nevertheless manages to "dig her grave" with it. Her wealth and high position bring her only unhappiness and disappointment as she goes through an endless series of "lousy lovers." Something painful happens, something very bad that is not to be found in the lyrics. That part you can make up as you see fit. It leads to the woman ultimately being reduced to a "pale shadow" of her former self, and then becoming a "woman of dust." Thus, she returns to the dust ... and dust in this context means Death. In her case, in a twist of macabre irony, the dust this wealthy woman returns to is gold. But whether the dust is gold or grey, the ending is the same for all: "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." In the end this is a frightening, eerie folk ballad based partly on fact and partly on fiction.
Category
Pop
Tags
70's, Retro, Synchronization, Remix, Live footage, Montage, Folk rock, Narrative drama, Rock
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