“I don’t want to say I’m in debt,” Anita Kayed said, laughing in her King City living room and surrounded by a lifetime of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac memorabilia: signed posters, decades of scrapbooks, unpublished photos, buttons, mugs, flowers from Nicks’ mic stand and hundreds of records, CDs and eight-track tapes from China to the former nation of Czechoslovakia.
When Stevie Nicks comes to the Moda Center on Feb. 28, Kayed is planning on being in her usual spot: the front row, looking up at her icon.
“I’m in my happy place,” she said. “I’m just completely who I am.”
The rock legend behind blockbusters such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and an enduring solo career has been giving Kayed, 45, that feeling since Kayed was an ’80s teenager witnessing the birth of MTV and Nicks/Mac era of “Bella Donna” and “Mirage.”
“As soon as Stevie ever came on, the image of her, I just went nuts,” she said.
A California kid in Stockton and then Santa Cruz, Kayed went to her first Fleetwood Mac show in 1987, saving her waitressing money to buy herself and a friend tickets. She starting cutting out magazine articles and buying records–whatever she could get.
“All allowance money would go to Tower (Records),” she said. “Having that money to save up for an LP was a big deal. We really didn’t have much.”
Kayed didn’t put a price on her current collection, but it’s grown to a museum-grade archive of rock history Just one Nicks Polaroid, she said, cost hundreds of dollars, with some of her LPs ranging into the thousands. Then there are items like a poster illustrated with a clownish Mick Fleetwood (and the drummer’s signature, from a Costco tour to promote his wine business). Kayed said that one’s particularly rare, though you may have seen it before: another copy was a studio prop on the “That ’70s Show” set.
Her rarest material includes the hand-written journals of a one-time Fleetwood Mac manager, a pen-and-ink sketch by Lindsey Buckingham, and photography ranging from more Polaroids to proof sheets to unreleased images from Nicks’ and Fleetwood Mac’s many photo shoots. A number of these are originals from Herbert W. Worthington III, who shot the cover of “Rumours.”
The Nicks memorabilia market, she said, is highly competitive, fought over by eBay flippers, naive “noobs” and the more serious fans of communities such as Ivory Keys, a Facebook group.
Kayed’s acquired the collection through tireless eBay watching and keeping track of the broader Fleetwood Mac community: managers, assistants, photographers and other associates whose work often ends up at estate sales or other outlets. According to Kayed, Worthington, who died in 2013, passed without a will.
“That was a feeding frenzy,” Kayed said. “It’s super-important to me it’s not just these great collect collectible items. It’s who was close to them and important to them… It might have bummed them out to see that it was at auction or in the trash. Who knows. But I have it now and it’s being cared and loved for.”
The return of Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s secret heart
Kayed’s fandom took a turn around 1997, as Fleetwood Mac released “The Dance” and another fan convinced her to go deeper.
“I met a young lady named Dawn, who was like, ‘Why didn’t you buy three copies of that album or magazine, or why didn’t you go multiple nights (to concerts)?'” Kayed said. “She unfortunately helped make this more of a nightmare. A happy nightmare.”
The self-deprecating Kayed has traveled to dozens of concerts since, including a run in 2003 and 2004 when “I was on tour with them.”
“Not literally,” she clarified. “But why they didn’t just pick me up and put me on their bus, I don’t know.”
In 2011, Kayed finally got her chance to meet Nicks, at a signing at Los Angeles’ Amoeba Music record store. An ABC News report from the time identified “One woman (who) drove in from Portland, Oregon”: that was Kayed.
Her dream moment was sandwiched by reality: a marathon road-trip down from Portland with a friend new to driving, a parking ticket in front of the shop and a case of nerves when it came time to take a lucky photo with Nicks herself after the autograph crowds had cleared.
“I’m trying not to fangirl,” Kayed remembered. “Karen (Johnston, Nicks’ assistant) takes one and she’s like, ‘I’m not so sure about that, let’s take another.’ I’m like, “No! No, no, it’s O.K.! Thank you so much.’ Trying to be polite. It’s a horrible photo.”
But she was grateful for what she got. The photo and a signed poster hangs on her wall, in a room stacked with her carefully organized archives.
Health issues and financial responsibilities–“grown-up bummer stuff”–have kept Kayed away from Nicks and Mac concerts in the last few years, and she’s asked her boyfriend to help her take a step back from eBay. But her passion hasn’t dimmed. Kayed follows other artists–she loves Siouxsie and the Banshees and younger Nicks followers such as Florence + The Machine–but for her, there’s no one like Nicks, whether it’s the music, the fashion, or especially the streak of make-believe whimsy that’s run through the “Gypsy” singer’s career.
“Everybody made fun of her,” Kayed said, and she has the article collection to prove it. “‘Stevie’s got her head in the clouds’ and ‘the fairy godmother,’ and Jesus, here she goes, spinning again. And I thought quite the opposite. I thought, in the Reagan era, and today’s era, that’s what you want.”
There was something about Stevie,” she continued. “She was in the ’80s but she a girl of the ’70s. She’s stayed true to it and it’s worked for her. What other artist has had something work for 30, 40 years? I mean, Madonna, God bless her. I’m a huge fan. Part of her appeal is changing all the time. But Stevie didn’t have to.”
It’s that perseverance and composure, after career ups and downs and the public turmoil and drug abuse of her rock ‘n’ roll youth, that Kayed might admire most.
“She seems sure of herself and got her act together and just always has,” she said. “She’s still who she is and no apologies.”
Stevie Nicks with the Pretenders: 24 Karat Gold Tour, Tuesday, Feb. 28, Moda Center, 7 p.m. Tickets: $49-$500 (VIP), rosequarter.com.
— David Greenwald
dgreenwald@oregonian.com
503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald
Instagram: Oregonianmusic
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