Don Felder | FOREVER YOUNG

You ever think back and remember how you never thought about age when you were younger? It’s true. Maybe we didn’t need to. My parents took us kids to the movies when we turned 13 and 16, which was fun, but I don’t think I really started thinking about age until I was 15, when I lost my grandmother Leona (my Mom’s mom) in 1982. That was not so much fun. She was just 55 and died of emphysema. She never smoked a day in her life.

But, then, you turn 16, and then 18, and 20, 21 and 30, and so on, and along the way, you think about age, and getting older. John Hughes tackled age, or rather, life in general, in 1986’s FERRIS BUELLER’s DAY OFF. “Life moves pretty fast…”

Remember that funny diatribe about aging by Billy Crystal in 1991’s CITY SLICKERS? He was at his kid’s school for “career day,” and expanded on Ferris’ advice five years earlier: “Value this time in your life, kids. This is the time in your life when you still have your choices. It goes by so fast.” There’s definite truth to that.

Blondie’s Debbie Harry, turning 73 in July and looking fantastic!

I think back to some of my first TV, film and music crushes when I was 13, and some were as old as my Mom, if not older. Debbie Harry turns 73 this Summer and is still rockin’ it. But, at 13, you don’t think about age like that. It catches up to you, though, and then age does become a part of your life.

But, it’s also a frame of mind, too. As I stated in my last blog post, I look and feel better at 51 than I did at 41 or 31. I know it’s not like that for everyone, but I’m embracing age like never before. But, John Hughes and his creation, Ferris Bueller, were right – “Live moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” I’m making sure I stop and look around these days. With Maryhope, I am the happiest I have ever been in my life, and I don’t want to miss anything.

Maryhope inspires much in my life, and inspired this post. She reminded me that today is Stevie Nicks’ 70th birthday, which, in itself is hard to believe. Same age as my Mom, which is pretty cool. Being stuck in the 80s all the time is fun, but you also lose track of time sometimes. You think, Stevie can’t be 70! “Stand Back” just came out! Then you realize that was half her life ago, and more than half of yours.

In a ROLLING STONE article from a year ago, of turning 70 this year, Stevie Nicks said, “I don’t like that number. I see lots of people my age, and lots of people who are younger than me, and I think, ‘Wow, those people look really old.’ I think it’s because they didn’t try.”

For the massive double-album soundtrack to the 1982 classic film, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, many popular artists of the time were recruited, including Donna Summer, The Go-Go’s, Oingo Boingo, Jackson Browne, Quarterflash, Sammy Hagar, Jimmy Buffett and Billy Squier. Several members of the then-disbanded Eagles were on there, including Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Don Felder and Timothy B. Schmit. That wasn’t a coincidence. One of the film’s producers, Irving Azoff, was also a personal manager of The Eagles and Stevie Nicks, who appears on the soundtrack with “Sleeping Angel.”

Stevie Nicks’ monster solo debut album, BELLA DONNA, had been released in 1981, almost a year to the day prior to FAST TIMES, and “Sleeping Angel” was actually meant to appear on the album, but ended up not being used for the record.

Paul Fishkin and Stevie Nicks, 1980.

In my research for this blog post, I found that “Sleeping Angel” was not written about Lindsey Buckingham (as many had thought), but was about a music executive by the name of Paul Fishkin, who she was with in 1980, and who would co-found (Atlantic Records imprint) Modern Records (1980) with Stevie and Danny Goldberg.

I also stumbled upon FleetwoodMac.net, where a bunch of people put the “Sleeping Angel” in perspective, or rather, an interpretation, and it makes sense. Age comes up in their interpretation, and in the song:

“Well someday when we’re older / And my hair is silver gray / Unbraid with all the love that you have / Like a soft silver chain…”

On FleetwoodMac.net, it’s interpreted that “age plays a big part in Stevie’s songs, that life keeps going and you can’t stop it; she knows she can’t stop it. She is trying to embrace old age, embrace death.”

Well, I’m not at a point where I want to embrace old age or death, but I embrace my 50s and love being healthy and happy and madly in love with Maryhope (who was an absolutely amazing super-sized Stevie Nicks for Halloween 2017), and when it’s my turn to be 70, maybe then I’ll be ready to embrace old age.

Maryhope is enchanting as Super-Sized Stevie! I took this gorgeous photo at Kettle Cove, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 10.29.2017.

I took this absolutely stunning photo of Maryhope (also on 10.29.2017) at Portland, Maine’s famed Evergreen Cemetery. One of my all-time favorite photos of Maryhope.

On that FleetwoodMac.net interpretation of “Sleeping Angel,” they write about that “soft silver chain” in the song, and how Stevie’s “that chain now: sturdy, letting her sleeping angel wake up. Stevie is a woman of prophesy – fully aware of who she is and her capabilities…and I believe she doesn’t regret one thing that happened to her. Now she can stand tall and as a survivor…her sleeping angel has awakened.”

For a long time, I was pretty dead inside. Well, maybe not dead, but not really alive, not living life the best I could, or should. I truly know, especially in the last four years, that Maryhope was the inspiration for awakening my sleeping angel…and for reigniting my love for Stevie Nicks’ music. Thank you, Maryhope! I absolutely love you! And Happy 70th Stevie!