Like a 70’s flashback, Stevie Nicks is on stage again.

But behind her dated Dickensian, style - she loves those platform boots and fringed shawls so much she grocery shops in them - is a 46-year-old woman making some 90’s changes.

Such as taking a bus on her current Street Angel tour instead of a private jet. "It's cost-cutting," admits rock 'n' roll's gypsy princes. "A deference between $700 a day or $5,000 a day."

She stopped smoking "December 12," she says, and her voice has never been in better shape.

And she left her rented home outside LA after the last big quake. "I found a house I really want, a very special house in Phoenix," confides the former, Fleetwood Mac lead singer. "But my mom says I have to pare down - she says right now I couldn't even qualify for the mortgage."

So, it's tour time, then one more album obligation to Atlantic Records. After that, Nicks senses there will be changes in her life. And putting down roots is just a start "I know I’ll always want to perform, to do shows. Maybe something more intimate than amphitheaters; I would love to do bars and clubs."

Movies maybe? TV? "Absolutely not!" she says. "I can't stand to have a camera right in my face, always having to worry, 'Is this the best side of me or is that?' I can't even stand to do videos any anymore."

She also can’t abide talk about her weight, which has been on the up side in recent years. "When you're as short as I am (5-foot-1), 10 extra pounds makes you look totally blown up."

The story about her manager who became an ex-employee when he told her she had to lose 20 pounds or forfeit her career is true, she says. "But then," she adds with a laugh, "I did lose the 20 pounds."

"It hurts me," she adds. "It hurts my heart to hear people say these sorts of things about me. As if, unless you look a certain way, your music is not important anymore. I'm 46. I am who I am."

Backstage after a show, on a sofa piled with bouquets from fans, Nicks looks more like Heidi than music's mystic vamp. Her hair is in braids - it's how she keeps her hair crimped between shows. "It takes two hours to braid my hair all around," she says. "It's work." A visitor wonders aloud why there's no one to do such mundane tasks. "Like so much," she says, "I do it better myself."

It's that self-sufficiency that defines Nicks in the '90s. "I've been around too long not to be happy with myself, and I'm enjoying being by myself," she says adding there is "no one special in my life now." (As for long ago beau Lindsey Buckingham: "He doesn't speak to me; we don't speak at all actually. He only played at the inauguration because I called him on the phone and begged him.")

"Now I'm like the social director on this tour - a mediator for everyone," she says. "What if there were (a guy) waiting on the bus for me right now? I couldn't talk to anyone, I'd have to hurry to get to him, and I'd be hot and tired and then I'd have to worry about him? No way."

So nix those baby rumors? "I'd never have one by myself," she says, "although it's still not too late if I met the right person. It’s also very hard to adopt a baby, even for me, and it's not the right time. I’m so busy and gone so much, I can't even have a dog. And you know, you have to have a house. And a dog."