Defying her 74 years of age, Stevie Nicks showed she still has it!

Stevie Nicks caps a Bonnaroo for the ages

There has been perhaps no greater mark of punctuation at the Bonnaroo Music Festival than Stevie Nicks on Sunday night.

Defying her 74 years of age, Nicks showed she still has what it takes to captivate a crowd, her signature siren of a voice piercing the night to stir sing-a-longs and bring reflection.

The multi-generation crowd, many not even born when Nicks was at the height of her career with Fleetwood Mac, soaked in the weight of her song -- her voice and knack for melody still as sharp as ever.

The crowd was still for “Landslide,” a song Nicks said she’s performed at every one of her concerts since 1975, the words carrying as much weight as ever for the star rocker who is still able to perform for 1 hour and 45 minutes in 5-inch heels.

 

"Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’

Cause I’ve built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I’m getting older too"

 

In a concert filled with highlights, Nicks belted out an extended version of “Gold Dust Woman” like she was still 27, then finished with a four-song encore that included a version of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock N Roll” as her final number.

The show was rich with Tom Petty recognition. Nicks told the crowd she didn’t have a single for her “Belladonna” album before her producer had her put a song written by Petty on it called “Stop Dragging My Heart Around.”

“I guess you could say I found my single,” Nicks told the crowd.

She followed that classic later in the concert with “Free Fallin,” a 1989 Tom Petty song. In showing the depth of her song collection, she offered up a jukebox of hits that included “Gypsy,” “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back.”

James Clark

Southern Standard

Below Photos:

Griffin Lotz, Amy Harris

 

Stevie Nicks sends off Bonnaroo 2022 weekend in timeless form

Stevie Nicks sends off Bonnaroo 2022 weekend in timeless form: 'For the women!'

Dave Paulson, 

Nashville Tennessean

Every year, tens of thousands of ticket holders pack and prepare for Bonnaroo with an idea of how they want to dress, act and feel at this hippie-rooted fest. And for many, that image looks a lot like Stevie Nicks.

You see her trademark style and free spirit reflected in countless attendees, regardless of age or gender. So when the 74-year-old took Bonnaroo’s biggest stage on Sunday night — as the fest’s final performer — it was beyond overdue, and not just because of her influence here.

On Sunday, Nicks became the first female headliner in Bonnaroo history. It’s not a flattering fact for a 20-year-old event, but a cause for celebration nonetheless.

“I am very honored to be the first girl to be the last person on tonight,” she said. “For the women! Yes! But of course, the girl in me says I’m also really glad that there’s a lot of cool men here tonight, too. So do not feel left out.”

From our vantage point in the field, everyone felt more than welcome here, especially as the opener “Outside The Rain” blended right into “Dreams” — a Fleetwood Mac classic, to be sure, but also a recent TikTok sensation.

Soon, she was sharing “Landslide,” and seemingly every other person — whether they were watching intently or weaving their way through the crowd — was singing along. As she sang “I’m getting older too,” a voice nearby shouted, “Never, Stevie!”

Another early treat was her collaboration with the late Tom Petty, “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around.” It’s the song that brought her to Bonnaroo for the first time, when she joined Petty to sing it in 2006.

That tune aside, Nicks and her band kept the set fairly mellow, and for awhile it seemed like she was bringing Bonnaroo down gently after four-plus hectic days and nights. But this set soon got to a roiling boil, culminating in the thunderous “Edge of Seventeen.”

“Bonnaroo, it has been a serious pleasure to be here with you tonight,” she said afterwards. “I might just drop by to tell you some more stories at some point in the future. I’ll call it ‘Stevie 101.’"

After Nicks said goodbye, the crowd chanted for one more song, and were thrilled when she returned for an encore – an inevitable one, if you checked online. Either way, cell service was non-existent in the packed field.

It began with another Petty nod, “Free Fallin’,” plus “Rhiannon” and finally a rousing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” (for the second time that weekend, as Robert Plant himself sang it with Alison Krauss on Friday).

“What an awesome audience you’ve been,” Nicks told them. “We couldn’t ask for any more."

Photos:

Matthew Baron, Jenn D Photography

Stevie Nicks Casts a Spell at Bonnaroo

There are many reasons why it became a tradition to close out Bonnaroo with a legacy act. Not least among them: When you’ve been coated in dust and sunscreen and roasted in the sun for four days, it feels good to sing along to songs you know, which may have been part of your life for a long time. When Bonnaroovians shuffled over to What Stage to end this year’s fest with rock ’n’ roll fairy godmother Stevie Nicks — the first woman solo artist to play a headline slot since the festival launched in 2002 — we certainly got that. 

Nicks and her band, led by guitar hero Waddy Wachtel, played “Dreams,” “Landslide,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Rhiannon” — bar-setting songs that she added to the Fleetwood Mac canon in the 1970s — as well as the hard-rocking “Edge of Seventeen” from her 1981 solo debut Bella Donna. The lush, many-layered presentation felt like watching your (or your parents’) album collection come to life in vivid detail, and the songs elicited ecstatic tears from more than a few in the crowd. There were also plenty of deeper cuts, like the poignant “Destiny” from Nicks’ 1984 LP Street Angel, that stood tall next to the hits. 

That would’ve been plenty, but as seems to be her style, Nicks brought even more to the table. In one of many asides, Nicks noted that she was wearing a bespoke dress from the photo shoot for the Bella Donna album cover — and how her mom had pooh-poohed her decision to invest the equivalent of a house payment in the piece, which has since paid off. There were nods to her camaraderie with Tom Petty, from performing a gentle cover of the late rock hero’s “Free Fallin’ ” to introducing the Petty-penned “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with a story that mentioned how she’d wanted to be in The Heartbreakers. The anecdote also mentioned how condescending producer and then-boyfriend Jimmy Iovine had been at the time, one of many instances when Nicks was subject to the misogyny that seems to have always been endemic in the music business. 

The oldest song in the main set was the nuanced and rollicking gem “Crying in the Night,” which Nicks wrote for Buckingham Nicks — the lone eponymous album from her band with guitarist and then-partner Lindsey Buckingham, before the two joined the already-established Fleetwood Mac. The record has since become a cult favorite, but poor performance when it was released, coupled with unfulfilled promises that “Crying in the Night” would be released as a single, convinced her that her fledgling music career was finished. To borrow a phrase from late, great Scene editor Jim Ridley, here was one of the heads on Mount Rushmore, taking a pause from rocking out to open up about the pain of rejection and what kind of perspective five decades has afforded her.

“Not only was it not a single, the whole record actually tanked,” Nicks recalled. “Down the road, everybody thought [Buckingham Nicks] was this great record, but who knew? We certainly didn’t know. If you think your dreams are just trashing out and you’re never gonna make it to where you want to go, that’s not true. … It might take a while to get to your dreamy place, but you will get there, I promise you.”

Later, at the conclusion of an encore that seemed to be finished twice before it actually ended, Nicks & Co. fired off a ripping rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.” It made Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ thoughtful reworking from a few days prior seem sleepy by comparison, and it was the friendly push we needed to get moving back to the non-Bonnaroo world.

KELSEY BEYELER, STEPHEN TRAGESER AND KAHWIT TELA

Nashville Scene

Photos: Angelina Castillo

Stevie Nicks 1st Woman To Close Bonnaroo Music Festival

Stevie Nicks kicks off the final set of Bonnaroo 2022 with "Outside The Rain"

Stevie Nicks kicked off the final headlining set of this year's Bonnaroo to the sounds of Tom Petty‘s "Running Down a Dream."  

She then took the stage in her signature black dress, long blonde blocks and streamers dangling from her mic stand. The crowd cheered and sang along as she launched into "Outside the Rain" which segued into the Fleetwood Mac classic "Dreams."

In the history of the festival, this is the first time a woman headlined the closing set on the final night. Way to go Stevie!!

Nicole Hester / The Tennessean