Thursday, March 16, 2023

Stevie Nicks Live in Seattle March 15, 2023

Stevie Nicks Kicks Off 2023 Solo Tour Like a Woman Possessed: Review - Nicks' impassioned set honored Tom Petty and Christine McVie



By: Robert Ham

By way of introduction to “Gypsy,” a song from her former band, Stevie Nicks recalled how she would center herself when, as she put it, she “got a big head about the Fleetwood Mac thing.” She would take the mattress from her bed, set it on the floor, festoon it with draperies and pillows, and then sit down in the middle, reminding herself, “I am still Stevie.” It was a humbling moment, undercut by her comment that she has beds on the floor in “all of her houses.”

But to Climate Pledge Arena crowd witnessing the opening night of Nicks’ spring concert tour (tickets are available here), the slight 74-year-old on stage was hardly just Stevie. This was the gypsy. The bella donna. The witchy woman. The blonde beauty that launched a dozen Lindsay Buckingham songs and inspired Walter Egan’s 1978 smash, “Magnet and Steel.” The iconic figure who could send the crowd reeling simply by spinning around in a circle billowing out one of the many colorful shawls she sported throughout the evening in Seattle.

Nice as it was to imagine her quietly meditating on the floor, from the audience’s worshipful cheers and thoughtfully chosen outfits (leather and lace, velvet and denim, and lots of top hats), the woman on stage will always be more than just Stevie.

Nicks did a lot of spinning on Wednesday night. She reacted to the music ecstatically, moving about the stage nimbly in spite of an apparent broken toe that forced her to forgo her usual high heels for more sensible shoes. “Goodbye Di Fabrizio, hello Balenciaga,” she quipped. At points throughout the evening, especially during the psychedelic coda of a particularly intense rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman,” she appeared possessed, enraptured. At the end of the song, she stood at the back of the stage lit by a spotlight, arms akimbo, and looking like she might levitate off the stage at any moment.

She remained earthbound however, grounded by humanizing moments throughout the night. She slipped off stage regularly, likely to recharge in some fashion before a particularly demanding song. And her voice has been audibly tempered by decades of use and abuse. She can no longer hit the high notes in “Dreams,” but that’s what backup singers are for.

There was a sense that Nicks was returning to the stage to deal with some unfinished emotional business. For the most part, she let the gigantic video screen on stage do most of the talking on that front. Though she referenced the war in Ukraine when introducing the raging “Soldier’s Angel,” commenting that Zelensky’s forces were “fighting for all of us,” the power of the moment came from the clips and photos of the conflict that spooled out behind her. Photos of Prince were intercut with animated images of doves throughout the performance of fan favorite, “Edge of Seventeen.”

But two of her friends and collaborators seemed foremost on her mind. The presence of the late Tom Petty loomed large over the evening. Her band took the stage to the sound of “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” Her classic duet with Petty, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” was placed prominently in the early moments of the 90-minute set, as legendary guitarist Waddy Wachtel, a member of Nicks’ airtight touring band, handled the other vocal part. And to kick off the encore, she leaned into a poignant rendition of “Free Fallin’,” complete with photos of Nicks and Petty sharing stages and a microphones.

The emotion finally spilled over at the end of the night when Nicks started to choke up as she commented that this concert was one of her first times on stage since the death of her Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie.

That moment — and the nods to her fallen comrades — went from far beyond a simple tribute. The compounded losses appeared to have given Nicks a stronger urge to make even a fleeting emotional connection with the people around her, be that her backing band or the thousands of ticketholders before her.

As the band settled into a taut groove, extending out the final minutes of “Edge of Seventeen,” Nicks made her way to each member of the group, holding their hand briefly or simply locking eyes. She then moved to the lip of the stage, waving and interacting with the audience in hopes of fostering that strange but powerful artist/fan relationship. Feeding them the hits and basking in their applause wasn’t nearly enough; Nicks sought to make as many people as she could feel seen and appreciated. Further proof that no matter what she may tell herself, she will never be just Stevie.

Nicks’ 2023 headlining tour continues through June, and she’s also joining Billy Joel for the “Two Icons, One Night” co-headlining trek. Tickets to all of her shows are available here.

Setlist:
Outside the Rain
Dreams (Fleetwood Mac cover)
If Anyone Falls
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
Fall from Grace
For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield cover)
Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Wild Heart
Bella Donna
Soldier’s Angel
Stand Back
I Sing for the Things
Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Sara (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Edge of Seventeen
Encore:
Free Fallin’ (Tom Petty cover)
Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac cover)









Saturday, March 11, 2023

Stevie Nicks and Billy Joel Inglewood, CA March 10, 2023

Review: Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks keep fantasy alive at SoFi Stadium



By: BY MIKAEL WOOD

Stevie Nicks slumped against a microphone stand, steadying herself with both sparkly gloved hands, and bowed her head for 10 or 12 seconds as the final chords of “Landslide” rang out through Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on Friday night.

Concluding her set on the opening date of a joint mini-tour with Billy Joel, the singer and gothic-hippie style icon had just performed her signature acoustic ballad in front of an enormous video screen showing photos of her with Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie, who died in November. We saw Stevie and Christine harmonizing; we saw them holding hands; we saw them whispering into each other’s ear, sharing some joke made only funnier by its secrecy. Now, Nicks — onstage for the first time since McVie’s death — lifted her head, her eyes seeming to glisten under the stadium lights.

“There’s really not much to say,” she told the tens of thousands in the crowd. “We just pretend that she’s just still here — that’s how I’m trying to deal with it.”

Finding new emotional purpose in well-worn material — in lines like those in “Landslide” about getting older after having built your life around someone — is probably the most you can ask of a veteran rock star on the road for the umpteenth time. It’s a way to keep the classic music alive, even (or especially) when it’s painful; it shows there’s use left in the old songs, not just for the audience but for the artist as well.

There are less noble reasons to tour, of course, some of which were in evidence Friday. Maybe you want to show off a voice, as Nicks did, that still sounds great at age 74 — low and smoky, with an imperiousness that can suddenly melt away to reveal pure need. Maybe you want to crack some dad jokes, as 73-year-old Joel did, about his lack of dance skills, just before his band struck up the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” and he flailed around for a minute like an adult-aerobics Mick Jagger.

And maybe you want to make some money, as both stars certainly will on a leisurely run scheduled to touch down once a month or so through November. (Primo floor seats for the duo’s next concert, in Arlington, Texas, are available for $2,250 a pop.)

But for those watching, a moment like Nicks’ moving “Landslide” — its reminder that honesty and finesse can happen in the same place at the same time — is the reason to show up for an operation like this.

Do Joel and Nicks make for an odd combination? He’s Mr. New York, she an avatar of West Coast cool; his songs look back to the tidy structures of the Brill Building, hers the haunted romance of Welsh folklore. Yet each began racking up radio hits around the same time, in the mid-1970s: Two years after Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” was named album of the year at the Grammy Awards, Joel won the same prize with “52nd Street.”

More to the point, both singers outlasted the FM era to endure well into the MTV age — a testament to radio’s career-building power, sure, but also to their understanding the emergent value of a visual brand. At SoFi, Joel still scrunched up his bulldog’s face while Nicks kept twirling in her glittering shawl.

Besides, how much sense does a joint bill of boomers even need to make? (Recall that Nicks toured a decade ago with Rod Stewart, of all people.) As Joel told The Times in an interview last week, McVie was just one casualty of the war of attrition that time is waging against his generation. “Dropping Like Flies” was his joking title for the next possible tour. That would really only sharpen the catch-’em-while-you-can pitch embedded in “Two Icons — One Night,” as the current show is called.

Here they joined forces for a pair of unlikely duets: her “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” in which Joel sang the part made famous by the late Tom Petty; and his “And So It Goes,” for which they stationed themselves at opposite ends of Joel’s grand piano. Neither performance convinced you that they had finally found their musical soulmates; both performances made you glad nonetheless to see two artists reaching toward each other.

Other than “Landslide,” highlights of Nicks’ set included a lustrous “Sara,” which online record-keepers say she hadn’t performed solo for a decade and a half, and a juicy take on “If Anyone Falls” that led you to think about how much modern pop music Nicks was groundworking between the years of 1975 and 1983. (No “The Wild Heart,” no Miley Cyrus; no “Bella Donna,” no Lana Del Rey.)

Joel did that too with “Just the Way You Are,” which sounds now like a blueprint for guys like the Weeknd and Bon Iver and their ideas about the obsessions concealed by shimmering surfaces. Mostly, though, he seemed less interested in casting new light on his music than in showcasing its durability: Before “An Innocent Man,” he said he was worried about hitting the song’s high notes, then nailed each one — wouldn’t you know it? — with precision to spare.

His hits were many and varied, from “My Life” and “Movin’ Out” and “Allentown” to “Only the Good Die Young” and “The River of Dreams” and the inevitable “Piano Man.” For his encore Joel rose from behind his piano and grabbed a mike on a stand to belt out “Uptown Girl” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” as his band cranked the guitars. The songs were arguing that things never change — another fantasy to believe in even when you know better. 






Tuesday, February 21, 2023

STEVIE NICKS AND FLEETWOOD MAC RECORD STORE DAY 2023 RELEASES

 COMING SOON!



STEVIE NICKS
Bella Donna Live 1981
RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE RELEASE
APRIL 22, 2023

Available for the first time on vinyl, this 2LP set features Stevie Nicks live, a recording from the White Winged Dove Tour, at the Fox Wilshire Theatre on December 13th 1981. The show included tracks from Bella Donna including “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Leather and Lace” and “Edge of Seventeen,” along with Fleetwood Mac favorites “Gold Dust Woman,” “Dreams,” “Sara” and “Rhiannon.”

Side 1
A1. GOLD DUST WOMAN
A2. GOLD AND BRAID
A3. I NEED TO KNOW
A4. OUTSIDE THE RAIN

Side 2
B1. DREAMS
B2. ANGEL*
B3. AFTER THE GLITTER FADES
B4. LEATHER AND LACE*

Side 3
C1. STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND
C2. BELLA DONNA*
C3. SARA
C4. HOW STILL MY LOVE*

Side 4
D1. EDGE OF SEVENTEEN
D2. RHIANNON







FLEETWOOD MAC
Albatross/Jigsaw Puzzle
RECORD STORE DAY 2023 FIRST RELEASE
APRIL 22, 2023

Fleetwood Mac's only #1 single in the UK was Peter Green's “Albatross.” This Record Store Day 2023 reissue of the original Fleetwood Mac/Blue Horizon single brings to light the greatness of Peter Green and his time with Fleetwood Mac.  The red vinyl 12” single has individually numbered sleeves. 

"Albatross"/"Jigsaw Puzzle"






Monday, January 23, 2023

STEVIE NICKS 2023 SOLO NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

Stevie Nicks returns to the stage with 14 solo shows booked beginning this spring



Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks will begin her solo tour on March 15th at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and end the first leg on April 5th at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. 

The second run of shows starts on May 12th at the PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina and ends on June 27th at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Tickets for all shows will be available for purchase on January 27th at 10am local time. 

Access tickets through Stevie's official website.

In addition to the solo run of shows, Nicks will also be co-headlining stadiums across the country with Billy Joel starting on March 10th in Los Angeles and ending on November 10th in Minneapolis. 

Stevie's been busy this last year somewhat with touring. She released a new cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" last year and is also set to appear on Dolly Parton's upcoming rock album, featuring Paul McCartney, John Fogerty, and Steve Perry among others.

Stevie Nicks 2023 Solo Tour Dates

March 15 - Seattle, WA - Climate Pledge Arena
March 18 - Las Vegas, NV - T-Mobile Arena
March 23 - San Francisco, CA - Chase Center
March 26 - Sacramento, CA - Golden 1 Center
March 30 - Oklahoma City, OK - Paycom Center
April 2 - New Orleans, LA - Smoothie King Center
April 5 - Birmingham, AL - The Legacy Arena at BJCC
May 12 - Raleigh, NC - PNC Arena
May 16 - Knoxville, TN - Thompson-Boling Arena
May 22 - Atlanta, GA - State Farm Arena
May 25 - Orlando, FL - Amway Center
June 20 - Toronto, ON - Scotiabank Arena
June 23 - Chicago, IL - United Center
June 27 - Louisville, KY - KFC Yum! Cente

Previously announced dates with Billy Joel

March 10 - Inglewood, CA - SoFi Stadium 
April 08 - Arlington, TX - AT&T Stadium 
May 19 - Nashville, TN - Nissan Stadium 
June 16 - Philadelphia, PA - Lincoln Financial Field 
August 05 - Columbus, OH - Ohio Stadium 
August 19 - Kansas City, MO - Arrowhead Stadium 
September 23 - Foxborough, MA - Gillette Stadium 
October 7 - Baltimore, MA - M&T Bank Stadium
November 10 - Minneapolis, MN - U.S. Bank Stadium

Saturday, January 21, 2023

STEVIE NICKS AND DOLLY PARTON IN THE STUDIO TOGETHER

Stevie posted a photo on her social media showing herself and Dolly Parton sitting in the studio... Not sure what studio or where it is, but they finished a song together that will appear on Dolly's Rock album she's recording.  Not sure when this will come out, likely later this year. 




FLEETWOOD MAC ALBUM CHART WEEKLY UPDATE

Fleetwood Mac's Rumours continues it's world dominance remaining in the top tier of many charts around the world. It's sitting in the top 20 in the following countries: US, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Pure album sales in the US were 7,000 for the week, which is a dip of 17% vs last weeks sales of 9,000 units. (Pure album sales means the full album was purchased either digital or physical). The Top 100 Album Sales Chart used to be the Billboard Top 200 prior to Billboard incorporating streaming numbers into chart placement on the now Billboard Top 200.

Country Chart Album/Song Position This week
(Previous week)
Sales
USA Billboard Top 200 Rumours 18 (14)
USA Billboard Top 200 Greatest Hits 163 (145)
USA Top 100 Album Sales Rumours 5 (4) 7,000
USA Top 100 Album Sales Greatest Hits 65 (58)
USA Top 25 Vinyl Albums Rumours 3 (2)
USA Top 25 Rock Digital Song Sales Dreams 22 (Re-Entry)
UK Top 100 Albums 50 Years-Don’t Stop 14 (9) 4,124 
UK Top 100 Albums Rumours 29 (20)
UK Top 40 Vinyl Albums Rumours 12 (5)
Ireland Top 50 Albums 50 Years-Don’t Stop 14 (10)
Ireland Top 50 Albums Rumours 18 (14)
Scotland Top 100 Albums Rumours 14 (6)
Scotland Top 100 Albums Greatest Hits 64 (35)
Scotland Top 100 Albums Tango In The Night 77 (Re-Entry)
New Zealand Top 40 Albums  Rumours 5 (5)
New Zealand Top 40 Singles  Dreams 22 (11)
Australia Top 50 Albums Rumours 19 (16)
Australia Top 50 Singles Dreams 50 (50)
Austria Top 200 Albums Rumours 75 (68)
Canada Top 100 Albums Rumours 22 (17)
Netherlands Top 100 Albums Rumours 18 (13)
Netherlands Top 33 Vinyl Albums Rumours 5 (5)
Belgium Top 200 Albums Rumours 18 (25)
Belgium Top 200 Albums Greatest Hits 74 (70)