Follow The Shawls... Stevie Nicks Live in San Francisco Dec 15, 2023

‘I feel like I’m home’: Stevie Nicks conjures the magic for S.F.

By Tony Bravo

SFChronicle

Photo: Dana Jacobs

If you’re trying to find the path to a Stevie Nicks concert in any city, just follow the shawls.

The singer’s trademark accessory was in abundance Friday, Dec. 15, at San Francisco’s Chase Center, along with peasant skirts, top hats and lace as fans dressed in homage to the rock ’n’ roll queen and fashion icon.

“I dressed as Stevie Nicks for Halloween two or three years ago, then my brain chemistry changed and I never stopped,” said Emma Sullivan, who was bedecked in layers of black velvet and Victorian chokers. 

Sullivan attended Nicks’ last concert of the year with her equally festooned sister Ysabel. The San Francisco siblings remember listening to Nicks’ music — both her solo albums and hits with Fleetwood Mac — with their parents as children. But for them, Nicks’ appeal is more than just nostalgia. 

“She’s a queer icon, a feminist icon,” said Ysabel Sullivan, “and I connect with the spiritual and darker aspects of her music.”

For fellow San Franciscan Warren Sinclair, his fandom also goes beyond an appreciation of her music. 

“It’s the closest thing to a religious experience in my life,” said Sinclair, who was attending his 20th Nicks concert in two decades. “Each one is as magical as the first time.” 

Nicks, nicknamed “White Witch” by loyal followers, also seemed to be feeling the magic for the two-hour show.

Wearing a black velvet jacket over a black ruched skirt with her long blond hair curly and loose, Nicks had a youthful glow under the stage lights. But she did not shy away from mentioning her age — she proclaimed she’s 75 several times — or her “fairy grandmother” status during the show. 

Throughout the night, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer also referenced her deep local roots. Nicks’ family moved to the Bay Area when she was a teenager, and it was during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School that she met future musical partner Lindsey Buckingham. The two later attended San Jose State University together before dropping out to pursue music, forming bands Fritz and Buckingham Nicks before finding success with Fleetwood Mac. 

Nicks told the audience that while she lived in the Bay Area for only about seven years, her connection to the region remains strong.

“I feel like I’m home,” she said in the first of many stories she shared between songs. 

Nicks said being back in San Francisco brought back memories from earlier days, including the time she performed at the Fillmore in “1969 or ’70,” she said, with Buckingham and their band Fritz. 

“This guy is heckling me, ‘Hey baby, what you doing?,’ and guess who walks onstage — Mr. Bill Graham,” Nicks recounted, referring to the legendary San Francisco concert promoter. “He stomps out on the stage, and I’m not sure who he is but I know he’s someone … He went, ‘I want you to get out of my f—ing Fillmore and never f—ing come back to this building ever. And if I ever see you come back, I’ll kill you!’ ”

Friday night’s concert, rescheduled from March due to a band member’s COVID illness, closed Nicks’ 2023 leg of her tour before she goes on the road again in February. The crowd spanned generations, with fans in their 70s and 80s mixing with children, at least one of whom was carrying the special edition Stevie Nicks Barbie that was released earlier this year. 

Nicks opened the concert with 1981’s “Outside the Rain” from her first solo outing “Bella Donna,” then immediately transitioned into Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” from the band’s 1977 album “Rumours.” 

In recent years, Nicks, like many singers her age, has dropped some of the high notes from her songs, but they’re not too missed under the enveloping musical direction of her longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel. Her voice has become richer and gained color, with her signature vibrato matured into a warmer timbre.

One of the concert’s recurring themes was Nicks’ homages to her late friend and sometimes collaborator, Tom Petty. On the Petty-authored “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” she dueted with Wachtel in Petty’s place, tearing ferociously through the lyrics. Later, she covered Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” with a soaring freedom in her voice. 

Her versions of her Fleetwood Mac classics “Gypsy” and “Gold Dust Woman,” plus her solo hit “Edge of Seventeen,” were expected crowd pleasers. But to many, her lesser-known 2011 “Soldier’s Angel” was a surprise. 

She introduced the song by referencing the war in Ukraine, saying, “If I was a guy and wasn’t 75, I’d go” fight for the country, she said, before launching into a performance accompanied by images of the conflict, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the country’s flag. 

Although Nicks didn’t change costumes during her performance, she did switch out shawls a number of times, reentering to roars when she sang her solo hit “Bella Donna” draped in the original purple shawl from the album. 

For her encores, she sang Fleetwood Mac hits “Rhiannon” — complete with streamer-laden tambourine — and closed with “Landslide,” which she dedicated to her late Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie, who died last year at age 79. 

Before exiting the stage, Nicks said that she loves San Francisco and can’t wait to return. 

As the crowd exited Chase Center, a sea of gold sequins, fringe and leather moved through Thrive City just outside the stadium, where a few fans continued to twirl in their shawls. 

Dave Stewart and Stevie Nicks Potential New Project In The Works

 

Dave Stewart teases new project with Stevie Nicks: ‘I can’t talk about it, but it’s interesting…’

Dave Stewart might be best known for his work as one-half of Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, but in a decades-spanning career he’s worked with the biggest names in music. 

From Anastacia, Geri Halliwell and Katy Perry, to Joss Stone, Bryan Ferry and Mick Jagger, his list of collaborators is varied and impressive, and in 2011 he teamed up with Fleetwood Mac frontwoman Stevie Nicks on ‘In Your Dreams’ – her first solo album in a decade. 

Three years later, they reconvened to record ‘24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault’, and speaking in RETROPOP’s December 2023 edition the musician hinted there’s more to come. 

“She has called me about something that I can’t talk about, but it’s interesting,” he teases, before musing on the success of his various collaborations.  

Read more at Retropop

Charlotte summer music fest Featuring Stevie Nicks

 

Post Malone, Stevie Nicks to headline Uptown Charlotte summer music fest

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Post Malone headlines a list of 40-plus artists that will be featured during a big summer music fest next year in the Queen City.

The three-day Lovin’ Life Music Fest will be headlined by Post Malone, Stevie Nicks, and Noah Kahan, which runs May 3-5th in Uptown, Charlotte. Tickets on sale now.

Ticket information

Stevie Nicks Live in Phoenix Review "It may have been the strongest solo set I’ve ever seen her play."

Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks in Phoenix: The soundtrack of your life sounds better than ever

 

 

By: Ed Masley

Photos: Joe Rondone

AZCentral

Nearing the end of the downtown Phoenix concert on his co-headlining tour with Stevie Nicks at Chase Field on Friday, Dec. 8, Billy Joel paused to reflect on the apparent incompatibility this tour may represent to certain fans on both sides of the aisle.

Even Joel didn’t get it at first. Or so he led us to believe.

“I couldn’t understand the package, as they say,” he recalled after thanking his costar for doing the tour. “OK, Stevie Nicks. And Billy Joel. OK. Why?”

That got a great reaction. Lots of laughter. Then he answered his own question with a shout of “Because it sells tickets, for Christ’s sake.”

This is true. It does sell tickets.

Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks: The soundtrack of your life

But it also makes a lot of sense on levels that go well beyond the ticket-buying super-power that Venn diagram suggests.

They both had massive pop hits in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so regardless of which artist is the bigger draw for you and yours, the other one will also play a lot of songs that occupy a sweet spot on the soundtrack of your life.

You know what came out the same year as Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”? Billy Joel’s “The Stranger.” Think about it. Two career-defining albums all but guaranteed to satisfy the same nostalgic urges.

And Joel and Nicks both know how to work a room, packing a setlist with crowd-pleasing classics while establishing a conversational rapport that draws you even deeper into who they are and what they represent.

Is Nicks a bit more heartfelt? Sure she is. Is Joel a bigger goof? Of course he is.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

And there was no mistaking the camaraderie between them when Joel made an early appearance during Nicks' set to sing Tom Petty's part on "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around,” doing his best to channel Petty in both phrasing and inflection, then hugging it out with Nicks before he left the stage.

It was an easy highlight of the night.

Stevie Nicks was in excellent voice throughout her 90-minute set

Although this is a co-headlining proposition, someone had to go on first, and that task fell to Nicks, who more than rose to the occasion at the helm of a fantastic backing band with longtime musical director Waddy Wachtel often dominating the proceedings on guitar, from “Fall From Grace” to the cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worh” and “Edge of Seventeen.”

His slide work, in particular, was consistently brilliant.

And Nicks was in excellent voice throughout her roughly 90-minute set while rocking an impressive assortment of shawls. That voice has deepened through the years, but Nicks is enough of an artist that she’s learned how to harness the power of the voice she has in 2023 and apply it in intriguing ways to classics she recorded in her 20s.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t wild about her messing with the melody to “Dreams” when she first started reimagining those early songs to suit her changing vocal range, but the “Dreams” we heard in Phoenix felt like the way it should be sung. At least in 2023.

It was a powerful performance, rocking with conviction in all the right places.

Because Nicks' image tends to leave a lot of writers searching for more synonyms for haunting and mysterious, we rarely hear about how much a song like “Gold Dust Woman” rocks in the hands of her latest collection of backing musicians.

But in Phoenix, “Gold Dust Woman” was an epic 12-minute rendition that used the Fleetwood Mac recording as a starting point and went off on a far more psychedelic journey that built to a fiery climax that was both majestic and intense. It was a highlight of her 15-song Phoenix setlist.

When Stevie went solo:How Stevie Nicks fueled her solo career with 'Stop Draggin' My Heart Around'

Stevie Nicks honored the memory of her mother, Tom Petty and Christine McVie

She took the stage to a recording of Tom Petty doing “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and set the tone for her performance with a dramatic rendition of “Outside the Rain,” which segued seamlessly into “Dreams,” the hit she took to No. 1 with Fleetwood Mac.

That was the first of several Fleetwood Mac songs in a set that found her signing off with two selections she wrote for the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album that introduced the “Rumours” lineup, “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” the latter of which was accompanied by vintage photographs of Nicks and the late Christine McVie.

She also made her way through countless highlights of her solo years, from the pulsing synth and slide guitar of a “Stand Back” that appeared to have a harder edge than the recording, to the a cappella break of “If Anyone Falls.”

And the heartfelt nod to her friendship with Petty, whose image flashed across the screen as she sang “Free Fallin’,” was exactly as sweet as she meant it to be.

It was after “Dreams” that Nicks reminded everyone that she was born in Phoenix.

“As soon as I get here, I think I’m gonna miss the ocean,’” she said. “And I get here and I don’t miss the ocean.”

As Nicks was preparing to finish her encore with “Landslide,” a bittersweet highlight of that first release with Fleetwood Mac, she dedicated the song to her brother, Christopher, with whom she shared a home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, for 25 years.

It’s as emotional a song as you could ever hope to hear. And after bringing her performance to a vulnerable finish with that undisputed classic, she talked about having met McVie in 1975.

“It’s kind of an empty world without her,” she said.

Then she teared up while recalling the words of her mother, Barbara Nicks, who died in 2012.

“And I want you to also know that my mom always used to say to me, ‘When you are hurt, you run to the stage.’ And I run to the stage every night.”  

It may have been the strongest solo set I’ve ever seen her play.

Stevie Nicks was a tough act to follow. But Billy Joel managed

Stevie Nicks Made History at KIA Forum Los Angeles

Stevie Nicks Weaves Memories + Music with Emotional Concert at the Forum in LA — and Makes History in the Process

 

By Adrian Garro

Rockcellar

Photos: Ashley Osborn 

A decoration on one of the pillars outside the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., on Dec. 2 highlighted the many tours that have brought Stevie Nicks to the venue’s stage over the years.

After an incredible, sold-out evening this past Saturday evening, Nicks has now played the Forum 25 times — the most concerts put on at the venue by a female artist, according to the facility itself.

From her (many) tour stops at the Forum with Fleetwood Mac to her own robust solo career and beyond, Nicks knows the Forum more than most. Throughout her two-hour concert, you could feel the comfort and familiarity she felt as she dazzled her adoring audience with a mix of solo hits and favorites and the Fleetwood Mac classics that made her one of the most beloved singers/entertainers in history.

“I sing and I dance around my apartment, my house, and I do it because it makes me feel like I’m 25 and that’s good — because I’m not,” Nicks cracked at one point, one of her many moments of amusing banter between the 17 songs she and her band performed.

Stevie has been on the road for parts of the past two years or so, either on headlining dates, appearing at festivals or on a co-headline bill with Billy Joel. This Los Angeles stop was a headlining show, which afforded Nicks the chance to take her time and really dig deep — both in terms of the songs she sang and the thoughtful stories and anecdotes she provided between them. It effectively made the Forum feel much more intimate than it already does as if we were all gathered around a storytelling session with one of the greats.

Helping to create this atmosphere of warmth was an audience featuring quite a few women in obviously Stevie-inspired outfits, head-to-toe shawls, scarves and the general style that she has proudly and unapologetically shown off for decades.

Support for the night came from Ingrid Andress, a Nashville-based singer/songwriter with a few Billboard hits and four Grammy nominations to her name. Andress, who wore a Slipknot shirt that she’d modified into a fashionable performance outfit, was a revelation, performing on piano and on vocals accompanied by a guitarist.

She, too, told stories between songs (“I have four siblings and we were all homeschooled for a bit, so if you think I’m weird — that’s why”), raved about the thrill of opening for Stevie Nicks and turned in the sort of performance that clearly won her a nice chunk of new fans and set the tone for Nicks’ headlining set.

Nicks made it abundantly clear that performing is where she feels the most at ease, even at age 75. At one point she quoted her mother, saying, “My mom used to say to me, ‘Stevie, when you’re hurt, you run to the stage.’ And this has been very hard for me, with the loss of Christine. So, I run to the stage, and I basically run to you. And I thank you for making me better, every single time I come on stage. Thank you so much, you’re always in my heart.”

As Stevie explained, her current tour was put together as a means of coping with the loss of her dear friend and longtime Fleetwood Mac band mate, Christine McVie, who passed away in November 2022. Throughout the show and especially during the encore finale “Landslide,” photos of Stevie and Christine from all eras of their time together flashed on the screen behind the stage, the songs taking on a eulogistic tone with the emotions clearly being expressed by the singer.

The early days of Fleetwood Mac after she and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band, she explained, provided steadily increasing paychecks as the group became more successful — a far cry from her previous experiences being “cut off” by her family after moving to Los Angeles in pursuit of a music career. As the paychecks grew in volume and finances became more stable, though, Stevie said she found herself sometimes going to her bedroom, stripping her mattress off the bed frame, placing it straight on the ground and lying down on it as a means of keeping herself grounded despite her world expanding in all directions.

“I’m still Stevie, I’m still me,” she recalled saying to herself in those grounded moments. “It all has to do with the gypsy in me, I guess.”

These were the sorts of stories that made up a good portion of her set, each more entertaining than the last. Just as there were visual tributes to McVie, there were also notable moments of homage to the late Tom Petty — with both Nicks’ collaboration with him on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and a beautiful cover of “Free Fallin” in the encore, photos on the screen reflecting various live performances they’d given together over the years.

From start to finish, this was as meaningful and expressive a concert as one could expect. Throughout, Stevie’s voice sounded pristine — so much so that some in the crowd said things like, “She’s amazing, there’s no weakness in her voice whatsoever.”

Stevie Nicks has helped soundtrack the lives of millions — and this show demonstrated that as important as her music may be to her audience, it’s that same audience that is just as crucial in keeping her spark alight.

Or, as she said more succinctly during “Edge of Seventeen”:

“I just want you to know that this is what I sing for.”

Stevie Nicks’ set list:

Outside the Rain

Dreams (Fleetwood Mac song)

If Anyone Falls

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

Fall From Grace

For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield cover)

Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac song)

Wild Heart

Bella Donna

Stand Back

Soldier’s Angel

Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac song)

I Sing for the Things

Edge of Seventeen

Encore:

Free Fallin’ (Tom Petty cover)

Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac song)

Landslide (Fleetwood Mac song) 

Review Stevie Nicks San Diego Nov 29, 2023

One night with Stevie Nicks entranced audiences with her mystical vocals, lost loves and ‘Dreams’

by Katerina Portela

The Daily Aztec

Magical.”

That is the word that best conveys the feeling in the air on the night of Nov. 29 when Stevie Nicks performed in San Diego State University’s Viejas Arena.

The crowd gathering before the concert was an ebb and flow of glitter, draped in beaded scarves and dark hats — a reflection of Nicks’ own iconic style. 

A remarkable range of ages was present that night, from Nicks’ older white-haired fans to newer fans running in flowing dresses, all of whom contained the same excitement to see the so-called “White Witch.” 

“When did I become a Stevie fan? I’ve been a fan my whole life!” said Denise Hughes, attendee and SDSU alumni. “Well, I was born in 1980, so you could say I became a fan in 1982!”

Former frontwoman of Fleetwood Mac, one of the biggest bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Nicks launched her solo career with her album titled “Bella Donna” in 1981. The album and her following work established her as both an extraordinary frontwoman and a platinum-album-selling solo songwriter and performer. 

After such an illustrious career, Nicks shows no signs of slowing down as she continues to write new music and perform today.

“I love Stevie’s independence,” said fan Hillary Addelman. “(I love) that she’s a woman with a vision and that she branched out with Tom Petty and other musicians, following her own dream. If it’s anything like her last concert, her storyline that goes with every song of hers makes it an intimate experience. It’s not just a song, it’s a story.”

The love for Stevie Nicks had not been contained within the older generation, as the crowds of parents and children showed, but has passed down from generation through records spinning in growing households and children coming to share their parents’ love for Nicks’ music.

“Fleetwood Mac was how I woke up every morning, so I have my dad to thank for that,”  Addelman said.