Stevie Nicks - Red Rocks Review (Denver Post)

In Nicks of time, Isaak pulls double bill into 2007

By Ricardo Baca
Denver Post Pop Music Critic
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated:05/30/2007 03:21:09 PM MDT

Stevie Nicks - the rock star of few facial expressions - is nowhere near her prime.

The singer-songwriter who gained fame via Fleetwood Mac and furthered her career through a successful solo outing can't help being a little bit of an anachronism.

She's a legend from another decade, and while some of her music stands the test of time, most of it falls into the category of so-1980s. It doesn't help that her witchy wardrobe, including the free-flowing, black get-up she wore Monday night at Red Rocks, looks like something out of an episode of "Electric Company" or "Charmed."

While Nicks has refused to conform to many modern trends, don't ever let her rabid fans hear you call her anything but a goddess. Her fan base is one of those notorious groups - not all that unlike Jimmy Buffet's "Parrotheads" - known for their unconditional love. And as they applauded and worshiped their way through Nicks' co-headlining set Monday night, they failed to recognize the singer's main fault, which is her inability to move into the contemporary realm.

Nicks was one of the great American songwriters, but then she failed to evolve. Songs like "Landslide" and "Stand Back" remain powerful tracks. But as she sang "Stand Back" at the beginning of her set Monday night, the song's aged sentiment was obvious. About an hour into her set, "Landslide" encouraged an impressive singalong, but it was the only song of the night that resonated with any honesty in 2007.

And even then, it was obvious she was just going through the motions.

More entertaining was the always-effervescent Chris Isaak, who co-headlined the evening. His songs "Wicked Game" and "Somebody's Cryin"' were thoughtful meditations on love in the 21st century.

He later covered Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me" and Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel," but they weren't nearly as exciting as his own "Bad Bad Thing" and the humor that littered his set. Isaak, sporting a hot-pink suit and later a mirror suit on Monday, stole the show with his very modern charm and affability.

Nicks, with a ribbony mic stand that looked as if it had been through a long Mardi Gras weekend, was left telling stories about the early '80s. The most modern element of her time on stage was the set-opening intro of a Destiny's Child song that heavily sampled "Edge of Seventeen." That actual song ended up unimpressively closing her set.

Contact pop music critic Ricardo Baca at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.

Crystal Visions Sales To Date

Date / Chart # / Sales / Total Sales

04/14/07 #21 - 33,944
04/21/07 #52 - 20,884 = 54,828
04/28/07 #49 - 13,384 = 68,212
05/05/07 #71 - 9,687 = 77,899
05/12/07 #73 - 9,531 = 87,430
05/19/07 #91 - 7,829 = 95,259
05/26/07 #116 - 7,421 = 102,680
06/02/07 #138 - 5,535 = 108,215
06/09/07 #131 - 5,705 = 113,920

Stand Back Morgan Page Vocal Mix

Here is Track #6 from the promo disc: Stand Back - Morgan Page Vocal Mix. I like this one although the vocals on it seem a little to upfront from the music.

Stevie Nicks Crystal Visions Tour Book

A couple of scans of the Crystal Visions Tour Book.

Stevie Nicks - Stand Back 2007 Remixes

A promotional disc has arrived for Stevie's classic track Stand Back.

Jumping Directly To Gig With Fleetwood Mac

Conservatory graduates Phil Nichols (left) and John Haley (right) bookend Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac and Engineer Mark Needham.

Imagine stepping out of recording school and having your first session be with Fleetwood Mac. That's exactly what happened to CRAS students John Haley and Phil Nichols. Haley and Nichols found saw their ship come in at Cornerstone Studios where they both were interning after graduating from the Conservatory.

"They were amazingly well-prepared, considering the situation we've thrown them into," remarked mix engineer Mark Needham, of Cake, Chris Isaak, and Elton John fame. "You've got 112 tracks of Pro Tools, a 48-track Sony 3348 digital machine, analog decks, and Neve automation all to lock up. They've handled every task I gave them, which is pretty sharp."

Student Phil Nichols comments. "I felt confident coming to work here in LA. The instructors made it clear exactly how it would be in the real world. They have the experience and want to make sure that you understand that and are prepared. In class, in sessions, in tutoring, the entire approach gives us a good foundation for working in the real world of recording music."

"The whole process of learning and coming up now is different than it was 20 years ago," explained Lindsey Buckingham "when rock and roll and the world around it were not as organized. There was a certain amount of luck, and I think you need the same amount of luck now, or even more. But there was also a certain amount of spontaneity that came from a lack of real understanding of what is correct and what isn't in the recording process. There is probably a good side and a bad side to having all of that harnessed, but I do admire the younger kids who are going in an learning a lot more, in a real sense of having a context of what it means to a broader understanding of music, and the techniques involved in recording music. I think that can only be a good thing. It certainly doesn't insure success anymore, though. It's just tough out there."

Haley offered the following advice: "Work harder than the guy who came before you. You are still proving yourself, so you have to have a really good work ethic. Be willing to put in lots of extra hours, all the time. You will be on the job as much as possible. Do your best to really help out."

Lindsey Buckingham Sundance Film Festival

WE Network Special Celebrates Confluence of Music and Film
Artists of Today, Tomorrow and All-Time Bring Four Special Nights of Music to Households Nationwide

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Sundance Film Festival may be known as the ultimate destination for independent film, but come Monday, June 4, at 10 p.m. EDT (9 p.m. CDT), the musical experience of Park City, Utah, comes to households nationwide as WE: Women’s Entertainment presents, “Park City: Where Music Meets Film, Presented by ZonePerfect® Nutrition Bars.”

Filmed in high-definition for four nights during the acclaimed festival, the intimate and mostly acoustic sets by Joss Stone, Sean Lennon, Lindsey Buckingham, Joan Osborne, Daniel Powter, Jonny Lang and others celebrate the unique and powerful relationship between film and music.

Grammy Award winning artist and producer Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds hosts the one-hour special, which intermixes documentary-style interviews and live performances set against the backdrop of the renowned Sundance Film Festival. Artist support filled the audience of A-list celebrities including Cuba Gooding Jr., Jessica Biel and Utah’s own Donny Osmond.

“Music has a profound impact on the film viewing experience,” said Edmonds. “It’s what makes a good film great, and a great film timeless. ‘Park City: Where Music Meets Film’ celebrates that one powerful idea with some of the hottest and most talented performers on stage today.”

“This was a truly successful event for everyone involved,” says executive producer Art Ford. “The artists, the producers, and sponsor, the great folks at ZonePerfect®, are able to reach their shared audience in this intimate atmosphere. Now all of America can share in the same experience with this television special.”

STARS
Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds
Joss Stone
Lindsey Buckingham
Sean Lennon
Joan Osborne
Shawn Colvin
Jonny Lang
Daniel Powter
Marc Broussard
Stanley Jordan
Shelby Lynne
Keb' Mo'
Bird York
Monte Montgomery

PRODUCER
Kenny Griswold
Dave Phillips
Art Ford
Michael McNamara

DIRECTOR
Michael McNamara

PRESENTING SPONSOR
ZonePerfect Nutrition(R) Bars

STEVIE NICKS - Greek Theatre - Los Angeles

May 21, 2007 03:57 PM
by Paul Gargano
LiveDaily Contributor

If Stevie Nicks could choose the perfect setting to perform her mystical passions of life and love, it very well may be the Greek Theater. Nestled amidst the sprawling greenery of Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills, the venue played host to a crowd of nearly 6,000 Saturday night (5/19), the first of two sold-out nights in Los Angeles and only the second stop on the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman's current "Crystal Visions" solo tour.
Despite the 10-piece band that joined her onstage for the duration of the 14-song, 100-minute set, it may have been the towering trees that line the amphitheater that contributed the most color to the evenings proceedings, the softly-lit leaves rustling in the light spring breeze and offering an ambient backdrop to Nicks' retrospective night of classic rock and iconic pop.

"The real 'Crystal Vision' in my life is all of you, and I thank you for staying with me all these years. Now let's rock…" she casually said following the pulse of opener "Stand Back," offering her first of many chatty interludes. "Dreams" appropriately followed, one of the night's more buoyant pop excursions and also the track that features the title line of her newly released hits collection.

While more than half of the night's set could be found on the new "Crystal Visions" best-of set, the night wasn't all obvious hits, with fan favorite "Leather and Lace" absent and lesser-known piano ballad "Beauty and the Beast" serving as a grand and dramatic finale. With her long, blonde hair pulled up for the first time all night and classic black-and-white footage from Jean Cocteau's 1946 French film of the same name, "Le Belle Et La Bete," Nicks' closed the night with a song that explored the gray area within life's black and white extremes--a theme she had frequented throughout the performance.

Introducing "Sorcerer," which she recalled writing nearly 25 years ago, Nicks commented that the song captured both the "scary and fantastic" aspects of living in Los Angeles in the early '70s. Later in the set, she reminisced that "Fall From Grace" was both "the most loving and meanest song I've ever written."

The glue that held the set together was Nicks' vocals, her textured rasp adding imperfect yet inescapably comforting warmth, whether during the soft tenderness of her signature "Rhiannon," the middle-of-the-road country tone of "Enchanted," or the more animated hard-rock timbre of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll."

While she didn't dust off the Tom Petty-penned "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" from her solo debut ["Bella Donna," 1981], Nicks did dedicate a cover of his "I Need To Know" to her friend and recent tour mate, longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who took advantage of some rare time in the spotlight.

The band--Wachtel was joined by guitarist Carlos Rios, bassist Al Ortiz, drummer Jimmy Paxon; piano player Cornell Thigpen and organist Ricky Peterson; Fleetwood Mac percussionist Lenny Castro; and backing vocalists Lori Nicks, Jana Anderson and Sharon Salani--was dutiful with the arrangements, seldom stepping outside Nicks' shadow.

Thigpen accompanied Nicks on the into to "Rhiannon," the vocalists played their part during the acoustic "Landslide," and Paxon and Castro soloed from "Still of the Night" into the intro to "Edge of Seventeen," which featured Wachtel riding his dominant riff throughout the song. As if by plan, though, they all blended rather reverently into the background, doing just enough to create a musical blanket for Nicks to wrap her vocals around.

That provided everything the enthralled crowd could have asked for, and sometimes more, as their "Gold Dust Woman" wove her musical incantations into the night. It was a night atypical of Hollywood's storied pomp and circumstance, and more fitting of Nicks' legacy as rock's reigning Queen. She delivered like royalty.


Setlist:
"Stand Back"
"Dreams"
"If Anyone Falls in Love"
"Rhiannon"
"Enchanted"
"Sorcerer"
"Gold Dust Woman"
"I Need To Know"
"Landslide"
"Fall From Grace"
"Still of the Night"
"Edge of Seventeen"
(encore)
"Rock and Roll"
"Beauty and the Beast"

OFF THE RECORD with Joe Benson

Sunday (May 20th) OFF THE RECORD with Joe Benson will feature the music of — and Joe's brand new conversation with — Stevie Nicks.

Off The Record Site for a list of stations that will be streaming this broadcast

Crystal Visions Tour OPENING NIGHT

The Crystal Visions Tour opened on May 18th in Concord, CA with Chris Isaak as the show opener. Stevie's Setlist is below:

Stand Back
Dreams
If Anyone Falls In Love
Rhiannon
Enchanted
Gold Dust Woman
I Need To Know
Landslide
Fall from Grace
Sorcerer
Band Intros
How Still My Love
Edge of Seventeen
Rock and Roll
Beauty and the Beast

STEVIE NICKS CALENDAR 2007/08

Stevie Nicks Calendar
At Last Herbert W. Worthington has released a calendar which showcases his amazing photography of Stevie Nicks. The calendar contains 14 previously-unavailable photographs of Stevie throughout her career. Herbert, a long-time friend of Stevie, captures her in a way no other photographer ever has. You can read more about the calendar and purchase a copy on the Calendar Website.

12 Year Old Nicks Photos Surface

New photos of Nicks surfaced today. Guy Webster Photography The photos were taken back in 1995.

New Stevie Tour Date

Stevie Nicks
July 27, 2007 at 8:00PM
Prescott Valley, AZ

American singer & songwriter Stevie Nicks will rock the house at Tim's Toyota Center on Friday July 27th. Nicks is known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and a long solo career which collectively has produced over twenty Top 40 hits. She is one of the few rock artists to maintain a solo career while remaining a member of a successful band. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Rock sweetheart, soldiers' angel

Rock sweetheart, soldiers' angel
Sylvie Simmons

Sunday, May 13, 2007


A small woman walks into the living room of her Southern California house carrying two mugs of steaming Earl Grey tea. A pair of tiny dogs, barely bigger than fur balls, skitter between her stiletto-booted feet. She is dressed in a floaty chiffon blouse and rock-star-tight black pants, her long blond hair worn loose and to her waist. Her expression, as she offers a mug and sits in front of the log fire, is open, unguarded and, as always, a little stunned, as if she'd just fallen out of a little girl's drawing of a fairy princess and hasn't quite got her bearings. She looks, in fact, exactly like Stevie Nicks.

In 1985, when Nicks was in the Betty Ford clinic being treated for cocaine addiction -- she was one of the first rock stars, if not the first, she says, to do the now-common rehab thing -- they gave her some homework: Write an essay on the difference between being Stevie Nicks, real-life human, and Stevie Nicks, rock goddess. She says it was the hardest thing she's ever had to do.

It prompts a story about going to her 40th high school reunion earlier this year in San Francisco -- Nicks was born in Phoenix, but her family moved West when she was a teenager. One of her close group of high school girlfriends told her, "You know what? You haven't changed a bit. You are still our little Stevie girl." Nicks says it made her cry "because it was the nicest thing anybody had said to me, that I'm still the same. Because I've always tried very hard to stay who I was before I joined Fleetwood Mac and not become a very arrogant and obnoxious, conceited, bitchy chick, which many do, and I think I've been really successful."

That this should be said so guilelessly by a woman who will be 60 years old next year, and who has spent a good three-quarters of those years experiencing the rock 'n' roll life in all its often less-than-innocent glories, might sound odd. But with Nicks, what you see really is what you get. Her hobbies include writing children's stories and drawing sweetly childlike illustrations. A couple of her drawings, still unfinished, are propped up in a corner of the room.

"They're my Zen thing, what I do on airplanes, what I do when I really think -- think about what I'm going to do," she says.

If she could only "organize my time a little better," she says, she would have had an art show by now and published the children's books.

"It's like Oprah says: If you wait around, you're never going to get it done," she says. "So I'll see if I can't multitask a little more."

To an outsider, Nicks' multitasking skills seem Olympian. For the past three decades she has run, concurrently, two phenomenally successful careers: as a solo singer and songwriter and as a key member of Fleetwood Mac. During a break from touring solo and with the band last year, she spent five months on the road as an unpaid guest member of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers "just for fun." She's been writing a ballet and a film based on the Menologian, the mythology book that inspired her best-loved song, "Rhiannon." Oh, and she also managed to establish the Stevie Nicks Soldier's Angel Foundation, a charity that helps injured U.S. military personnel.

She was planning a vacation in Hawaii before finishing the last few songs for a new solo album, when her record company called and told her it was putting out a greatest-hits CD and DVD, "Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks" ("These records are never your idea," she says). So Nicks dusted herself off, packed her bags and got ready for the solo tour that brings her back to the Bay Area on Thursday.

"Due to the fact that I never got married and never had children, I do have this crazy world where I pretty much continually work," she says. "But I love my work, and it's so different all the time that I really can't complain. And when I do get tired and irritable I get really mad at myself and stop in my tracks and say, 'You have no right to complain. You are a lucky, lucky girl.' I always hear my dad, who I lost a year and a half ago, saying, 'Ninety-nine percent of the human race will never be able to do what you have been able to do, to see all the beautiful cities and meet the people that you've met. You're a lucky girl, Stevie.' And I just try to keep that very present in my life."

But it must be hard playing the ethereal fairy princess myth at the age of 59, isn't it?

She nods.

"It is. Because when you go onstage and perform in front of people, you want to be that person for everybody, but you are getting older, and there's nothing you can do to stop that," she says. "That is something I have had really long talks with myself about. All women have to deal with getting older, famous or not famous, and the way I deal with it is, I feel that if you stay animated from within, people don't see the age. I do my makeup and I do my hair and I try to look as fantastic as I can when I walk out of that bathroom, but once I walk out of that bathroom, I don't think about it again. I've never had a face-lift. The idea of having plastic surgery and looking like somebody else or a caricature of myself is so horrible. So I deal with it by just being me."

Her aversion to cosmetic surgery might have something to do with her work with wounded soldiers. In 2004, when Nicks was performing in Washington, D.C., her manager got a call from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, asking if she would visit, and she couldn't refuse.

"You put on a gown and gloves and they say, 'Well, this guy's name is John Jones and he was injured in a blast and lost both legs. He's had a bad day, but he's very excited to see you.' And you go in and I just say, 'My name's Stevie Nicks. What happened?' Because they would like to talk about it. I was there from 2 in the afternoon until almost 1 o'clock that night. When I walked out of that hospital, after having seen about 40 guys and girls who've lost arms and legs, I was completely blown away by it all, and by how these kids' lives had been completely changed."

It changed her, too. She went back, armed with iPods she'd filled with music for the patients. She and her girlfriends dropped by with movies and popcorn and sat and watched the films with the soldiers.

"I'm not a mother, but I feel incredibly motherly to all these kids," she says. "They are so young."

She phoned her musician friends and asked for their help with a foundation she was planning. And when she learned that a new facility for amputees and burn victims was opening in San Antonio, Texas, she set up her tour "so that I can hub out of San Antonio and go there and figure out what they need," she says.

"I'm very, very dedicated to this. It's nothing that I would have ever in a million years have dreamed that I would have ever become involved in," America's rock sweetheart says, smiling, "but I feel like it's probably the best thing I've ever done."

NEW Stevie Tour Date

TOUR DATED ADDED
Sat 28-Jul Phoenix, AZ
Dodge Theatre
TICKETS ON SALE: 2-May 10:00 AM

Stevie Nicks On Tour

STEVIE NICKS & CHRIS ISAAK TOUR 2007
May 17 2007 - Concord, CA - Sleeptrain Amphitheatre
May 19 2007 - Los Angeles, CA - The Greek Theatre
May 20 2007 - Los Angeles, CA- The Greek Theatre
May 23 2007 - San Diego, California - Coors Amphitheatre
May 25 2007 - San Jacinto, California - Soboba Casino
May 27 2007 - Albuquerque, New Mexico - Journal Pavilion
May 28 2007 - Denver, Colorado - Red Rocks
May 30 2007 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - Zoo Amphitheatre
Jun 1 2007 - Dallas, Texas - Smirnoff Music Centre
Jun 2 2007 - Houston, Texas - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Jun 4 2007 - Atlanta, Georgia - Chastain Park
Jun 5 2007 - Atlanta, Georgia - Chastain Park
Jun 8 2007 - Chicago, Illinois - Charter One Pavilion
Jun 9 2007 - Detroit, Michigan - DTE Energy Music Theatre
Jun 12 2007 - Holmdel, New Jersey - PNC Bank Arts Center
Jun 13 2007 - Wantagh, New York - Jones Beach
Jun 15 2007 - Camden, New Jersey - Tweeter Waterfront
Jun 16 2007 - Atlantic City, New Jersey - Borgata Spa & Resort
Jun 17 2007 - Boston, Massachusetts - Tweeter Center

STEVIE NICKS (SOLO DATES) 2007
June 21, 2007 - Rama, ONT Casino Rama
June 22, 2007 - Rama, ONT Casino Rama
June 25, 2007 - London, ONT John Lebatt Center
June 26, 2007 - Verona, NY Turning Stone Casino
June 28, 2007 - Norfolk, VA Constant Center
June 30, 2007 - Scranton, PA Toyota Pavillion
July 1, 2007 - Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun
July 3, 2007 - Youngstown, OH Chevrolet Centre
July 27, 2007 - Prescott Valley, AZ
July 28 2007 - Pheonix, AZ Dodge Theatre
July 30, 2007 - Las Vegas, (Shoe Convention)

Lindsey Announces Fourth Leg

Lindsey Buckingham Announces Fourth Leg of U.S. Solo Tour to Begin June 1st
Singer-Songwriter/Guitarist Touring Behind His Critically Acclaimed Solo Album, "Under The Skin"

BURBANK, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- May 10, 2007 -- Lindsey Buckingham will embark on the fourth leg of his first U.S. solo tour in nearly 14 years on June 1st, 2007. Buckingham and his three-piece band present an innovative, tightly orchestrated minimalism that captures the spirit of the Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist's most recent solo album, the intricately crafted, acoustic guitar-driven "Under The Skin," which was released by Reprise Records on October 3rd.

The summer dates, which conclude June 30th, follow the enthusiastically received autumn, winter, and spring legs of Buckingham's nationwide trek. The New York Times praised the artist's appearance at New York's Town Hall, saying that, "the strength of Buckingham's songs, his singing and guitar playing, and his strange intensity as a performer carried the evening," while "his stamina kept the music's energy fresh and volatile." The Chicago Tribune calls Buckingham "an enigmatic rock'n'roll icon" whose tour is "worth the wait." The Austin American Statesman says Buckingham "mesmerizes and gets the crowd moving."

Critics have equally applauded "Under The Skin," hailing Buckingham's first solo album since 1992's "Out Of The Cradle" as "magnificent" (The Washington Post), "a stellar comeback" (Blender), and "a mesmerizing return to the side of Buckingham that birthed the proto-indie pop strangeness of 1979's 'Tusk'" (Rolling Stone).

Buckingham, the acknowledged musical visionary behind Fleetwood Mac, will release another solo album at the beginning of 2008. His recent television appearances include "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "The Ellen Degeneres Show," PBS's "Tavis Smiley," "Soundstage," CBS's "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," and CMT's "Crossroads," where he appears with country quartet Little Big Town. A special acoustic performance of "Big Love" from this year's Sundance Film Festival's "Where Music Meets Film" will air on the WE network June 4th at 10pm, featuring Buckingham along with other artists.

Lindsey Buckingham's Summer tour dates are as follows:

June 1 Santa Rosa, CA Wells Fargo Center for the Arts
June 2 Hanford, CA Fox Theater
June 3 Bakersfield, CA Fox Theater
June 6 Los Angeles, CA House of Blues
June 7 Anaheim, CA House of Blues
June 8 Mesa, AZ Mesa PAC
June 9 Las Vegas, NV The Joint
June 11 San Diego, CA Humphrey's
June 13 Ventura, CA Ventura Theater
June 14 Saratoga, CA The Mountain Winery
June 16 Lake Tahoe, NV Harrah's
June 17 Redding, CA Redding Convention Center
June 19 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater
June 20 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
June 22 Bellingham, WA Mount Baker Theatre
June 23 Spokane, WA Big Easy
June 24 Boise, ID Big Easy
June 26 Rapid City, SD Rushmore Civic Center
June 27 Sioux Falls, SD Washington Pavilion Arts Center
June 28 Fargo, ND Playmakers Pavilion
June 30 Milwaukee, WI Summerfest

For more information, please visit www.lindseybuckingham.com