Stevie Nicks - Still rocking, still dreaming

Still rocking, still dreaming, enchantress Nicks delivers

By Lauren Carter/ Music ReviewMonday, June 18, 2007 Boston Herald.com

At 59, Stevie Nicks is still enchanting onstage. And she still has really great outfits.

Nicks’ nearly two-hour set at the Tweeter Center last night proved that rock’s goddess has maintained the illusion of youth, but more important, hasn’t lost the fire that fueled her best work.

Fleetwood Mac classics like “Rhiannon” and “Gold Dust Woman” were dark and ominous, giving Nicks ample time to sway meditatively and charm the crowd with dreamy twirls.

Nicks can play the hard rocker as well as the haunting enchantress, breaking out Tom Petty’s “I Need To Know” and a fiery “Stand Back,” making it clear that Nicks’ silk-and-sandpaper voice has dropped in register, but not intensity.

The night included a mixture of Fleetwood Mac classics and solo hits, from the country-tinged “Enchanted” off her debut album “Bella Donna” to “Dreams” and a hard-rocking “If Anyone Falls,” with longtime guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel punctuating the song with a driving guitar riff.

Nicks looked the epitome of mystical cool in a black ruffled waistcoat, skin-tight pants - and those boots. There was plenty of time for wardrobe changes, mostly leading to more black ruffled outfits and gauzy shawls.

The show was well-attended but not sold out, with enough women in top hats and black, flowy garb to signal Nicks’ influence on fashion.

The heavy riff of “Edge of Seventeen” officially closed out the nearly two-hour set, with Nicks making her signature walk around the stage only to return for an encore that included Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” and a poignant “Beauty and the Beast.”

There was no elaborate set behind Nicks, just a giant screen which displayed dreamy shapes, images of mysterious, beautiful women, and during the soft cascade of “Landslide,” a montage of Nicks through the years with her now-deceased father, Jess Nicks.

At the end of that song, opener Chris Isaak, who provided an alluring but overlong opening set on his last tour date with Nicks, surprised Nicks onstage with a bouquet of flowers, thanking her for being as gracious onstage as she is off.

Tellingly, Nicks also included “Sorcerer” in her set, a song about the “netherland time” after she and then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham were dropped from Polydor Records - before they joined Fleetwood Mac and became world-famous rock stars - that she wrote in 1973 but didn’t record until 2001’s “Trouble in Shangri-la.” The song, like Nicks herself, has stood the test of time.

Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak At the Tweeter Center, Mansfield, last night.