(Review) Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks at the Bell Centre; April 1, 2011

Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks
Photograph by Allen McInnis

By BERNARD PERUSSE
Full Review at: Montreal Gazette

In the dying moments of the Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks show at the Bell Centre Friday night, 11,000 people used the last shreds of their vocal cords to howl out the distinctive keyboard line from Do Ya Think I’m Sexy over and over again, wordlessly begging Stewart and his 13 musicians to come back.

But the outburst was in vain. Stewart had delivered that song as his sole encore.

Montreal Gazette 4/2/11

There were a few missteps, notably when Stewart ruined Rhythm of My Heart by handing a few bars of the chorus to his back-up singers and letting them ham it up and go all diva in succession.


Another ill-advised move was bringing Nicks out for duets on the wrong songs: Passion, one of Stewart’s weakest, and the undistinguished Young Turks. In the latter song, Nicks mostly danced and handled the mic while he sang, ultimately joining the backup singers.


Unlike Stewart, Nicks is not a visual performer --- although she still looks wonderful. Apart from the requisite spacey witch moves and shawl-wielding twirls, she just sings her songs. And as her opening set revealed, a few of them -- like the tuneless Stand Back and the rambling piano ballad Love Is, which bookended her performance --- can be tedious. Others definitely still have legs.


A stripped-down version of the Fleetwood Mac evergreen Landslide, with photos from Nicks’s past providing a touching backdrop, was a highlight, as were the consecutively played rockers Sorcerer and Gold Dust Woman. Edge of Seventeen was extended beyond its proper life span by some serious wailing by Nicks’s longtime default guitarist Waddy Wachtel, but no one was complaining.

Full Review