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Stevie Nicks delivers the hits and stories in Pittsburgh concert
MIKE PALM
Photo: Renee Klaas Piatt
Much as she’s done for the past 40-plus years of her solo career, Stevie Nicks enchanted Pittsburgh concert-goers with a career-spanning show Wednesday night.
Nicks dazzled through a nearly two-hour show at PPG Paints Arena, soaring through Fleetwood Mac classics like “Dreams” and “Gypsy” while delving into her solo career, with hits like “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen.”
Dressed all in black, the 75-year-old Nicks didn’t venture too far from her mic stand except for occasional off-stage wardrobe updates — a variety of shawls, of course — or for light dancing near her guitarists.
Playing the part of enthusiastic storyteller, Nicks offered commentary and insight into many of her songs while introducing them. First, she expressed satisfaction with being indoors after a rain-drenched show in Boston last week where she was forced to wear a velvet hat on stage for the first time in 30 years.
Appropriately, she opened Wednesday’s show with “Outside the Rain,” which segued seamlessly into Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”
After the synth-driven “If Anyone Falls,” Nicks told the story of how one of her most famous songs — from her debut solo album “Bella Donna” — came to life, thanks to producer Jimmy Iovine.
“(He said) ‘Well, it’s a great record, and we love it, but guess what? There is no single,’” Nicks recalled of the conversation. “By now, this guy is also my boyfriend. ‘There’s no single. Did you think about telling me that last week or something? Do I have to write a single or dig through my vault of songs and find another song that we didn’t put on there already? He goes, ‘No, no … I have a plan.’”
That plan turned out to be a collaboration with Tom Petty on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which helped Nicks’ debut record rocket to No. 1 on the Billboard charts back in 1981.
One of her most recent songs (relatively speaking), 2001’s “Fall From Grace” rocked with Nicks offering her most emphatic singing of the night and some minor head bopping.
In 1966, Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield wrote “For What It’s Worth” about the Sunset Strip Riots in Los Angeles, and Nicks had long admired it, releasing a cover of it last year.
“He managed to write a protest song but yet write it in a way where it’s like, you’re on this side, and you’re on this side, and you’re down the middle and he doesn’t really care,” Nicks said. “He’s just writing a song to ask everybody to stand back and listen. Listen to some music. Listen to your friends, and don’t be nuts and try to destroy everything.”
Nicks called Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” her foundation song, recalling a time in 1975 where she and Lindsey Buckingham came into a lot of money but she needed to stay grounded. She pulled her mattress onto the floor, declaring “I am still Stevie.”
“And much to my surprise — you would probably not believe this — but I still do this every once in a while,” she said. “I put the mattress back on the floor, back to my roots. So if you ever need to just bring your foundation back to where you wish it would have stayed, that’s what you do.”
“Wild Heart” flowed into “Bella Donna” before an electric version of “Stand Back,” complete with black and yellow lights on the stage and video screen, as well as Nicks’ black-with-gold-highlights shawl.
In her most serious moment, Nicks reflected on 2011’s “Soldier’s Angel” — written after visiting injured troops at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — taking on new meaning in light of the conflict in Ukraine.
An extended version of “Gold Dust Woman” led to “I Sing For the Things,” which had originally been cut from Nicks’ debut album. The crowd came back to life as the drums and guitar kicked in for the intro on “Edge of Seventeen,” another highlight of the set.
Two of the three songs in the encore paid tribute to close friends she had lost. A cover of Petty’s “Free Fallin’” included archival photos of Nicks and Petty, and the closing “Landslide,” a Fleetwood Mac classic, honored bandmate Christine McVie, who died in November 2022.
In between those two came another Fleetwood Mac hit, “Rhiannon,” which drew the largest cheers and helped send the audience home satisfied.
Judging by the restroom lines, the crowd skewed heavily female, and there might not have been this many Pittsburgh women sporting fancy hats since Easter or maybe the Kentucky Derby.
Cil, a 20-year-old pop singer from Colorado, opened the show with 25 minutes of songs about love, albeit with a younger viewpoint.
Stevie Nicks setlist
- Outside the Rain
- Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
- If Anyone Falls
- Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
- Fall From Grace
- For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield cover)
- Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac)
- Wild Heart
- Bella Donna
- Stand Back
- Soldier's Angel
- Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
- I Sing for the Things
- Edge of Seventeen
Encore
- Free Fallin' (Tom Petty cover)
- Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
- Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
Review: The ageless Stevie Nicks bewitches crowd at PPG Paints Arena
SCOTT MERVIS
With the departure of Lindsey Buckingham and the passing of Christine McVie, we may have seen the end of Fleetwood Mac.
While that situation plays out, or doesn’t, we are blessed to have the mystical gypsy of the band, Stevie Nicks, serenading us with those classic songs as well as the best of her solo career.
That on-and-off journey was launched 42 years ago with the instant success of “Bella Donna,” and now, at 75, Nicks is on a solo tour that brought her to PPG Paints Arena Wednesday for the first time since 2018.
Her devoted followers turned out strong in brimmed hats, shawls and lacy dresses, even some of the guys.
After the entry song of “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” from another fallen comrade, Tom Petty, Nicks emerged, all in black, bowed, and eased into “Outside the Rain,” a deeper track from her 1981 debut, “Bella Donna.”
Although it’s not a showy song, vocally, it was all we need to know that her uniquely rough and raspy voice still has the old magic. It was reinforced when the song segued into “Dreams,” one of the beloved entries from the FM catalog.
It’s not often that Pittsburgh is complimented for its lack of rain, but she greeted the crowd saying she did her previous show, with Billy Joel, in a steady Boston rain, with a hat pinned to her head, “and I can’t tell you how excited I was to get to this show.”
She prefaced her signature duet with the story of Jimmy Iovine telling her that her forthcoming solo debut album didn’t have a single.
His solution was to introduce her to Petty for what would become “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around.”
“I love you, I love the Heartbreakers, I love this song,” she recalled telling Petty.
Rather than summoning the late Heartbreaker on video, she found a worthy duet partner in longtime guitarist and music director Waddy Wachtel, who sizzled throughout.
Nicks, once a shy frontwoman, continued in storyteller mode, providing the background, about the LA Sunset Riots in 1966, for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” The song endures for her, she said, because it’s about learning how to listen. She infused it with some added slide guitar, her blunt, husky delivery and a longer, echoey outro.
About 10 years after Stephen Stills wrote that song, she was joining a broke Fleetwood Mac, driving around with Buckingham in a car that didn’t go in reverse.
“I was the only one that had a job,” she said, “because [what] was Lindsey going to do?”
She was cleaning houses. He was perfecting his guitar chops, presumably.
It introduced “Gypsy,” which she referred to as one of FM’s “foundational songs.” It, of course, was another beauty with another stunning vocal over a spinning, carousel effect.
It was full-on hard-rock muscle for a show-stopping “Stand Back,” for which she donned a sparkly coat for the first of her witchy dances, sending the crowd into hysterics.
The strident “Soldier's Angel,” she explained, was added to the set to support Ukraine and express her disgust with Vladimir Putin, who she is convinced plans to take over all of Eastern Europe. “He is not going to stop.” Rod Stewart had a similar message here a few weeks ago, so this is clearly a hot topic with the boomer rockers.
An exquisite “Gold Dust Woman” was thick with drama and noisy atmosphere, climaxing with harrowing held notes and the shawl dance that’s the Stevie Nicks equivalent of Gene Simmons spitting fire.
Wachtel got to blaze away in an extended opening for the song that many were waiting for, “Edge of Seventeen.” It was an epic set-closer with the chugging riff, Nicks’ braying vocal and a round of solos going from organ to piano to guitar.
“You’ve been an awesome crowd…I love being in this city,” she said, before exiting the stage.
There were more hits stacked in the encore: a celebratory cover of “Free Fallin’,” a surprisingly hard-driving “Rhiannon” and finally, the lovely and bittersweet “Landslide” with just Nicks, Wachtel and keyboard.
This song is course, has her repeating “And I’m getting older too.”
Some of the 70-something rockers still packing arenas have lost a step or two, while others barely seem any different than they were 30 years ago. Maybe even better. Nicks clearly falls in the latter category. Rock goddess, indeed.
