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