Stevie Nicks will sing songs people want to hear

Stevie Nicks vows to stick with fan favorites for her show here

By Kevin C. Johnson
STLtoday.com
POST-DISPATCH POP MUSIC CRITIC
06/12/2008

Stevie Nicks vows to stick with fan favorites for her show hereBy Kevin C. Johnson

When Stevie Nicks comes to Chaifetz Arena this weekend, her fans won't have to worry about her dropping "Gold Dust Woman," "Rhiannon," "Landslide" or other staples to make room for new material.

First of all, Nicks, 60, hasn't released new music since 2001's "Trouble in Shangri-La"; her latest release is last year's "Crystal Visions — The Very Best of Stevie Nicks."

Second, Nicks just isn't into deleting hits from her set.

"People aren't happy with you for doing that, and we've all tried," she says. "The Eagles tried it, Fleetwood Mac tried it, I've tried it. We try to do it because we want to do something different. But then when you do it, you find your audience going to the bathroom or going to buy a T-shirt.

"They've leaving because they're not familiar with what you're doing and don't care. So all we can do is take the nine or 10 songs they're coming to hear, build a set around those songs, add four or five songs, and mix it around, change the sequencing. Then it appears to be different to everybody."

Nicks, who will rejoin Fleetwood Mac for a tour next year, says her show has changed since the last time fans saw her.

She put "Beauty and the Beast," "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You" and "Outside the Rain" back into her show, and added songs by Bob Seger and Dave Matthews Band.

"Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You" is performed in front of a video montage of American soldiers in noncombat situations.

"It's great, but I couldn't look back at the video," says Nicks, who believes she'd lose it if she did. "It's beautiful and poignant. It had everyone in tears."

Nicks, who filmed a PBS "Soundstage" episode to air this summer, had more to say about her music and tour.

Q. When you look over your solo repertoire with a collection like "Crystal Visions — The Very Best of Stevie Nicks," are there any regrets?

A. I have no regrets. I did everything pretty right. The only thing was in 1986, with the tranquilizers (she says it was Alonpin). I got through the pot and the cocaine and the Kool menthols and still worked. But the tranquilizers stole my soul. It was a very sad time. I curled up and didn't do anything. I could have made one or two more Fleetwood Mac records, and my own repertoire would've been 30 to 40 percent bigger.

Q. You released "Timespace — the Best of Stevie Nicks" in 1991. What makes "Crystal Visions — the Very Best of Stevie Nicks," the very best?

A. Some of it is live, some of it is hot new mixes, some of it is video with me sitting and doing commentary over each video and telling people what the song is about and what was happening in my life when the song was being made. That's interesting and fun to me because it's not just greatest hits.

Q. Dixie Chicks and Billy Corgan both covered "Landslide." What's the preferred version?

A. I love the Dixie Chicks, and I love Billy Corgan's version, crazy as it was. I'm friends with the Dixie Chicks and I got to sing it with them in a four-part harmony, and they brought it back in a huge way. Now the version I do is different, and the Dixie Chicks made that possible.

Q. Your songs have been heavily remixed by dance-music technicians, including the Deep Dish remix of "Dreams" on "Crystal Visions." How do you feel about your material getting this treatment?

A. I love them. I work out to all these dance remixes. With Deep Dish, they asked whether they should use my old vocal, or another singer, or if I could sing it over. I said I'll be there in an hour. It was a thrill to put a brand-new vocal on it, though it sounds similar to the old (one). My voice doesn't change.

Q. Destiny's Child used "Edge of Seventeen" for its hit "Bootylicious." What was your thought on that?

A. I know Beyoncé fairly well, and she's a doll. She asked me if she could do it, then she called and asked me to be in the video. As a writer, 50 percent of that song is mine. Every time that song is played, Beyoncé and I make the same money.

Q. When can we expect the next Stevie Nicks studio project?

A. I don't know. That's why I'm doing more greatest hits and going back in the vaults and finding cool stuff that might bring people out to Borders and Starbucks to buy a record. I can do a solo record, but what will happen is 1,000 hard-core fans will buy it and push the send button and send it to 5 million others. That makes me wonder, why bother? People are stealing our songs.

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You

Stevie performing at the Hard Rock Live, Hollywood, Florida, June 7, 2008

Stevie Nicks talks Crow

06.10.2008 9:29 am
Stevie Nicks talks Crow, Winehouse on way to Chaifetz Arena Friday
By: Kevin C. Johnson

Stevie Nicks has somehow managed to escape my interview clutches these past 20 years I’ve spent writing about music, and my chat with her last week was worth the wait.

Nicks, a longtime favorite of mine who performs at Chaifetz Arena on Friday, called my home office last week in the midst of a tornado warning that made national news. She was watching the news reports while at a tour stop, asked if I was OK, and said if I needed to hurry off the phone at any point because of the weather, it was cool.

She was a great interview, chatty, revealing and forthright. The interview runs in the Post-Dispatch in Thursday’s Get Out, and will be online at http://www.stltoday.com/, but her comments on Sheryl Crow and Amy Winehouse are only found here.

Crow made some headlines recently when she suggested she’d fill in for Christine McVie on the Fleetwood Mac tour next year. But Nicks shot down the idea of her friend joining her on the road with the veteran band.

“Sheryl and I discussed this in the nicest of ways. Sheryl has a new baby, and a new baby is all encompassing. We decided it wasn’t the best idea,” says Nicks. “I had to explain to her the ups and downs of being in a band like Fleetwood Mac. You sign your name on the contract and it’s like being in the Army. You don’t have your own life anymore. That’s why I went solo.”

There will be no second female vocalist with Nicks on the Fleetwood Mac tour. Instead, a backing singer will step up to the plate. “We’re excited about this, because now there are five or six songs we love that we can put back into the show,” says Nicks.

Nicks, whose past problems with substances are well known, has words for the constantly troubled Winehouse about getting her act together before she’s forgotten. Nicks’ advice comes from a loving place, she says.

“I will always think of myself as a drug addict, and it’s hard to tell a drug addict to stop doing drugs. They have to wake up and say I’m done, have that epiphany, get on a plane and go to rehab and stay there for two months,” says Nicks.

You gotta love Stevie Nicks.

Tickets to her concert Friday are $45-$95, available through MetroTix outlets, www.metrotix.com, and by calling 314-534-1111 (go to MetroTix’s web site and get half off lower level tickets using promotional code MAC, up until 5 p.m. Tuesday).

Peter Cincotti was just announced as Nicks’ opening act.

Lindsey Buckingham UTS Tour Stats (update)

Managed to find additional dates and tour grosses for Lindsey's Under The Skin Tour. Additions to the list are marked with an asterisk.

Stevie Nicks at Hard Rock Live (Review)

(photo - Hard Rock 2007)
Stevie Nicks

Saturday, June 7

Hard Rock Live

Browardpalmbeach.com

Better than: Watching Stevie Nicks 10 years from now.

The body of Stevie Nicks turned 60 last month. Her voice has been 60 for a while.

Maybe it was all that coke in the '70s, or maybe it was that her vocal cords weren’t durable enough to handle her preferred mode of singing. I suspect it was the latter — Stevie’s always cited Janis Joplin as a prime influence, but she never had Janis’s chainsaw pipes, nor the dubious good fortune to die at 27. In the '70s, Stevie Nicks performed like a blues shouter even while her recorded output highlighted a voice better suited to witchy balledeering, and even back then her fans worshiped her primarily as a crone in the making.

She’s not in-the-making anymore — now she really is a crone, and her fans love her for it. They went genuinely apeshit at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino last night, with the first twelve rows erupting into near-moshing when guitarist Wally Wachtel ended a long solo by segueing into “Edge of Seventeen." The Hard Rock isn’t known for volatile crowds, and the reactions down front were more intensely physical than anything Aerosmith ever got in the same venue. Nicks fans are passionate people.

They’re also, I might add, exactly the same demo you might have seen at a Hillary Clinton rally a few short months ago. They are overwhelmingly white, female, and middle-aged, with a few old hippies tossed in for grit. There’s plenty of lesbians and skinny young white girls who can’t dance, but are willing to try. I counted four blacks in the auditorium. All of these people are madly in love with a white, 60-year-old woman with a sometimes-grating voice and a history of relationship trouble. Their devotion is so intense that, when fully demonstrated, it looks a little creepy.

In the case of the Nicks fans, you can understand why. Despite the shocking limitations of her vocal range — which I’m pretty sure doesn’t even span an octave anymore — Nicks’ performance is surprisingly muscular. Heartfelt too, which is even weirder (how a singer can stay attached to a song like “Gold Dust Woman,” which implores you to “Rock on ancient woman/follow those who pale in your shadow,” is anybody’s guess). Since Stevie’s touring in support of a greatest hits package (Crystal Visions), her current show sticks mostly to the lollipops that even non-Nicksians can dig, but she never sounds tired of the material. Last night, she seemed most engaged when tearing into the most obvious of chestnuts, like a huge, raucous version of “Stand Back” or the long slow build of “Rhiannon,” which she brought to an acceptably molten climax (she’s been fiddling with the end of that song since 1975, and only now has she finally gotten it right). She only seriously faltered when she tried doing something new, like a version of Zep’s “Rock’n’Roll” which was a whole helluvalot more staid than the original, or a version of Dave Matthews’ “Crash Into You” that made you appreciate Dave’s charms as a singer.

The set was under two hours but felt a little longer, probably because Stevie kept darting backstage to change bits of her costume. Since all of her costumes were pretty much identical, it’s hard to say why she bothered. If I were her, I would have used that time to do something about my boots. Stevie Nicks’ footwear looks like some kind of medieval torture device, equipped with huge, cruel heels that force her to do the entire show en pointe. This may be the reason Stevie refused to move around the stage during the show. Not once did she come over to our section, off to the side of stage left. She remained glued to the five feet around her monitors at center stage, and though she seemed mobile enough in that circumscribed little area, it would have been nice to see her up close — especially since those of us at the sides of the arena couldn’t see the video screen mounted behind the drummer (I assume that’s where it was mounted — like I said, I couldn’t see it). We were starved for visual stimulation, but Stevie didn’t care.

The long-time Stevie fan sitting next to me noticed this, and complained about it. She also noted that Stevie should stay the hell away from Dave Matthews songs, and commented on the unfortunate state of Stevie’s vocal cords. Even so, she said she “loved the concert” and thought it was “wonderful.” This is what it means to be a fan of Stevie Nicks, or even Hillary Clinton: it’s not the execution that matters, but the gusto of the attempt.

--Brandon K. Thorp

Stevie Nicks - Hard Rock Hotel - June 7, 2008 (3 Pics)

Stevie Nicks performs in concert at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida on June 7, 2008.
Photo/Michael Bush