Review Stevie Nicks & Billy Joel Arlington, TX March 9 , 2024

Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks’ show in Arlington a ‘Rage against the Dying of the Light’ 

BY MAC ENGEL

Star Telegram

When one of the two headliners is 74 and he isn’t the oldest one on the stage you have a show more appropriate to end by 5 p.m. rather than 11. 

Stevie Nicks is 75 years old, but she forever remains Fleetwood Mac’s middle finger, while Billy Joel, 74, is simply happy to play songs he could perform in a coma, and his audience has heard 3.4 trillion times. 

On Saturday night at AT&T Stadium, the two music icons whose respective careers have combined to span about 100 total years did whatever they wanted, which is exactly what the predominantly over 50 crowd came to hear. 

They performed some covers. A duet. Some ZZ Top. A little opera. Some Tom Petty. Led Zeppelin. 

The every single one of the approximately 55,000 in the place is at that stage where they really don’t care what someone else thinks, which ultimately makes for the ideal night out. You want ice cream for dinner, kids? Here’s five bowls. 

That’s what a Steve Nicks/Billy Joel concert is; bowls of chocolate chip cream you’ve had since you can remember. 

This show was originally scheduled to play last spring, but it was canceled after Nicks was diagnosed with COVID. 

She played 13 songs, and she still sounds like Stevie Nicks. For the most part. It helps her voice has always sounded like it’s crusted with cigarette smoke, so she was never apt to embarrass herself by going for a few high notes that were never her thing. 

Part of Steve Nicks’ appeal is a voice that she doesn’t need to trademark. Even with autotone, no one else can sound like Stevie Nicks. 

She ripped through her hits, and had no problem going to her Fleetwood Mac roots. She can still do “Gypsy,” “Stand Back,” “Seventeen,” “Gold Dust Woman” and the rest. Her cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” was an unexpected twist, but she pulled it off. 

There was an undeniable bittersweet undercurrent to her set. So many of the people she performed with are gone. People like Tom Petty and Christine McVie. 

Nicks performed a cover of Petty’s “Free Fallin,” and Joel joined her on stage for “Stop Dragging My Heart.” That song became a hit with Petty and Nicks. 

After performing her final song, “Landslide,” she spoke lovingly of McVie. 

Joel didn’t take too much time before taking the stage wearing a Cowboys hat. Not a Cowboy hat. A Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. 

“Hat or no hat?” he asked the crowd before taking it off revealing his bald head. “I am Lex Luthor.” 

“Luthor’s” set lasted 2 1/2 hours that was a mashup of classic songs that became American staples. Since he’s only recorded one new song in the last 20 years, he all but acknowledged to the crowd that he was going to play what they wanted to hear. 

He even went off script to play some of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up,” complete with Joel standing on stage mimicking Mick Jagger’s hip moves. A noble effort, but Billy Joel will never be Mick. Billy Joel will always be a more diverse, energetic version of Paul Simon. 

Name it, and Joel with his eight-member band played as if it was their final performance ever. “Don’t ask me why,” “Allentown,” “New York State of Mind,” “The Entertainer,” “It’s Just a Fantasy,” “All for Leyna,” and on and on. 

This was as much of a throw back rock concert as you could have in 2024, right down to the distinct whiffs of marijuana smoke circulating on the floor. 

Just when the audience was settled into Joel’s greatest hits, he had guitarist Mike DelGuidice perform a cover of ZZ Top’s “Tush” in the middle of “River of Dreams.” DelGuidice also performed “Nessun dorma,” an aria that today’s audiences associate with opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. (Since Pavarotti died in 2007, he couldn’t make it to Arlington). 

Even if Joel is 74, listening to him perform “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and “Piano Man” still move any audience. They are brilliantly written poems, or short stories. 

Joel has never had the best voice, but his ability to craft lyrics for a song is what allowed him to remain relevant in a brutal industry for several decades. He closed his 21-song set with a few encores, and ended the night with “You May be Right.” 

By that time, everyone had given him a smile ‘cause he knew that it’s him they paid to see, to forget about life for a while.

Stevie Nicks Live in Little Rock March 6 'Part spoken memoir, part rock concert'

Stevie Nicks delivers powerful show to sold-out Simmons Bank Arena

by Sheila Yount

Arkansasonline.com

For two hours Wednesday night, Stevie Nicks took the audience at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock on a journey through the past with stories and songs from her five-decade career. It was part spoken memoir, part rock concert, but most of all it was, in her words, a party. 

 “Let’s get this Little Rock party started,” the 75-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told the 14,000 concert goers who sold out the arena. “Keep rockin’ Little Rock.”

Dressed all in black with a long, flowing skirt, accented with capes draped around her shoulders, which she changed throughout the show, she brought her signature witchy vibe to the stage. Backed by a six-member band led by her longtime lead guitarist, Waddy Wachtel, 76, she floated across the stage, twirling theatrically, as she sang a multitude of a hits from her days with Fleetwood Mac and, later, as a solo artist. There was a sharing of energy in the building as the crowd, which she called “awesome,” clearly fueled her performance while she, in turn, inspired the enthusiastic concert-goers, which included teenagers, millennials, members of Gen X and, of course, Nicks’ fellow baby boomers. “This is the joy of my life,” Nicks said at one point during the show. “I hope it will be the joy of your life.”

She opened the show with “Outside the Rain” from her debut solo album Bella Donna, released in 1981, followed by “Dreams,” a No. 1 hit for Fleetwood Mac from the acclaimed 1977 Rumours album. She followed that with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a song written by Tom Petty, who sang on what became a hit single from the Bella Donna album. Wachtel joined Nicks to sing Petty’s part of the duet as a psychedelic-styled video featuring images of Petty and other rock legends including Billy Joel, members of Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin played on a large screen behind the stage. 

After that, she performed “Fall from Grace” from Trouble in Shangri-La, released in 2001, followed by “For What it’s Worth,” a song written by Stephen Stills in 1966 for his band Buffalo Springfield. In one of several stories she shared during the evening, she described hearing this song for the first time as an 18-year-old high school student and learning only recently how it was based on a confrontation between police and a group of young people gathered on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. She recorded the song in 2011 and, in 2022, she released it as a digital download and streaming single. 

In the longest song introduction of the night, she shared how she and her former partner and bandmate, Lindsey Buckingham, lived as paupers in the early 1970s as they tried to establish their musical careers. Within a period of five months after joining Fleetwood Mac, they became rich rock stars. As her life became more of a whirlwind with their increasing fame and wealth, she longed for a simpler time, she said, and the result was “Gypsy,” a hit from Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 album Mirage. 

The show continued with performances of “Wild Heart” and “Bella Donna” before she and the band rocked it out with “Stand Back” from the 1983 album The Wild Heart. Next was “Soldier’s Angel,” a song she wrote for wounded servicemen from the Iraq war after visiting with them at military hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area. She dedicated the song to the people of Ukraine in their war against Russia, saying that, if she was a man and wasn’t 75 years old, she would be there helping in the fight.

A true highlight of the show was Nicks’ performance of “Gold Dust Woman” from the Rumours album, a song she said she always performs at her shows. Draped in a gold sequined cape, she twirled around the stage, her voice echoing powerfully through the arena, backed by the perfect harmonies of two back-up singers. 

She finished the main part of the show with “Leather and Lace,” a duet she performed with Don Henley on the Bella Donna album, and “The Edge of Seventeen,” also from Bella Donna. In what she called a “surprise,” her vocal coach, Steve Real, joined her for “Leather and Lace” in a crowd-pleasing performance with vocals reminiscent of Henley. 

For the encore, Nicks and the band returned to the stage with a tribute cover of “Free Falling,” written by Petty, who died in 2017 at the age of 66. Next came one her first hits with Fleetwood Mac, the 1975 “Rhiannon,” followed by the ballad “Landslide,” also from her first album with Fleetwood Mac. 

A video of images of Nicks with her late best friend and Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie (she died in 2022 at the age of 79), played on the screen while Nicks sang the haunting song of lost youth to the accompaniment of Wachtel's acoustic guitar. 

Afterward, she closed out the show with another story, this time about the intense grief she felt following McVie’s death, which eventually led her to tour again. “My mother always said, ‘Anytime you are hurt, Stevie, you run to the stage,’” she said, adding that she was grateful to her audiences for helping “fix her” by coming to her shows. “I love you so much for that and appreciate it, every single night,” she said. 

For those in attendance Wednesday night, there was no doubt the feeling was mutual.

LEATHER AND LACE

FREE FALLING

Stevie Nicks Live in New Orleans Feb 28 'A collection of songs and stories'

Still Stevie: Stevie Nicks infuses youth, memory into New Orleans

by Sophia Finkbeiner

tulanehullabaloo.com

On Wednesday, Feb. 28 at the Smoothie King Center, Stevie Nicks proved that 75 years of age has nothing on her. Dressed from head-to-toe in black, Nicks serenely floated onto the stage in a witchy, flowy skirt and blouse and announced: “Let’s get this funky, fabulous party started.”

 Though she admitted several times during the show that “we’re old,” referring to her and her bandmates, her age never showed. She presented no sign of fatigue, allowing the music to overcome and move her throughout the show, at times air drumming, head banging and twirling. Her voice defied time; her songs sounded just as ethereal and rich as when they were first released.

The concert could better be described as a collection of songs and stories. Between each song, Nicks spent several minutes telling stories from the impromptu creation of the song “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty to learning what taxes were when she finally started making enough money to have to pay them. One of her fondest memories is the way she would ground herself when her fame began to reach the level of international superstar: by dragging her mattress to the ground, draping it with pillows and antique throws, sitting in the middle and reminding herself “I am still Stevie.”

The nearly two-hour show spanned only 18 songs because of her storytelling, which seemed to take up just as much time as actual performance. Though her lengthy stories between each song did not allow for much momentum to build up, they provided something even more valuable: a glimpse of her personality, her reflection on her life and career and an insight into her worldviews. Nicks even spoke about her concern for the war in Ukraine, strongly encouraging American support towards the effort. She dedicated her performance of “Soldier’s Angel” to the soldiers and citizens of Ukraine, ending the tribute with a Ukrainian flag beaming fiercely on the screens surrounding her. She also revived a less well-known song, “New Orleans,” for the audience of “one of her favorite cities.”

Nicks sang her songs from her career as a solo artist and a member of Fleetwood Mac, as well as covers of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” a song that is known as a symbol of the political turmoil of the 1960s.

Nicks told the story of how even during her time in Fleetwood Mac, she envisioned her own band with two female singers besides herself. “And here they are,” Nicks announced, gesturing to the female singers to her left. Though she did not mention them by name, they are Sharon Celani, Nicks’ longtime friend, and Lori Nicks, her sister-in-law. Both women are her long-term backup singers and have been with her most of her career. 

To conclude the night, Nicks had an encore lasting three songs: “Free Fallin,’” followed by Fleetwood Mac songs “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.” The band’s performance of “Landslide” was a perfect way to end the show. It gracefully acknowledged the passing of time; it was Nicks admitting that she is not the same woman she was at her peak in the 70s and an acceptance that she doesn’t need to be. 

As the mellow guitar of her bandmates accompanied her, Nicks soulfully encapsulated her career and concert, singing: 

“But time makes you bolder, even children get older and I’m getting older too.”

Stevie Nicks Live - CHI Health Center Omaha March 3, 2024

 Stevie Nicks Live - CHI Health Center Omaha March 3, 2024

Above Photos: Shelly Blankenship Salter

Above photos: CHI Health Center Omaha

RHIANNON

GYPSY

LANDSLIDE

Review Stevie Nicks delivered a ‘funky fabulous party’ of a concert Wednesday night

[Review] Stevie Nicks: Live in Concert

New Orleans showed nothing but love for Stevie Nicks on Wednesday night – and Nicks showed it back!

As promised, Stevie Nicks delivered a ‘funky fabulous party’ of a concert Wednesday night at the Smoothie King Center. 

Nolaconcerts.com

Photos: Kathryn Holden

Vanessa Carlton

There are no words in the human language that can describe what it feels like to watch Vanessa Carlton perform her 2002 hit, “A Thousand Miles” live. And although that was one of the highlights of her set for me, she is much more than her twenty-year-old tracks. From her electric piano work to her magnetic vocals to her profound lyrics, Carlton captivated the crowd during her 30-minute-long set.

The Pennsylvania-born singer-songwriter walked onto the stage and the first words out of her mouth were, “I’m here, pinch me” before going into her first song, “Carousel.” She prefaced each song with commentary that gave a glimpse into how each one came to fruition. It’s worth getting to the venue early for the warnings of red flags, the backstory of her nickname ‘Miss Vanilla’, and how MTV censored her in 2004 (and hearing some deep cuts because who doesn’t like to be put onto new music.)

Stevie Nicks

She and her band opened with “Outside the Rain,” from Nicks’s album Bella Donna before taking the crowd into one of Fleetwood Mac’s most iconic tracks, “Dreams.” 

“I started [the tour] in New Orleans…almost two years ago. That was our first show of this entire tour. I thought it was gonna be like maybe a year, it’s still going,” Stevie Nicks afterword. Nicks performed at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. She was scheduled to return to the Big Easy in April 2023 but the show was postponed and then later canceled due to a COVID-19 infection among her touring group. Ten months later, Nicks made it back and it was worth the wait! The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and one of Rolling Stones’ 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, Stevie Nicks, graced the city on Wednesday night with an unforgettable show. 

Dressed in all black, the 75-year-old singer-songwriter was joined on stage by a six-piece band and two singers. For over two hours, she performed a mix of her solo hits and songs from her time with Fleetwood Mac from “Rhiannon” to “Edge of Seventeen” to “Soldier’s Girl.” She even included a few covers including Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” 

We took a trip down memory lane as Nicks shared stories about her life – from how she and Tom Petty’s collaboration, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” came to be to writing Fleetwood Mac’s hit “Gypsy” during a time in the 70s when she needed to find herself and stay grounded. The nostalgic storytelling gave fans a glimpse into how the musical legend created some of their favorite songs.

Throughout the night, she also had some quick outfit changes where she would throw on colorful shawls that were tied to the songs she was performing. For example, she wore the original royal blue ‘Bella Donna’ cape and a shimmering black and gold one that was tied to her song, “Stand Back.”

One of the highlights (and you had to be there moments) was when Nicks performed “New Orleans” in New Orleans. Another was Nicks not being afraid to use her platform to encourage attendees to call leaders in Washington and ask for money to be sent to Ukraine to help stop Putin’s mission. And the most heartfelt moment of them all was her dedication to the late Christine McVie during her performance of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Nicks was very open about her grieving process and how running to the stage has helped her through one of the greatest losses she’ll ever experience. It’s true what they say, music can heal and her fans have helped heal her soul. 

If Stevie Nicks is ever in a city near you, don’t hesitate. Buy the ticket. It’s not every day you have the chance to witness greatness live – and even at 75 years, she hasn’t lost her touch!

Rhiannon

Edge of Seventeen

Review Stevie Nicks Live in New Orleans February 28, 2024

Chatty Stevie Nicks acknowledged and defied the passing of time during New Orleans concert

BY KEITH SPERA

NOLA.com

PHOTOS: JEFF STROUT

Less than two years after dedicating 'Landslide' to Taylor Hawkins at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, she sang it for Christine McVie at the Smoothie King Center

Early in her songs-and-stories session at a full Smoothie King Center on Wednesday, Stevie Nicks gave herself and her bandmates a free pass: “If we make a mistake, we just go, ‘We’re old.’”

Superstars of the 1970s, now deep into their seventies, are bowing out. Elton John and KISS have concluded long farewell tours. The Eagles were recently in New Orleans as part of their Long Goodbye Tour.

At 75, Nicks hasn’t said anything about retiring. Nor should she. She is clearly comfortable in her own skin, comfortable being in charge, and comfortable with where she stands in life.

And as she demonstrated Wednesday, she is still committed to quality, to employing real humans to make real music in real time with real instruments, topped by a voice that still sounds real good.

Following the COVID lockdown, Nicks returned to the stage at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. She considered Wednesday’s gig part of the same tour, albeit a tour with an intermittent itinerary.

A set that spanned two hours and 15 minutes managed only 18 songs. Nicks prefaced most with a story as long as the song itself. That verbosity didn’t allow momentum to build across multiple songs strung together.

But it did give fans insight into her thought processes, personality and world view, plus behind-the-scenes glimpses of her life and career.

She recounted long and frequent visits with injured soldiers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. Sympathetic to the plight of soldiers, she strongly supports American aid for Ukrainian troops. Her song “Soldier’s Angel” concluded with a blue and yellow Ukrainian flag blazing on the LED screen above and behind her.

She recounted thinking she’d finished recording her 1981 “Bella Donna” album, only to be told by producer Jimmy Iovine that it lacked a proper single.

Not to worry, Iovine said: Tom Petty, whom Nicks idolized but had never met, had written a song that would be perfect for her. An overdressed Nicks showed up at Petty’s studio and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” was born.

Forty-three years later, she and her band cranked up a crackling version at the Smoothie King Center, with Nicks emphasizing the final “stop!”

She once thought “Fall From Grace” was “too mean-spirited” to perform. But her perspective shifted: “It’s not mean-spirited. It’s energy.” Sure enough, it was the most energetic and driving song up to that point in the show.

She thanked Stephen Stills for writing Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” in the 1960s “so I could sing it 3,000 years later.” It’s a fine song, but that time may have been better spent with a Fleetwood Mac cut.

In the early 1970s, she and then-paramour Lindsey Buckingham were dirt poor when Fleetwood Mac first hired them. Their $250 weekly checks seemed like a fortune, she said. When those checks increased to $1,000, Nicks considered herself truly rich. After her mother introduced her to the concept of taxes, she and Buckingham hired an accounting firm to handle their money.

Having money and success “is a big deal, but it’s not everything.” She then dedicated “Gypsy” to the “waitresses and waiters and cleaning ladies” who work as hard as she once did.

Even at the height of Fleetwood Mac’s success, Nicks envisioned a solo career with her own band. It would feature two “girl singers” standing up front with her, not in the background. And there they were on Wednesday.

As talkative as she was, Nicks never got around to introducing the bandmembers. That brawny band was led by guitarist Waddy Wachtel. A first-call session guitarist from the 1970s to the present, Wachtel has contributed to at least a couple hundred albums, plus countless live shows.

His extended guitar excursion settled into the chugging riff of “Edge of Seventeen.” Guitars also drove a strong “Stand Back.” As the drummer hammered a big finish on “Gold Dust Woman,” Nicks air-drummed, shook her curls and rocked out.

Just as she did at Jazz Fest, she revived “New Orleans,” a love letter to the city she penned after Hurricane Katrina. “If Anyone Falls” had a satisfying punch to it. She held out and massaged the final “know” in “Dreams.”

Since the 1990s, Nicks has relied on vocal coach Steve Real to keep her hearty contralto in tip-top shape. On this tour, he also joins her onstage to sing Don Henley’s part in “Leather and Lace.” Nicks and Real did the duet justice.

Underscoring just how close her connection was to Petty, a recording of his “Runnin’ Down a Dream” blasted from the P.A. to signal the start of the show. Nicks and the band opened the encore with Petty’s “Free Fallin” as a scrapbook of Petty pictures, including one from Jazz Fest, filled the screen.

A faithful take on the Fleetwood Mac classic “Rhiannon” followed by “Landslide” closed out the night. At the 2022 Jazz Fest, Nicks dedicated “Landslide” to her pal Taylor Hawkins, the Foo Fighters drummer who had recently died.

This time around, she sang “Landslide” for Christine McVie, her longtime Fleetwood Mac bandmate and confidante. As photos of the late McVie faded in and out on the screen, Nicks, accompanied by Wachtel’s light touch on an acoustic guitar, navigated the lyrics’ unflinching acknowledgment of the passing of time.

She is well aware that she is no longer the wild young chanteuse she was in the 1970s. And well aware that she doesn’t need to be.