Stevie Nicks, Glasgow review - ‘dazzled with the evergreen
wonder of her songwriting gift’
Even though she spent more time introducing some songs than actually singing them, Stevie Nicks still managed to hold her audience’s attention, writes Jay Richardson
The creative and romantic psychodrama behind Fleetwood Mac's success is legendary. Yet the enduring rockers' most enduring survivor, Stevie Nicks, belatedly closing her latest tour in Glasgow after medical issues forced her to postpone the original date, still treated her crowd to a lengthy account of how she and Lindsey Buckingham ended up joining the band, transforming them into the world's biggest pop outfit in the 1970s. Indeed, between several changes of cape to emphasise her persona as “the psychic witch that everyone thinks I am” and all the tales behind the songs (both in the band and from her illustrious solo career), with the introductions at times lasting three or four times longer than the tracks themselves, she truly tested the crowd’s love for her, which nevertheless remained strong.
Performed with her vocal coach Steve Real, the timelessly gorgeous ballad Leather And Lace acquired additional depth from Nicks' yarn of how she wrote it for Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter shortly before their split. But a rather by-the-numbers cover of Stephen Stills' For What It's Worth was insufficient reward for an interminable, decades-spanning explanation of why she loved the song.
Thankfully, the second half of the setlist featured less exposition. And it's a hard heart that would deny Nicks the chance to pay tribute to some of her greatest departed collaborators, including Tom Petty, with a soaring, gutsy rendition of Free Fallin', and her poignant take on Landslide which closed the night, emphasising her sisterhood with her Mac bandmate Christine McVie. Highlights included the white hot rock of Petty composition Stop Draggin' My Heart Around and the anthemic juggernaut of Edge Of Seventeen, its iconic guitar riff propelling almost everyone in the Hydro out of their seats.
Opening her encore with the driving rhythms of Rhiannon, Nicks belied her 76 years for a show that was low on surprises, overburdened with filler but generally dazzled with the evergreen wonder of her and her peers' songwriting gift.
Jake Shimabukuro joins forces with his friend, drumming legend and founding member of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, to create a fresh new take on the Blues. “I’ve always wanted to do a Blues album and when Mick and I started talking about working together, I thought who better to work with than Mick Fleetwood?” The result is something exhilarating and unique, as these two titans of their instruments reinterpret some of the greatest songs written by some of their favorite songwriters in a Blues setting.
Since gaining prominence in the early 2000's, ukulele marvel Jake Shimabukuro has mesmerized audiences with his innovative and dynamic style, taking the instrument to dizzying new heights. Over a dozen solo albums, Shimabukuro has shown a knack for moving effortlessly between genres, sometimes in the same song. Shimabukuro has played the world's most venerable venues, from The Hollywood Bowl to Lincoln Center to the Sydney Opera House and collaborated with some of the world's greatest musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma, Bela Fleck, Jimmy Buffett, Jack Johnson, Ziggy Marley, Sonny Landreth, Billy Strings, Willie Nelson and Warren Haynes. In 2021 he was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a Member for the National Council on the Arts.
What does the iconic Stevie Nicks bring on tour in 2024? Gold, glitter, glam, her legendary capes and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. But also a lot of sadness because of the loss of her loved ones.
The Ziggo Dome was not sold out, despite it being a seated show, but that probably has more to do with the ticket price than with the popularity of Stevie Nicks. She is – still – not only a musical icon but also a style icon for all generations, as evidenced by the outfits of the visitors. Top hats, shawls and capes, black lace, puff sleeves, wide skirts, black boots, wild curls. Clearly inspired by the style of the Fleetwood Mac legend, who also displayed her 'witchy' image in American Horror Story: Coven.
Ode to her lost friends
Tonight she will play a mix of 'her' Fleetwood Mac songs, solo work and a few well-chosen covers. But above all she will pay tribute to the people she has lost. Starting with Tom Petty, who plays an important role in the setlist from the intro song Runnin' Down A Dream. Although it is a seated show, everyone in the audience immediately stands up at the first notes. But don't worry: for those who suddenly can't see anything of the stage anymore, Stevie Nicks can be followed in no less than four places on the screens.
What immediately stands out in the first song: her voice is still good, although she sings a little lower than she used to and with slightly less compelling emotions. When Outside The Rain (Bella Donna) seamlessly flows into Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, a mother and her teenage daughter go crazy for me. Stevie also seems to be enjoying herself: even for her it is apparently special to be in Amsterdam. “Let's get this Amsterdam party started!”
Tom Petty
With Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stevie and her band bring Tom Petty closer. She enthusiastically tells the story behind the song, although most fans probably already know it. It was the first song he gave to Nicks – and it became her first solo hit. “That man you're always pining over, wishing you were in his band, he has a song for you”, she was told by her producer Jimmy Iovine. At the time, he was working on Bella Donna and the Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers album Hard Promises at the same time. “I went to the studio completely overdressed, and Tom Petty was so casual!” They recorded it in a few days, although she now tells us that she was actually sad that it ended so quickly.
The parts that Tom Petty sang back then are now performed by Waddy Wachtel, who was also in the studio in 1981 as a guitarist. But he also sings very well. In the background, not only photos of the young Stevie with Tom Petty on stage and in the studio are projected, but also other icons such as Bob Dylan, Prince and Joni Mitchell pass by. Nicks calls the song the beginning of the Stevie Nicks band. Now that Petty is no longer there, she feels it is important to let him know how much she still appreciates that. Later, she also plays a cover of Free Fallin'. This feels even more like an ode to Stevie's friend and idol, with a matching photo slideshow.
“I don't want to be a cleaning lady!”
Tonight's other cover is the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth. She's known since she was eighteen that she would one day record a version of it ('in all my arrogance') and in 2022 she did indeed release the song as a single. That one long outburst in the song gets a lot of applause. Then she really goes into chatterbox mode, and catches herself not knowing what story she wants to tell anymore, because she has so many. It becomes the moment that she and Lindsey Buckingham - then still virtually unknown as Buckingham Nicks, she had a part-time job as a cleaner - meet the other Fleetwood Mac members for the first time. They clicked enormously, especially between Stevie and Christine McVie. But afterwards Buckingham said: "I don't wanna be a blues guitarist..." Nicks replied firmly: "But I don't want to be a cleaning lady!"
Gold, glitter, glam
For Bella Donna, she brings out the first cape of the evening. The real, original Bella Donna cape, she says. She actually didn't want to take it with her ("Been there, done that"), but she was persuaded: your audience wants to see them! And that's absolutely true. The Stand Back cape, which is almost falling apart from age, also makes an appearance. Stand Back is a highlight of the show: screaming guitars, gold, glitter, glam. That line is continued in Gold Dust Woman, an impressive longer version of the Fleetwood Mac classic (complete with gold cape).
She sings the beautiful Leather And Lace with her vocal coach and band member Steve Real, who has a terribly beautiful voice and is actually not inferior to Don Henley. For a moment the song goes through marrow and bone. This sensitive moment is quickly over when the intro of Edge Of Seventeen is milked to increase the tension. Was this an ode to Prince?
“I'm gonna make it”
“There are no live recordings of us, there's just us,” Stevie reminds us, thanking us for being there. The encore is a real treat: Rhiannon and Landslide, the second with Christine McVie in dozens of photos. It's hard to hold back the tears, for the song itself and all the loss Nicks has to live with. All night I've been wondering how she does it, how she keeps going and singing without breaking down. And now, at the end of the show, the answer comes. This is a night where she explains, and she doesn't always do that. The stage is her coping mechanism, ever since she was a little kid. “Whenever I'm sad, I run to the stage. It keeps me going. When I'm here, I know I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make it.”
As Stevie Nicks arrived on stage at Manchester’s Co-op Live on Tuesday (July 16) to her 1981 ‘Bella Donna’ track Outside The Rain, she cast a spell over the packed crowd as she launched into a two-hour set of solo and Fleetwood Mac classics.
A week after her planned appearance was postponed due to an injury, it didn’t hurt the turnout for the concert, which saw the 23,000-capacity venue filled with adoring fans of all ages – some who’ve been there from the start, many of whose parents weren’t even born when she joined the legendary group in 1975.
Segueing into Dreams – the only Fleetwood Mac song to top the US Billboard Hot 100, written solely by Nicks, for the classic ‘Rumours’ (1975) – it provided the first of many singalong moments in a show that, in the artist’s words, celebrated her “halcyon days” with a focus on her first two records.
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around – her first solo single outside of the band – saw guitarist Waddy Wachtel step up for Tom Petty’s parts, after Nicks introduced the track by detailing its origins and crediting her producer and ex-boyfriend Jimmy Iovine for making it happen, during one of several anecdotes throughout the evening.
Radiating warmth and laced with humour, there’s an innate charm to her storytelling that had the crowd hanging on her every word, whether introducing her quasi-political cover of Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, or recounting her early years with Lindsey Buckingham in San Francisco ahead of the Mac’s Gypsy.
Having pointed out her tendency to ramble and the venue’s “strict curfew”, a sizzling Stand Back brought the crowd to its feet and Nicks – adorning the original ’80s black and gold cape – barely let up, with a non-stop run of anthems: a tribute to Petty with his own Free Fallin’ led into an enigmatic Gold Dust Woman (another shawl moment) and the Don Henley duet Leather And Lace, with Steve Real.
It was the iconic opening bars of Edge Of Seventeen that garnered the biggest reaction of the night so far, with longtime backing singers Sharon Celani and Marilyn Martin (yes, the same Marilyn Martin that sang with Phil Collins on Separate Lives) showcasing the flawless blend that’s become integral to Nicks’ live shows over the years.
Returning for a two-song encore, it was Fleetwood Mac classics Rhiannon and Landslide – both lifted from the group’s 1975 self-titled album – that closed the show, the latter featuring a poignant tribute to her bandmate Christine McVie, with a images of the pair through the years flashing across the screens.
Thirty-five years since her last European tour, on the back of her 1989 album ‘The Other Side Of The Mirror’, Nicks’ return to the UK stage is long overdue, but having filled the country’s largest arena – days after drawing 60,000 fans to London’s Hyde Park – there’s plenty of demand for one of music’s all-time legends over here.
Happily, a return looks to be on the cards with Nicks sharing her love of England – “[I’m] probably going to live in Harrods… in the jewellery department!” – and teasing: “We like it here. We just might stay.”
When Stevie Nicks postponed her Glasgow gig everyone with a ticket to see her at British Summertime held their breath, would their dreams be shattered of seeing the legend at Hyde Park. When she postponed Manchester we tried to ignore an impending sense of doom that it was not to be. She issued a press release saying London was definitely going ahead, but still, would she have recovered enough from her recent leg operation to make it? When no cancellation notice arrived by the morning of the event we began to breath easier. On arrival at the event, there are no white notices at the entrance with a stinging message that unfortunately Ms Nicks could not make it, and we could begin to dare to have confidence she was coming. But not until she actually stepped on the stage did people believe their eyes, pinching themselves that this was actually happening.
And the moment has arrived, and the crowd roars, as Stevie Nicks really is here!! She comes on looking fantastic, still beautiful at 76, elegantly dressed in a kind of Victorian mourning outfit emphasizing her still trim figure and sounding better than the Fleetwood Mac records in person. It's like suddenly cleaning a window to hear her live, compared with the dated production of many of her famous records and iconic track 'Dreams' made a very early appearance making everyone's day. She looks happy and well and although still limping a little (although I wonder if I didn't know about her leg operation would I have picked that up). She danced a little for the crowd who gave a huge roar every time she did. Encouraged by others she has brought along the genuine shawls and cloaks from the original Fleetwood Mac records such as 'Bella Donna' and 'Gold Dust Woman' adding to the sense of awe and historical importance when performing these tracks. The sight of her lifting up the black and golden shawl like a butterfly against the dots moving across the stage like the effect of a giant golden glitter ball was the most stunning visual of the day.
She was engaging and chatty telling stories between songs, for example, how she looks back on the days when she was young fondly: constantly touring and with no money, she now calls them the 'halcyon days'. Explaining that when she was young she had been too busy getting fittings, having her hair done, writing poems and doing everything necessary for her music career to ever vote. She implores the crowd not to be like her, but make sure they turn out for a general election.
Her musings turned to those she cared for who had a connection to Hyde Park where she had last seen Tom Petty before he died. She explained that she could feel his presence as she covered one of his best known tracks 'Free Fallin' to a backdrop of huge photos of him on screen. Later she reminds everyone that the actual date of this show is the dearly departed Christine McVie's birthday. She explains that her mother always said that Stevie went on stage when she was hurt to heal, and how her audiences have helped her get over the loss of people she loves.
'Rhiannon' was the first track of the encore and as if that wasn't enough, Harry Styles suddenly arrived to duet on 'Stop Dragging My Heart Around' and 'Landslide'. I didn't tell everyone screaming around me that I was much more excited by Stevie and I couldn't sing a Harry Styles song to save my life, but it added to the special feeling of the occasion to have some more celebrity stardust added. As special as I thought this would be the reality surpassed my expectations by a mile. When you see a legend in concert nothing compares to it as an experience when you are in the moment and actually there. She really came.. and played .. and sang .. and danced. and everything!! (Instant fan girl!) Along with the rest of the crowd I am still pinching myself now and will never forget today!
Harley Young is honoured to share a room with the coolest lady on the planet
LET’s face it. When you think of the most beautiful, enchanting, ethereal yet incredibly badass woman in music, your mind instantly goes to The Reigning Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll herself Stevie Nicks.
At 76 years young, the boho beauty is still taking to the stage to grace us all with her unmistakably iconic look and sound and, on Tuesday night at Co-op Live, she did just that to an arena full of adoring fans, blubbing (me included) as she waltzed out onto the stage in her signature garb.
Her unruly trademark curls flowed freely as she greeted the audience to Tom Petty’s Runnin' Down a Dream before charging right on with Outside The Rain from 1981 solo album Bella Donna.
Despite having pushed back the gig a week due to minor surgery, Stevie showed no signs of slowing down and put her all into her performance from the off, thanking the crowd for taking time out of their week to come and see her before getting everyone up on their feet with Fleetwood Mac favourite Dreams.
Stevie then told the audience that, after the show, they could find her in Harrods. “It’s not even in this town, but you can visit me here because I’ll be in the jewellery department,” she joked, adding “Anyway, jewels allowed, I’m so glad to be here. I’m so glad you’re here. So let's get this fabulous party started.”
Party in full swing, Stevie took the packed-out arena on a journey through her discography, both with Fleetwood Mac (Gypsy) and Tom Petty (Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around) and her solo career (Stand Back).
Between every couple of songs the Arizona-born legend shared tales of how her legacy came to be, including how she was working as a cleaning lady when she and Lindsey Buckingham were discovered by Mick Fleetwood. She’d scamper off every now and then and reappear with a different cape, each more magical than the next - most of which were originals worn by her in music videos.
“We bought and listened to all of their records. Lindsey said they sounded ‘too jazzy’ and he didn’t want to be a jazz guitarist. So, I told him I didn’t want to be a cleaning lady.”
Both comical and endearing, Nicks has a way of telling stories that make you feel like you’re the only person in the room listening to them. The way she speaks of her past is so sincere and it makes you feel like you’re best friends sharing a secret. We’ve all read the tabloids, but hearing it straight from the lady herself is truly special.
After covering Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, Nicks performed a powerful rendition of Gold Dust Woman with help from musician and record producer Waddy Wachtel on guitar. She then brought out her long-time vocal coach, Steve Real, to perform a heartwarming duet of Leather & Lace, a track she originally performed with Don Henley on the Bella Donna album.
Then came the moment we’d all dreamed of; Wachtel and the band erupted into life, performing the most highly anticipated instrumental of the night. The crowd were on tenterhooks as they waited with bated breath, eyes fixed on the door waiting for Stevie to reappear.
Seconds felt like years until finally Nicks strutted back out onto stage to a roaring applause before serenading us like a white winged dove with Edge of Seventeen.
The lights went down and the crowd begged and pleaded, chanting in unison for “one more song”. Much to our delight, Stevie and the crew came back and graced us with not one but two more Fleetwood favourites; the wonderfully entrancing Rhiannon followed by closing song Landslide, accompanied by photos of keyboardist, vocalist, and Nicks’ dear friend, the late Christine McVie.
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
