A trunk of treasures from Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders at TD Garden


Stevie Nicks’s current tour is called the 24 Karat Gold Tour, a reference to the vault of songs that the Los Angeles-based artist has amassed over her career as a singer, songwriter, and muse. The vault’s full name? “The Gothic Trunk of 24 Karat Gold Songs” — an appellation that sums up her legacy’s many riches, among them the mega-selling albums she recorded with her band Fleetwood Mac, her indelible solo hits, her collaborations with the likes of Tom Petty and Don Henley, and her penchant for flowy outfits.

Nicks’s first two solo albums, 1981’s “Bella Donna” and 1983’s “The Wild Heart,” were reissued earlier this month. To look back on them now is to remember how blockbuster they were, spawning sinewy, catchy singles that ruled the then-nascent MTV and allowing Nicks’s singular take on American gothic — a swirl of black lace, sweeping capes, and blonde hair — to captivate a broadcast audience. Tuesday night’s exuberant show focused on those two albums while also looking backward and forward at her decades-spanning body of work.

The band, led by her longtime music director Waddy Wachtel, muscled through the set, adding heft to Fleetwood Mac chestnuts like “Gold Dust Woman” and “Rhiannon” and fleshing out the taut “Stand Back” with a guitar solo worthy of its inspiration, Prince. (A photo of the late polymath performing with Nicks appeared on the video backdrop at the song’s conclusion, and images of him also floated onscreen during “Edge of Seventeen.”) Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, the proto-Britpop outfit who powered through an hourlong set before Nicks took the stage, helped fill in for Tom Petty on a particularly boisterous version of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

Between songs, Nicks offered up a slew of origin stories — workshopping “Leather and Lace” with her then-boyfriend Henley, who would later duet with her on the recorded version; the tour-occasioned breakups that inspired the recently unearthed “Belle Fleur.” (”That’s kind of the story of how relationships end when you’re with me,” she said.) A stirring version of 2005’s “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” which ended with a fur-swaddled Nicks thrashing as the music churned around her, was followed by her confession that it was probably her favorite song of the past quarter-century, and that it was inspired by “Twilight,” the brooding vampire romance that definitely has a bit of Nicks in its DNA.

But perhaps the biggest treat of the night, aside from Nicks strutting through 19 pieces of her catalog, was the way Nicks related to the audience as a clutch of potential peers, creative fireworks waiting to be lit. “If you are a creative person — which you all are — you can always go out and follow your dream,” said Nicks after performing the 1973 Buckingham/Nicks track “Crying in the Night.” “And 43 years later, you can stand on a stage, or in your house, and do something you wanted to do since you were 21 years old when you’re 68 years old.” The message was only made stronger by its messenger, a woman who honors the power of words with every song she writes, and who remains one of rock ’n’ roll’s brightest lights.

STEVIE NICKS

With the Pretenders. At TD Garden, Nov. 15


https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/mus...4XO/story.html

MUSIC SCENE: Steve Nicks, Pretenders a hit at TD Garden

They're calling the Stevie Nicks tour, with opening act Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, "the 24 Karat Gold Tour," as a nod to Nicks' most recent album, but they could just as well dub it Rock Queens of the Last Four Decades.

Boston's TD Garden was about 90 percent full for Tuesday night's concert by the two headliners, and the the 17,000 or so fans on hand got a full night of music, from The Pretenders' hour-long set that started at 7:15 p.m., to the more than two hours from Nicks that concluded just shy of the 11 p.m. arena curfew.

Nicks' set was, as she alluded to several times, as much a storytelling review of her career as it was a collection of hits. Of course she played most of her signature tunes, but she also lent a historical aura to the night by injecting some lesser known numbers that had significance to her own journey. That most recent album of hers, "24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault," released in October 2014, included many tunes she had written and sometimes recorded, but never released before, for various reasons.

Nicks is a good storyteller, with plenty of rich details, but she tends to digress also, and some of the intros may have been longer than the actual songs. Not that many people seemed to mind. From the moment Nicks appeared, in a black dress with black shawl and six-inch platform heels, the audience was enthralled. And when she noted after her first song that travel difficulties getting into Boston had melted away in her ride through the city, as she marveled at the windows on Beacon Street, to the point where she now wants to get herself an apartment there, she had the throng firmly in her back pocket.

The 19-song setlist for this tour has not changed much, night by night, but it is a smart combination of the obvious and the eclectic. If you're a casual fan just hoping to hear the hits, you heard most of the biggest ones. But if you were curious enough about Nicks' career and its various facets, there were also very interesting nuggets of how she became the songwriter she is.

The opening "Gold and Braid" was kind of a lesser chestnut, but an appealingly midtempo rocker with a fiery solo from guitarist Waddy Wachtel. Backed by six musicians and two backup singers, Nicks really hit her stride with "If Anyone Falls," her slightly raspy contralto ringing out clearly yet with subtle shifts and tones even over the band. That song ended with the three singers doing a brief a capella section which was exceedingly lovely.

Nicks seemed to tease the crowd that Tom Petty might show up to sing their most famous duet, but it was Chrissie Hynde who strolled out to join her for a dazzling "Stop Dragging My Heart Around." Nicks's simple stage set had ornate framing around it, making it that much easier to project baroque patterns and colors, as a series of four large, round, gourd-like structures dropped down from the ceiling, and later ten different smaller bulbs, all illuminated with whatever colors were that song's theme. Vintage video and photos of the singer also was played on the main screen behind the stage, giving the whole evening that sort of imaginary sepia tone.

The show also made some well crafted segues, such as when the ethereal "Outside the Rain" smoothly morphed into the familiar Fleetwood Mac flow of "Dreams." (Cool factoid: that Nicks-penned number was the Mac's only number one hit.) Nicks has eight solo albums to draw form too, and "Wild Heart" and its thumping march rhythm seemed to have a much more visceral pull Tuesday night than on the original record. Once more, with Wachtel's guitar as the focal point for the shift, that song almost imperceptibly became "Bella Donna," which rose to an incendiary finish with Wachtel's slide guitar and bent note phrasing.

Nicks, having shifted to a cape of blue chiffon which she noted was a relic from 1981, uncorked a vintage nugget with "Enchanted," which managed to be a driving rocker, even as it contained some delectable syncopation. Nicks explained she had written "New Orleans" around the time of Hurricane Katrina, but hoped it carried a celebratory tone that made it relevant long after, and the song, sort of a talking blues/folk tune amped up to rock tempos, mostly fit the bill.

"Starshine," Nicks related, came from a 1979 session with the Petty band, but had never appeared anywhere until the retrospective "24 Karat" CD, and the version done last night was certainly an infectious rocker as good as anything on Nicks' other albums.

Nicks, floating on and offstage, with a new cape or shawl each time, appeared after a long piano intro to "Moonlight (A Vampire Dream)," in a white, fur-trimmed floor-length robe. "Moonlight" in truth could be called a suite, with several distinct movements and a surreal storyline that played to all the singer's strengths. Nicks later confided the ballad was inspired by the "Twilight" series of vampire romances, and was her favorite songwriting product.

Nicks was strutting her stuff in a lighter, black and gold shawl for "Stand Back," as her rhythm section seemed to cut across the pattern to give it more impact, as it built up to yet another roaring Wachtel guitar solo. Nicks told how "Crying in the Night" was penned around 1973 when she and Lindsay Buckingham had their Buckingham-Nicks band, but it was put aside, and revived more recently, where Tuesday's rendition was a midtempo rocker highlighted by Wachtel's slide guitar.

Still in storytelling mode, Nicks mentioned that "If You Were My Love" was supposed to be on her first solo effort in 1981, but she had nixed it when she didn't like the way it sounded. Finally getting an arrangement she liked in Nashville a couple years ago, the tune was revived on "24 Karat Gold," and Tuesday's take was both a spacey and yet intimate love song.

Storytelling detours aside, few rock fans could ask for more than the ten-minute "Gold Dust Woman" that the TD Garden crowd heard. Nicks, now in a white shawl, even did some of her trademark dancing and spinning, although time-lapse photo effects were used on the video screens to make it seem like she was going faster than she was--she is 68 after all. But musically the song was a gem, ending in an extended psychedelic jam as Nicks seemingly ad-libbed lines like "baby, you don't see me no more, you don't feel me no more.."

The regular set ended with a boisterous "Edge of Seventeen," where pretty much the entire arena was singing along and romping and stomping in place. To no one's surprise the first encore was a pulse-pounding charge through "Rhiannon," with Nicks spinning, and the band taking it in another lengthy jam-out.

Nicks' longest story was her last, as she noted how in 1976, just before the "Rumours" record brought Fleetwood Mac massive success, none other than Waylon Jennings called her and asked her to write a song about an enduring marriage and its travails, expressly for he and his wife Jessi Colter to sing. Nicks, having just ended her long-term romance with Buckingham, and having taken up with Don Henley of the Eagles, threw herself into the project. Henley was quite critical, but she finally got a version even he liked and sent it off. Soon after she learned Jennings and Colter were splitting up, so she called him and demanded her song back, since the whole point of it was staying together. That roundabout tale is how "Leather and Lace" became one of Nicks' most cherished songs, and Tuesday's version featured a stripped down quartet behind her, focused on acoustic guitar, Nicks and the two backup singers, for an indelible finale.

The Pretenders' hour-long set included 15 songs, and was perhaps more geared to a greatest hits collection, with just a few of Chrissie Hynde's more recent solo works. Hynde is a sprightly 65, looking fit and lithe in blue jeans and a black T-shirt with "Elvis" on the front. Her own voice was in vintage form for the soulful ballad "Don't Get Me Wrong," and had the power to drive the quintet on the old Kinks cover "Stop Your Sobbing."

Hynde had plenty of vocal muscle during the ode to her old hometown of Akron, "My City Was Gone." Hynde introduced a newer song as being about, more or less, how white supremacists cannot be Christians, and "Holy Commotion" rode uptempo guitar textures as delivered its message about "the price of devotion." The old chestnut "Mystery Achievement" may have been the Pretenders' hardest rocking number, its jittery, enervating rhythms soaking into the crowd.

But the searing rhythmic undercurrents making "Middle of the Road" such a treat were also delectable, and "Brass in Pocket" became that charming and rare jewel of a tune that was both a crunching, punk-rock-inflected rave-up, and still a warm communal singalong for 17,000.


http://www.tauntongazette.com/entert...t-at-td-garden

Ah ah ah, a nice little quote about Stevie even on a CNN sports report:

Here are all the links from around the hockey world, and what I’m reading while giving a “thumbs up” to Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders at TD Garden last night after taking my mom to the show for her birthday.

This show was by far one of my favorites. Smiles, tears, laughs..amazing

Cape Cod Times, November 16, 2016

Nicks, Pretenders: different styles for same audience

http://www.capecodtimes.com/entertai...-same-audience

By Jim SullivanContributing writer

BOSTON – Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders, together on tour. This is the kind of package that never could have happened, say, in 1981. The Pretenders were the hard-edged, snarling voice of Anglo-American new wave, having released two A-level albums, “Pretenders” and “Pretenders II.” Nicks was the ethereal, ever-twirling enchantress from the multi-platinum Fleetwood Mac, who with the “Bella Donna” album had started her soft-rock solo career.

But in 2016 this bill makes sense. There’s nothing divisive about the camps of fans anymore (if there ever was), and the prospective demo is almost the same, the 50+ pop/rock market. (Nicks also guested on “American Horror Story” playing a version of herself, probably earning some young fans.) The Pretenders’ lead singer-guitarist-songwriter Chrissie Hynde is 65; Nicks, 68; and they both wear it well. The two hooked up and had fun during Nicks’ set for a rendition of the duet hit Nicks scored with Tom Petty, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” with Hynde taking Petty’s vocal.

So, that’s the show that came to Boston’s TD Garden Tuesday and, make no mistake, it was Nicks’ baby. This jaunt through the arenas supports her 2014 CD “24 Karat Gold Songs from the Vault,” and Nicks, her backing sextet and two female backup singers were on stage two hours and 10 minutes. The Pretenders got an hour, and the bad weather, traffic and a box office ticket snafu had us missing the first third, which included two from the new “Alone” album, the title cut and “Gotta Wait” plus “Private Life” and “Message of Love.”

Given my druthers, I’d have much rather heard more Pretenders and less Nicks. But so it goes. Nicks was there, as she said, to unpack her trunk. I’ve always enjoyed Nicks in the Fleetwood Mac context, half of the primary female voices, one of the core three songwriters. The Mac meshed styles and personalities as did few other bands.

Nicks alone? Of lesser interest. For one thing, her contralto voice too often was lost in the music, in comparison to Hynde, whose cut through loud and clear. Nicks explained at the onset that they were late arriving and didn’t think they’d get out of Washington, D.C., because of the intense rain. And they had “a hard curfew at 11 o’clock so if I come off like I’m talking fast, it’s just that I’m trying to fit everything in.” (I think in part she was trying to humorously suggest her fast-talking had nothing to do with cocaine, her old dance partner/nemesis that once fueled her and the Mac during those high-flying days.)

Nicks and company played 19 songs, none less than tuneful but not that many compelling, most floating in the zone of mid-tempo pleasantry. And if you do the math – 19 songs into 130 minutes – you know that left a lot of time for yak, and Nicks is chatty to the point of self-indulgence. She was occasionally engaging – talking about the “gift” she got from Petty, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” - but she deeply needed editing.

While her song “New Orleans,” about the city recovering from the 2005 hurricane, was affecting, the back story – watching it unfold on TV from L.A, not wanting to make it depressing, hoping to make it celebratory – was TMI. Her story about her and then boyfriend Don Henley writing and recording “Leather and Lace” was interminable. And while the melodramatic piano-based ballad “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)” was eloquent, Nicks’ post-song explanation that it was about the “Twilight” lovers tilted toward schlock.

Nicks was dressed in black and was draped in various shawls throughout the show, including the silk chiffon from the “Bella Donna” days. She donned a white furry coat during “Moonlight” and was less the twirling dancer than she used to be. She did, however, have a frenetic few moments during Waddy Wachtel’s sizzling guitar lead during Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman.” And while solo songs like “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back,” which became an ode to Prince, with both their images floating on the scrim behind the stage and the band rocking hard, had some power, it really was the Mac songs that clicked. She did “Dreams” and “Rhiannon” in addition to “Woman,” and they were the high points of a long set.

The Pretenders, with hard-hitting original drummer Martin Chambers back in tow – live gigs only, no studio – hit mark after mark. Hynde, clad in an Elvis T-shirt and tight blue jeans, may (still) be the best female rock singer around. The way she glides and soars around a vocal line – that wavering tremolo - is sublime. The string of “Back on the Chain Gang,” “I’ll Stand By You,” “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” “Stop Your Sobbing” and “My City Was Gone” was pure bliss, achingly resplendent.

Hynde kept her sometimes volatile temper in check, telling a joke when Chambers suffered a kit malfunction and only noting before “Holy Commotion” that “white supremacists aren’t Christians – you can do what you want with that.” For the final stretch, the Pretenders hit high gear with “Mystery Achievement,” “Middle of the Road” and the ever-slinky, sexy “Brass in Pocket.”

Face it, the Pretenders have a stellar catalog from which to choose – songs that embrace sensuality, wistfulness and power, with slash-and-burn guitar licks from Hynde and James Walbourne. We could only offer a sigh of regret that they did not include “Precious” and “Tattooed Love Boys.”

I wrote a really long review of this show. I was going to post it here, but I felt it was pretty personal, and no one would really want to read the thoughts of a 25-yr-old heterosexual white boy with a Bachelor's in English.

Nonetheless, I would like to share a little bit about what I felt after this show:

Now, I feel that I understand why Stevie wanted so badly to do this tour -- for her fans and herself. She said a few times during the show that everyone should follow her or his dreams. And that's what she's doing. She wants to go out and sing all these songs that she has never been able to perform until today -- and not just the hits [she mentioned how she wanted to leave Rhiannon in the box for this tour, but she couldn't do it for fear of a revolt]. It was such a gift to see her deviate from her "hit-list" and sing the deep cuts. I have never enjoyed a FM/SN solo show more than this one. Yes, she did not perform all her hits, but that is what made it fun. She was more creative, smiling, and having fun.

I was also so glad to she how well the show sold. Perhaps, she didn't sell every seat, but people were standing up and dancing, even in the balconies.

In closing:
Do I want her to go back to FM and record (at least) one more album with them? Yes, of course. But I understand her desire to go out on the road and sing all her favorites. And I'm glad that she's having fun doing it.

I hope everyone who sees her on tour has as much fun as I did. She is truly shining. Long live the Queen of Rock and Roll.

I would love the read the longer review :nod:

I would love to read your long review.
And thank you for these words, I've been saying this all along, some cynical FM fans think Stevie is trying "to prove a point" or something, when really, all she wants to do is sing the songs she loves. It only takes watching the show to know it's true.

I was hoping for a 100% dishonest review, BUT didn't see that other than "I am floored." Where's the beef @Olive or do I have to ask @PoetofRhiannon for the non-Cliff notes version of his review??

I appreciate what you did share, but I'm not sure why you think no one would want to read what you had to say. Stevie's fans come from every walk of life--doctors, lawyers, candlestick makers (however that poem goes). You're as welcome here as anyone else. Seriously. If you want to add on, go for it!

GREAT pic SisterNightroad- thanks for putting it up! She looks like she's flying!

You'll have to ask them. I am taking a break from here.

Yeah, this tour has producted some major gems!