Review of Stevie Nicks and Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde at Adelaide’s Botanic Park
Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders
Botanic Park
WE got a lesson in rock and roll last night, delivered by two women in their 60s.
The prospect of watching Chrissie Hynde play before Stevie Nicks was an exciting one, and the shows they delivered to a 10,000-strong crowd at Botanic Park (a great outdoor venue) lived up to the promise.
Hynde is a star, stick skinny and oozing rock attitude, and while her band might only contain one original Pretender (drummer Martin Chambers) the musicians she’s assembled do a great job of recreating that spiky, post-punk sound.
Kicking off with a couple of tracks from new record Alone (the title track, and the tough Gotta Wait), Hynde was in fine form, moving around the stage and seemingly enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.
There’s very little of the now obligatory phone filming going on - perhaps the berating she delivered to the crowd in Dubai a couple of weeks ago scared people into leaving their mobiles in their pockets, or perhaps they just paid heed to the sign asking people to “experience the show, not film it”. You can see her point.
Hymn to Her slows things down a little, with just Hynde and her keyboardist working through the ballad, before she straps on her silver Telecaster again and rips through Chain Gang and Stop Your Sobbin’, originally a Kinks number, but one The Pretenders made their own.
I’ll Stand By You is a great showcase for Hynde’s still-amazing voice, while Brass In Pocket - their best-known song - ends things on a high note.
By now the sun has set, and the crowd is eager to see the woman they call The Queen of Rock and Roll.
Kicking off with the early eighties funk of Gold and Braid, it was clear straight away that Nick’s voice had lost none of its distinctive timbre and that the band - led by legendary session guitarist Waddy Wachtel - was as tight as a drum.
This was only Nicks’s second show since the death of close friend and collaborator Tom Petty, and it was a touching moment when Hynde reappeared from backstage to sing Petty’s parts on Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.
Nicks tells a story (one of many for the night) about consulting with a “spiritual friend” who told her that Petty would’ve wanted her to continue her 24 Karat Gold tour.
“We’re just gonna pretend that Tom’s out there rockin’ on the road somewhere,” she tells the crowd, many of whom are wearing Heartbreakers t-shirts in tribute.
Fleetwood Mac hit Gypsy goes down a treat, as does a mesmerising version of Stand Back, a song, Nicks tells us, that she “kind of stole” from Prince, with his blessing.
According to Nicks she was on her honeymoon when she first heard The Purple One’s Little Red Corvette, and knew instantly that she needed to write a song of her own based on the backing music. She goes on to tell how she tracked Prince down in LA and convinced him to play keyboards and guitar on the song.
“Forty-five minutes it took him, then he was gone,” she laughs.
Every song is accompanied by a monologue, but they’re all delivered with that trademark wide-eyed enthusiasm and they never get boring.
The end of the set sees things ratchet up a notch. The Mac’s Gold Dust Woman, already a cracking tune, is transformed into a trance-like epic, while Edge of Seventeen has the crowd in raptures.
An encore was called for and delivered - two Fleetwood Mac classics in Rhiannon and the touching Landslide - before a collective bow is taken and a promise is made to “see you all next year”. Let’s hope so.
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