Stevie Nicks told lots of stories Saturday night (Nov. 15) at Toronto’s sold-out Scotiabank Arena.
One of them, towards the end of her one-hour-and-45-minute show, set up “Gypsy,” the Fleetwood Mac song from the 80s she said “still has so much meaning today.” She’s told it many times before, but essentially when things were going so well in Los Angeles and she didn’t want to forget who she was, she would take the bed frame out to the garage, put the bed on the floor, find a vintage coverlet and fake flowers, and sit on the bed and go, “I’m still Stevie,” she whispers. All these years later, thankfully she is.
The 77-year-old age-defying, raspy-voiced goddess of song never replaced her bohemian witchy style over the decades, nor cut her long golden wavy hair. She came out onstage looking every bit the Stevie we’ve come to know and love — tiered black skirt, black long sleeve velvet top, black boots, and shimmery capes (a couple of them the original). Good thing too, as some women in the audience came dressed “as Stevie,” in black lace, boots, scarves, and hats, and some in earlier-era cropped beige faux-fur jackets.
Backed by a crack band that includes guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel (whose long association with Nicks dates back to her 1973’s Buckingham Nicks album) and her long-time backing vocalists Sharon Celani and Marilyn “Minnie” Martin — they started with the Crickets’ “Not Fade Away,” Nicks emerging from behind a black curtain at the back of the stage.
She told the audience she’s coming back together after a shoulder injury (the show was rescheduled from an August date). “I just had to start with that because I honestly didn’t think I would get out on this next leg of the tour because I was in bed for almost a month,” she said, otherwise she’d have to have surgery. “Then it was like, ‘Get up. Do something…I’m not gonna stay home.’” She then showed us she could raise her right arm and demonstrated her circular wrist exercises.
“Anyway, guys, we’re here and we’re gonna have a good time and I’m so thankful you’re here too. Let’s get this party started.”
Nicks then sang a pair of solo numbers, “If Anyone Falls” and “Outside The Rain” (“we had a lot of rain today,” she noted), before going right into one of the many Fleetwood Mac hits the crowd has no doubt come to hear: “Dreams.”
She introduced the next song with a story from rock history. Producer Jimmy Iovine had told her at the last-minute that her debut solo album, Bella Donna, didn’t have a single. Not something an artist wants to hear when a record is done. As she relayed the conversation, she dropped the tidbit that she “preferred” to be in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers than the “other big band,” and Iovine had told her that Petty had finished a song he was willing to let her have and would also sing on it with her (the story stretched for four minutes). She said she was “so nervous” and dressed to the nines, went to the studio and the two recorded it in three takes. The album Bella Donna came out in 1981, and she said, “This song kicked that record right into the universe.” She then sang the song in question: “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” with Wachtel singing the Petty parts.
From her first-ever single to her most recent, Nicks then did “The Lighthouse,” a poem she wrote and turned into a moody empowering song of resilience, released last September. From there, “Wild Heart/Bella Donna” and “Stand Back” came next, with Nicks wearing the original capes from the early 80s. She even graced us with her trademark twirls, just not as fast as she used to.
Paying tribute again to Petty, she covered “Free Fallin’,” while tons of photos of the dearly missed rock legend flashed on the video screen, many of the pair of them together.
Four of the five final songs — including the two-song encore — were Fleetwood Mac songs.
“Gold Dust Woman” and “Gypsy” first (for which she told the “I’m still Stevie” story), then she capped the main set with the familiar menacing drive of “Edge of Seventeen.”
“You have been an awesome, awesome audience. This is not something that we expect. It is not something that we come here and go, ‘We’ll just do a good show and then we’ll just leave…,’” she said graciously. “That’s not how we look at it at all. We look at it as each show that we do is maybe the last show we do, so we better put every single thing we have into it.”
“It really helps though when it’s an awesome audience,” she said again to huge cheers. “We will come back and see you, and we will hang out with you, and we will love to be here again. It is our pleasure to do this and to play music for you, always.”
When she returned for the encore, she sang “Rhiannon” and the reflective “Landslide,” as photos of her late Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie, who died in 2022, flashed on the screen. “Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’ / ‘Cause I’ve built my life around you / But time makes you bolder / Even children get older / And I’m gettin’ older, too,” she sang.
And many of us have built our lives around her. Truly an icon that we hope to see again.
