Live Review: Stevie Nicks at United Center • Chicago
Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks
United Center
Chicago, IL
June 23, 2023
By Curt Baran
No one sings like Stevie Nicks. She is at once singular and ubiquitous in both sound and influence (Courtney, Alanis, and Shirley…show of hands, please). It’s as if her voice continues to travel from some distant past to the present tense whenever we need it the most. As an integral part of Rock’s greatest soap opera, she proved to be a Titanic-sized, creative force during her time with Fleetwood Mac. Joking inside a packed United Center on Friday night, she made mention of needing a “backup plan” when alluding to her also lucrative solo career outside one of the industry’s most commercially successful bands ever.
So she’s hit the road, armed with a cracking eight-piece band (six players and two backup singers) to sing what has arguably become one of the most instantly recognizable American songbooks in the business, which amounted to an evening filled with tales of witches, white doves, black cats, mysticism and more than a few lingering ghosts (two, specifically Tom Petty and Christie McVie, loomed large).
Nicks has, in the past, often mentioned that the only band she ever REALLY wanted to be in was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. She’s even credited Petty specifically with helping to facilitate her solo career. So when he offered her a duet on 1981’s “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” she jumped at the chance. The song became a Top 5 hit and helped propel Nicks’ solo career. It was an absolute highlight of the evening, along with performances of other Petty compositions (“Free Falling,” “If Anyone Falls”).
Throughout the evening, Nicks deftly worked all corners of her career. Not surprisingly, her Mac contributions (“Dreams,” “Gypsy,” and “Gold Dust Women”) would elicit the night’s most rousing applause, but it was the lesser-known songs that hit hardest. “Soldier’s Angel” was written in the early 2000s, but placed in front of destructive images for the recent Ukrainian war, it was a stark and sobering reminder that, unfortunately, songs about war always render themselves relevant.
The most emotional gut punch would be reserved for the evening’s coda and the arrival of the second ghost. As the first few notes of “Landslide” were plucked, the inside of the arena all but collapsed into itself. As Nicks sang the refrain, “well I’ve been afraid of changing/cus’ I built my life around you,” a video monitor the width of the stage showed a montage of photos featuring Nicks and the recently passed Christine McVie, her longtime Fleetwood Mac band mate. The pictures were candids that felt like they were torn from the picture book of two-grade school friends who would go on to know each other for the rest of their lives.
“I can’t talk about what Christie meant to me,” she exclaimed, choking up. “Maybe soon…but not yet.” If it were her intention to send her audience to the exits all puffy-eyed and weepy, well then, on this particular night, it was Nicks for the win.
Category: Live Reviews
