STEVIE NICKS INFO

Tag: Peter Frampton

  • Unenthusiastic Nicks gives a fashion show at SPAC

    Unenthusiastic Nicks gives a fashion show at SPAC

    Songbird Stevie Nicks focuses on costume changes at dull Saratoga concert.

    Stevie Nicks has given rock fashion her own special twist with her flowing ensembles, but in Tuesday night’s concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center she introduced a bothersome trend: A change of clothes for each song.

    Apparently the outfits hold special significance for the Fleetwood Mac sex symbol, who’s ending up the summer solo tour soon, but for her 10,700 fans, it was a little frustrating. The stage went dark after most numbers in the hour-and-a-half-plus show, and the songbird disappeared.

    The mini-intermissions only twice meant a solo from the band. Guitarist Waddy Wachtel delivered a hard-rock improvisation that seemed stale and inappropriately raucous. Then the band vamped over percussionist Bobbye Hall’s nothing-special bit. Nicks’ fashion show halted the momentum. Although she came back for an encore, some bored fans already had left.

    Nicks performed her new hits, “Talk to Me,” with a saxophone solo by Bobby Martin (who also was on keyboards), and “I Can’t Wait.” For the latter Nicks might find it important to point out she was draped in black, and Wachtel spilled another solo.

    “Beauty and the Beast” revealed her voice – with qualities of both a baritone munchkin and a post-game cheerleader – at its roughest. The music overall was well done, maybe a little unenthusiastic at times.

    Her voice returned for “Leather and Lace.” She sang harmony with Martin, who has a bright tenor voice. But here is a good place to point out another flaw in the Nicks show. She spent half of the night, including most of “Leather,” with her back to the audience. Perhaps to give them the benefit of studying both sides of her ensembles? Is she introducing a clothing line?

    She also performed “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” sans Tom Petty, and walked off for a change before the song had ended. There was no enthusiasm whatsoever. There was no rapport with the crowd. It was amazingly dull. And those people screaming for the encore must have been very faithful or very easy to please.

    Opener Peter Frampton, on the other hand, was a sensation with his three-piece backup.

    Before his encore, he closed the show with his 1976 smash hit, “Do You Feel Like We Do?” complete with his trademark mouth-guitar. The extended version revealed the former Humble Pie player has only improved his technique. He’s making his comeback now, and Tuesday night’s performance made it no surprise.

    Laura Haynes / Knickerbocker News (Albany, NY) / August 13, 1986

  • She’s got that Midas touch

    She’s got that Midas touch

    Stevie Nicks performs at the Worcester Centrum, June 3 and 4

    LOWELL – A funny thing happened when Keith Olsen popped a demonstration tape into the machine in his recording studio 11 years ago, and it was the beginning of Stevie Nicks’ Midas touch.

    Not only did the sound that swelled from the speakers win Olsen the job of producing Fleetwood Mac’s next album, as he had hoped, but it also gave the band its super-seller lineup. The tape, so the story goes, was of the Olsen-produced album Buckingham Nicks, a record by the West Coast duo Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

    Nicks, the sultry, raspy-voiced singer, brings her solo tour through Worcester this Tuesday and Wednesday, June 3 and 4. Peter Frampton, a longtime rocker experiencing renewed success, opens the shows. Some tickets remain for both nights.

    What followed the merger of the Mac and Buckingham and Nicks was multi-platinum success, thanks to albums named Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk and Mirage. Hit singles danced up the charts with ease. But relationships within the band eroded, and while it made for some strong music, the splits made it tough to work together, too.

    Mystical ramblings

    Nicks mustered her spirits and her talents, put together crack studio backing, including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and released Bella Donna. The album, named for belladonna, the second most hallucinogenic drug in the world, featured many of the mystical ramblings and haunting melodies that had been a signature of Nicks’ work with Fleetwood Mac. But gone were the other members of the band, and the sharing of the microphone and the responsibility for the outcome. Some critics slammed Nicks for her tendency toward spacey lyrics, but “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” a duet with Petty and band, was a smash.

    Other solo Nicks albums, including 1983’s The Wild Heart and the recent Rock A Little, followed, and Nicks is the most successful member of Fleetwood Mac to hit the road and the recording studio alone.

    Nicks, who turned 38 Monday, was born in Phoenix, Ariz., and first performed with Buckingham in a San Francisco area band named Fritz, which played the Bay Area from 1968 through 1972. The two, who had become romantically involved, broke off from the band and eventually recorded the Buckingham Nicks album. After Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac (which had formed in 1967 as a blues band but enjoyed only moderate success), drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie were looking for a studio when they heard Olsen’s work with the duo.

    The re-formed Fleetwood Mac’s first, self-titled effort, helped considerably by the success of the single “Rhiannon,” a Nicks composition, sold fast and heavily and stayed on the charts for 122 weeks. Its sales topped five million.

    Personal breakups

    Rumours, which hit the racks two years later, chronicled the personal breakups after the success (Nicks and Buckingham and McVie and his wife, keyboardist Christine), was one of the biggest sellers of all time, as fans snapped up 15 million copies worldwide. Tusk was the band’s creative peak, as Buckingham led the Macs in experimental directions, and Mirage, from 1982, was a solid, steady hunk of pop-rock.

    Through it all, Nicks added considerably to the band’s success, penning several hit singles (most notably “Rhiannon,” “Dreams” and “Sara”) and taking her place as one of rock’s biggest sex symbols. But Nicks, a dancer, was as prone to throat nodes in concert as she was to whirling around onstage like a possessed backwoods witch, and was known as an inconsistent performer, sometimes unable to sing.

    Fleetwood Mac has been in the studio recently, and the release of a new record is imminent. Feelings weren’t as strained as they have been in the past, ifs been said, and Nicks had so much fun while adding her vocal parts that she wanted to stay longer, but had to hit the road in support of Rock A Little. While that’s good news to fans of the band, Stevie Nicks will probably continue to do just fine on her own, too.

    Guitarist Frampton, whose latest album, Premonition, is something of a comeback from a few dismal efforts, is riding on the success of a basic rocking sound and a hit single, “Lying.” 

    Tickets for the Stevie Nicks concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 3 and 4, are available at the Centrum box office, 755-6800.

    Who: Stevie Nicks
    Where: Worcester Centrum
    When: June 3 and 4. 8 p.m.

    David Perry / Lowell Sun / May 30, 1986
    (This article was transcribed by Stevie Nicks Info)