November 8th 2017

Concert review : The Pretenders and Stevie Nicks at the ICC Theatre, Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia

Towards the end of last nights concert Stevie Nicks apologized to all of us in the audience for having spent so much time acting like the strange aunt we only ever see at Christmas who tells us long and rambling anecdotes that seem to take forever to get to the point but when the person telling those stories has a voice like hers and when those stories remind us all of the ghost of Tom Petty and the strangeness of Prince then it’s very easy to forgive her.

Both Stevie and Chrissie are rock chicks who have outlived a lot of their contemporary male equivalents some of whom are part of the 27 club.

Ms Nicks was the latter and larger part of a double act that began with Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders whose show was much less elaborate in terms of costume and staging as well as being much more down to earth. Just straight up rock and roll with a few barbs aimed at audience members who wouldn’t stop photographing her on their mobile phones while she was trying to sing. My date observed that at least she didn’t use the “c” word this time. Several of their greatest hits were on show along with some songs I’d never heard before as she put on a great act that was over much too soon. Later on she came out for one duet with Stevie on “Stop Draggin’ my heart around” after Stevie had explained how hard it was for her to get that song from Tom. A few of her stories involved how negative a lot of people were about her ideas for collaborating with the likes of Mr. Petty and the Artist formerly known as ... but she made it quite clear that if you want to get anything done you should make sure you ignore all the people around you telling you it can’t be done. The other major stories were about how she wrote some songs all alone in unusual or strange surroundings like the time a sound engineer showed her the black velvet room where Sly Stone recorded a lot of his stuff and she came up with Dreams whilst sitting in it. At one point she thanked each one of us in the audience for being so nice and friendly and while it’s easy to be cynical she did come across as genuinely believing and meaning what she was saying. She also thanked an 88 year old Australian female friend that she’d met when buying dolls out here some years ago who was sitting way at the back somewhere.

The Stevie Nicks part of the show was also a greatest hits of Stevie and Fleetwood Mac interspersed with some other songs I’d never heard before. Her part of the show was much more elaborate than the Pretenders with videos on the screen behind her that reminded me of the more psychedelic audio visual treats you might have once seen projected behind the likes of the Velvet Underground way back in their heyday but using todays’ much more reliable technology to operate without a glitch. One of her better anecdotes involved how her mother was always money conscious and would have been appalled to know her daughter had spent $3,000 on a velvet gown which she explained she was still using and hadn’t worn a bit in all those years. During various different songs she performed her shamanic dances which reminded me a bit of whirling dervishes. There were numerous costume changes helped along by some solos by the other musicians showing us their skills whilst Ms. Nicks did quick changes behind the scenes and paraded in front of us like a one woman fashion show.

My date had to leave early in order to catch a safe train home but only did so after she’d managed to surreptitiously film the Gypsy performance on her iPhone. I didn’t bother correcting the audience member seated next to me who said something about my missus that she was actually just a coworker and close friend as I was enjoying myself too much.

Both performers thanked their fellow musicians as per usual and also allowed them to have their moments in the spotlight doing drum and guitar solos and the like.

My preference in music would be more towards the Pretenders rather than Fleetwood Mac end of the spectrum of the music colour chart. I like Fleetwood Mac but to me their music is a bit too nice and polished and I prefer the rougher and grittier more gut feeling type of music supplied by the Pretenders but I can still enjoy both.

As I left having heard the two encore songs to make sure I didn’t wind up missing the last train home Stevie was still thanking all of us for being

there.

God bless her.