Stevie Nicks is 76 years old, but she doesn’t sound it. The Fleetwood Mac singer’s low, raspy register had such maturity and depth to begin with that you hardly notice the changes of pitch and texture that come with age. At London’s British Summer Time festival on 12 July, dressed in her signature black velvet, with long black gloves and a changing roster of embellished capes, Nicks stood mostly still in the centre of the stage, telling long, endearingly rambling anecdotes between songs. (“I was asked when I started this tour, ‘How come you don’t wear all your capes and stuff?’ And I was like, ‘I dunno, I just don’t,’ and they were like, ‘WELL, PEOPLE WANNA SEE ’EM!’”)
Her presence was undiminished, mostly thanks to the enduring quality of her vocals. Nicks’ husky, gruff voice sounded strikingly powerful as it rang out across Hyde Park, especially on her rousing Eighties solo hits “Wild Heart” and “Edge of Seventeen”. (Nicks brought out her vocal coach, Steve Real, to duet with her on “Leather and Lace”.) Introducing “For What It’s Worth” – which she describes as “not a political song when I wrote it, but it’s become political in the years since” – Nicks urged the audience to vote, while admitting that she never did until she was 70 years old. (“Why? I was busy! And that was so stupid… Don’t be me. Vote.”)
The most atmospheric, melodic Fleetwood Mac songs – “Dreams”, “Rhiannon” and the moving ballad “Gypsy”– are undeniable highlights, as was her cover of “Free Fallin’”, dedicated to her friend Tom Petty, who she last saw in person playing with him on the same stage at Hyde Park in 2017. But the crowd was most delighted by an encore appearance from Nicks’ friend, the pop star Harry Styles, who made an unshowy cameo on guitar and backing vocals for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, before joining Nicks for a gorgeous, harmony-heavy duet of “Landslide”, a tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, who died in 2022 aged 79. “She was Harry’s girl, she was my girl, she was your girl… and today would’ve been her birthday.”
BST
Hyde Park, London W2
[See also: From the feral to the glamorous at Glastonbury 2024]
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This article appears in the 17 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The American Berserk