Season of the Witch

Stadium pop rock shows are relics of my youth. The last one I can vaguely remember attending was a gig by The Cult back in ’89 with Lenny Kravitz opening. The yawning chasm between then and now was a chief reason why I jumped at the chance to catch Stevie Nicks play The Target Center (Minneapolis’ principal stadium-sized venue) last night. That, a clutch of gratis tix, and the burning desire to prove that no music lies outside the realm of Bagatellen’s reach were all the impetus I needed.

I’ve long been a casual Nicks fan, from her work on classic Fleetwood Mac platters like Rumors up through the 80s apex of her solo career, but I lost touch with her output sometime in the early 90s, the only album of hers extant in my collection being a battered cassette copy of Timespace her greatest hits package. Making a pit stop at a nearby Thai restaurant for a handful of cocktails & beers we arrived just in time to catch the tail end of the opening act, a Norah Jones clone trading in treacle-wrought mono-melodic piano pop. Dwarfed by the massive stage, but magnified on the pair of stage-mounted video screens she chatted politely with the masses between songs and dutifully made her exit. It was an ideal time to scan the crowd and tabulate demographics. Just who exactly shells out the $45-$65 to see a Stevie Nicks concert circa summer 2005?

There were the legions of predictably white, suburban-looking forty & fifty-somethings, but also a surprising number of kids and teens. Nearly everyone seemed jazzed for Stevie’s entrance and as the lights went low only to explode into a rocking rundown of “Stop Dragging My Heart Around.” A video screen the size of a small apartment building flashed familiar Celtic iconography and painted tapestries depicting maidens and gothic castles that have been her talismanic trappings lo these many years. Nicks cycled through a lavish succession of her signature shawls, dressed in a tight-fitting black gown that amply accentuated a generous bosom. Heavy cosmetic strata probably had something to do with it, but she didn’t look all that bad for someone nearing sexagenarian status. The backing ten-piece band (two keyboardists, two guitarists, bassist, drummer, conguero & two back-up singers) was tight and well-stocked with skilled soloists.

Best among them was Waddy Wachtel, a long-time Nicks’ hired hand whose added guitar punch on the singer’s Bella Donna had a major hand in moving over 5 million units. Here he was a near perfect picture of the quondam rocker, still sporting the leather pants and sleeve-less skin-tight spandex shirt, hot-ironed ‘fro, Coke-bottle glasses and a raging penchant for precision plectrum-driven pyrotechnics. The numerous video screen close-ups of his blazing metal-influenced fretwork were priceless and only added to the camp. His solos on “Stand Back,” which retained its vintage stinging synth line and the epic finale rendering of “Edge of Seventeen” with its seminal wocka-wocka riff amplified to chest-reverberating volume had large portions of the audience screaming and on their feet. Also impressive were the drummer, whose rat’s nest ‘fro easily eclipsed Wachtel’s, and Japanese conguero who locked in extended percussion duels as prefaces to two tunes. I was genuinely dumbstruck by how hard much of it rocked.

Stevie thumbed through a plentiful songbook of hits: “Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Landslide,” the last curiously dedicated to her husband of three months, her raspy pipes still largely intact. Each received an epic reading replete with kaleidoscopic light shows and melodramatic cinematic accompaniment. She even paused at one point to plug One.org, advising us to pledge monetary support to the campaign in its bid to influence the G8 summit and to “love each other” as the URL sat emblazoned on the center screen in story-high letters. An encore of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll” afforded another opportunity for Wachtel to pull the stops and pay homage to an obvious influence in Jimmy Page. All the pomp and spectacle was enough to topple the walls of my skepticism and I was soon hooting and hollering with everyone else, singing the sentiment-heavy lyrics, clapping along & having the best time I’ve had at a concert of any kind in quite awhile.