A SOLO RUN FOR STEVIE NICKS--Fleetwood Mac singer goes it alone
by Roger Catlin (special from the Hartford Courant)
from The (Bergen, New Jersey) Record

After spending most of the 1990's out of the public eye, Stevie Nicks is following last year's successful Fleetwood Mac reunion with a solo concert tour.

"I've never been able to do anything like this," says Nicks, who recently turned 50.

The tour--which in the coming days makes three stops in the metropolitan area--is promoting her new three-disc boxed set, "Enchanted."

While Nicks will highlight songs from deep in her catalog, she'll also find room for Mac classics such as "Rhiannon," "Gold Dust Woman," and "Dreams."

"I'm going to do a version of 'Landslide,' since I have two incredible guitarists," she says, "and they should be able to play the part almost as well as Lindsey."

There is one thing she won't try without Lindsey Buckingham, her longtime romantic partner and original musical collaborator, with whom she joined Fleetwood Mac. It's "Silver Springs," the B-side that became a hit from the group's 1997 live reunion album, "The Dance." The song seemed directed at Buckingham. In concert, it became a searing statement as she faced him as she sang it.

"I can't do 'Silver Springs' without Lindsey," she says. "After people seeing us, and having it on TV all the time, I think it would be kind of an empty song without the other person."

Putting a set list together for the concert shouldn't be any more difficult than sifting her solo career into a 46-track boxed set. That selection was made shortly after the Mac tour ended in December. And the tracks don't follow chronological order.

"I wanted people to go, 'Could that have been yesterday, or could that have been 10 years ago?'"

Nicks, who chose the order of songs on the best-selling "Rumours" album, thinks sequencing is one of her best unsung skills. "It's one of my favorite things to do." Her secret is to match beginnings and ends of songs. "If you like the way the end of one song goes into the beginning of the next one, I figure you'll probably listen to the whole song."

That also made for some startling juxtapositions on her boxed set.

"On the third disc, I put 'Twister' and 'Long Distance Winner' together because of the incredible similarity between the sound of the voice, and the songs."

Never mind that one song was written for the 1996 disaster movie, and the other came from the long out-of-print "Buckingham Nicks" duet album 23 years earlier.

The name of the boxed set was suggested by her brother, Christopher Nicks, who was the project's art director. "'Enchanted' had always been his favorite song, so that was the first thing he thought about," she says. "And of course, in the mystical way I live my life, 'Enchanted' seems to make a lot of sense to me."

Magic also was involved in the Mac reunion, she says. By now, it seems like it didn't even happen.

"The whole Fleetwood Mac thing seems like just a dream. It went by so fast. It was a lot of concerts--45 concerts--and it went by so fast."

Musically, it was most satisfying, she says. "It was like being back in the Seventies. It was as close to feeling like I did in the beginning of my whole rock-and-roll life."

Any chance for future Fleetwood Mac music seems to be in the hands of Christine McVie, who decided to return to England in December.

"She said, 'I did what I said I was going to do and I'm going home,'" Nicks says. "What are you going to say to somebody who says that to you? 'No, you can't'? Everybody did his or her best to convince her to finish out this tour (to promote the live album) and she didn't want to. So we thought: Better to let her go and give her lots of love and she'll come around.

"It doesn't worry me in the least that Fleetwood Mac will not always somehow be together. I mean, how could we not do any music after what just happened with us?"

MUSIC PREVIEW
STEVIE NICKS: With Boz Scaggs. 8 p.m., Saturday. PNC Bank Center, Garden State Parkway, Holmdel. $24, $40, $60. (732)335-0400. Nicks and Scaggs also perform 8 p.m. Sunday, Jones Beach Amphitheater, Long Island, $15, $25.75, $39.75, $53.25, (516)221-1000; 8 p.m. Wednesday, Radio City Music Hall, Sixth Avenue and 50th Street, Manhatten, $52.25 to $92.25. (212)247-4777. Tickets available at respective box offices ot TicketMaster.