When the moment finally came, as Stevie Nicks sang “Landslide” while photographs of her best friend Christine McVie filled the screens behind her, it was beautiful, it was heartbreaking, and it surely left many in the packed SoFi Stadium on Friday as teary and emotional as Nicks herself.
McVie, who for years sang and played with Nicks in Fleetwood Mac, died in November, and the Two Icons, One Night opener, a coheadlining tour with Billy Joel, was Nicks first performance since then. So you knew something would be said.
That Nicks said it via “Landslide,” her coming-of-age song about the fragility of life and love, was less expected, but the Fleetwood Mac favorite worked beautifully recast to reflect the loss of a great love much later in life.
“There’s really not much to say,” Nicks said, visibly moved as her bandmates gathered round her at the end of the song. ““I have to imagine she’s still here. It’s all I can do.”
It was a highlight in a night filled with many, including Nicks earlier tribute to longtime collaborator Tom Petty, as well as Joel and Nicks duetting with each other on songs during their individual sets.
But beyond all that, there was simply the thrill of a rainy night in Inglewood spent with two singer-songwriters for whom the word iconic truly fits, and the joy of singing and dancing to songs that have been hits long enough to be full strands in the DNA of pop music over the past 50 years.
Billy Joel’s hit parade
Joel opened his set with “My Life,” featuring Bach’s “Ode to Joy” as its intro, and “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” a pair of his biggest hits – “My Life” reached No. 3 – which is what you do when 17 of the 21 songs on your set list cracked the Top 40.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he told the crowd after that opening. “The bad news is I don’t have anything new to play for you. The good news is I don’t have to play anything new.”
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That speaks to the confidence of an entertainer who hasn’t released an album of new material since 1993, but still feels fine to leave the No. 1 hit “Tell Her About It,” out of his show, while giving his guitar player, Mike DelGuidice, the spotlight to sing the Puccini aria “Nessun dorma” with Joel as his accompanist.
The album tracks and fan favorites “Vienna” and “Zanzibar” followed, and from there the show unfolded with the familiarity of a good friend you haven’t seen in years – Joel hadn’t played Southern California since a Dodger Stadium show in 2017 – who dropped by to pick up right where you’d last left off.
“An Innocent Man” was introduced with a warning that he might regret the highest notes he’d written into it when he was 40 years young, which set up for cheers when he scaled those heights on the choruses of the finger-snapping tune inspired by the street-corner doo-wop of his youth.
The ballad “Just the Way You Are” wasn’t originally going to make his 1977 breakout album “The Stranger,” but then singer Linda Ronstadt urged him to reconsider, Joel said before playing the sax-infused ballad that went on to win the Grammys for record and song of the year.
Nicks joined Joel for the ballad “And So It Goes,” on which her voice never quite seemed to mesh with his as they sang to each other across the top of his grand piano. His longtime backing vocalist, percussionist and sax player Crystal Taliefero fared much better – they’ve got the benefit of playing together since 1989 – when she sang the Ike & Tina Turner hit “River Deep, Mountain High” as an interlude in the middle of “River of Dreams” a few songs later.
The main set wrapped up “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” a mini-suite of songs set in, well, you know, a restaurant, and his signature tune “Piano Man,” a ballad based on his time as a lounge singer in a Los Angeles piano bar early in his career. (“I didn’t know I was gonna end up here when I was playing that little dump on Wilshire,” Joel said early in show.)
The five-song encore opened with a trio of upbeat rock tunes, including the No. 1 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” for which Joel strapped on a guitar, and then “Uptown Girl” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” both of which he sang while roaming the stage, twirling his mic stand like the frontman he insisted earlier in the night he really wasn’t.
Then, after “Big Shot” brought him back to the piano, “You May Be Right” wrapped up the night, Joel’s fingers pounding the keyboard as he rocked out to the finish.
Stevie Nicks a-twirling
You’d be forgiven for thinking Nicks might have changed up her set after looking outside at the rain that fell all day Friday. Her opener, “Outside the Rain,” was followed by Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” with such lyrics as “Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining,” and “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.”
But those were the opening songs of her fall tour, too, and a strong one-two to get her 16-song set off and running.
Nicks has a thinner solo catalog than Joel, but her show Friday felt full thanks to the addition of a handful of songs she wrote and sang as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and a few choice covers including Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” a ’60s protest song she said she chose for its relevance still today, and “Free Fallin’,” a Tom Petty solo tune that served as a tribute to her friend and collaborator.
Joel walked out early in Nicks’ show to join her for another Petty tune, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which she noted Petty had gifted her for her 1981 solo debut “Bella Donna.”
The Fleetwood Mac songs, of course, drew huge responses from the crowd. In addition to “Dreams,” they included “Gypsy,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Sara,” which historically she doesn’t do as often, and her encore of “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.”
Nicks’ performance style is almost as iconic as her music, and at SoFi she had the mic stand and tambourine, both of them beribbon, her fingerless gloves, black boots and flowing black dress, as well as at least three different shawls that floated as she twirled during musical breaks in the songs. (At the end of the show she encouraged the NFL players who play there to feel free to follow her twirling lead.)
Other highlights included the solo hits “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen,” the latter of which closed the main set. But that final encore of “Landslide,” that will always be the highlight anyone there will remember.
Two Icons, One Night: Billy Joel & Stevie Nicks
When: Friday, March 10
Where: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood