ROCK ICONS STEVIE NICKS AND THE PRETENDERS JOURNEY TO THE PRUDENTIAL CENTER

BY JON DOMENICK

Stevie Nicks, creator of the mystical gold-dusted, swirling dervish, gauze-draped persona that haunted many a ’70s and ’80s teen dream, is giving fans a rare gift during her current 24 Karat Gold Tour (with special guests, The Pretenders): a “magical, Gothic trunk” of seldom heard and “lost” songs.

The legendary Nicks, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and multi-platinum Grammy Award winning solo artist, has been riveting audiences nationwide with insider yarns about the songs’ origins and meanings, setting devotees aflutter. These often humorous anecdotes shed light on collaborations with the likes of Tom Petty, Don Henley, and her Fleetwood Mac bandmates. The new tour follows
Fleetwood Mac’s highly touted 2014 Reunion Tour (featuring long-absent member Christie McVie), and features selections from Nick’s most recent album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, released that same year.

Meanwhile, The Pretenders, headed by Chrissie Hynde, in addition to delivering their catalogue of hits, are belting out songs from the 2016 album, Alone, reviews of which have been consistently glowing.

The former Stephanie Lynn Nicks intended to become a teacher before dropping out of college to pursue music with boyfriend Lindsay Buckingham. Instead, the pair joined Mick Fleetwood and his band Fleetwood Mac in 1975. The troupe’s ups, downs, and stormy relationships became legend, as have its songs “Gypsy,” “Stand Back,” “Landslide,” “Dreams,” and “Rhiannon,” many written or co-written by Nicks. The band eventually splintered, with its chanteuse moving on to a successful solo career. Either with the band or on her own, Nicks has sold over 140 million albums, and as part of Fleetwood Mac, won a Grammy for Album of the Year for Rumours. The group was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1998, then, in 2003, into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her solo material garnered several Grammy nods for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.

Rising out of London during the “British Invasion” of 1979 (though Hynde was an American expatriate from Ohio), the Pretenders hit, “Brass in Pocket,” topped the U.K. album and singles charts in 1980, and Neil Young inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. Concertgoers can expect to rock out to chart-toppers like “Talk of the Town,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” and “My City Was Gone (Ohio).”

In addition to a Prudential Center gig, the tandem tour stops at the newly re-opened Nassau Coliseum on April 6 before concluding in London in July.

Prudential Center
25 Lafayette Street, Newark / 973.757.6600
prucenter.com / 7:00 P.M., April 2