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Stevie Nicks is more than just a singer or a songwriter or the front person of Fleetwood Mac. She’s an icon and an archetype, the high priestess of classic rock, whose music and post-hippy California cool has influenced generations of artists in multiple fields. The concert film Stevie Nicks, 24-Karat Gold: The Concert was released in October 2020 in a special ticketed event and is currently available for streaming on Tubi.

Filmed at two performances in 2017, the set list draws deep from Nicks’ 2014 album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, which found her cracking open her self-described “dark Gothic trunk of lost songs.” Some of the songs were written as far back as 1969 but never properly recorded or released. Mixed in with these are recognizable hits from her Fleetwood Mac and solo catalog. Between numbers she tells the stories behind them, how they were written, what and who inspired them.

Striding to center stage at the start of the show, Nicks is every inch the witchy goddess the audience paid to see, her mic stand bedecked with scarves, a tambourine, also covered in scarves, slung over her arm. It takes a few minutes before the camera pans out and you see she’s wearing 3 inch lifts. They might as well be stilts and she could just as easily be barefoot, given the power she projects. Her voice sounds older but no less alluring, a croaky hum which warms the ears and fits the songs like an old leather jacket.

As a songwriter, Nicks had to compete for space on Fleetwood Mac albums with Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. Like George Harrison in the Beatles, this produced an overabundance of material. Seeking a respite from the Mac’s volatile emotional landscape, which included three formerly romantic couples, Nicks recorded her first solo album, 1981’s Bella Donna, with the promise not to quit the band that had made her famous. It’s a tribute to Nicks’ dedication that for 40 years she has successfully balanced the demands of being in one of rock’s biggest bands with an impressive solo career.

Nicks and her band perform with vim, vigor and virtuosity throughout the 2-hour plus performance. L.A. session great Waddy Wachtel plays Jimmy Page to Nicks’ Robert Plant, pumping up the crowd with old school guitar hero energy and letting them know when to genuflect before his leading lady. Their musical relationship goes back to 1973, when Wachtel played on the debut album by Buckingham-Nicks, which presaged Fleetwood Mac and whose “Crying in the Night” is featured in the show.

Nicks back up singers have always served as her on-stage coven, familiars, sisters, and extensions of herself. Singing together on Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy,” they sound as good as you might hope and imagine. Throughout the show, Nicks switches in and out of different colored capes which hang down to the bottom of her dress and take flight when she pirouettes at the end of a song, eliciting ecstatic cheers from the crowd.

Nicks is capable of lyrical brilliance – witness Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” – and more mundane verse which sacrifices coherence for symbolism. Like ancient talismans, they’re intriguing but hard to decipher. Even when the lyrics are nothing, though, they sound beautiful coming out of her mouth. Her classic rock radio standards of the ‘70s and ‘80s evoke memories of the past for the artist and audience alike. However, her new material, or should I say, new old material, feels overcooked, like a roast someone forgot to put on the dinner table and was left out overnight.

Like the Celtic warrior queen Boudica taking on the Roman Empire, Stevie Nicks has battled drug addiction, bad lovers and record labels for independence and respect. With a long track record of success behind her, she can now afford to do exactly as she likes. Before the final encore she thanks the audience for sitting through songs they’ve never heard before, saying “It’s been like starting over…dreams come true, even for me still at 68 years old.” Stevie Nicks is poised to return to the stage this spring, appearing at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Bonnaroo.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.