Inglewood, CA
SoFi Stadium
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| not the greatest shot, but it will have to do |
Early in November, my cousin Denise sent me a text -- Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks were playing a co-headlining show in Dallas. Wow, cool, but damn, Dallas. That's just a bit too far to go. The next day she texted again -- two new shows, including one in LA. Now that's much more doable! I texted our cousin Eileen -- the show was in her backyard -- wanna go? She said she did and so did her husband. Denise was iffy pending kid obligations.
Tickets went on sale about a week later and since I've never been to SoFi stadium before, I logged into Ticketmaster late the night before to check out the seating chart and see if I could figure out where the best seats might be. In doing so, I somehow managed to stumble into some kind of pre-sale. Denise hadn't decided yet on getting a ticket, but I couldn't let a great opportunity like that pass, so I jumped on the pre-sale and got three tickets. The next morning, about half an hour before the general on-sale, Denise texted me -- how much were tickets and what are your plans? I told her what had happened the night before and how much I'd paid for the tickets, and she decided she was in. The only problem was, she was in the car on the way to Fresno, so I logged in to Ticketmaster again and in a texting relay was able to grab her a seat next to the ones I'd already purchased and billed her credit card directly instead of mine. Yay modern technology and voice command texting!
Ticketing settled, we waited until after the holidays to sort out travel planning. That was complicated a bit by my plans to see Bruce Springsteen in Portland two weeks before. It got further complicated when I came back from Portland with COVID. Three years in, I finally got hit with it. To be honest, I'm surprised I hadn't contracted it earlier -- between concerts, baseball games, two trips to Las Vegas, and a couple of known exposures it was only a matter of time before I came down with it despite being fully vaccinated and boosted. Fortunately all my symptoms were fairly mild and by last Sunday all I was dealing with was lingering congestion. I checked the CDC to see what the current restrictions/recommendations are for a post-positive COVID test, and so long as I wore a mask in crowds, I was good to go. Even if I tested negative by Friday (I didn't), I was planning to wear a mask -- I didn't want to get a rebound case!
Denise and I flew down to LA from separate airports, but arrived at LAX a few minutes apart. Since LAX is huge and we were on different airlines, when we landed I texted Denise to meet me at the car rental. I got there first, which was good since the car was in my name. It was a bit confusing figuring out where to go to pick up the car, but I eventually made my way to the right counter and got in line. Denise arrived just as I was talking with the agent, so I told her to stay where she was and I'd come find her once I was done. A few minutes later I had the key to a Polestar 2 -- an electric car from Volvo. I met Denise and went off to find the car. Naturally our car wasn't under the covered shelter, which meant getting in the car in a pretty good rain. It's been a wet winter in California, but it was just grey and cloudy when we left the Bay Area and I expected the weather to be similar in LA. Nope. That made getting in the car more complicated, and I finally had to find someone to help me figure out where the trunk release was and how to turn on the defogger. Eventually we made our way out of the car rental and got checked in to our hotel.
Eileen and Doug were going to pick us up about 5:30 for the 7:00 show, so we freshened up and then hung out in the hotel lobby chatting until they arrived. I hadn't seen Denise in person since last summer, so it was nice to catch up face to face rather than via text. Eileen and Doug arrived more or less on time and we were off to the show.
SoFi Stadium is the new football stadium in Inglewood where the Rams and Chargers play. It's only been open a couple of years, and I was curious what it would be like. Wow! The place is huge. Luckily, Eileen had purchased a parking pass, so we were able to park relatively close to the stadium and it was a short walk in the now drizzle to find the right entry gate. We had to ask staff, check the stadium map, and get a little bit lost before we found our seats which were about the 50-yard line and 9 rows up from the field. Pretty decent for a stadium (and pretty pricey!) We hadn't had time to grab something to eat before leaving for the stadium, but luckily we could access the field club concession area so we were able to get some decent snacks before showtime without having to wait in line too long.
I'd gotten several emails saying the show would "start promptly at 7:00", but I've been to enough shows to know that was unlikely. Still, it wasn't much of a wait until Stevie Nicks came out about 7:15 and kicked into her set. I wasn't familiar with the opening song ("Outside the Rain") but the set quickly became familiar with "Dreams." Just a few songs in, Billy Joel came out to join her for "Stop Dragging My Heart Around." I thought this would be likely since the last time I'd seen Stevie, she was touring with the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde joined her on the Tom Petty part. Billy did a pretty good job and it was an enjoyable duet.
Stevie went back and forth through her set performing solo songs along with songs from her Fleetwood Mac catalog, and all sounded warm and familiar. The crowd would cheer whenever she would embark on her trademark twirl -- a bit slower than it once was, but she is in her mid-70s now! A personal highlight from the main set was her tribute to Tom Petty when she sang "Free Falling" with lots of images of Tom on the video screen -- including many of them performing "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" over the years.
The set was pretty brisk and she wrapped up the main set by about 8:30, but of course there would be an encore. Denise and I briefly guessed what she might play, then Stevie reappeared launched into "Rhiannon" which made me think "oh, duh!" But the highlight of the night was the finale. Stevie closed out the set with "Landslide" while pictures of Christine McVie scrolled through the video screens showing the decades long friendship the two shared. Tears came to my eyes immediately and remained throughout the performance. The audience did a great job singing along, and hearing all those voices join in was amazing. Just as the song was ending, Stevie put her head down -- she was too emotional to get to the final note. It was a heartbreaking moment. She kept her head down for a bit, and when she raised it again it was with tears on her face and a comment along the lines of "damn, I didn't want to screw that up." She didn't. It was a real emotion and everyone felt her grief.
Stevie took her final bow and it was time for a brief intermission while the set was changed over for Billy. We chatted a bit about the set and speculated on whether or not Stevie would come out and join on one of Billy's songs, and if so, which one.
We didn't have to wait too long -- Billy took the stage about 9:20, so about 30 minutes after the end of Stevie's set. He kicked off his set with Beethoven's Ode to Joy before launching into "My Life" -- woo hoo! the song that introduced me to Billy Joel at age 10! (I'm fairly sure I heard/knew some of his earlier songs, but "My Life" is the one that hooked me.) Up on my feet singing along under my mask!
Like Stevie's set, Billy played hits along with some deeper album tracks. I'm a bigger fan of Billy's than Stevie's, so have all his albums and thus really enjoyed the album tracks like "Vienna" and "Zanzibar." (Not that I didn't enjoy Stevie's, I just didn't know them all that well.) About half-way through the set, Stevie did indeed come out to join Billy on "And So It Goes." It's one of my favorite ballads of Billy's and unfortunately probably not the right song for Stevie to sing as a duet. Her trademark warble was a little rough on such a delicate melody. I think something a little more mid-tempo like "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" might have worked a bit better. Still, it got an enthusiastic response from the crowd.
A few personal highlights of Billy's set were "An Innocent Man" and "Only the Good Die Young." For the former, Billy joked how when he recorded it back in the early 1980s he recognized he was hitting some high notes that weren't coming as easily as they once were, so beware 40 years later! Billy managed to pull off the high notes, in part by starting the song in a lower key than the original. When "Only the Good Die Young" hit, I grabbed my cousins on either side and made them stand up -- can't have the Catholic school girls sitting for that one! (The crowd was a bit up and down all night, so were we.)
Throughout Billy's set he featured various members of his band in extended solos from his trumpet player on "Zanzibar" to multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero singing "River Deep, Mountain High" in the middle of "The River of Dreams" (she's awesome!) Probably the most amazing part was when one of his guitarists came out and sang "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot (and yes, I had to look that up.) Absolutely incredible - what a voice! My mother's been trying to get me to go to the opera (or more accurately watch in-theater live streams of the Metropolitan Opera) for a few years now, maybe I'll finally take her up on it! This brief operatic interlude was followed by "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and worked wonderfully.
Billy's set closed out of course with "Piano Man" and having 60,000 people singing along for the chorus felt epic. He did change up the second to last verse singing "It's a pretty good crowd for a Friday" and the crowd roared in response.
It was close to 11:00 by the time the main set ended, so I expected that we'd only get one or two more songs for the encore, but he managed to play five more! He kicked off the encore on guitar for "We Didn't Start the Fire" while the video screens behind him scrolled through photos of all the people/places/things he mentions in the lyrics. It was pretty clever and made it look like scrolling through photos on your phone.
The show wrapped up about 11:20 and we made our way through the crowd to the parking lot. It took a while to wind our way out and back to the hotel. Denise had an earlier flight home than I did, so we met for breakfast the next morning then I dropped her at the airport and went off to meet Eileen for lunch before I too needed to get on a plane home. A quick fun trip to a wet and cloudy SoCal with my cousins! (And COVID negative as of Sunday.)
{You can check out cousin Denise's take here.}
Set lists courtesy of setlist.fm
Stevie Nicks:
Outside the Rain
Dreams
If Anyone Falls
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (w/ Billy Joel)
Fall From Grace
For What It's Worth
Gypsy
Wild Heart
Bella Donna
Stand Back
Free Fallin'
Gold Dust Woman
Sara
Edge of Seventeen
Encore:
Rhiannon
Landslide
Billy Joel:
My Life (w/ 'Ode to Joy' intro)
Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
Vienna
Zanzibar (Carl Fischer on trumpet)
An Innocent Man
Don't Ask Me Why
Just the Way You Are
Allentown
And So It Goes (w/ Stevie Nicks)
Say Goodbye to Hollywood
Sometimes a Fantasy
Only the Good Die Young
The River of Dreams (w/ 'River Deep, Mountain High' interlude sung by Crystal Taliefero)
Nessun dorma (Giacomo Puccini cover) (sung by Mike DelGuidice)
Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Piano Man
Encore:
We Didn't Start the Fire
Uptown Girl
It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
Big Shot
You May Be Right (w/ 'Rock and Roll' by Led Zeppelin interlude sung by Mike DelGuidice)
