Stevie Nicks Conjures ‘Enchanted’ Moments

Even if Fleetwood Mac hadn’t enlisted Stevie Nicks to help them sell unholy amounts of records in the mid-’70s, you get the feeling she somehow would have become a rock icon.

That multi-platinum band may have produced hits from three different singer-songwriters, but when it came to filling arenas, it was Nicks, the pagan goddess of the L.A. music scene, who fans came to see. That mystical woman persona remains a powerful lure for her fans.

For her performance Monday at the Universal Amphitheatre, the singer had the stage festooned with pink drapes and a giant stained-glass backdrop, and appeared in a seemingly endless series of flowing dresses and diaphanous shawls.

Nicks was every inch the seraphic diva, her signature whirling-dervish dance eliciting huge roars from her adoring supplicants.

Nicks was promoting her recently released CD box set, “Enchanted,” which compiles the cream of her solo work. Her output with Fleetwood Mac tended toward genteel folk-rock, but Nicks toughened up her sound for her own albums, juicing her material with blustery guitars and big, radio-ready keyboards.

At Universal, Nicks went with a two-guitar, two-keyboard lineup and attacked such up-tempo rockers as “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen” with the kind of unforced urgency that was missing from last year’s too-polite Fleetwood Mac reunion tour.

The upside of being in a band is that it provides the checks and balances necessary to avoid self-indulgence, which Nicks was guilty of more than once Monday.

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During the first half of the show, Nicks paused for an acoustic mini-set of songs that laid bare her penchant for flowery metaphor and clunky pastoral imagery. And there were countless annoying pauses for costume changes, which gave the show a Vegas taint.

Not that any of this registered with the crowd, which seemed to find some measure of comfort in Nicks’ tales of gothic romance. Those included her Fleetwood Mac hits, which Nicks sprinkled throughout her set.

If anything, “Dreams, “Rhiannon” and “Gold Dust Woman,” all of which sounded a mite threadbare on the Mac reunion tour, benefited from her band’s sturdy, sympathetic accompaniment. And her ballad “Landslide,” predictably enough, brought the house down.

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Nicks’ voice has lost none of its range or quirkiness; she thrilled the crowd whenever she used her craggy vibrato to stretch out a melody. Her gypsy-queen dance steps have grown tired with age, however, and have merely become a way to milk the crowd.

No matter--what Nicks lacked in spontaneity, she made up in show-biz spunk and polish, even if her material occasionally wallowed in naive platitudes.

* Stevie Nicks and Michael McDonald play Friday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive. 8 p.m. $22.25-$75.25. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).