Stevie Nicks shares why she moved out of San Francisco at Chase Center concert

Because of Fleetwood Mac’s well-known connection to Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, it’s easy to forget Stevie Nicks lived in the San Francisco Bay Area before she ever made it big in Southern California. But the rock legend reminded her Chase Center crowd of her roots as soon as she came onstage to open her triumphant set on Friday.

“This is where I would say, ‘Welcome, San Francisco’ but I could just say, ‘I feel like I’m home,’” said Nicks, who moved to the Bay Area as a high schooler and went to college at San Jose State University. 

Before continuing with the show, Nicks proved her Bay Area bona fides by casually name-dropping an iconic city venue and one of the most important men in San Francisco music history. 

As she told it, Nicks was performing at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1970 when she started being heckled and catcalled by someone in the crowd. According to Nicks, a man came on stage and told the heckler, “I want you to get out of my f—king Fillmore and never f—king come back to this building ever. And if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you!”

That man, Nicks soon found out, was none other than legendary San Francisco concert promoter Bill Graham, famed for helping launch careers for the likes of the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin.

“My heart is still here,” said Nicks of the San Francisco Bay Area. “I lived here for about seven years, and had I not joined the band and went to LA I would still be living here.”

The line wasn’t empty pandering. With her flowing shawls, aura of warmth and recollections of San Francisco’s rock ’n’ roll heyday, Nicks fits the bill for a hippie Bay Area grandma. 

Over the next two hours, Nicks performed a medley of songs from her days with Fleetwood Mac, from her solo career and even a couple of covers of her close friend Tom Petty. 

There were points during the show where Nicks showed her age. She sings some of her hits like “Dreams” and “Gold Dust Woman” at a lower pitch than they were recorded. And at a few points, she lost track of her thoughts and had to start a sentence over. But she was hardly trying to hide the fact that she’s 75 years old. She happily poked fun at herself for not being able to get Netflix to work on her home TV (an issue anyone with baby boomer parents is certainly used to.)

For the most part, Nicks proved her reputation as one of rock’s living legends.

She can still belt when she needs to, including during performances of “Bella Donna” and “Rhiannon”; and her stories of triumph and heartbreak while recording Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” in Sausalito are so central to music history that they served as inspiration for a bestseller and Emmy-nominated series.

After her initial set concluded with “Edge of Seventeen,” Nicks treated the crowd to two encores (she didn’t become a two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer by being modest). The second concluded with a touching rendition of “Landslide,” which she performed in front of photos of her friend and Fleetwood bandmate Christine McVie, who passed away last year. 

As the last notes of “Landslide” faded, the crowd headed back to their Bay Area homes. Had Fleetwood Mac not become one of the biggest bands of the past 50 years, Nicks would have been doing the same exact thing.