Stevie Nicks performs surprise duet with Billy Joel, pays teary tribute to Christine McVie at first 'Two Icons, One Night' tour date

Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks kicked off their much-anticipated, nine-date “Two Icons, One Night” co-headlining tour at Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium on Friday, March 10, and the evening featured not one but two surprise duets between the Gold Dust Woman and Piano Man that had the 70,000-capacity crowd cheering.

But it was Nicks’s tributes to two other much-missed rock icons that had the crowd in tears — and Nicks’s name trending on Twitter.

Nicks played first, delivering a hits-packed set that included solo songs like “Stand Back,” “Edge of Seventeen,” and “If Anyone Falls” as well as Fleetwood Mac classics like “Dreams,” “Gypsy,” “Rhiannon,” and “Sara” and a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It's Worth.” Four songs into her set, the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee performed “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around,” the Bella Donna single that she said her late friend Tom Petty “gifted” her in 1981 — and the SoFi audience absolutely erupted when Joel unexpectedly emerged from the stage wings during the second verse to take on the Petty role. Later, during Joel’s main set, Nicks returned the favor by guesting on his tune “And So It Goes.”

Nicks also reprised her crowd-pleasing cover of Petty’s “Free Fallin’”— which she’d previously performed on tour with Fleetwood Mac when Mike Campbell, former guitarist for Petty’s band the Heartbreakers, played in the 2018-2019 Mac lineup. “Free Fallin’” provided a powerful moment Friday, but it was Nicks’s encore of Fleetwood Mac’s coming-of-age ballad “Landslide” — dedicated to her late friend and bandmate Christine McVie, while a slideshow of vintage Nicks/McVie photographs ran on the venue’s wall-sized video screens — that resonated the deepest.

When “Landslide” ended, Nicks paused and bowed her head against her microphone stand, her eyes brimming with tears. “I have to imagine she’s still here. It’s all I can do,” she said, choked up, as her band members supportively surrounded her to take their final bow. Friday marked the first time that Nicks had performed a public concert since McVie’s November 2022 death.

Joel and Nicks’s Two Icons, One Night tour continues April 8 in Arlington, Texas, followed by dates in Nashville, Philadelphia, Columbus, Kansas City, Foxborough, Baltimore, and Minneapolis. The two artists’ kick-off setlists were:

Stevie Nicks

Outside the Rain

Dreams

If Anyone Falls

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Fall From Grace

For What It's Worth

Gypsy

Wild Heart

Bella Donna

Stand Back

Free Fallin'

Gold Dust Woman

Sara

Edge of Seventeen

Rhiannon

Landslide

Billy Joel

The Natural (The End Title)

My Life

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)

Vienna

Zanzibar

An Innocent Man

Don't Ask Me Why

Just the Way You Are

Allentown

And So It Goes

Say Goodbye to Hollywood

Sometimes a Fantasy

Only the Good Die Young

The River of Dreams

Scenes From an Italian Restaurant

Piano Man

We Didn't Start the Fire

Uptown Girl

It's Still Rock and Roll to Me

Big Shot

You May Be Right

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

• Stevie Nicks on how she wrote 'Dreams,' her signature style, book plans, and not being able to tour: 'This virus has stolen time from me'

• Watch Harry Styles reunite with 'magical gypsy godmother' Stevie Nicks at L.A. record release show

• 'RuPaul's Drag Race' queen Alaska talks 'spiritual' new music — and why Stevie Nicks is a true all-star

• Mick Fleetwood on the new Fleetwood Mac: ‘It’s important to remain creative and not tread water’

• Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell talks new(ish) band the Dirty Knobs, possible album with Fleetwood Mac, and ‘cathartic’ reunion with Benmont Tench

• Neil Finn talks Crowded House's return, joining Fleetwood Mac, and why Miley & Ariana's 'Don't Dream It's Over' cover is his favorite

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