Mick Fleetwood recalls the nightmares behind a dream album, writes Kathy Mccabe

 Rumours were all true
by Kathy McCabe
The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)

Fleetwood Mac's famed heartbreak album Rumours is being re-released

MORE than 35 years ago, Fleetwood Mac forged Rumours in the grip of relationship implosion medicated by substance abuse.

As the anniversary is marked by the requisite reissue, even band founder Mick Fleetwood shakes his head at how they managed to write and record one of the greatest break-up albums of all time in the midst of such heartache.

These days, as the Mac prepare to embark on a world tour, the lanky drummer and his bandmates Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and John McVie share that comfortable affection which comes with the survival of such a long marriage.

You could fill a library with lurid stories from Fleetwood Mac’s past

Their own way
Sunday Star Times
by Grant Smithies

You could fill a library with lurid stories from Fleetwood Mac’s past, but everything you need to know is in the 12 songs of Rumours.

AH, YES, 1977. I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was a year of great rejoicing among the old and tired, due to the launch of the new National Superannuation Scheme, but, elsewhere, political tensions ran high. That old bully Muldoon was still in power, presiding over the shameful dawn raids in which hundreds of Polynesian ‘‘overstayers’’ were deported, and a group of Ngati Whatua was ensconced at Bastion Point, protesting government inaction over land claims. Sleeping Dogs was screening in our cinemas, a movie that imagined Aotearoa as a police state, complete with bombings, torture, and reluctant revolutionary Sam Neill hooning around in the Coromandel bush.

I, meanwhile, was marinating in male hormones in Whanganui, riding the rapids of puberty while listening to a steady soundtrack of David Bowie, The Commodores, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

Mick Fleetwood cheerfully admits, talking about Fleetwood Mac is like free therapy

A LOVE AFFAIR OF TRUE SADNESS
As Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours celebrates its 35th birthday, drummer and band lynchpin Mick Fleetwood tells Charlotte Heathcote how he's kept the volatile band going so long.
By Charlotte Heathcote
Daily Express Weekend

AS Mick Fleetwood cheerfully admits, talking about Fleetwood Mac is like free therapy. The result is an unusually candid interview, tying in with the 35th anniversary re-release of the rock juggernaut that is Rumours, one of the bestselling albums in history.

Its success is largely thanks to it being an almost perfect record and one strewn with classics; but much of its emotional intensity flowed from the well-documented romantic, drug-fuelled dramas playing out in the studio.

Stevie Nicks had ended her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham after five years (so Stevie aimed Dreams at Lindsey who retaliated with the bitter, brilliant Go Your Own Way); while Christine McVie was splitting from her husband John (and taunting him with a song about a fling, You Make Loving Fun). At the same time, Fleetwood was divorcing his own wife Jenny. Not enough heartache and tension for one band? Mick would complicate matters by embarking upon a two-year affair with Nicks.

Stevie Nicks: Sound City’s glory days are lived again

Live Review: Dave Grohl’s Sound City Players at LA’s Palladium (1/31)
BY CARL POCKET
Consequence of Sound

In a city where movies premiere every night and streets flood with stars, there was only one place to be Thursday evening in Hollywood: The Palladium. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl not only premiered his much-hyped Sound City documentary, but also strung together the studio’s regulars for a rock ‘n’ roll history lesson on stage shortly after.

Photo by Carl Pocket

Full Review with some really great photos at Consequence of Sound


Sound City’s glory days are lived again

1/2 Page LA Times Review - Feb 2, 2013 issue

By August Brown
Los Angelese Times

The Sound City vibe crackles again
The joint is buzzing as Dave Grohl gathers rock musicians who recorded at a popular Van Nuys studio.

Full Review at LA Times

Grab today's Los Angeles Times... Nice half page review of the Hollywood Palladium show with a giant photo of Stevie.  It's in the Calendar section.

Dave Grohl, Stevie Nicks, John Fogerty and Rick Springfield Take 'Sound City' to the Hollywood Palladium Stage: Concert Review By Emily Zemler
Hollywood Reporter 

Stevie Nicks Set 
1. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
2. You Can't Fix This
3. Dreams
4. Landslide

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Video: Fleetwood Mac - The Truth Behind Rumours

Fleetwood Mac - The Truth Behind Rumours

Video: STEVIE NICKS "You Can't Fix This"

STEVIE NICKS "You Can't Fix This"

Hollywood Palladium - January 31, 2013

Sound City Players Live

Thanks @EricPahls 

New Tune from Stevie... Will be released on the upcoming 
Real to Reel Sound City Soundtrack March 12th.

Review: Fleetwood Mac 'Rumours' The album that made divorce cool

Stevie Nicks, that five-foot-one-inch rock goddess in a floppy hat, one-time lover of cocaine, tranquilizers, Lindsey Buckingham, Don Henley and Mick Fleetwood, a woman who doesn’t just live in California but embodies that state with every fibre of her tiny, glittering, ragged-voiced, flat-ironed blond being, once said that “to be in Fleetwood Mac is to live in a soap opera.” And so it proved to be.

She went on to add, in a much more recent interview, that 2013 would be “the Year of Fleetwood Mac.” Here, again she was correct.

LEAH MCLAREN

The Globe and Mail

While classic-rock reunions come and go – a tedious conveyor belt of pot-bellied boomers in pleather pants desperately cashing in on youthful glory – this year’s much-anticipated reunion of Fleetwood Mac could not have been better timed. It’s been three and a half decades since the band members overcame their toxic web of mutual heartbreak, divorce and addiction, crammed themselves into a sweaty studio, and emerged with Rumours, quite possibly the most uplifting collection of breakup songs ever written. Just rereleased as a digitally remastered box set, the album, which produced four Top 10 U.S. singles, is the eighth-highest-selling album of all time.

In addition to the new release, the band is preparing for its most ambitious North American tour since the eighties. It won’t be a full reunion – Christine McVie, ex-wife of bassist John McVie (whose name accounts for the “Mac” in Fleetwood Mac) and one of the band’s best songwriters, will not be taking part, having long ago scooped up her royalties and permanently retired to the English countryside.

Full Review at The Globe and Mail

Mick Fleetwood: Christine McVie will visit with Stevie Nicks in LA after Hawaii Holiday with Mick

Mick Fleetwood: We miss Christine.. I'm hoping I can get her to rejoin
Jacqui Swift
The Sun

IT was one of the top-selling albums of the Seventies which turned Fleetwood Mac into the biggest superstars in the world.

But with all the broken hearts, tempestuous affairs and excessive drink and drugs, the making of 1977’s Rumours came at a price.

This week, almost 36 years after the seminal record hit shelves, an expanded and deluxe version of the album is released including original B-side Silver Springs, unreleased live recordings, outtakes, and documentary The Rosebud Film.

Rumours was huge, selling more than 40million copies, and made the entangled lives of Brits Mick Fleetwood, husband and wife John and Christine McVie and US couple Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, one of rock ’n’ roll’s legendary stories.

Songs such as Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way, You Make Loving Fun, The Chain and Dreams are as popular as ever today. With a world tour opening in the US in April and a UK tour planned for September, Fleetwood Mac are winning over a new generation of fans as well as their hardcore devotees.

When we meet in a west London hotel, 6ft 5in Fleetwood says: “There are young people who are so happy this tour is happening.”

Now 65, the drummer has a healthy tan after years of living in Hawaii but has retained his English accent.

He says: “It’s a new generation that have been turned on to our music. Rumours is our most famous album but it leads to all the others. It’s like someone finding a Neil Young album and going, ‘What? There’s more?’

“Sonically it’s a very clean, un-gizmoed record which has been a huge blessing. We didn’t call in a slick, Hollywood producer and there were none of the sound effects you hear in music today.

Video / Review: Stevie Nicks - Sound City Movie L.A. Premiere and Live Gig

Sound City Movie L.A. Premiere and Live Gig

The Sound City Movie made it's official debut in theatres around the world last night (January 31st) and on-line... If you pre-ordered the flick through the Sound City website, the download and streaming of the movie became available last night.  If you haven't watched it... You should!  Really well put together documentary on the famous studio and its console (Congratulations Mr. Grohl!).  Tons of Rock Stars in the feature with Stevie, Lindsey, Mick and Keith Olsen featured quite heavily in interview segments. Stevie has a great segment where she's shown recording her new song "You Can't Fix This" which sounds really great!  She even reads a letter (on Sound City stationery) she wrote to her family while she and Lindsey were in the studio recording Buckingham Nicks.

Plus there are a lot of really great photos of early Buckingham Nicks and early Fleetwood Mac in the studio. 

Little known fact: 

Buckingham Nicks' "Crying In The Night" was the first ever track 

recorded on the Neve console at Sound City.

 Anyway, if you like music, and or listening to stories on how some of the really great music of our time was made... Check out the movie, you'll enjoy it!  Buy and download from Sound City direct, or look for it in a theatre near you using the threatre listing at the Sound City website.  The DVD and Sound Track will both be released March 12th.

After the LA premiere at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, The Palladium rocked for a further 3 1/2 hours with many in the film playing live to a sold out crowd.

Foo Fighters joined by Stevie Nicks, Slipknot and Nirvana members for Sound City gig in LA
The gig followed the LA premiere of Dave Grohl's Sound City documentary

Stevie Nicks was the final guest musician, performing 'Stop Draggin' My Heart Around', with Grohl filling in Tom Petty's role. She sang new song 'You Can't Fix This', from the soundtrack, which she told the crowd was about her late 18-year-old godson, who last year died of an overdose at a frat party. "In our day, we made a pact not to dance with the devil," she explained before the intense, gothic track.

Nicks also sang Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' and 'Landslide'. The evening came to a close with a heavy, nearly 10 minute long version of 'Rumours' track 'Gold Dust Woman'.

Show Review: NME

Landslide

Dreams

Gold Dust Woman.. Wow!

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around