Wednesday, November 04, 2009

FLEETWOOD MAC - Tour finishes on Friday at Wembley Arena in London

Fleetwood Mac Lift The Lid
BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC

Despite a rocky past, Fleetwood Mac look set to finish their UK tour this week without incident.

The band have pulled off a series of comeback dates that wrap up in London on Friday, but as Stevie Nicks explained, it hasn’t always been such a smooth ride for them with many rows and in-fighting within the band:

“Somebody’s playing a song, and everybody in the room is going, that’s about me right? And of course it’s about you, but what you have to do is let that go, ‘cos if you don’t let that go, you can never play these songs for anybody.”

"Somebody’s playing a song, and everybody in the room is going, that’s about me right?"  Stevie Nicks on troubles in the band.

The band have not shied away from any of their hits on the tour, including songs from all four decades at the shows, which have been hailed a triumphant return for the band. They've managed to overcome several changes to the line-up and had to contend with breakups, drug problems and even a religious cult during their time together.

Lindsey Buckingham says reforming wasn’t a walk in the park, and he didn’t really face up to the full force of their previous problems in doing so: “It was kind of an exercise in denial that really was the only way to get through it, you really had to put your feelings over here and get on with what needed to be done in the rest of the room.”

The band re-released "The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac" last month, which went in at number 6 in the UK album charts. But Ken Caillat who produced their classic album Rumours, and said even during the recording Stevie Nicks, and then partner Lindsey Buckingham, were falling out in a big way:

“They were both sitting on stools next to each other and singing into two microphones, and we had to stop the tape or something, and suddenly they were screaming at each other, “Damn you, damn you, go to hell,” and I was honestly embarrassed, I didn’t know what to do, so I just rewound the tape as fast as I could and the moment I hit play they were back into singing, You Make Loving Fun Again, which I thought was very ironic.”

Since going on tour - now without singer Christine McVie - the band have been able to bury some old hatchets, according to John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham.

“We’d just come back from New York, and I don’t think the band has played better. This is a great body of work we’ve got and that allows you to sort of, all the other good feelings, and the other more objective and positive aspects of how you feel about the people, to follow.”

The tour finishes on Friday at Wembley Arena in London.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Songs from all four decades? I saw them in D.C. on this tour, and they played songs fromt he 60's, 70's, and 80's, but I failed to hear any songs that were written in the 90's. Both the songs they did from solo work were from the 80's, and everything else was from their albums in the 70's and 80's, with the exception of Oh Well, from the 60's. What did they play from the 90's?

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