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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Diehards flying in from the US and Britain, on what is likely Fleetwood Mac's final concerts ever
Taranaki Daily News
December's two Fleetwood Mac concerts will bring a $7.5 million bonanza to the Taranaki economy.
The figure comes from a recently-published forecast from Venture Taranaki, which says more than 36,000 fans are expected pass through the gates of the TSB Bowl of Brooklands within a 24-hour period – with more than 25,000 of them from out of the region.
Among those fans will be diehards flying in from the United States and Britain, intent on attending what is likely to be Fleetwood Mac's final concerts ever.
The New Plymouth District Council and VT are forecasting that these visitors will contribute the $7.5 million to the local economy.
This means each visitor will spend roughly $300 each during his or her time here.
The same forecast looks at the value of three rugby World Cup games in New Plymouth in 2011 and estimates those games will bring $5.2 million in visitor money to the economy.
The council's manager of business events Garry Sharpe-Young says the sheer magnitude of the concerts and their guests have prompted several local agencies to form a steering committee to manage the large amount of out-of-towners to the region.
Agencies include the council, VT, Taranaki Chamber of Commerce and the police.
"We have discovered many of the people coming in have never been to New Plymouth before and we want to encourage them to see more of it than just go to the concert and leave," Mr Sharpe-Young said.
"We are also encouraging businesses to stay open during that weekend because the economic impact is just huge. It will be $7.5m plus."
At the REM concert at the Bowl in 2005 Easter licensing laws ruined the party for thousands of fans who hit downtown New Plymouth after the band's concert. Strict liquor licensing laws forced bars to close early, with many bar owners feeling they missed out on the fun.
But this time around, with more than twice the crowd likely to hit the town after Fleetwood Mac, local business owners are being encouraged to stay open to cater to the masses.
About 100 people are coming from the US and the United Kingdom, many of them have been following the international group's world tour, which is said to be its last.
"It's a huge opportunity for us to alter people's perception of New Plymouth in a positive way," Mr Sharpe-Young said.
"You could definitively say this is the biggest concert to hit New Plymouth in the last 40 years."
Tickets for Fleetwood Mac's concert on December 19 sold out within minutes when they went on sale last month.
The second concert for December 20 is almost sold out, with only general admission tickets available.
In order to cope with the region's extra guests, volunteer co-ordinator for the steering committee, Moira Irving, says organisers need about 200 volunteers to help with various tasks around the city.
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"We want volunteers on the walkway and greeting people at the airport, we want them at the park, we just want people to feel sort of overwhelmed at the amazing weekend," Ms Irving said.
"We will have people handing out information and showing them what restaurants will be open, places they might want to go and visit through and make sure it's a whole Taranaki visit, it's not rushing into the concert and then shooting through."
Anyone wanting to become a volunteer should contact Ms Irving at the New Plymouth District Council.
But the region better get used to being overrun by out-of-towners as Mr Sharpe-Young says he intends to bring in a major international act every year.
"There are a few possibilities for early 2010 and more for 2011 and 2012.
"We want to bring in another contemporary act like we did with Jack Johnson."
WHERE THE FANS ARE FROM
Auckland: 7000
Wellington: 8000
Waikato: 2500
Manawatu: 2000
Bay of Plenty: 2000
South Island: 2000
West Coast: 32
Taranaki: 10,000
American and UK: 100
FLEETWOOD MAC HAVE AN OPENING ACT FOR SELECT AUSTRALIAN DATES
Herald Sun
KILLING Heidi siblings Ella and Jesse Hooper are set for a comeback to the charts.
The hit-making pair's new band, the Verses, has just signed with Warner Music.
The deal has also helped the band secure the coveted slot supporting Fleetwood Mac on its December tour of Australia.
Unlike Killing Heidi, the Verses have a country-tinged southern rock sound.
Aside from Ella's occasional appearances on Spicks and Specks, the Hoopers have kept a low profile since the end of Killing Heidi, to concentrate on their songwriting.
Now 26, Ella was 17 when Killing Heidi topped the charts in 2000, becoming the hottest band in the land.
The Verses have built a loyal following through residencies at the Toff in Town in Melbourne.
"We're country kids - we like things to go at a nice, slow pace - and we gave ourselves time: time to write, time to get inspired, time to try different things musically," Ella said.
"We were taking a holiday from the three-minute pop song, although funnily enough we've found ourselves coming back to that."
The first taste of the Verses will come with an EP released next month.
Curious listeners can download their new single Forever More free from theverses.com.au as of Monday.
The band will support Fleetwood Mac at Rod Laver Arena on December 1 and 2.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
LINKS TO PHOTOS OF FLEETWOOD MAC IN GERMANY
Fleetwood Mac - Oberhausen, Germany 12.10.09
Facebook Photos by: Stephanie Eshuis(link)
Fleetwood Mac - Oberhausen, Germany 12.10.09
FLEETWOOD MAC'S "LITTLE LIES" SAMPLED BY UK ARTIST CHERYL COLE
(REVIEW) Fleetwood Mac Live in Oberhausen Oct 12, 2009
FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE
OBERHAUSEN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 12, 2009
Munstersche Zeitung.de
Von Ingrid Wielens
Fingerfertigkeit an der Gitarre
Vergoldetes Schlagzeug
(TRANSLATION)
Dexterity on the guitar
OBERHAUSEN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 12, 2009
Munstersche Zeitung.de
Von Ingrid Wielens
BERHAUSEN Es war der Abend der 45-plus-Generation. Die überwiegend angegrauten Fans einer der einflussreichsten Rockbands aller Zeiten wollten am Montag in der nicht ganz ausverkauften König-Pilsener-Arena in Oberhausen ihre Musik der 70er und 80er hören. Fleetwood Mac schenkte ihnen eine Riesen-Party.
Fleetwood Mac schenkte ihnen eine Riesen-Party. Die Band mit mehr als 40 Jahren Geschichte, die mehrfach vor der Auflösung stand und sich immer wieder in Teilen neu formierte, trat in Bestbesetzung auf: Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks und Lindsey Buckingham auf „Unleashed-Tour“.
Der Titel war Programm. Die Musiker zeigten sich entfesselt. Monday Morning, The Chain, Dreams – schon beim sanften Auftakt war das originale Fleetwood-Mac-Feeling da. Stevie Nicks‘ prägnante Stimme, noch ausgereifter, noch wärmer und auf den Ton genau lullte sie das Publikum ein.
Fingerfertigkeit an der Gitarre
Dann wird aufgedreht: Gypsy, Rhiannon, Tusk, Sara – die Party gewinnt an Tempo. Lindsey Buckingham mischt sich ungewohnt stark ein und Gitarren-Soli unter. Er malträtiert sein Instrument, schlägt und streichelt es, lässt es schnurren, klingeln, scheppern, krachen. Bei Tango In The Night stellt er seine Fingerfertigkeit unter Beweis.
Oft ballt Buckingham die Fäuste, greift sich theatralisch ans Herz, als wollte er sagen: „Wir sind alle über 60, aber wir können es immer noch. Und wir können es noch richtig gut.“ Big Love, Never Going Back Again, Say You Love Me – keinen Ohrwurm lassen sie aus.
Vergoldetes Schlagzeug
Präsent im Hintergrund der Boss der Band: Mick Fleetwood am vergoldeten Schlagzeug liegt auf der Lauer, nimmt seine Kollegen ins Visier, zieht Grimassen, hat sichtlich Spaß. Auffallend unauffällig bleibt einzig John McVie. Virtuos am Bass, hält er sich ansonsten aus dem Show-Geschehen heraus.
Go Your Own Way, Don’t Stop – das Publikum ist nach wie vor in Stimmung, tanzt, singt, klatscht, jubelt. Erst nach drei Stunden verabschiedet sich die Band: „Wir wollen, dass wir heute Abend alle Spaß haben“, hatten die Macs eingangs angekündigt. Das haben sie wahrhaftig geschafft.
(TRANSLATION)
OBERHAUSEN It was the evening of the 45-plus generation. The mostly graying fans of one of the most influential rock bands of all time would not hear on Monday in the not entirely sold out König Pilsener Arena in Oberhausen, their music of the 70s and 80s. Fleetwood Mac gave them a huge party.
Fleetwood Mac gave them a huge party. The band with more than 40 years of history, who stood several times before the dissolution and again and again in parts of newly formed, which came into existence on cast: Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on "Unleashed Tour."
The title was program. The musicians were unleashed. Monday Morning, The Chain, Dreams - was already on the soft start, the original Fleetwood Mac-feeling there. Stevie Nicks' voice, incisive, yet sophisticated, yet warm and exactly the tone they lulled the audience.
Dexterity on the guitar
Then turned on: Gypsy, Rhiannon, Tusk, Sara - the party is gaining pace. Lindsey Buckingham mixes a highly unusual and guitar solos taking. He mistreated his instrument, hitting and stroking it, it can purr, ring, rattle, crack. Tango In The Night When he puts his finger dexterity to the test.
Buckingham often clenches his fists, grabs theatrically to his heart, as if to say: "We are all over 60, but we can still am. And we can still really good. "Big Love, Never Going Back Again, Say You Love Me - do not let them out catchy.
Gilt Drums
Presence in the background of the boss of the band: Mick Fleetwood on drums gilded lies in wait, takes his colleagues to target, pulls faces, obviously has fun. Remarkably unremarkable remains the only John McVie. A virtuoso on the bass, otherwise he keeps out of the show events.
Go Your Own Way, Do not stop dancing - the audience is still in the mood, singing, clapping, cheering. Only after three hours passed, the band: "We want that we have all the fun tonight," announced by the beginning of Macs. That has really done it.
(REVIEW) Fleetwood Mac Live in Oberhausen October 12, 2009
By: Arnold Hohmann
Photo: Ralf Rottmann
Derwesten.de Untranslated Link with Photos
Has this man had something in the coffee? Lindsey Buckingham at least hops howls from across the stage like a little devil, and on into the microphone, prowling around like a panther, the guitar at the ready. My God, this giant with the high narrow forehead is, after all, already 60th But that he is still at the Benjamin Fleetwood Mac, who filled in the Arena Oberhausen on Monday night almost. 
Buckingham is anything like the heartbeat of this band, which he once went for a long time back. Meanwhile, however, is nothing without him: While the other seniors give up on occasion, to regenerate in the restroom, B. Lindsey is the whole time on stage. Because he alone and his guitar, from which he ejecting the riffs with great nonchalance, are an event. It may even happen that the man was playing such a rage that he is capable on the mic, only to Gutturallauten while with his right hand almost fainted eindrischt on his instrument. One might almost think he had something sexual with that string part.
Everything just for show, of course, but a bit of musical madness that may already resonate. Finally, in one of his song titles are not in vain, "I Go Insane". While previous drummer Mick Fleetwood (62) tends to the old blues roots, John McVie (64) only faithfully plucking his bass, and consumes Stevie Nicks (61) from the shimmering glory of their early songs is still the most creative in the Buckingham community of fate. On his solo records, he is rehearsing the musical minimalism, from which he knows with great force shaping sheer drama.
When Fleetwood Mac five years ago, last played at this place, they had a new album ( "Say You Will") in the back, which gave the sound a new freshness. Strangely, this plate is from this time nothing to hear, one is taken up with the "Unleashed" tour rather to deliver a best-of-concert, but loosened up with some woefully neglected pieces and a few solo tracks. Already the first song is a successful Überrumpelungsversuch: "Monday Morning" collapsing upon formally through the unprepared audience, attended by a great light circus.
Loudly and violently, it usually stays on that evening. Fleetwood thresh angry with her eyes wide open on his drums as if he wanted to punish her for that even someone like him needs to be older. McVie, who are unremarkable, even gets a bass solo and needs to come shortly from the cover - for him, almost an act of self-exposure.
And Mrs. Nicks, suspiciously wrinkle-free, nor would most like to stand still dancing from the ground, which seems to hold them but more than before. Speaking earlier: One is very talkative that night, says ready to "difficult relationships in turbulent times", a "complicated and emotional band history. In other words, it already had in the 1970s, each with something to everyone. But today they do not share a damn strong music.
PETER GREEN AT BELFAST'S SPRING & AIRBRAKE.
Green will be rocking and rolling in Belfast
Belfast Telegraph
Rock and Roll hall of famer Peter Green has announced an intimate show at Belfast’s Spring & Airbrake on Wednesday, October 21.
Belfast Telegraph
Rock and Roll hall of famer Peter Green has announced an intimate show at Belfast’s Spring & Airbrake on Wednesday, October 21.
Along with current members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Peter Green was one of the founders of the original Fleetwood Mac.
Peter began redefining rock and pop music with a succession of outstanding songs that cemented the band as one of the most popular groups of the sixties.
Tracks such as Black Magic Woman and the number one hit Albatross remain to this day in many people’s top songs of all time.
Tickets are £18.
INTERVIEW: FLEETWOOD MAC "Stevie Nicks is thinking about the good times"
By Craig McLean
Scotland on Sunday
IN THE airy, eyrie lounge at the top of the three-floor penthouse suite of one of New York's ritziest hotels, the Plaza in Manhattan, Stevie Nicks is thinking about the good times.
"The party that could be had up here would just be spectacular," she coos, gazing out over the rooftop terrace at the glorious views afforded by this, one of her longstanding favourite hotels. Her tiny dog Sulamith, named after a German artist and ever-present by the singer's side, whimpers her assent. Is Nicks saying that she never actually partied up here, even back in the glory days of '77, when her band released what would go on to be one of the biggest-selling albums of all time?
"No, no, I did not up here," she says, flicking the thick, swishy, blonde hair framing a wrinkle-free face that belies her 61 years and her onetime, longstanding enthusiasm for cocaine. "I don't think we ever came up here. It was probably winter. I think we partied downstairs."
Last night Fleetwood Mac played a great and rapturously received gig at Madison Square Gardens, show number 12 on a comeback-cum-Greatest Hits tour. It's the latest chapter in one of the all-time legendary rock'n'roll stories, that of a band with almost four decades of hits, splits, divorce, drug abuse, walk-outs and reunions behind them. Fleetwood Mac are still here (mostly – singer and keyboard player Christine McVie left in 1998; she now lives quietly in Kent), although these days there's a functional dysfunctionality to their operations. On the road these multi-millionaire veterans all stay in different hotels and, on the rare occasion they grant interviews, will only be interviewed separately (or in the case of bass player John McVie, not at all).
Naturally their live set draws heavily from Rumours, the band's landmark 1977 album. To date it has sold some 30 million copies, its timeless tunes and infamous lyrical backbone – the break-up of the songwriting couples within the band – appealing to a whole new generation.
At the end of the Madison Square Garden gig, Mick Fleetwood, six foot six and 62, had jumped down from behind his drumkit to take a bow. He was wearing the knickerbockers he's long favoured onstage, with pendulous decorative "testicles" dangling beneath his scrotum. Just as he did on the Rumours sleeve. Why does he wear those, still?
"The original ones were toilet chains," he chuckles. He's talking in another hotel uptown, his preferred Manhattan pied à terre, his English accent intact almost 40 years since he shipped his blues band over to Los Angeles and set about reinventing them in late 1974 by hiring hotshot Californian guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and his hippy-chick songwriter girlfriend Nicks. "I had them hanging down there – obviously to be rude, pornographic. 'Cause we were pretty graphic back then, all the old blues guys were. We weren't a punk band, but we might as well have been. It was always the ethic: when you play, play with balls."
In the cavernous rehearsal studio in Los Angeles where I meet him a few weeks before the New York show, Buckingham, 60, is thinking back too. Success came quickly after he and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac – within nine months the Fleetwood Mac album was No 1. By the end of 1975, he and his girlfriend were millionaires. But it came at a personal cost. The marriage of Christine and John McVie was already in trouble, not helped by the bass player's heavy drinking, and Buckingham and Nicks' relationship foundered too. Nicks found herself "getting a lot of attention. I was the new girl in the band. And what could I do? Put a bag on my head? I tried to be as low-key as possible. Christine always wanted to be behind thousands of banks of keyboards. That was her persona. She never wanted to be up front. She had no interest in walking out in the middle of the stage and being the lead girl singer."
The fracturing of the relationships was played out in the new songs that McVie, Nicks and Buckingham were writing. At the rehearsals in Florida in 1976 that presaged the recording of Rumours, the first new song Fleetwood Mac played was Buckingham's Go Your Own Way. "Loving you isn't the right thing to do…" it began. "Packing up, shacking up's all you wanna do…"
Was he apprehensive about presenting these lyrics to Nicks?
"Hell no!" the guitarist fires back. "They were true. Yes, they were frank. I wasn't mincing any words about anything. But they were also offering a choice to her."
In Second Hand News he describes his rejection by Nicks, but also – as he sees it – "humorously" offers her the chance to make a booty call: "when times go bad, when times go rough, won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff…"
"At first I thought that was a little rude," says Nicks. "I don't think I saw a lot of humour. But now I kinda can." Indeed, those lines are emblazoned on the T-shirts being sold on the Greatest Hits tour.
Christine McVie, meanwhile, wrote Don't Stop (a message to her soon to be ex-husband: keep on being positive) and You Make Loving Fun (seemingly a message to her new lover, the band's lighting director). She also wrote Oh Daddy, a paean to Fleetwood.
"I think that whole thing was about the fact that I was the only family guy," says the drummer – he had two daughters with Jenny Boyd, sister of Patti, although his marriage was in crisis too. He was also the band's de facto manager at the time. "And I was in the middle of my mess – and in the middle of their mess. And I like to think I was some help to both Chris and John, as a friend. And I think it alludes to this chap desperately trying to keep everything together as a father would. Stop people being horribly hurt. And," he smiles, "I think she realised that I needed to be thrown a bone as well!'
Buckingham thinks that the three couples were heading for their individual breakdowns before the new line-up of Fleetwood Mac ever took shape, "but I think the coming together of us as a band became a catalyst for speeding up the process". Was that process hastened by success, and by the cocaine use that was featuring increasingly within the band?
"Yeah, sure," he shrugs. The making of Rumours was conducted in a blizzard of the white stuff: a bag was kept ever-ready under the mixing desk. "We all were drinking too much and smoking too much pot and doing pretty much what everybody in that subculture was doing, and maybe more of it. Maybe possibly (that was] somehow exaggerated by our circumstances."
Nicks even wrote a song for Rumours about cocaine: Gold Dust Woman.
"You know what's so very weird?" she says now. "Gold Dust Woman was written before the cocaine really became serious in our lives. And the line 'take you silver spoon and dig your grave' is the only time that I actually said something explicit – the silver spoon is obviously a coke spoon. But I had only been on the fringes of it when I wrote that song. So I always think that it was a very heavy premonition. That I somehow saw it coming."
Over the following decade things became even worse. During the making of 1987's Tango In The Night, a zonked-out Fleetwood was reduced to crashing in a Winnebago motor home at the bottom of Buckingham's garden. Over the course of the year-long recording, Nicks showed up for approximately three weeks. She had been prescribed Klonopin to help wean her off cocaine; she became addicted to the tranquilliser instead.
"I was in really bad shape then," she admits. "I felt bad about the eight years that I lost." It was worse, she says, than the cocaine years. "No creativity. Creativity gone. You just wanna lay on the couch, watch movies, have a glass of wine, smoke a joint, call the deli, eat a lot of really fattening food. And get up the next day and do the same thing. It's just, you know, a nightmare."
Fleetwood, meanwhile, was a full-time party animal, bunkered up in the Malibu home he dubbed The Blue Whale with some like-minded crazies.
"Oh, lunacy!" says Fleetwood brightly of the four-day parties with a gang including actors Nick Nolte and Gary Busey. "A few people, yes, were escorted on all fours into their wives' vehicles to be ceremoniously taken home, hopefully safely. And I think all that horrified Lindsey." Indeed it did: the guitarist left Fleetwood Mac after the making of Tango In The Night. He didn't speak to Fleetwood for eight years, before rejoining the band for 1997's The Dance.
Speaking to the members of Fleetwood Mac is hugely entertaining: so extreme were their lifestyles and the ructions – and so monumental was their success – they're long past being embarrassed or diplomatic. And the affection and closeness between them all is apparent, even if they won't be in the same room as each other to talk to the press.
The seeming bonhomie is hard to reconcile with the rancour that attended the end of the band's last tour. Nicks "hated" the trek in support of 2003's Say You Will, the first without Christine McVie. She felt isolated, and the lack of female companionship was compounded by Buckingham's self-confessed "abrasive" onstage behaviour. Nicks was particularly underwhelmed by the guitarist's insistence on bringing his solo material into the set – notably the song Come. "Think of me sweet darling, every time you don't come," goes the song about one of Buckingham's ex-girlfriends. The actress Anne Heche? "Possibly," grins the puckish guitarist, "possibly. Yes, Stevie didn't like me doing that song. She left the stage." At the end of the tour Nicks vowed never to work with Buckingham again.
But, six years on, here they are again. What did Buckingham do to make amends to Nicks?
"Well, this is a Greatest Hits tour so there should not be anything to fight about," replies Nicks, who's still a wafty, scarf-loving presence. "And, you know, time passes. Things subside. And I thought, why not?"
"You don't have enough time or energy to start hacking out stuff again," observes chipper Mick Fleetwood. "We can't do it. At a certain point you have to learn to address things in a more civilised, less time-consuming, and hopefully more intelligent way. As it is in my lifestyle: I still enjoy drinking wine. And eight times a year I'll go, 'oooohhh, is that what it sort of was like?' The hangovers are catastrophic." He grins ruefully. "So you just don't go there any more."
Fleetwood Mac play the SECC, Glasgow, 22 October. The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac released 19 October www.fleetwoodmac.com
Candid Photos: Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham on the street in Stockholm
Both Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham in Stockholm taking the time with fans outside their hotel. I think it's awesome that they are so approachable, which is largely due to the fact that Fleetwood Mac fans are respectful. Photos by: Morningstar. Please visit the Fleetwood Mac Forum "The Ledge" for more.
THE VERSES & FLEETWOOD MAC?? CONFUSED!
Okay, I'm confused. Who are The Verses and why does it say on their website that they will be joining Fleetwood Mac as their special guests in Australia on tour. Is it possible that this is old news and never was solidified
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