ALL THE SHAWLS, FEATHERS AND TOP HATS YOU COULD WANT

Stevie Nicks, Live in Chicago: Also available as a CD titled The Soundstage Sessions, Nicks' latest live DVD finds Fleetwood Mac's witchy woman in good spirits and fine form, braying her hits, Mac classics and cool covers for PBS cameras in the Windy City. The two-hour set also features plenty of between-song banter, guest spots from Vanessa Carlton, and all the shawls, feathers and top hats you could want.

London Free Press

FLEETWOOD MAC RULE

Headliners: Fleetwood Mac

By Chris DeVille

ColumbusAlive.com

I think I speak for most of my generation when I say I'm familiar enough with Fleetwood Mac to know they rule, but not so much that I can adequately explain why. Throughout my 25 years, I've gleaned that Bill Clinton is a big fan, the members slept around with each other a lot and "Go Your Own Way" is a monster jam.

In the same way that Hall & Oates' soft-core soul has gained currency with America's youth, Fleetwood Mac has earned that vaguely kitschy, mostly genuine seal of approval. But I must admit I'm behind the curve.

With the band playing Nationwide Arena Saturday, now seems like a good time to learn more about the rock legends and pass along my discoveries to my fellow noobs. (This will also allow elitist Fleetwood Mac fans out there, if such people exist, a chance to look down their noses at me.)

FULL ARTICLE

FLEETWOOD: "I'M THE BOSS" NICKS: "YOU'RE ALL FIRED!"

Fleetwood Mac 'Unleashed' on tour
BY JORDAN LEVIN

Miami Herald

Fleetwood Mac, famed for its supremely catchy pop-rock songs (particularly in 1977's Rumours, one of the bestselling albums of all time) and tangled relationships, is hitting the road for the first time since 2003. The Fleetwood Mac Unleashed tour, which comes to the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise on Thursday, will feature the group's greatest hits. Earlier this spring, singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks, drummer and founder Mick Fleetwood, songwriter and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and (a mostly silent) founder and bassist John McVie talked about touring and getting together again.

Q:You've all been working on successful solo projects for the last couple of years, why come together to do the Unleashed tour now?

Nicks: Solo work and Fleetwood Mac is a really great thing to be able to go back and forth to. . . . We've been apart for four years, now we're back together and we're having a blast. It's terrific. Had we been working every single year for the last four years and we were going to do yet another tour this year, we would all be going ``Uh, OK.''

Q: You're coming out with the Rumours expanded re-release, and you're doing a Greatest Hits tour. Are you all thinking about a new Fleetwood Mac album?

Fleetwood: This is the first time that we've gone on the road without an album. We would enjoy doing another album, there have been discussions for sure that we would love to make some more music. I think it's really down to the whole bio-rhythms of how everyone is feeling and what's appropriate.

Q:After almost 30 years of music-making, how do you guys stay fresh?

Nicks: It stays fresh because we never stop playing. Basically what we are is entertainers. Even if this band had never made it big, we would still be playing all the clubs. . . . We're performers, that's what we do. So it isn't a question of keeping it fresh because it's what we love.

Q:It's been years since you guys went out together. How does that affect things?

Buckingham: It frees you up to enjoy each other more as people. The mantra is really more ''Let's just have a good time'' and value the friendships and the history that underpins this experience. The dynamic between band members, you wouldn't think after all this time, but it is still to some degree a work in progress.

Q:Are you influenced by current and recent music?

Buckingham: The older you get the more you find your own style and become more self-referential. I think that is the difference between being in your 20s and having a circle of people who are all out there listening to every new thing that comes out and are also networking in terms of sharing it. That tends to fall away over time. . . . as you grow into a style that you can call your own it becomes less and less important to try to emulate new things that come out.

It's always enlightening and reassuring to me to hear an artist who is doing something on their own terms because I think that's the only way you survive over the long term. When someone like Radiohead can get up at an otherwise fairly musically void awards show [the 2009 Grammys], a group like that means a lot to me.

Q:The title Unleashed sounds like professional wrestling or a heavy metal band. Who is leashing you and why are you unleashed now?

Nicks:Unleashed to me meant unleashing the furies, unleashing us back into the universe. Unleashed to me was an edgy term of throwing this amazing musical entity back into the world that we had been away from for four years.

Q:You and Lindsey have occasionally had difficulties to work out. Has that been part of the preparation for this tour, or has it been easier for you?

Nicks: Lindsey has been in incredibly good humor since we started rehearsal on the fifth of January. And when he's happy, everybody is happy.

Buckingham: We are a group of great contradictions, a group that in some strange way you could probably say doesn't really have any business being in a band together. . . . But that's what makes Fleetwood Mac what it is. It's the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It's the energy created from that contrast in personalities.

Q:What do you get out of working as part of a group as opposed to being a solo artist?

Nicks: In the beginning, I really had no interest in being a solo artist. Because what I love is being in a band. But after you've been in your solo work and done what have I done, 11 solo albums, where I am absolutely the boss, you get used to being the boss. So it's good for everybody to be knocked down a little bit. It makes you think more.

Fleetwood: I'm the boss now.

Nicks: You're all fired.

FLEETWOOD MAC - GREENSBORO SHOW CANCELLED

CANCELLED:

According to Ticketmaster - Fleetwood Mac have canceled the

Greensboro Coliseum Complex show in Greensboro, NC on April 26, 2009

Fleetwood Mac won't be giving a planned performance at the Greensboro Coliseum this month, coliseum officials announced today.

The Sunday, April 26, concert in Greensboro has been canceled because of scheduling conflicts, according to the news release.

Tickets purchased online and via phone will be refunded automatically starting Monday, April 20. Tickets purchased at outlets or the box office can be refunded at point of purchase, beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 21.

Fleetwood Mac’s concert on Saturday, April 25, at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte will continue as scheduled.

Tickets are still available for the Charlotte concert at livenation.com, the Arena box office, all Ticketmaster outlets, or charge by phone 800-745-3000. 

REVIEW - FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN PHILADELPHIA

Fleetwood Mac at Wachovia Center
By Sam Adams
For The Inquirer

Early in Fleetwood Mac's show at the Wachovia Center Wednesday night, Lindsey Buckingham dropped a reference to the "convoluted emotional history" that spawned many of the band's best songs.

Rumours (1977), one of the best-selling albums of all time (and, given the state of the music industry, likely to remain so in perpetuity), was famously inspired by the simultaneous dissolution of the relationship between Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks and the marriage of John and Christine McVie. Songs like "Go Your Own Way" and "Second Hand News" are more exultant than morose, but their slick surfaces are studded with spikes.

Wednesday's show, though, was all surface.

Supplemented by three backing singers and two guitarists who stood to the side and in the shadow, the core quartet of Buckingham, Nicks, John McVie, and drummer Mick Fleetwood rolled comfortably through a selection of their greatest hits. (Christine McVie left the band a decade ago.)

With 14 years elapsed since their last studio album, there was nothing to add to their repertoire, and only a handful of surprises in the set list: "I Know I'm Not Wrong," from the overreaching Tusk, and "Oh Well," reworked from the band's first incarnation as a British blues act.

Buckingham put on the semblance of a show, grunting and grimacing his way through a solo version of "Big Love," and frequently sounding out of breath, as if he'd just bounded on stage after running a few laps.

But his posture seemed dictated more by pose than passion. Buckingham is a true pop visionary, but he's also plainly enamored of his mad-scientist image, and prone to displaying his formidable guitar technique at excruciating length. Part of what makes "The Chain" and "Never Going Back Again" thrilling in their original versions is the way Buckingham's flourishes poke through the songs' watertight structures. Nowadays, his bandmates seem uninterested in reining him in.

Nicks seemed content to go through the motions, which didn't much faze the crowd; it's hard to think of another performer who could draw cheers just by spinning in a lazy circle.

Fleetwood and McVie stuck to the background, anchoring the songs without much in the way of flash. Fleetwood demonstrated both power and (with the exception of an ill-advised drum solo) grace, providing the kind of excitement his colleagues at the front of the stage couldn't quite seem to manage.

DISCOUNT TIX FOR FLEETWOOD MAC IN PHOENIX MAY 24 - $25 TIX

$25 UPPER LEVEL SEATING (Reg. $49.50)

PHOENIX, AZ - Sunday, May 24th

Jobing.com Arena

TICKETMASTER

Use the code LANDSLIDE to get the tickets

Additional Fees of $9.65/ticket apply