After 52 years Fleetwood Mac can still sell out Wembley - June 16, 2019

Fleetwood Mac at Wembley Stadium — has the chain been broken?

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times
★★☆☆☆

After 52 years the band can still sell out Wembley Stadium but the latest line-up change may be a rupture too far.

A tour by one of the biggest bands in rock history is always notable, but “An Evening with Fleetwood Mac” might have been particularly special. When it was conceived, there were suggestions that it could have been Fleetwood Mac’s swansong. A new album was in the offing too, a final recording. But the band’s penchant for volatility has once again intervened.

It is the second tour since Christine McVie officially rejoined their ranks in 2014. The keyboardist-singer played a key role writing some of their biggest hits, and the new Fleetwood Mac album was to have been written by her and guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham. But singer Stevie Nicks did not want to record a new Mac album, so instead it appeared under McVie’s and Buckingham’s joint name in 2017.

The next twist came with Buckingham’s exit from the group, reportedly after reigniting his long-running feud with his ex-lover Nicks. He stomped off to play solo shows in the US last year, where his setlist included a pointed rendition of the Fleetwood Mac song “Never Going Back Again”. Meanwhile, his septuagenarian former bandmates are touring the world with a nostalgia-circuit setlist and no talk of farewells.

Fleetwood Mac review, Wembley Stadium: Band perform with too much zest for this to be a simple exercise in nostalgia
It is difficult not to occasionally feel the lack of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, less for his guitar wizardry than for the tense, loaded chemistry he always shared with ex-partner Stevie Nicks

Alexandra Pollard
Independent
Photo by looper23

“It’s unbelievable that we’re all still doing this,” proclaims Mick Fleetwood from behind his vast drum set onstage at Wembley Stadium. The “all” isn’t quite accurate – for one thing, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham was unceremoniously ousted from the band last year, reportedly after smirking at Stevie Nicks – but he has a point nonetheless. Fleetwood Mac have come to the brink of self-destruction more times than there are people in this enormous stadium.

Fifty-one years after the band first formed (though Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are the only founding members remaining), this is “the 61st show of a long trip we’ve been on since September”, announces Stevie Nicks. She says so with just a hint of weariness – the energy, at first, is a little fatigued, the first few songs sung seemingly by rote. But things take a turn by the time “Second Hand News” comes around, taken from their seminal 1977 album Rumours, which was recorded when the band were tied up in romantic knots and barely speaking to each other. Nicks, an occult leader all in black, suddenly clicks into gear, air drumming along to Fleetwood’s hugely impressive percussion.

Fleetwood Mac Live at Wembley Stadium June 16, 2019

Review: still going their own way
Even without Lindsey Buckingham, the band's unmistakable sound, as promised, lingers on

By John Clarke
iNews

Fleetwood Mac
Wembley Stadium, London
★★★★

Like a mighty ship of state, Fleetwood Mac finally sailed into London over the weekend. One crew member, Lindsey Buckingham, had been cast adrift but two new shipmates – Crowded House’s Neil Finn and Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell – had signed up.

It had been a lengthy voyage. “This is the 61st show of a long trip that started last year,” said Stevie Nicks, “and we’re glad you’re all here. Let’s get this party started.”

The fear was that with Buckingham’s departure – he left under less than happy circumstances last year – Finn and Campbell would change the shape of a band that has already sold 100 million records worldwide. Mick Fleetwood wasn’t worried. “We jammed with Mike and Neil and the chemistry really worked… We know we have something new, yet it’s got the unmistakable Mac sound,” he said on the band’s website.

It was hard to argue with that, as they promptly emerged on stage and launched into a supercharged “The Chain” that immediately had everyone out of their seats.

The sound, despite the huge open spaces in Wembley Stadium, was big, thick and impressive. It even got intimate when Christine McVie, regal as ever all in black, gently sashayed into “Little Lies”. Crowd pleaser, “Dreams” was next, with a vocal chorus that came more from the audience than it did the stage.

It was a reception that seemed to energise an already hyperactive Nicks as she darted around the stage, her peerless vocals on the still enormously effective “Rhiannon” and admitting “I’m the black magic woman” on a reboot of a hit from 1968, and what now feels like the band’s distant past.

New boy Finn proved his worth with a melodic and touching version of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (with vocal support from Nicks) which fitted seamlessly into the Fleetwood Mac oeuvre. Campbell got his chance later in the evening with “Free Fallin’”, an emotional and moving tribute to the late Tom Petty.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Mick Fleetwood appropriated “World Turning” for a drum solo, complete with screams which segued into a conga-driven battle with percussionist Taku Hirano as the rest of the band ambled off stage. It was interesting, but a tad too long for comfort. And while Campbell made a brave bid to tackle another earlier Fleetwood Mac classic, “Oh Well” it lacked the grandeur of Peter Green’s original version.

The band were on safer ground with “Go Your Own Way” which saw Finn step neatly and almost imperceptibly into Buckingham’s shoes. “Don’t Stop” closed the night. The music may have had to, but the good-time feeling lingered.

LIVE REVIEW FLEETWOOD MAC LONDON JUNE 16, 2019

Fleetwood Mac review – latest lineup makes loving them fun
Having weathered the acrimonious departure of Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac seem to be enjoying themselves more than ever

By Alexis Petridis
The Guardian
Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Wembley Stadium, London

Happy Father’s Day, London,” offers guitarist Mike Campbell, one of Fleetwood Mac’s two new recruits. “I know,” he adds meaningfully, “there are some fathers out there.” There certainly are, but perhaps not as many as you’d think. The crowd packing out Wembley to see what – at a conservative estimate – is something like Fleetwood Mac’s 13th lineup is far from entirely comprised of the middle-aged-to-pensionable.

If you want proof of how wrong the recently departed Lindsey Buckingham was when he suggested the band were “incredibly unhip”, here it is – fans visibly too young to remember Fleetwood Mac’s late-80s resurgence with Tango in the Night, let alone the release of Rumours; twentysomething women dressed up as Stevie Nicks in top hats and scarves. On stage, the actual Stevie Nicks – no top hat, but very much dressed up as Stevie Nicks – is dedicating Landslide to Haim, one of umpteen latter-day bands under the spell of the music Fleetwood Mac made 40-odd years ago.

She says that Haim, too, might be on stage in their 70s, to which the obvious response is: only if they write more songs like these. Little Lies, Dreams, You Make Loving Fun – they’re built to withstand anything, from human resources issues to the sound at Wembley, which tonight recreates the experience of trying to listen to Fleetwood Mac with your head submerged in a tureen of soup. The visuals appear to be broadcast direct from Nicks’s brain – trees silhouetted against misty moons, stallions galloping through the surf in slow motion, mysterious ladies holding crystal balls etc – but more striking is the atmosphere emanating from the stage.

Over their 52-year career, being a member of Fleetwood Mac has always looked like a fraught business, but tonight, at least, they seem to be enjoying themselves. Mick Fleetwood is a constant blur of eye-popping, tongue-waggling and grinning; Nicks unguardedly plays not just air guitar, but air drums; Christine McVie, who gave a dislike of touring as the reason for her 15-year absence from the band, seems untroubled by such concerns, whether playing bluesy electric piano or standing front and centre to deliver her peerless song Everywhere.

The setlist is designed to subtly accommodate Buckingham’s acrimonious departure – it lightly steps around Tusk (1979), an album that was the guitarist’s baby; Big Love is noticeable by its absence from the cavalcade of hits – but both new members are what a football manager would call strong signings. Campbell storms confidently through the Peter Green-era anthem Oh Well. Neil Finn, meanwhile, brings with him not only a voice that sounds pretty much perfect standing in for Buckingham on Second Hand News, but also his own back catalogue. When the rest of the band cede the stage to him and Nicks for an acoustic version of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over, it provokes the audience into the latter-day lighters-aloft moment that is waving your mobile phone with its torch activated.

Perhaps they’re just relieved Fleetwood’s solo turn is over. A drum duet with percussionist Taku Hirano, decorated with a lot of extempore grunting and whooping, it goes on long enough to accommodate not merely a visit to the lavatory and a queue for the bar, but a trip back home to check whether you’ve left the gas on, although in fairness, sections of the crowd respond as though a drum solo with extempore grunting is precisely what they’ve ponied up £200 to see. Behind him, the screen fills with images of past Mick Fleetwoods, favouring the world with drum solos over the decades, which gives his interlude as much of a symbolic air as the concluding run at Don’t Stop. If it seems as if it could go on for ever, well, so do Fleetwood Mac themselves.

LIVE IN LONDON - FLEETWOOD MAC JUNE 16, 2019

Fleetwood Mac review – all the hits, with a sour aftertaste
Kitty Empire
The Guardian
Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Wembley Stadium, London

Lindsey Buckingham’s absence casts a pall over a singalong show, despite sterling work from subs Neil Finn and Mike Campbell

There is no arguing with the numbers. Wembley Stadium is brimming with fans, even on a wet Tuesday. A dozen people fill the vast stage, reproducing some of the most opulent harmonies and venomous kiss-offs of the late 20th century. On Dreams, a bittersweet classic written by an enduringly swirly Stevie Nicks, a chandelier descends from the rigging. Amusingly, it goes back up afterwards, reappearing and disappearing with every one of her compositions on the final night of Fleetwood Mac’s European tour.

Superfan Harry Styles has brought his mum, Nicks reveals, complimenting her on what a well-brought-up young man he is. Super-producer Jimmy Iovine (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nicks’s 1981 solo album Bella Donna) has flown over from the States, she says. The Fleetwood Mac setlist – barely varying from Berlin to London – is replete with peak-period hits and refreshed by a couple of deeper cuts. One, the Peter Green-era blues Black Magic Woman, made famous by Carlos Santana, finds Nicks vamping her way through a female reading of the tune as the chandelier glitters darkly.

You can’t help but wonder, though, what constitutes a quorum in Macworld – a notoriously fickle place, which has seen a number of key personnel go missing. The reunited classic 70s lineup of Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie (back in the fold since 2013) has been touring for a year without guitarist and songwriter Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood asked Buckingham to join his band in 1974. Buckingham assented, but only if he could bring Nicks. The results were immediate: two of the biggest albums in rock history, sacks of cash, dangerous liaisons, mucous membranes caked in “booger sugar”.

LIVE IN DUBLIN - FLEETWOOD MAC JUNE 13, 2019

Fleetwood Mac in Dublin: ‘We’re a bunch of crazy people with a crazy history’
Breathtaking songs sum up the turmoil and happiness of the band’s break-ups and make-ups

Louise Bruton
The Irish Times

An Evening with Fleetwood Mac is a brave title for a tour, given that some members of the Fleetwood Mac family can’t even stand to be in the same room as the others. But for this tour and this their 60th gig of their tour, an evening with Fleetwood Mac is an evening with Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn.

Emerging from backstage, they come in hard with The Chain, a song that drums up fervour even if it’s just on a mid-afternoon repeat of Top Gear on Dave.

Immediately, Fleetwood’s facial expressions become a star in their own right, beaming as he cues in the always thrilling break of The Chain. In the unseasonably cold June breeze, the ribbons draped on Nicks’s mic stand and tambourine billow during Dreams, as does her long, honey blonde hair, building up her air of being the true witch supreme.

Her husky voice hits the same soft purrs she’s been hitting ever since she joined the band, a timeless icon. Batting the chorus of Second Hand News back and forth with Finn, there’s a warmth between them that was vaguely absent from their last visit to Dublin with Buckingham in 2015.

Retrieving Black Magic Woman from the archives, there’s a distinct playfulness between Nicks and Christine McVie as Christine wraps a scarf around her friend’s shoulders. This time, says Nicks, we “Sing it through the eyes of the woman ... so that’s me and Chris”.

Passing on the good karma, Campbell takes off his hat in appreciation of Christine’s work on the keyboard. And in general, there’s a reverence for the ever silent John and a universal adoration of the larger than life Fleetwood, who shows more than a glint of madness during his 10-minute long drum solo, shouting out things like “hanky panky!” and “unleash the hounds!”.

It’s almost like they’re telling no one in particular and the entire world at once that it’s nice to play nice.

Historically, the group has a revolving door policy with members coming, going or getting fired due to: affairs, divorces, drunken brawls, break-ups, make-ups, creative differences, dalliances with the Children of God cult, drug abuse or health issues.

The core set though, consists of Nicks, the McVies, Fleetwood and Buckingham, who stuck together for a winning streak between 1974 and 1987, releasing the seminal Rumours and Tusk albums during this period. Their capacity to work together continued to fluctuate over the years.

A two-year touring stint reunited them in 1996, until Christine decided to step away from the public eye. Sixteen years later, she rejoined the group and the five-piece had a four-year run of touring until Buckingham was fired – although Mac says that’s too ugly a word to use – for a plethora of allegations, including smirking at Nicks during a thank-you speech at an awards ceremony. He also refusing to sign off on a tour that they’d been planning for over a year, which led to Buckingham filing a lawsuit against the group for breach of oral contract.

It’s not easy carrying the burden of being a rock star, is it? So with Buckingham out, Finn and Campbell fill his boots instead, and with these welcome additions onstage, Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over sneaks onto the setlist and Nicks takes the lead on Free Fallin’, an emotional tribute to Campbell’s former bandmate and friend Tom Petty.

Fleetwood Mac’s music transcends generations. Everywhere is a borderless anthem that can be played at a wedding, in Coppers, the Róisín Dubh and the queer night club Mother and it will always incite the same rush to the dance floor.

Landslide, written by Nicks, is a breathtaking song and as she says herself, she wrote this song at 27 when she thought she was old but now that she’s 71, she feels like she’s got so much more to give. The show ends with Don’t Stop, a song that Christine wrote in 1976 about her separation from John after eight years of marriage.

As they take their final applause, grinning through the happiness and the turmoil that each song represents, there’s no better example of “the show must go on” than Fleetwood Mac.

“We’re a bunch of crazy people with a crazy history,” says Fleetwood, getting the last word in, “but it’s nights like this that give us life’s breath”.

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