REVIEW - LINDSEY HAS THE ENERGY OF A PUNK ROCKER HALF HIS AGE

By JON BREAM, Star Tribune

Fleetwood Mac outdoes itself

Stevie Nicks, in concert with Fleetwood Mac at the Xcel Energy Center Tuesday night, can still shake a mean tambourine and bewitch with her husky, emotional voice. Lindsey Buckingham had the energy of a punk rocker half his age.

Soap operas are addictive, aren’t they? Eventually we come back for a peek even if the cast of a long-running soap has changed, because the story lines remain the same.

That’s true of rock’s longest-running soap opera, Fleet wood Mac. The romantic tension between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, lead singers for about 34 years, never goes away, even though these high school sweethearts broke up in the 1970s. They walked onstage Tuesday at the Xcel Energy Center hand in hand — in the darkness.

Then for the next 2¼ hours, they put on one of those rare shows in which it was about the individuals of the band rather than the sum of the parts. Even though the 42-year-old band has had more different lead guitarists than Spinal Tap had drummers, Fleet wood Mac has always been about being greater than the sum of its parts. That was certainly true when Buckingham Nicks, a former duo, joined in the mid-’70s, sharing vocals and writing duties with keyboardist Christine McVie (who retired in 1998).

While the rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie was rock solid all night, the rest of Tuesday’s concert felt like the Stevie Nicks Show or the Lindsey Buckingham Show. Not that it was a competition.

Buckingham was terrific all night, reminding the 12,000 concert-goers just what a monster talent he is. As for Nicks, her husky, nasal voice was not in top form, though she probably could have won a Stevie Nicks sound-alike contest. At 60, she can still shake a mean tambourine, strut in platform boots and rock layers and layers of gauzy fabrics and shawls. But she didn’t do any of her famous witchy/dervish dancing in circles. More important, her vocalizing was not particularly passionate, save for the end of “Rhiannon,” “Sara” and “Storms,” a seldom-performed tune that she said was too emotionally dark live. However, she was focused, emotive and mesmerizing on this gem.

Eighteen of the 23 songs came from the band’s 1970s blockbusters “Fleetwood Mac,” “Rumours” and “Tusk.” Buckingham and Nicks did a couple solo hits and the band dusted off 1969’s “Oh Well,” a wonderful workout for Buckingham’s tortured guitar. All night long, the 59-year-old played aggressively and expressively. Same could be said of his singing; he seemed as amped as a punk-rocker half his age. The Lindsey Buckingham Show indeed.

From time to time, he exchanged glances with Nicks, especially when they harmonized on hits. Not that they seemed cold, indifferent or even angry. For the encore, they came out smiling, hand in hand. Buckingham kissed her hand and walked away to wail again on his guitar.

REVIEW: Stevie Nicks Rediscovers Her Inner Shawl

Twincities.com

By Ross Raihala

Throughout Fleetwood Mac's long and stormy history, Lindsey Buckingham has traditionally filled the role of the reluctant one. Tours and recording sessions, particularly since the classic lineup's mid-'90s reunion, have taken place at his whim, and he's a guy who has grown more and more fond of the word "no" when it comes to all things Fleetwood Mac.

So why, then, was Buckingham the only one who looked like he was having any fun Tuesday night when Fleetwood Mac played the Xcel Energy Center? Throughout the 135-minute show, Buckingham performed like a man possessed, barking out his lyrics, sprinting across the stage and shredding his six-string with an energy unseen from the guy in decades. At the end of his solo tear through the overheated 1987 hit "Big Love," he even hugged his guitar and took a deep bow.

The problem, though, is that there are three other members of Fleetwood Mac. Goofball drummer Mick Fleetwood has long since toned down his behind-the-kit antics — save for a manic solo during the encore — while bassist John McVie spent most of the night lurking in the shadows.

That left only Stevie Nicks to stand up to Buckingham. And, well, she mostly stood back. Without longtime foil/rival Christine McVie on hand — she left the group a decade ago — Nicks mostly allowed herself to get swallowed up by Buckingham's often hammy antics. (Seriously, it was a crime how he stepped all over her during "Never Going Back Again.")

And while Nicks remains bewitchingly foxy at 60, her voice tended to drift, particularly during disappointing runs through "Gypsy" and "Dreams." Thankfully, she eventually rediscovered her inner shawl, giving "Gold Dust Woman" a much-needed boost. Even better was "Landslide," a song she wrote more than 35 years ago that takes on deeper significance each time she coos, "I'm getting older, too."

With no new album in stores, the band is billing this tour as a greatest-hits outing. And they weren't kidding, with nearly half the songs coming from their two most enduring albums, their 1975 self-titled breakthrough and 1977's bazillion-selling "Rumours."

From there, they threw in a solo hit each from Buckingham ("Go Insane") and Nicks ("Stand Back") alongside a few classic album cuts (including the rarely performed "Tusk"-era track "Storms") to come up with an evening of songs familiar to pretty much anyone over the age of 40. And the crowd of about 12,000 consisted almost entirely of folks of that demographic, many of whom left the gig energized by Buckingham's endless enthusiasm.

Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak - Red River Valley (Live)

The Chris Isaak Hour with guest Stevie Nicks

This Thursday March 5th 10:00pm EST 9:00pm Central
on The Biography Channel

Chris Isaak & Stevie Nicks - Red River Valley (Live) -

THE MICK FLEETWOOD BLUES BAND featuring RICK VITO

THE MICK FLEETWOOD BLUES BAND

"BLUE AGAIN"

Produced by Mick Fleetwood and former Fleetwood Mac member Rick Vito, BLUE AGAIN was recorded live at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis, Missouri in February of 2008 and sees him teaming up on this recording with guitarist and lead vocalist Rick Vito, bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone. The immaculate recording gives the songs a vibrant, modern immediacy which transcends easy nostalgia. Says Mick: “Over my career I’ve been called a pop star and a rock star, yet in my inner heart, I will always be part bluesman. On my journey from blues to a life of rock ‘n’ roll, I’ve always remembered where I started.” BLUE AGAIN is both an original musical tour de force and a respectful tribute to Fleetwood Mac initiated by the sole member of the band to be in every incarnation from the beginning.

Available at itunes March 3, 2009 with an exclusive Bonus Track

Available at Amazon on March 17th

Released By: 429 Records (Click through for preview)

FLEETWOOD MAC - PROVING GROUND

There are still things for us to work

out emotionally

BY THOMAS CONNER

Chicago Sun Times

Lindsey Buckingham is attempting to explain why his on-again, off-again megastar band, Fleetwood Mac, is on the road again without an album to support. Nothing to sell. Just the classic band (himself, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood -- still no Christine McVie), together again, playing the hits. He provides lots of deeply considered reasons, yadda yadda -- but then he says something extraordinary.

"Maybe someone came to the conclusion that it might not be a bad time to go out and do some dates to use as hang time, as a proving ground," he says. "It's an inverted model, for sure, but there's something to it."

Proving ground? What could Fleetwood Mac -- author of one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, 1977's "Rumours" -- possibly have to prove at this point?

Buckingham chuckles. He's used to people straining to square his massive insecurities with his equally massive successes.

"In a general sense, every time you get together to do something new, you have to start thinking after all these years there are still things for us to work out emotionally, historically. We are a band of couples who broke up and got through it living in various states of denial and never getting closure -- at least from my perspective -- and it leaves a lot of stuff hanging out there.

"I took off in '87 to regain my sanity, and the band died a slow death without me. That didn't make me feel too bad," he snickers. "Without sounding too vindictive, it was nice to know they needed me. ... But we're still a work in progress in terms of those interactions. There are still things that need to be worked through."

Kind of amazing, isn't it? More than 30 years after Buckingham and Nicks split up at the dawn of the band's success, the "issues" remain that palpable between them. He still considers the band a "band of couples who broke up." And that was always part of the appeal -- the telenovela-like drama and tension between two of the fiercest artistic personalities in Southern California.

Buckingham, at least, still hopes to harness that tension for more musical magic. He and the other members seem to be viewing this tour as a casual way for the quartet to settle a bit, to get back into some kind of rhythm that would produce a new record.

It's the elephant in the room that each member treads carefully around.

"There have been discussions, for sure, that we would love to make some more music," said founding drummer Mick Fleetwood, during an earlier teleconference with the band. "I think it's really down to the whole sort of biorhythms of how everyone is feeling and what's appropriate."

They're still so careful when speaking of each other, except Nicks, who remarked -- with discernable astonishment -- how well they were all getting on so far and added, "Lindsey has been in incredibly good humor since we started rehearsal. When Lindsey is in a good humor, everybody is in a good humor."

They still look to him, take their cues from him, and he remains the band's creative linchpin. The last few Mac albums he was on -- you know, the successful ones -- each began as Buckingham solo projects that the record label and the band begged to turn into band efforts. "Tango in the Night" sounds like his crystalline solo work with a few warmer Nicks and McVie songs added. Buckingham had asked Fleetwood and bassist John McVie to back him on another solo album that, with the addition of four Nicks songs, became Fleetwood Mac's 2003 comeback CD, "Say You Will."

But he'd like that pattern to change.

After "Say You Will," Buckingham told the band to leave him alone for three years, during which he exorcised two back-to-back solo discs: the quieter, almost indie-rock outing "Under the Skin" in 2006, and last year's slightly harder rocking "Gift of Screws." As a result, Buckingham says he feels refreshed and at the height of his creative powers.

"Having accomplished what I wanted to do with both solo albums, I'm really in the best place I've been artistically," he says. "I tapped into things I wanted to get to for a long time. And I have a lot of new material -- I could drop another solo album at any time -- but no one's talking yet about a new Mac album, at least for a while. Still, I'm pointedly not fleshing out my new stuff, so that I might be able to show it to the band and let it take on a life in the context of that.

"The way we used to do it, we'd each have rough ideas and would get together and the songs would get formulized and brought into some sort of life for the first time through a set of Fleetwood Mac eyes. More often than not, over the last few experiences it's been my solo material that had to be slightly altered to make it feel more Fleetwood Mac-like. So I'd really welcome the chance to come to these people with things a little less fleshed out, something that might be born as Fleetwood Mac rather than being just ... painted like it."

So he speaks of this tour as a "way to create a level of ferment" among the band again, and adds uncharacteristic optimism of "bringing things to light in a more organic way by being together without a real reason."

The question is: Do you want to pay $50 to $150 for a ticket to watch four grizzled but talented music makers "hang" and "ferment"? Buckingham says the band is not using the tour as an expensive woodshed.

"We've very pointedly stuck to catalog for this tour," he says, adding, "There is still validity in looking at this body of work, the irony being that this is what most people want to hear from us, anyway. I figure, let's make our mantra just hanging and working on the rough edges in terms of personal interactions with band members. That in itself will be part of the preparation for making an album, whenever that does happen."

“We would have been eaten alive, I’m sure,” (Lindsey Buckingham)

Fleetwood Mac - Give The People What They Want

Illinois Entertainer

Imagine the headlines if Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours in 2009 instead of the mid-’70s. People magazine, Us Weekly, and other supermarket litter would have a field day, as would the paparazzi waiting to catch a glimpse of a band on the verge of destruction.

Appearing: March 5th and 6th at Allstate Arena in Rosemont.

A Britney Spears meltdown barely holds a candle to the oft- recited tale of the band’s two couples breaking up and funneling all the pain, doubt, and bitterness into 11 perfect songs. Add snow-capped mountains of blow to the mix to guarantee a spike in newsstand sales.

“We would have been eaten alive, I’m sure,” guitarist Lindsey Buckingham guesses from home in Los Angeles. “Thank God we didn’t have the kind of tabloidism that exists today.”

Three decades after releasing and surviving Rumours, Fleetwood Mac hits the road with its most successful and well-known lineup in tow for a large-scale tour. Original members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, rock goddess Stevie Nicks, and the thinking-man’s guitar hero Buckingham are all along for the ride (Christine McVie hung up her honeyed vocals after 1997’s The Dancereunion). The foursome last dusted off the Fleetwood Mac tunes five years ago when touring behind Say You Will, but this time the band comes armed with the hits and only the hits – a big departure.

“This is the first tour we’ve ever done where we’re really concentrating on giving all the stuff we feel people would really love to hear because we’ve always toured with a brand-new album. This is the only time we have never done that,” Fleetwood admits, hours before meeting the crew for rehearsal in Los Angeles. “We haven’t been going ’round playing all our lovely songs for 15 years, which a lot of bands do.”

When Buckingham put up the do-not-disturb sign after the last tour to focus on his solo work (2006’s Under The Skin and 2008’s Gift Of Screws), the band took a break with the intent of gathering again at some point to discuss new material.

“There was this implication that the band would reconvene and start doing something and it did indeed begin with the perception that we would go in and make an album first and then start touring,” Buckingham explains. “Somewhere along the line that got inverted and we found ourselves rehearsing first. It wasn’t necessarily my game plan, but a part of what I’m doing this time around is approaching this as much from the standpoint of thinking about everyone’s comfort level.”

Plus, it’s a great way for the longtime friends/former lovers/thorns-in-each-others’ sides to spend time together in a low-pressure situation. “In a way, it’s kinda cool. It kinda frees us up to go out there and just hang out and enjoy each other’s company and not have a particular musical agenda going out there,” Buckingham reasons. “The fact that we are coming out with a tour where there is no agenda to redefine ourselves musically – it kind of gives us that freedom to redefine ourselves a little bit emotionally and personally.”

When these varied personalities converge, drama ultimately follows. According to Buckingham, Nicks left the last tour muttering that she’d never work with him again (oh, how things change), which Buckingham chalks up to the absence of Christine, normally Nicks’ “emotional back-up onstage,” and unresolved issues from years past “that no one ever got closure on.”

On the other hand, Fleetwood characterizes the last tour as “incredibly productive and successful. The Say You Will tour was a happy tour,” Fleetwood says. “We had a good time doing it.”

Always the optimist, Fleetwood is the yin to Buckingham’s brooding yang when it comes to putting a finger on the emotional pulse of the band. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but both can agree the current atmosphere remains affable. “I’d say all the signs are good,” Buckingham forecasts. “I think we’re gonna have a good time out there.”

“It’s always fun when we get back together,” Fleetwood says. “It’s like that old getting-back-on-a-bike thing that you sometimes forget. You forget how good that chemistry is when it’s all locked in. There is something that happens when these people get together and make music. You sort of, in retrospect, in real time look at yourselves in this framework called Fleetwood Mac and you really quietly pay tribute to how special that is. And you spend three, four years apart not doing that – when you do come back in the first week of rehearsal, there’s lots of glances across the stage. You can’t even second guess it. It just consumes you. And you’re never really going to fully analyze it, you just end up totally accepting it and you go, ‘That’s the real shit.’ When we’re all together, this is what happens. And when we’re not together, lots of great things happen for all of us, like I said, Stevie has a very successful [solo career], but still, when she comes back to Fleetwood Mac and we all do, it’s amazing.”

There’s no doubt otherworldly forces are at work when this bunch share a stage. You Tube “Silver Springs” from The Dance concert special MTV first aired in ‘97 and behold how the last minute encapsulates the tangible passion coursing through Nicks and Buckingham. When they lock eyes and sing, “I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you,” showmanship gets thrown out in deference to standing face-to-face with a musical soulmate dating all the way back to high school.

Nicks has played duet partner with good friends Tom Petty and Don Henley to proven success, but when Buckingham enters the fold, the intertwining of these two voices elicits a response on

 par with a first kiss – a mix of excitement, nausea, and a concrete change in body temperature.

It’s no surprise, then, why Buckingham continues to feel a need to participate in this endeavor – even when the same buttons pushed at age 27 manage to still irk the bejesus out of everyone as they approach the AARP years. “I’ve known [Stevie] since I was like 16, so I don’t want Stevie and myself to be so distant from each other in any way,” Buckingham reveals. “I’m doing it because I think I’m going to learn something from it. I think that there’s a road left to be walked with this group of people that needs to be approached in a certain way. I want to see us in a place where we can be friends and enjoy each other and dignify how we got started.”

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Fleetwood and John McVie also share a history, dating back to John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Former Rolling Stone photographer Mark Seliger once dressed the powerhouse rhythm section as a bride and groom for an eerily prophetic photo spread. Most marriages stop short of the 40-year mark – wedded bliss for both Fleetwood and McVie failed to yield such milestone anniversaries – yet their friendship and professional relationship continues to endure.

- Janine Schaults

To read more about Fleetwood and McVie, grab the March issue of Illinois Entertainer, available free throughout Chicagoland.

FOUR-DISC BOX SET OF RUMOURS

KSHE 95

Coming later this year will be a four-disc Rumours boxed set including previously unreleased tracks recorded during the making of the 1977 landmark album. The set will feature a DVD component with never-before-seen footage of the band. There's been no release date announced for the collection yet, but various online sources are saying that it could be out as early as the Spring.