STEVIE NICKS - SOUNDSTAGE PRESS RELEASE

LEGENDARY ROCK QUEEN STEVIE NICKS’ NEW “LIVE IN CHICAGO” DVD AND “THE SOUNDSTAGE SESSIONS” CD SCHEDULED FOR MARCH 31st RELEASE

New York, NY - Stevie Nicks, rock’s superstar chanteuse, the “Gold Dust Woman” herself, will be releasing the “Live In Chicago” DVD as well as “The Soundstage Sessions” CD - both in stores 

on March 31st, it was announced today by Reprise Records.

The “Live in Chicago” DVD includes all the timeless Nicks songs from her solo projects as well as songs written as a member of the legendary rockers Fleetwood Mac. Along with Stevie classics such as “Stand Back,” “Rhiannon,” “Dreams,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Landslide” and “Edge of Seventeen,” the DVD also features stunning cover songs, including Dave Matthews’ “Crash Into Me” and a tear-down-the-house finale of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.”

“This is the first time since 1985 that I have had one of my live shows filmed and recorded,” said Nicks. “We spent three years perfecting this show, which we began in Vegas in October of 2007. I could not move on until we filmed this show. Luckily “Soundstage” producer Joe Thomas, who saw the show many times, felt the same way. I am as proud of this as anything I’ve ever done in my entire career.”

Stevie Nicks “The Soundstage Sessions” CD includes 10 songs from the “Live in Chicago” DVD. Nicks brought the songs from the show to Nashville and worked once again with Joe Thomas in the studio where they added “Nashville strings” and additional vocals. The CD features a lush orchestral version of “Landslide” and other Nicks gems including “Stand Back,” “Crash Into Me,” “Sara,” “Fall From Grace” and “If Anyone Falls in Love.”

Digital downloads of “Crash Into Me” (”I’ve wanted to record this song for the last 10 years,” said Nicks) and “Landslide” (orchestral version) will be available on Amazonmp3.com on March 17th. “Enchanted,” an exclusive album track, is scheduled to be available on March 31st on Amazonmp3.com. “Gold Dust Woman” and “Edge of Seventeen” will be available exclusively on iTunes on March 31st.

“We wanted everything on the DVD and CD to look and sound perfect and I think we succeeded,” concluded Nicks.

Nicks is currently on the Fleetwood Mac “Unleashed” Tour, which began March 1st in Pittsburgh.

REMEMBERING THE TURMOIL BEHIND RUMOURS

After a five-year break, 'rock-'n'-roll's greatest soap opera' hits the road and remembers the turmoil behind 'Rumours'

By Alan Light

Special to MSN Music

A few weeks ago in Los Angeles, the members of Fleetwood Mac -- Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Stevie Nicks -- gathered to run through songs in preparation for their Unleashed Tour. "We did the entire set, totally unplugged," says Stevie Nicks. "We laughed about the songs, about what was going on when we wrote each one -- what we thought it was about, and what it was really about. One of our backup singers was asking all these questions like she was interviewing us. It's such a shame we didn't film all the little stories, because it was really all coming out."

If this band was truly revealing old secrets to each other, it's a bit of a miracle they walked out of there alive. There is simply no other group that can match the offstage drama of Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood and McVie -- the rhythm section that gave the band its name -- are the only members who have stuck it out through multiple lineups since the Mac's early days as a British blues-based band in the '60s. In 1975, the Bay Area duo of Buckingham and Nicks joined the fold, and all the parts fell into place. The resulting "Fleetwood Mac" album sold five million copies and spun off three hit singles.

But that was just a warm-up for 1977's "Rumours." Recorded while Buckingham and Nicks were breaking up romantically; McVie's marriage to the group's third songwriter/vocalist, Christine, was disintegrating; and Fleetwood and his wife were divorcing -- played out amid numerous affairs and copious amounts of drugs -- the album became a perfect chronicle of the promise, excess and chaos of the late '70s. It spent 31 weeks at No. 1 on the charts and has sold, to date, a staggering 19 million copies. 

A new CD/DVD box-set reissue of "Rumours," with previously unreleased demos, outtakes, live recordings and video footage, was to be released in conjunction with the new tour, but is delayed while some clearance issues are being resolved.

For the past few decades, Buckingham and Nicks have bounced between solo careers and Fleetwood Mac reunions; his sixth solo album, "Gift of Screws," was released in September, and she has a live album and DVD coming out later this month. The Unleashed Tour, which kicked off March 1 in Pittsburgh, is the band's first outing in five years. Unfortunately, this time around, Christine McVie -- an often-overlooked secret weapon in the Mac arsenal -- opted not to participate (there was talk of Sheryl Crow filling her chair, but the idea fizzled out), and there is no new music attached.

Instead, there is an unprecedented sense of loyalty and camaraderie between the band members, as Buckingham and Nicks both expressed during separate telephone conversations on break from rehearsal. For a band whose music is forever linked to its personal relationships, its high-wire act of romance and heartbreak, Fleetwood Mac has even started to fully embrace maturity.

"I'm a first-time parent in the last 10 years -- at age 59, with three kids under 10," says Buckingham. "That transforms your life, that sensibility and stability, and it informs everything I do. Being adult carries over into the group setting."

MSN Music: Do you find it difficult to connect to the old songs? Especially because you don't have a new album for this tour, is there any extra challenge in relating to that material again?

Stevie Nicks: The way we always start is that we go back to the original. We listen to the record once or twice, all of us together -- and then we don't listen too much more after that. So every time we play a song, of course, there's a lot of the original in there, but it also tends to morph a little bit, depending on our mood and what's going on in the world. After 9/11, everything took on a different meaning. For this show, a song like "World Turning" is such a premonition of our world in chaos, spinning out of control.

Lindsey Buckingham: I was definitely a little ambivalent about the mentality going in to this. We knew that we wanted to get out and do something, and there was talk of making an album, but it didn't work out. But the last album we made [2003's "Say You Will"], we worked for almost a year, in the same house, and by the end, there was a lot of tension that carried into rehearsals and the shows that followed.

Getting back into the big machine could be seen as resting on our laurels. So the mantra has had to be not what new statement we are making, but how we have moved along as people trying to become adults, who were admittedly living in a state of arrested development, without ever getting closure and never really working our problems out fully.

What becomes meaningful to me is that we've got this body of work, so let's relax into that and enjoy it and see what comes, rather than go through the pressure cooker again. And, as a result, these are probably the smoothest rehearsals I've ever been involved in.

So much of your writing, particularly on "Rumours," grew out of your personal relationships. How do those songs evolve as your own lives change?

Buckingham: It becomes easier to look back and appreciate the struggles we went through. I think that, especially with "Rumours," there really was a transformative, redemptive purpose in that music. We somehow survived all of our personal difficulties because of the music. On that album, I think there's a staying power that comes from being very authentic in terms of what we were going through. I can hear these opposite emotions going on in those songs that really lend themselves to a very timeless quality. But it takes time to be able to appreciate that.

Nicks: When you're singing, you definitely throw yourself back into that time. You can't sing "The Chain" without throwing yourself into it. You can't sing "Damn your love/Damn your lies" without becoming those people again. Lindsey and I haven't been in a relationship for 20 years, but you go right back to that -- I mean, if we didn't, it would be pretty stupid to even do those songs.

Lindsey and I will never be pals, never just hang out. We will always be that ex-couple where it all blew up in the middle of being so rich and so famous and so indulgent. But we're still able to be a power couple onstage. We can be nothing to each other when we don't see each other for three years, but when we come back together, we can have that relationship, and we're still working out our problems onstage.

We never found the peace that we'd like to find. We've known each other since we were 16 or 17, and I think we'd like to know before we die that we finally found a peaceful place together.

The reputation of "Rumours" is that it's the greatest rock-'n'-roll soap opera of all time. Do you think the focus on its history distracts from the music?

Buckingham: I think you have to be realistic about the fact that "Rumours" was a success for reasons other than the music. There got to be a point where it did clearly detach from the music and bring out the voyeur in listeners. We put ourselves out there, and people started to invest in us more emotionally. And that was part and parcel of the phenomenon -- it had to do with the mythology around the record, and it would be unrealistic to not acknowledge that. I don't think that it diminishes the appreciation of the music in any way; it was just a scope that went beyond the music.

I will say I'm glad it didn't happen in 2008 or 2009. I think the way the tabloids work today, it would have been exploited in such a different way. At the time, though some of it was reported, it really was more word of mouth, and there was an authentic sense of a lore that grew up around it.

Nicks: It is inextricably part of it, and you have to embrace that.

And when you hear it, it's like being back there -- even for me. It puts me right back there, and it makes me understand why I'm going out on the road with Fleetwood Mac again, because it is that good.

Right now, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen are all on the road -- it could be the touring calendar for 1979, not 2009. Does it surprise you that you're all still standing and still out playing?

Nicks: If you'd asked me 25 years ago, I would have said that I think we would all still be going, but that I also hope there are some great new bands who are firmly established by the time I'm 60. And there are a few, but it's not what I expected, and I really fault the music business for that. Artist development really died about 15 years ago, and it's killing the ability of talented kids who are just as good as Fleetwood Mac, just as good as Led Zeppelin -- and I know they're out there -- from ever seeing the light of day.

Buckingham: We obviously had a lot of commercial success at that time, but they weren't the happiest days for me personally, or the most artistically satisfying. And in those days, the studio was crazy and the road was five times crazier. People always ask now, isn't it tiring being on the road? It used to be, when we were doing all that nonsense, but now with everyone behaving, the whole day is really geared around having the energy for those two hours onstage. It's very Zen, a very pared-down environment, if that's what you choose for it to be.

Any time there's a band with a male and female singer -- from a rock band like Rilo Kiley to a country group like Little Big Town -- they get compared to Fleetwood Mac. Do you think that kind of harmony singing is your most defining legacy?

Buckingham: It's hard to analyze your own work. You concentrate on the process and not the impact that it's having. So it's hard to know what's passed on. I mean, I can tell that Death Cab for Cutie has listened to Fleetwood Mac, I can hear the chordal structure. But I think about the construction, the complexity that makes up Fleetwood Mac; I don't necessarily think about the most obvious things. You just have to let it go, out into the ether.

Nicks: I think two girls and a guy really worked. It adds that spark of romance, no matter what. I mean, the Eagles have romantic songs and they're all guys, but having a woman in a band of great guys is a big selling point. And if she's as good as the guys, it's a huge selling point. So if I were a kid, I'd definitely be looking to make that next Fleetwood Mac.

STEVIE'S STUNNING LEGENDARY CONCERT (Pre-Order)

Stevie's epic Soundstage Sessions concert in Chicago!

The DVD features over 2 hours of stunning footage from this legendary concert! The CD includes brand new studio versions of classics like "Stand Back", "Sara", "Landslide" and MANY, MANY MORE! 

Includes Limited Edition Lithograph.


BONUS DOWNLOADS INCLUDED WITH PRE-ORDER NOT FOUND ON THE CD
("Rhiannon" and "The One")

Visit The Nicks Fix To Order

FLEETWOOD MAC - DETROIT REVIEW (BILLBOARD)

Fleetwood Mac/ March 8, 2009/ Auburn Hills, Mich. (The Palace)
Billboard Magazine
Gary Graff, Detroit

Early in the fourth show of Fleetwood Mac's Unleashed tour, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham referenced the group's "fairly complex and convoluted emotional history," drawing a laugh from the crowd and even some knowing smiles from his bandmates.

But can there be a Fleetwood Mac without the drama?

The Unleashed outing makes a case that there certainly can. For the group's first tour in five years there's no new album and therefore none of the attendant tension that comes when introducing fresh material. Everyone is purportedly getting along well these days. And the group has had even more time to adjust to life without Christine McVie, now 11 years (but only one tour) removed from Fleetwood Mac. 

What that leaves the Mac and its audience with is hits -- an abundance from one of the most successful catalogs in rock history, more than enough to keep the two-hour and 20-minute show airborne from start to finish. The Fleetwood Mac that's trotting around North America now is comfortable in its position and is cheerfully celebrating its legacy, and the warm familiarity of its 23-song greatest hits set is likely just what its fans -- particularly those paying $80 or $150 for their tickets -- want.

The parade began with "Monday Morning" before sliding into "The Chain" and "Dreams," each in their usual No. 2 and 3 positions on the set list. "Gypsy," "Rhiannon," "Sara," "Landslide," "Gold Dust Woman," "Go Your Own Way" and "Don't Stop" had everyone singing along. And the group still managed to deliver a few surprises including "Tusk," album deep cuts such as "I Know I'm Not Wrong" and "Storms," the return of "Second Hand News," and a rendition of McVie's "Say You Love Me" with Buckingham and Stevie Nicks trading verses. 

But more than ever, the Unleashed show underscored the fact that in McVie's absence, Fleetwood Mac has become the Buckingham and Nicks show -- which does not minimize the continuing strength of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie as a rhythm section or the six additional musicians' role in bringing a studio-quality sheen to the songs. It gave the night two distinct flavors -- Nicks' ethereal cool and Buckingham's manic edge.

It's an equation that gives a dominant edge to Buckingham, with his fluid, finger-picked guitar styles and aggressively inventive melodies such as "Go Insane" and a solo acoustic rendering of "Big Love." He delivered a spirited take of the original Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well (Part 1)," then tore the roof off with a searing solo at the end of the slow-burning "I'm So Afraid" that made it as much a highlight as any of the set's bigger hits. Nicks did rise to the occasion with her 1983 solo hit "Stand Back," and had the night's last word with "Silver Springs," but even she seemed respectful of, and perhaps resigned to the sheer force of her former boyfriend's musical personality.

Buckingham noted during the concert that "every time we get together again it's always different, always a sense of forward motion, and we always have more fun." The Unleashed show is more like a holding pattern, but few in the audience would deny there's fun in hearing all those hits.

FLEETWOOD MAC REVIVES A TIRED ROCK FAN

A reporter finds a recent Fleetwood Mac concert to be much more tame -- and enjoyable -- than the rock shows of the '70s

By KEVIN HELLIKER
WSJ.Com

CHICAGO: Back in the 1970s, a family friend in the arena business gave me passes to nearly every rock concert in Kansas City, making me the envy of my teenaged peers -- until the moment arrived when I couldn't take it anymore. Arrogant performers and their out-of-control worshipers had turned even the free-of-charge concert into punishment. 

But recently my wife, not knowing about this boycott, presented me with two tickets to the Fleetwood Mac concert Thursday night in Chicago, near the start of the group's multi-city tour. Having frowned at the gift, I owe her an apology.

The experience was sprinkled with Rip-Van-Winkle moments, even before the band appeared. When did everybody get so old? And so courteous? At a Styx concert in the '70s, a long-haired dude, impatient in the restroom line, took a swing at me for refusing to use the sink as a urinal. But in the crowded restroom Thursday night I heard only, "Excuse me."

When the band appeared -- very nearly on schedule -- the crowd did not go wild, at least by '70s standards, and that worried me, especially in light of a few empty seats in the upper reaches of the Allstate Arena. Back in the '70s I'd heard Stephen Stills, clearly furious about having filled only half the hall, spew contempt toward those of us who had bothered coming. Those temperamental artists.

But from the first to last moments of a two-hour set, the four remaining members of Fleetwood Mac -- Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie -- expressed what appeared to be heartfelt gratitude toward the sizeable audience they'd drawn. And they gave the crowd what it wanted: a complete dose of nostalgia, from "Rhiannon" and "Landslide" and "Gold Dust Woman" to "World Turning" and "The Chain" and "You Can Go Your Own Way."

I'm no music critic, but the band members looked and sounded great. Mr. Buckingham, always a masterful and eccentric guitarist, played the electric without a pick, sharper and faster than ever. And at age 60, Ms. Nicks showed once again that adding shawls and top hats to her long-dress-and-gloves attire can be more provocative than baring flesh a la Madonna. 

After two encores, Mr. Fleetwood bent his tall frame into a bow and said, "We are so blessed that you came."

Renowned for caustic divorces and boozy intra-band affairs

FLEETWOOD MAC BACK FOR ANOTHER AFFAIR

By JOSEPH BARRACATONEW YORK POST

Renowned for caustic divorces and boozy intra-band affairs, Fleetwood Mac never seemed likely to celebrate a 42nd anniversary. Throughout the years, the only constant has been drummer Mick Fleetwood, who stuck it out behind the skins no matter how crazy things got. Now the band - including Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and John McVie - is back on tour for the first time in six years, playing the group's biggest hits and a new version of "Rumours." The group hits Nassau Coliseum on Friday, Madison Square Garden on March 19 and the Izod Center on March 21. We asked Fleetwood about the reunion.

So, who caved in and got the reunion going?

There really wasn't any single person doing the coercing. We've been talking about it for two years, but needed to wait for the right time. Lindsey was working on solo records, I was touring with my blues band and both Stevie and Christine [McVie, a former member] were working on projects.

Is the group still tight?

Yes. John lives in Oahu and I live in Hawaii, so we see each other a lot. And Stevie has always been like family. We've all gone through such an emotional roller coaster together - everyone falling in and out of love with each other. Our story is pretty damn unique. A lot of the troubles Stevie and I went through are so well-documented, they've almost become boring.

Most of the band's insane alcohol- and drug-fueled stories are commonly known.

Any chance of creating new ones?

[Laughs] The days of putting up silver paper over the windows to keep the sunlight out are well and truly over. There's not much "partying" anymore. We still have fun . . . sitting around sharing old war stories, but nothing crazy. Most of us are in our 60s, with kids.

Which outlandish tale(s) stand out?

The thing that truly amazes me was the time we spent in the studio recording "Rumours." We made that album under impossible circumstances - everyone's life was falling apart. I was divorcing my wife, John and his wife Christine were separating, and Stevie and Lindsey were breaking up. It was a hell of a mess. But even though it was a horror show, we created something special that has withstood the test of time.

Any chance you'll be back into the studio?

I have three hairs left. If they all don't fall out following the tour, we've talked about recording again. I don't think we want to just sit around for another five years. We're all healthy, we still have loads of energy. [Laughs] Plus, some of us still have mortgages to pay.

I miss Maui," said Mick Fleetwood

FLEETWOOD AND MAC ON ROAD

Starbulletin.com

"I miss Maui," said Mick Fleetwood over the phone from Chicago. Fleetwood and John McVie, who lives on Oahu, have reunited with their Fleetwood Mac bandmates for a "Greatest Hits Unleashed North American Tour."

Fleetwood Mac is readying a special DVD/CD boxed edition of their 1977 album, "Rumours," which has sold 30 million copies already.

The band's four dates into the tour. "Business is incredible," notes Mick. "We are truly blessed to have loyal fans in this strange economic time." But, he notes, both he and McVie now have "too thin blood" to be happy in cold climes.

He's going to take advantage of a break in the Fleetwood Mac touring schedule to fly back and do a few island dates with Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, the members of which now, like Fleetwood, live on Maui. Their "Blues Again" album, not yet released as a CD, climbed to No. 18 on the iTunes sales chart immediately after release.

____________________________________________________________________________

Also, from BlogTalkRadio - here's an interview with Mick Fleetwood from March 6th to promote his "Blue Again" cd to be released March 17th. Mick speaks briefly about how the Fleetwood Mac tour is going and how they are getting along.

THEY make singin' fun

Newsday.com Full Article

One thing that's sure to happen is a new Fleetwood Mac record, though the timing of it hasn't been worked out, since it depends on how long the current tour goes. "We will have time to hang and maybe throw some new material around, whether it's after 46 dates or after we do some playing in Europe and some other places," Buckingham says. "Eventually, we will get down to making an album, but it will be after we've had time to be not only close as people but sharp as musicians, too."

And Nicks says she is just as determined.

"I think the world should have one more kick-ass Fleetwood Mac record," she says. "We're going to do it so the world can have it."

THEY make singin' fun

For its new tour, Fleetwood Mac is planning to play songs by former member Christine McVie, with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks handling the vocals, for the first time since McVie retired from touring in 1998. "Christine really was the singles queen," says Nicks.

Here are some of the songs they've considered:

"Say You Love Me" (1975) - Sweet harmonies and "Fallin', fallin', fallin'."

"You Make Loving Fun" (1977) - "Oh, woh-oh, can it be so?"

"Don't Stop" (1977) - A smash even before the Clintons.

"Hold Me" (1982) - Videorific, harmony-filled single from "Mirage."

"Little Lies" (1987) - Classic Mac updated with '80s pop.

-Glenn Gamboa

BRAND NEW "STUDIO" VERSIONS OF CLASSICS

Here's an interesting bit of information on Stevie Nicks' "Soundstage Sessions" CD that is being released on March 31st. The 10 track CD being released in conjunction with the "Live in Chicago" DVD appears to be studio versions of Stevie's classics along with two new songs "Crash" by Dave Mathews and "Circle Dance" by Bonnie Raitt. Triple A Radio Stations have already been serviced with a two track promo CD containing "Crash" and "Landslide" (orchestra version). Both tracks on the promo CD were assumed to be the audio taken directly from Stevie's live Soundstage show in Chicago. And that very well still may be the case, where they used her live vocals from the show.

But a Stevie fan has heard the promo CD and confirmed that the vocals DO NOT appear to be live vocals and are not the same as what is on the DVD.

This adds a whole new twist to this release... So are all the tracks on the CD really NEW updated studio versions of old Stevie tracks? Are they the vocals from the live Soundstage show but without the audience? Many many questions!!! Might explain why Stevie's website The Nicksfix says "The CD includes brand new studio versions of classics like "Stand Back", "Sara", "Landslide" and MANY, MANY MORE!"

1. Stand Back
2. Crash (Dave Matthews Band cover)
3. Sara
4. If Anyone Falls in Love
5. Landslide (orchestra version)
6. How Still My Love
7. Circle Dance
8. Fall From Grace
9. Sorcerer
10. Beauty and the Beast

REVIEW: Nicks is at an age where her voice is robust and layered

Chicago Sun Times
BY MARK GUARINO

The grab-n-go revenue stream of aging rock bands is the greatest-hits tour. You spend the first half of your life creating groundbreaking hits; then you spend the second half performing them each time a new wife requests alimony or Bernie Madoff made off with your fortune.

Fleetwood Mac's current revival on the tour circuit has those hallmarks -- it is the Anglo-American band's first since 2003, when core members Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood reunited for a new album that was surprisingly very good.

Their return is not featuring any of those songs, only hits from their blockbuster albums of late 1970s: "Tusk," "Rumours" and "Fleetwood Mac." Thursday night at the Allstate Arena, the first of two consecutive nights, Buckingham admitted there was "no new album -- yet" and the two-hour show would concentrate on "things we love and hopefully stuff that you love, as well."

It was a love affair to last. Unlike most outings like these, the band steered through its hits with interest that went well beyond professional courtesy. While the last tour was more like a revue, with secondary players crowding out the band, this outing was nicely subdued, with even the clownish Fleetwood kept in check.

Forty-one years past its earliest incarnation, the band wisely chose not to dwell on the same old references. Instead, it let the body of work stand on its own ground. At 60, Nicks is at an age where her voice is robust and layered with lovely textures; she sang "Landslide," as a blues song, tarnished but with strength.

She and Buckingham sang lead vocals together on many songs, harmonized sweetly on others, but made the unfortunate decision to trade vocals on "Say You Love Me." Their reconstruction did not suit their voices, and the interchange was strained.

The night belonged to Buckingham, who injected paranoid intensity into every guitar lick, whoop, holler, growl and foot stomp. His peers may have been knighted early in their careers for their guitar flash and mastery, but at age 60, Buckingham has emerged as the only one who still carries it forward with sparkle and commitment.

He elevated even his own revenue generators when the night's highlight became a pairing of the band's lesser-known songs: "Oh Well" and "I'm So Afraid." Played back-to-back, they built into an emotional purging of volume and odd detouring. As Buckingham stalked the width of the stage, he injected an edge-of-cliff abandon into his playing, yet maintained a remarkable technique.

Near the end, his body worked in convulsion over his instrument until he stopped to skip back to his spot -- a concluding image that was peculiar but well-deserved.

Mark Guarino is a Chicago-based journalist. Visit mark-guarino.com.

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Guitarist Played Like His Graying Hair Was On Fire

Chicago Tribune
by: Greg Kot

Fleetwood Mac at Allstate Arena Lindsey Buckingham burns through nostalgia

The Fleetwood Mac set list Thursday at the packed Allstate Arena was straight out of the ‘70s, but Lindsey Buckingham was very much in the present tense on the quartet’s latest reunion tour.

The leather-jacketed guitarist played like his graying hair was on fire most of the night, throwing himself into the songs with a gusto that frequently erupted into manic howls and fleet-fingered, shrapnel-tossing solos. Buckingham pulled the 23 creaky songs out of the long-lost “Rumours” era and into the now, with enthusiastic assistance from drummer Mick Fleetwood.

With the stalwart bassist John McVie at his side, Fleetwood looked like he had just popped out of a Dickens novel, a towering, pony-tailed Fagin in knickers. For all the mugging and preening, he pounded the drums with maniacal glee, blending bluesy firepower with orchestral flair. The inventively propulsive drum parts on songs such as “Rhiannon,” “Go Your Own Way” and “World Turning” colored the arrangements with authority, and matched Buckingham’s passion.

Stevie Nicks was the only member of this revived version of the band’s classic ‘70s lineup (minus singer-songwriter Christine McVie, who retired from the business years ago) who wasn’t quite up to speed as the show began. Her voice has not only deepened, it has lost much of its flexibility, and her performances of “Gypsy” and “Rhiannon” fell flat. She re-accessorized continually with boots, dresses, shawls, scarves, tambourines and even a top hat as the show progressed over two-plus hours. Halfway through the set, she finally shook off the doldrums and audibly rose to the occasion on “Landslide,” accompanied only by Buckingham’s guitar.

“I’m getting older, too,” Nicks sang with soaring, if melancholy conviction. By the time she trotted out her solo hit “Stand Back,” she felt frisky enough to revive one of her trademark twirls.

But it all would’ve been little more than a quaint rehash of a bunch of golden oldies were it not for Buckingham. He started strong, pushing his voice hard on “Monday Morning,” and by the end of the set was finger-picking shrieking, gale-force solos from his instrument, reanimating Peter Green’s early Mac classic “Oh Well” and investing “I’m So Afraid” with scarifying intensity. Wired and still wiry, Buckingham looked like he could’ve raved all night with this rhythm section at his back.

Set list for Thursday at Allstate Arena:

1. Monday Morning
2. The Chain
3. Dreams
4. I Know I’m Not Wrong
5. Gypsy
6. Go Insane
7. Rhiannon
8. Second Hand News
9. Tusk
10. Sara
11. Big Love
12. Landslide
13. Never Going Back Again
14. Storms
15. Say That You Love Me
16. Gold Dust Woman
17. Oh Well
18. I’m So Afraid
19. Stand Back
20. Go Your Own Way

Encore
21. World Turning
22. Don’t Stop

Second encore
23. Silver Springs

"I THINK THE WORLD SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER FLEETWOOD MAC RECORD" (Stevie Nicks)

Boston.com
By Sarah Rodman

All iconic rock records begin life as the dreaded "new stuff" fans don't want to hear.

Stevie Nicks vividly remembers a time when Fleetwood Mac fans weren't interested in the songs from the landmark album "Rumours." Granted, it didn't take long for the 1977 release to become a multiplatinum monster, but there was definitely an initial resistance to the charms of "Gold Dust Woman."

"The audience is always going to be like, 'We need to hear the songs we came here to hear,' " says the 60-year-old singer-songwriter. And at the start of the "Rumours" tour, the songs they came to hear were hits like "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me" from Fleetwood Mac's eponymous 1975 album, the first to feature Nicks and her then boyfriend, singer-songwriter-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.

As the title of the current road show makes clear, Fleetwood Mac's "Unleashed: Hits Tour 2009," which comes to the TD Banknorth Garden on Wednesday, will not feature any new stuff. "We've had incredibly good luck with successful radio songs, so if you start with that and make a list, it's not a short list," says Buckingham, 59.

But this is no farewell jaunt for the band, which also features the namesake rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood, 61, and bassist John McVie, 63. (Singer-songwriter-keyboardist Christine McVie retired from the group in 1998 but performed on the 2003 album, "Say You Will.") In separate back-to-back interviews, we talked to Buckingham and Nicks about the past, present, and future, and they made it clear that the British-American band that has withstood more than a half-dozen permutations will continue to make new music for the masses to disregard - at least at first.

Singing McVie's praises

This tour is the group's second go-round without McVie. The absence of her harmonies and keyboards was definitely felt on the "Say You Will" tour, as were her songwriting contributions, including the hits "Say You Love Me," "Over My Head," "Hold Me," "Everywhere," and "Little Lies." This time out, the group has decided to add some of her tunes to the set list.

Buckingham: "I think she would want us to do that. I think she's going to be flattered as well."

Nicks: "She's delighted. Chris is the greatest, she's not selfish and she's not conceited. She's just a wonderful, wonderful girl. She doesn't like to fly and you just have to. She was having panic attacks and she didn't tell us, so we were all very surprised when she said 'I can't do this' because we never knew she was having a hard time."

The Stevie/Lindsey dynamic

McVie's absence was also felt on a personal level, especially by Nicks, who felt adrift as the band's gender balance shifted. Buckingham was having a blast, however, digging into his songs and guitar playing. Onstage in Worcester in 2003, the former lovers could be seen shooting intense glares at each other.

Buckingham: "When we got off the road in 2004 with Fleetwood Mac, I know Stevie was not very happy with me. I think she maybe wasn't that comfortable onstage in a situation where, without Christine, I had half the material to do and I was just up there being a guy. I think her sense of herself, the context kind of got blurred for her without the female compadre. I had a great time; she didn't."

Nicks: "It went from being a band with two powerful women and a bunch of guys to a bunch of guys with one powerful woman. And Christine really was the powerhouse anyway, she really was the leader of the pack, our Mother Earth. So without Chris it definitely changed the dynamic. And I was lonely because I was obviously so used to having her there since 1975."

Buckingham: "That was one of the reasons we decided we would do a few more Christine McVie songs this time and that we would find ways to do them that are more about Stevie's and my dynamic. I've been talking to Stevie a lot and it's great, the chemistry, the history; I've known her since we were both in high school. And it's not only intriguing but it gives me a big smile that we're going to go out there as a band, the four of us, and particularly Stevie and myself, and be able to bridge all the crap that maybe we've never been able to completely bridge before. We're talking about a band whose sensibilities are so disparate that probably on some level we don't really have much business being in a band together. . . . It's the synergy of that, that makes it work, that makes it greater than the sum of its parts. I think it becomes important and timely to acknowledge that and to share it with each other."

New record on the horizon

The band members hope to keep that synergy going when they get off the road and into the studio.

Nicks: "There's nothing better than having a totally tight, rehearsed band go in and make a record because you're playing great and you've been hanging out for a long time. I'm excited about it because I think the world should have another Fleetwood Mac record. Even if it doesn't sell one record, what it is for us is the experience of making the record. It really is the journey of making 'Rumours,' of making [her first solo album] 'Bella Donna,' of making these really precious records in the long run that is almost more important than what they did when they left us."

Buckingham: "I think there are chapters yet to be written with this band, and there are chapters that need to be written for the people themselves. There have been some things left hanging out there, and this isn't just a band getting together to do it for the bucks. . . . I'm getting quite excited about it, I have to say."