REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto - Hit Makers Delivered a Crisp Concert

FLEETWOOD MAC: AIR CANADA CENTRE IN TORONTO

When Fleetwood Mac began preparing for its current greatest-hits tour, the idea was to use Sheryl Crow as a lean, tan stand-in for former singer-pianist Christine McVie. But, either because of scheduling problems or because of Crow's unfrivolous concern that she would be required to sleep with at least one current band member, the All I Wanna Do singer passed. So it was Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and band namesakes John McVie and Mick Fleetwood who arrived at Toronto's Air Canada Centre for the first of seven Canadian dates. Brad Wheeler scores the four

BRAD WHEELER

GLOBE AND MAIL

March 19, 2009

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM

Monday Morning, the singer-guitarist's 1975 song of romantic indecision, came early - too early for the soundman, who hadn't turned on Buckingham's microphone yet. His singing, a bit scratchy to begin, improved as the 23-song show went along. Buckingham, a fit 59, dazzled as a guitarist, whether on the shimmering delta-blues intro to The Chain, the genteel finger-picking of Never Going Back Again, the iconic solo of Second Hand News or the superhuman arena-rocking shredding of I'm So Afraid. The same magic fingers that plucked those strings also, as the band walked onstage, clasped the hands of the golden-haired diva to his right.

STEVIE NICKS

"Now, I think we should get this party started," the woman in the flowing black gown said, audaciously, given that the concert was already a pair of songs in. But Dreams, third on the set list, was her first moment. Nicks, at 60, is no longer a sultry waif. Her voice is lamb-like; on Don't Stop, I wished that she would, because she was not suited for Christine McVie's parts. She was wonderful on signature pieces Sara and Rhiannon, though, and was positively jaunty with her black top hat on the buoyant singalong Go Your Own Way. Nice shawls, naturally, and her tambourine and mike stand had scarves attached.

JOHN McVIE

Commenting on the chaos of the time and giving name to the band's landmark album of 1977, McVie observed that the songs sounded like gossip or rumours. Possibly, the hang-dog bassist hasn't opened his mouth since. With his newsboy cap, the 63-year-old Englishman appeared as a country gentleman, hanging back near the drum stand. But his playing, melodic in counterpoint to Buckingham's often percussive style, was noticeable. On the Who-intensity blues-rock of Oh Well, he was vigorous like John Entwistle, and the considerable bounce of Dreams came from his Fender-made instrument.

MICK FLEETWOOD

The overly tall, 61-year-old drummer is grey and bald - his pate shone like the gong behind him (which he never struck). His presence (and his lunatic grin) showed more often as the evening progressed: The jungle-tastic energy during World Turning made his drum solo the most bearable one I've ever had the pleasure to witness.

DON'T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

All in all, the historic hit-makers (augmented by three backup singers and a pair of sidemen) delivered a crisp concert - if anything, the longer it went, the better it got. "We plan to have fun on this tour, because there's no album - yet," Buckingham suggestively quipped at one point. Hmmm, just think what tomorrow will do.

Fleetwood Mac plays Ottawa, March 23; Montreal, March 25; Toronto, March 26; Calgary, May 12; Edmonton, May 13; Vancouver, May 15.

GOLD DUST WOMAN

Gold Dust Woman
Richard Burnett
hour.ca

My favourite rock stars have always been women - Tina Turner, Chaka Khan and Stevie Nicks - because their narratives, in life, love and song, speak to me, whereas the lyrics and life experiences of most straight men rarely do.

I've seen Tina perform live 27 times - notably in 1984 at the Spectrum where she found out backstage that What's Love Got to Do With It was number 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart - as well as Chaka Khan, whom I interviewed in this column in 2007.

"When I've been in need, when things weren't going well, the gay community always bailed me out," Chaka told me. "They're my most loyal friends and following and they have a special place in my heart."

But the one woman rock star I've never interviewed is Stevie Nicks. Lord knows I've tried. Former Warner Records USA president Howie Klein, who occasionally lectures at McGill University, is a friend of Stevie's and some years ago he introduced me to Warner PR powerhouse Liz Rosenberg who handles all publicity for Madonna.

Rosenberg set me up a Nicks phoner but that and a rescheduled Nicks interview were both cancelled at the last minute when Fleetwood Mac went into rehearsals for their 2003 Say You Will Tour.

I've been flailing in the wind ever since. That is until Fleetwood Mac announced their current Unleashed Tour that brings the band to Montreal next week.

This time I got band leader and drummer Mick Fleetwood on a press conference call with 30 other journalists from across Canada.

So I asked Mick - whose side project The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band has just released a terrific new live album, Blue Again - what the band dynamics are like now for Stevie since the only other woman in the band, Christine McVie, quit 12 years ago.

"Stevie's had a very successful solo career, so she brings that ability [to front a band] back to Fleetwood Mac," Mick replies. "She also puts on a new coat and becomes a band member. For many years she called all of her own shots, but in Fleetwood Mac she lets that [guard] down and pays respect to the other band members."

Nicks, with her then-partner Lindsey Buckingham, got her start with manager David Forest whom she met at Stanford University in 1966. Forest - who went on to work for Bill Graham at the Fillmore, then headed up the contemporary music division at CMA with David Geffen in 1970, before becoming a super-agent in Hollywood's multi-billion-dollar porn biz - managed Nicks and Buckingham's first band, Fritz, before they joined Fleetwood Mac.

"I knew Stevie would be a star the night Fritz opened for Janis Joplin and Big Brother at the Fillmore," David told me in 2007. "After her band members left I told Stevie, 'Stay and meet Janis.' Stevie looked at Janis and she saw herself in her."

Over the next 35 years Nicks would write and record a string of classic hits, many of which Fleetwood Mac will perform in Montreal: Rhiannon, Landslide, Gypsy, Dreams, Sara, Gold Dust Woman, and (my personal favourite) Storms, which Fleetwood Mac has never before performed on tour. The setlist also includes one of Stevie's monster solo hits, Stand Back.

So, I ask, how did Fleetwood Mac negotiate the setlist?

"We've always done Stand Back because people love to hear the song and Stevie loves doing it," Mick explains. "It's a ballbuster and gets her up there doing her thing. But we can't play eight Stevie [solo] songs or we'd have a riot in the ranks!"

Fleetwood continues, "A lot of bands play great music and don't get on. It's a business arrangement. With us business is involved but we're pretty damned happy with each other. Stevie and Lindsey still see [music] in different ways, but I would be an idiot as band leader if I didn't make sure the front line wasn't happy. You don't have a band if you can't co-exist."

Meanwhile, former Warner head Howie Klein once told me over breakfast that Stevie also cherishes her gay fan base. In fact, on May 1, Hour Editor-in-Chief Jamie O'Meara and I are jetting to NYC to catch the 19th annual Night of a Thousand Stevies, the internationally famed drag-queen tribute to Nicks.

VIP guests over the years have included Debbie Harry (dressed as Stevie!), Boy George, Courtney Love and Cyndi Lauper, and this year Jamie and I will attend with Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto.

"Stevie is very aware of her gay fans and has donated personal items [that were] auctioned off [for charity] at Night of a Thousand Stevies, which we have encouraged her [to attend]," Howie told me.

So if you can't see the real Stevie at the Bell Centre next week, don't miss Night of a Thousand Stevies, which each year ends with a spectacular onstage Stevie Nicks drag-queen battle royal. Who knows, we may even get an audience with the real Stevie.

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac at the Air Canada Centre, March 17, 2009

Iconic west-coast rockers stop thinking about tomorrow long enough to journey through the past

BY PAUL ISAACS
March 18, 2009
EDITORIAL RATING: 4/5

EYEWEEKLY.COM

"Unleashed" seems like a very odd title for a Fleetwood Mac tour. "Unleashed" is a word that suggests risk and danger — even the possibility of violence. That might be appropriate for an Yngwie Malmsteen concert, perhaps, or a Satanic Slaughter comeback tour, but Fleetwood Mac? Unleashed by who — and to do what? Shake their jewelry at us? A greatest-hits tour by a band who, decades after their heyday, remain one of the best-selling, most iconic and recognizable groups in the world — that's hardly a risk-filled proposition. (Unleashed by their accountants, perhaps.)

Still, it's great to have them back. And I suppose the concert was ferocious enough to just about deserve that "Unleashed" moniker. The band started, unfortunately, with the night's three worst performances, with Lindsay Buckingham faltering on the lyrics to the very first line of "Monday Morning," and the mix sounding abysmally echo-y and indistinct — as it would, with intermittent exceptions, for the entire evening. "The Chain," which followed, was just as stumblebum, with John McVie fluffing the cue to the bass riff at the start of Buckingham's guitar solo. (Don't worry, John, it's only the most important part of the song.) When Stevie Nicks then promised to finally "get this party started," only to respond with an off-key, pudding-paced "DREAMS," you felt the audience starting to brace for the worst.

Thankfully, things improved in drastic fashion with "I Know I'm Not Wrong," the first of several numbers from the Mac's seminal Tusk double album. When the band said this was a greatest-hits tour, they weren't kidding — save for "Gyspy" and "Big Love" (from Mirage and Tango in The Night, respectively), two numbers from Buckingham and Nicks's solo careers ("Go Insane" and "Stand Back"), and a cracking performance of Peter Green's "Oh Well (Part 1)," the band stuck entirely to the three records that made their name in the 1970s: their self-titled 1975 album, Tusk, and — of course — Rumours.

You would have thought that Nicks, with her drapes and scarves and bangles and glitter and multiple costume changes (I counted four, including a last-minute encore change into a pair of knee-high white pointy-heeled boots) would have dominated the concert, but in fact Buckingham provided most of the gig's most memorable moments: scissor kicking and primal-yelping with glee at the end of several songs, and indulging in a sublimely wanky, seven-minute (!) guitar odyssey during "I'm So Afraid," a solo that only appeared to end because he ran out of high notes to play on his fretboard.

Nicks, on the other hand, had to pace herself — not worrying about hitting the high notes on her first few songs, then going ballistic by the time the band reached "Sara" and "Gold Dust Woman" later in the set. Christine McVie, who last played with the band in 1998, opted once again out of performing this year, and while her absence was obvious on the group's last record, Say You Will — she's essentially the McCartney to Buckingham and Nicks's Lennon — she wasn't missed tonight, with Buckingham and Nicks providing creditable vocal turns on two of her songs, "Say You Love Me" and a predictable (if well-performed and received) encore of "Don't Stop."

"The 'Mac is back!" Mick Fleetwood yelled at the end of the show (dressed, for some reason, in red shoes and knickerbockers) — and they certainly were. Just for once during this financial crisis, let's raise a toast to accountants.

REVIEW: Fleetwood Unleashed on TD Banknorth

BCHeights.com
By Chris Dewey

Fleetwood Mac Live 

in Boston, MA 

March 11, 2009

Last Wednesday night, Fleetwood Mac brought their Unleashed tour to the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. The tour marks the first time the group has been on the road since 2004. The band, currently a quartet, includes singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks, bassist John McVie, and drummer Mick Fleetwood.

Fleetwood Mac kicked off their set with "Monday Morning," an upbeat song about Buckingham's frustration with love that dates back to the group's self-titled 1975 album. Without missing a beat, the band launched into "The Chain," a song that found Buckingham and Nicks sublimely combining their voices with urgent intensity. Half-way through, the song transitioned into an increasingly faster section marked by an ominous bass-line and an unrestrained guitar solo.

While Nicks' voice seemed to struggle slightly on songs like "Gypsy" and "Rhiannon," there were other times where it was nothing short of outstanding. Her rendition of "Landslide" was just about perfect. "Gold Dust Woman," a song chronicling her past struggles with cocaine, demonstrated that she is at her most powerful and haunting when harmonizing with former lover Buckingham. Donned in flowing dresses, scarves, top hats, and other eccentric pieces of clothing, Nicks twirled about the stage like it was 1977, a move that would have been more ridiculous if the 60-year old singer did not look so remarkably youthful.

FULL REVIEW

Photo by Matt Becker

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto - Rolls Out The Hits

Fleetwood Mac rolls out the hits
Live in Toronto, ON at Air Canada Centre - March 17, 2009

By JANE STEVENSON

TORONTO SUN

It felt like the mid-to-late '70s all over again at the Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night as Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits - Unleashed tour pulled into the hockey hanger for the first of two shows on St. Patrick's Day.

And while the opening song, Monday Morning, wasn't a very smooth start to the two-hour-plus concert - singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham's first words weren't on microphone - and the followup tune, The Chain, sounded a bit disjointed and unpolished, the evening eventually picked up as the veteran rockers found a decent groove by the third number, Dreams.

"We are Fleetwood Mac, and we're thrilled to be here tonight. We hope you have a wonderful time. And now I think we should get this party started," said iconic singer Stevie Nicks, 60, decked out in her usual costume of flowing black dress and black suede boots with black scarves and silver chains decorating her microphone stand.

On their first tour together in five years, the band - rounded out by Brits Mick Fleetwood, 61, on drums and John McVie, 63, on bass - played material primarily from 1975's Fleetwood Mac, 1977's juggernaut Rumours (30 million copies sold worldwide and counting) and 1979's Tusk, embracing their most commercially successful years after Americans Nicks and Buckingham joined the group. (British keyboardist Christine McVie - and John's ex - gave up touring in 1989.)

Notable deviations from that trio of albums were Gypsy from 1982's Mirage, Big Love from 1987's Tango In The Night, Oh Well from 1969's Then Play On, Buckingham's 1984 solo tune, Go Insane, and Nicks' 1983 solo song, Stand Back, all highlights in a set brimming with hits.

"We're a band of complex, convoluted emotions," said Buckingham, 59, a recent visitor to Toronto's Music Hall last October on behalf of his latest solo album, Gift Of Screws.

"Every time we reconvene it's different. As we got into rehearsals this time we just said, 'We're just going to have fun, and because there's no new album to promote - yet - we're going to do the things that we love and hopefully they are the things you love as well."

The fun quotient picked up considerably as the initially remote Nicks and Buckingham, a former couple who met as teenagers and split up shortly after joining Fleetwood Mac (Nicks would later have an affair with Fleetwood), actually started to sing while looking at each other and even embraced - it was more of a lean actually - during Sara.

Eventually, they held hands and were arm-in-arm, respectively, as they returned to the stage for their first and second encores.

Standouts proved to be Nicks' signature songs, Rhiannon, Sara, Goldust Woman (complete with her in a gold shawl) and Stand Back with a crowd-pleasing twirl; the fiery Second Hand News and Go Your Own Way, with Buckingham letting out one of his big whoops when the first song ended and Nicks decked out in a black top hat for the second; Buckingham's acoustic-guitar-driven Big Love and Never Going Back Again and then electrifying electric guitar work on I'm So Afraid; Landslide, which featured Nicks in a new burgundy dress and matching suede boots and Buckingham on acoustic guitar alone together on stage; and the old Peter Green blues-rocker Oh Well with Buckingham taking over lead vocals and a grinning Fleetwood having a grand old time behind his kit.

They also played the pretty and haunting Storms, from Tusk, which they have never performed on tour before.

"A stormy song for a stormy group of people," explained Nicks.

Less successful was Say You Love Me as Nicks and Buckingham traded verses on one of Christine McVie's signature tunes and her absence was definitely felt and Fleetwood's primal drum solo during World Turning.

The band were backed by two other musicians on keyboards and guitar and three vocalists but it was hard not to imagine how the lineup might have sounded given they briefly flirted with the idea of having Sheryl Crow join them on this tour.

There was also large curved video screens behind and above the stage that could have been put to better use with a montage of old footage or photos of the group given this was a Greatest Hits show.

Fleetwood Mac returns to the ACC on March 26.

SET LIST:

• Monday Morning
• The Chain
• Dreams
• I Know I'm Not Wrong
• Gypsy
• Go Insane
• Rhiannon
• Second Hand News
• Tusk
• Sara
• Big Love
• Landslide
• Never Going Back Again
• Storms
• Say You Love Me
• Gold Dust Woman
• Oh Well
• I'm So Afraid
• Stand Back
• Go Your Own Way
• World Turning
• Don't Stop
• Silver Springs

SUN RATING: 4 out of 5

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto March 17, 2009

Fleetwood Mac fuelled by 'stormy' conflicts
Band draws crowd into the band's `convoluted' history

ASHANTE INFANTRY
POP & JAZZ CRITIC

THESTAR.COM

For a group that's conquered its demons, again and again, Fleetwood Mac sure does love to wallow in the memories.

No less than three times, during last night's Air Canada Centre show, either singer Stevie Nicks or guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who do all the talking for the foursome rounded out by founding members, sneaker-shod bassist John McVie and ponytailed drummer Mick Fleetwood, alluded to the well-noted upheavals of the four decades-strong pop-rock group. These traumas included changing lineups – both Buckingham and Nicks departed for a time – and failed intraband marriages or romances.

But to hear the players tell it, these conflicts fuelled the songs and artistry that define them.

"Fleetwood Mac, as most of you know, has a complex and convoluted emotional history and it's actually turned out to be kind of cool," Buckingham said last night. Without a new album to push – "yet," he explained, the quartet was indulging themselves and fans with a 23-song, two-hour-and-20 minute hits concert, which drew heavily from 1977's Rumours – "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way," "The Chain," "Never Going Back" – and 1975's Fleetwood Mac – "Rhiannon," "Say You Love Me," "World Turning," "Landslide."

They also turned in a not previously toured tune, the moody, aptly titled "Storms" from 1979's Tusk, which allowed Nicks to again reference the group's peripatetic past – "it's a stormy song for stormy people and a stormy bunch of relationships and stormy problems."

She's actually the group's weakest component on this tour, which kicked off in Pittsburgh March 1 and returns to the ACC on the 26th.

If it weren't for that inimitable tremor in her voice, any female singer could've been substituted.

What Nicks lacked in energy and charisma, Buckingham delivered tenfold. He proved a crack showman whose fierce playing and vocal drama – replete with karate screams and maniacal laughter – was smoothly supported by Fleetwood's glee and tomahawk pounding and McVie's cool, steady groove.

And with a catalogue this deep – they didn't even get to "Everywhere" and "You Make Loving Fun" – it's great to have these sexagenarians back on the road after a five-year break.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM - EQ MAGAZINE

Lindsey is featured in the April, 2009 issue of EQ Magazine  Multiple page spread where Lindsey discusses his approach in the studio and his technic.

FLEETWOOD MAC - TORONTO PHOTOS 3/17/09

Fleetwood Mac are currently playing in Toronto. A few TwitPics courtesy of concertaholics:

(Review) Mistress Stevie Nicks lived up to expectations

ROCHESTERCITYNEWSPAPER

By Dale Evans

It was a celebratory crowd that nearly filled Blue Cross Arena for Fleetwood Mac Monday, March 16. And I think most of them had filled their bellies at the Dino prior to the concert. The rib-running-jam was so backed up that the hostess pleaded via loudspeaker for patrons to exit their tables ASAP and move on over to the bar because hundreds of concert-goers were still waiting to eat. Last I heard it was a two-hour wait, but it didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. Everyone was happy as they strolled the bridge over to the arena.

As they aren't promoting anything -- yet -- Fleetwood Mac is playing just for fun. And it could have been catching if enthusiasm for the concert hadn't already infected everyone. Most of the crowd spent the night up on their feet getting down, which made me wonder why-oh-why the promoter wouldn't book this as a general admission ticket instead of the dance-in-front-of-your-seat celebration that it was.

All the fave songs were played, and even if a few made me cringe inwardly at their corniness, I was more surprised at just how many of the band's songs are really, really good.

Lindsey Buckingham floored me with his playing; he gave his guitar such passionate spankings that I'm sure some bottoms blushed. And if you were in the nose-bleed section, it mattered not, as the videos were masterfully manned. Yeah, that was him looking right at me.

Mistress Stevie Nicks lived up to expectations, slowly swirling and twirling in her shawl-draped costumes, caressing the glittering boas adorning her mic stand, topping off songs with poignant silhouetted poses.

Mick Fleetwood, well, he was just insanely spectacular. Yes! We're with you! And John McVie's bass was profoundly anonymous, just like one should be.

When the band stopped playing, no one moved. After being called back for two long encores, we were finally too tired to put up much of a fight. If it could be possible, everyone left even happier than they arrived.

MICK FLEETWOOD SPEAKING TO CANADIAN JOURNALISTS

Mick Fleetwood Still About The Blues
by Elizabeth Chorney-Booth -CHARTattack-

Mick Fleetwood didn't plan on being the drummer for one of the most popular and ubiquitous rock bands of all time.

In his heart of hearts, Fleetwood is a bluesman and as hardcore fans of Fleetwood Mac already know, when he started the band way back in the late '60s, that's exactly what he originally set out to be.

A quick primer for anyone who thinks Fleetwood Mac begin and end with their massive hits of the '70s like "Go Your Own Way" and "Don't Stop": Mick Fleetwood (the only member of the band who has survived every single incarnation of the group) began Fleetwood Mac in 1967 with guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer. John McVie, who still plays bass in the band, joined shortly after their first gig.

They were pretty much straight-up blues band, who became fairly popular. Things fell apart when Green, the driving force in the band, started taking LSD, which unlocked a latent mental illness. Green was diagnosed with schizophrenia, left the band in 1970 and has spent much of his life in institutions. Spencer left the band a year later after being recruited by religious group The Children Of God. 

Fleetwood and McVie kept the band alive, eventually recruited singer-songwriters Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (as well as McVie's wife, Christine), and morphed into the the mega-group we all know today.

But Fleetwood always kept a piece of the blues in his heart. A few years ago, he and guitarist/vocalist Rick Vito (who, to complicate things even further, was briefly a member of Fleetwood Mac when Lindsey Buckingham took hiatus from the group in the late '80s) started playing together and formed The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band. That band have just released an album called Blue Again!, which is largely comprised of songs that were part of the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac's repertoire.

Speaking to a group of Canadian journalists, Fleetwood says that for him, the project has been about focusing on the excitement of the early days of Fleetwood Mac rather than the sadness of losing Green and Spencer.

"They are all unbelievably great memories," he says. "This is where I learnt to be the player that I turned out to be.

"Peter was, specifically, an incredibly important part of mentoring me in those days. And we became great friends. The sad part is only that I have somewhat lost that connective as a friend. The music entirely inspires me and makes me really aware of these four little English guys. We had such an incredible journey in a very short space of time."

While Fleetwood is still obviously proud of his work with the contemporary Fleetwood Mac line-up, his affection for the original Fleetwood Mac, and by extension, his blues band, is unmistakable. While he's clearly just happy to be playing this kind of music again, he's also proud of the fact that his old friends who haven't been as successful in the later parts of their lives are still getting their props.

"I don't know where it all came from sometimes, but I know there's a regard for how we played music," he says. "We were pretty hardcore and elevated ourselves in our interpretation, which was as loyal as could be to the [American blues artists] that we loved. And looking back on it, I have to say, in a positive way, listening to what we did, it does really hold up. 

"The only thing that baffles me is why I didn't do it many years ago. I don't know. But now that I'm doing it, it makes me extremely happy."

Mick Fleetwood's "Blue Again" cd is in stores today March 17th.

YESTERDAY'S NOT GONE

Fleetwood Mac: Yesterday's not gone
Fleetwood Mac's current jaunt isn't a reunion tour if you accept the notion that the band never actually broke up

Vanessa Farquharson, National Post
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

It's been more than four tumultuous decades of hookups and breakups, arrivals and departures, hits and flops. But, finally, Fleetwood Mac has found some stability within its instability and the band is going on tour to prove it.

The Canadian leg of their Unleashed tour kicks off in Toronto tonight, and band members Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham spoke recently about the state of the band, its place in today's music industry and why they chose to tour without any new material.

"You know, all of the changes we've experienced have been happening since the beginning," said drummer Fleetwood. "Band members have come and gone, but that's just how our story goes. Looking back on it, it hasn't always been easy -- surviving that change is actually somewhat of a miracle -- but it's who we are."

"We never think of ourselves as a band that's broken up," added Buckingham. "We just feel that there are times to be together and times to be apart ... and we take significant periods of time apart. Because of that -- and because we continue to evolve and gain insight and appreciation for the road we've been down and for each other -- the songs can take on a bit of a new life every time we revisit them."

This, in part, is the logic behind hitting the road now, despite not having a new album to promote. And while some may be tempted to simply call it a "greatest hits" tour, the group insisted this isn't entirely accurate.

"It's the first time we've done this," said Fleetwood, "and it'll be refreshing in that we're selecting really emotive, connective songs that we've enjoyed throughout the years, that we hope people will be familiar with.

"I would love to do another album, to make more music, but it ultimately comes down to bio-rhythms, how everyone's feeling. We have careers and families, and it's a different perspective than it was 20 or 30 years ago."

Nicks concurred, adding that as long as a musician keeps playing, regardless of how much new material is written, his or her sound will remain fresh and original. What makes a good concert has less to do with the specific songs and more to do with how they're performed.

In her case, a sense of enthusiasm and originality, at least at this point in her career, comes from alternating between solo work and collaboration.

"It's kind of a blessing and you never get bored that way," she said. "It makes for a more exciting and uplifting humour because you're not stuck doing one thing, year after year."

As well, the constantly shifting dynamic between Fleetwood Mac's band members adds yet another dimension -- after Nicks and Buckingham, who joined the band as a couple, split up, there was a great deal of tension that often had to be mitigated by former member Christine McVie, who was married to the group's bassist John McVie and eventually left the band for good in 1998. Nicks, for the record, insists she doesn't need a buffer anymore.

"Look," said Buckingham, "our mantra is: Have a good time and value the experiences we've had over the years; value the friendships and the history that really underpins this whole band."

CONTINUE

CRASH / LANDSLIDE AVAILABLE TODAY

Stevie's Single "Crash" which includes "Landslide" is available TODAY to purchase through Amazon.com

The "Soundstage Sessions" CD will be released March 31st along with the "Live in Chicago" DVD