REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Cleveland April 17, 2009

Fleetwood Mac doesn't stop thinking about yesteryear in hit-stacked concert at The Q

by John Soeder

Plain Dealer 

April 18, 2009

"Ooooo, don't you look back," Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks sang at the end of "Don't Stop."

And if the irony of singing "Ooooo, don't you look back" after spending more than two hours doing nothing but looking back wasn't lost on them, they didn't show it.

Without a new album to promote, Fleetwood Mac stared deep into the rearview mirror Friday night at The Q, yielding a concert stacked with classic-rock hits.

A sprightly "Monday Morning" got the proceedings off to a galloping start, followed in short order by "The Chain" and "Dreams." The arena was approximately two-thirds full, with most of the top tier curtained off.

Half-apologizing for not having any fresh material to play, Buckingham explained the rationale behind the band's latest road trip: "Let's just go out there and have fun."

Mission accomplished, to the tune of guaranteed crowd-pleasers such as "Gypsy," "Tusk" and "Go Your Own Way."

Besides Buckingham and Nicks, the core lineup included founding members Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass. They're all in their 60s.

In the middle of several particularly intense musical passages, various band members clutched their chests, feigning cardiac arrest. At least it looked as if they were only faking it.

Two sidemen and three backing vocalists fleshed out the sound nicely, especially on the intricate, harmony-laden "Sara."

A twangy stab at "Say You Love Me" (originally popularized by Christine McVie, who went her own way more than a decade ago) was among the evening's few surprises. Ditto a suitably overcast "Storms," a ballad off 1979's "Tusk" album that Fleetwood Mac hadn't played live prior to this tour.

Buckingham and Nicks also touched on their solo careers, by way of "Go Insane" and "Stand Back," respectively.

Early on, Buckingham joked about the group's "fairly complex and convoluted emotional history." As usual, that history was milked for all it's worth.

The poignant "Landslide" was a highlight, with ex-lovers Buckingham and Nicks alone onstage for a stripped-down duet. They also looked into each other's eyes as they traded barbs via "Second Hand News."

The latter tune was prefaced with a long-winded introduction courtesy of Buckingham, who babbled on about "emotional opposites" and the song's elements of sadness, aggression and humor.

He fared better when he let the music do the talking, most notably when he punctuated a jaw-dropping "I'm So Afraid" with a cathartic guitar solo.

At times, you got the impression that Buckingham might snap up there -- and thank goodness. His emotionally raw vocals and unhinged guitar heroics stole the show.

Sure, this was essentially one big nostalgia trip. Yet thanks largely to Buckingham's efforts, at least it was a trip worth taking.

For her part, Nicks was in fine voice as she led various well-received excursions into the mystic, via "Rhiannon" and other spellbinding oldies. And if there was any lingering doubt about it, "Gold Dust Woman" reaffirmed that nobody -- but nobody -- works a shawl like Fleetwood Mac's leading lady.

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"

FIRST ENCORE:

"World Turning," "Don't Stop"

SECOND ENCORE:

"Silver Springs"

ALL THE SHAWLS, FEATHERS AND TOP HATS YOU COULD WANT

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

London Free Press

FLEETWOOD MAC RULE

Headliners: Fleetwood Mac

By Chris DeVille

ColumbusAlive.com

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

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

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

FULL ARTICLE

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

Fleetwood Mac 'Unleashed' on tour
BY JORDAN LEVIN

Miami Herald

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q:Are you influenced by current and recent music?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fleetwood: I'm the boss now.

Nicks: You're all fired.

FLEETWOOD MAC - GREENSBORO SHOW CANCELLED

CANCELLED:

According to Ticketmaster - Fleetwood Mac have canceled the

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

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

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

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

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

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

REVIEW - FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN PHILADELPHIA

Fleetwood Mac at Wachovia Center
By Sam Adams
For The Inquirer

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

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

Wednesday's show, though, was all surface.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PHOENIX, AZ - Sunday, May 24th

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PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Philadelphia April 15, 2009

Nicely done shots of the April 15, 2009 show in Philadelphia
Photos by: dadapix (click for more)

This is an excellent shot of Lindsey and the fan hands.

Photo by: hejiranyc (click for a couple more)

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Hot and Cold in Philadelphia

Fleetwood Mac hot and cold in Philly stop of greatest hits tour

By Katherine Reinhard

The Morning Call

Perhaps it was because they had been on break for a few weeks. But there seemed to be two distinct Fleetwood Mac bands on stage at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia last night.

The first took up more than half of the two-hour plus show featuring greatest hits from the band's mid-1970s incarnation.

Sure, there was the trimmed down Stevie Nicks in a flowing gypsy black dress, killer boots and a mike stand draped in black scarves. Yes, the first three songs - "Monday Morning," "Chain" and "Dreams" - are among their best and could easily have filled out the end of the show.

But the performance was flat. You could barely hear Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham seemed to be trying too hard. Group founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were little more than wallpaper. And the back-up band and singers may as well been on another stage.

Ten songs in I was so bored that I seriously contemplated going to the bar area to watch the Flyers get hammered by Pittsburgh.

But then the second Fleetwood Mac band showed up when Fleetwood, McVie and the backup band and singers left the stage. It was just Buckingham and Nicks up there, like their pre-Mac days with Buckingham on acoustic guitar. Now dressed in a claret dress, Nicks' voice finally kicked in. It was a bit deeper than her early years, but it was still there. The duo performed "Landslide." The lyrics were not lost on the mostly older audience. "Children get older," Nicks sang.. "... I'm getting older, too." The crowd ate it up.

From then on it was a really good show. Fleetwood, McVie and the others returned to the stage. Fleetwood moved up to a small drum kit at the front of stage. When Nicks sang "Gold Dust Woman" it was as though she had moved into a different astral plane. Buckingham took on Peter Green's part in "Oh Well," the only song from the pre-Buckingham-Nicks day, and proved he still can play guitar like a '60s rock star.

By the time the band closed the show, playing "World Turning" and "Don't Stop," I wanted to stand up and demand a redo of the first half. I guess I'll have to wait for the next tour.

(Photo by Brian Hineline, Special to The Morning Call)

SUPERGROUP FLEETWOOD MAC IS TOURING TO PROMOTE RUMOURS REISSUE

Catch reunited Fleetwood Mac on Thursday in Sunrise
SUN-SENTINEL.COM
By Sean Piccoli | Pop Music Writer

If yesterday's gone, as Fleetwood Mac once sang, what's up with yesterday's bands? They don't appear to be going anywhere.

Some tour ad infinitum, letting a generation lapse between albums ( the Eagles). Others emerge from situational exile (Guns N' Roses) or return as aging comeback kids ( New Kids on the Block). Call it 20th Century Village — a community of acts that hit their pop-culture peaks in previous decades but survive on varying combinations of musical relevance and audience nostalgia.

Where along that spectrum does one put Fleetwood Mac? The "Unleashed" tour that comes to BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise on Thursday is timed not to new music but a deluxe reissue of 1977's Rumours. But this quintessentially '70s band — known for its tuneful pop-rock songcraft and congenial, co-ed sound — hasn't ruled out making new music. Just not now.

"This is the first time that we've gone on the road without an album," drummer and band co-founder Mick Fleetwood, told entertainment writers on a conference call in February. Fleetwood seemed relieved to be touring on that basis, calling it "truly a new experience for Fleetwood Mac to go out and ... play songs that we believe and hope that people are really going to be familiar with."

As for another album, which would be the first since 2003's Say You Will, Fleetwood sounded hopeful but hardly definitive.

"There have been discussions, for sure," he said. "And I think it's really down to the whole sort of biorhythms of how everyone is feeling and what's appropriate. We have careers and families and whole different sort of perspectives from what it would have been, you know, 20, 30 years ago ... I think the feeling is, and the consensus is, that we would love to be challenged to go out and do, in a couple of years, something with some new songs."

The point or value of another Fleetwood Mac album is something he and the remaining band members — Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and John McVie — will have to decide for themselves.

What's not in doubt is the appeal of the existing songs. Many have become standards, covered by stars and bar bands alike, and played at proms and other life-affirming rituals.

At some point, a band becomes much smaller than its music. Enjoyment of the songs supersedes interest in the personalities behind the microphone. But Fleetwood Mac's history still holds some intrigue. Their best-known work arose in part from romantic entanglements among band mates. John and Christine McVie divorced in 1976. At the same time, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were coming undone as a couple but still collaborating as songwriters. Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time, is rife with those tensions.

"We are a group of great contradictions," guitarist and singer Buckingham said. "The members don't necessarily have any business being in a band together because the range of sensibilities is disparate. But that's in fact what makes Fleetwood Mac what it is. It's the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It's the kind of energy that is created from that kind of contrast in personalities."

To hear Buckingham tell it, those contrasts got the better of the band last time out. "When we rehearsed for [the] Say You Will [tour], we had come off almost a year in the studio and we were tired," he said. "And there was a certain amount of tension from that experience, and there was a certain amount of anxiety in terms of working things out that were new, and how it was all going to fit together. And I think there was even a kind of novelty of going out without Christine McVie for the first time."

Nicks said the collective mood this time around is much improved thanks to Buckingham's good spirits. "When he's happy, everybody is happy," she said.

Buckingham said that time away, during which he released two solo albums, eased his return to the fold. "We've been down this road — a long, long road together," he said. "And in some ways we know each other better than we know anybody else. We share things with each other that we've never shared with other people. And I think that we all want to dignify the road we've been down. If you talk about Stevie in particular, I've known Stevie since I was in high school. And I just think we all want to get to a place where we all feel ... that unity is sort of waiting in the wings. And it's not that we're not unified. But it is still a work in progress."

PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Philadelpha April 15, 2009

Photo by JTRamsay

WEEK 2 BILLBOARD TOP 200

Week 2 for "The Soundstage Sessions" on Billboards Top 200 Album chart suffered a 62% drop in sales landing at #146 with 4,908 in sales for the week.  Accumulated total = 18,038.

"Live in Chicago" the DVD drops one place to #2.  (Sales information to follow).