REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Dublin. "Nicks keeping the mid-life crisis men enthralled"

By Siobhán Cronin

Irish Examiner

She’s a drama queen and she knows it. But we love Stevie Nicks all the more for it. At 65, this hot hippie is still able to hold an audience spell-bound. 

It’s the perfect couples night out – with Nicks keeping the mid-life crisis men enthralled and Lindsey Buckingham, a very youthful 62, looking hot in his skinny jeans and leather jacket. 

“I think Dublin is the best place to start up again after 47 shows in the US,” says Nicks, and we really believe her. 

This could easily be dubbed a Greatest Hits tour – such is the outpouring of chart successes over five decades, with staples, ‘Gypsy’, ‘Tusk’ and ‘The Chain’ all featuring in a song list of favourites, with just a few gentle nods at more recent recording sessions. 

The bizarrely complicated love triangles and trysts the members of Fleetwood Mac engaged in down the years have been played out in public, but neither Buckingham nor Nicks seem able to let it go. In what seems an almost therapeutic sharing with the 13,000-strong sell-out audience, the duo reference the troubles in their past several times over. Could they be wearing the band’s dysfunctional history as a badge of rock honour? 

Win one of 10 double passes to see Fleetwood Mac at A Day On The Green in Geelong, Australia

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To celebrate their new gloss GT Magazine, the Geelong Advertiser is giving you the chance to win one of ten silver reserve double passes, valued at $300 each.

For your chance to win, pick up the Geelong Advertiser on Saturday, 28 September.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Then Play On” Remastered 4 Decades Later with the original U.K. tracking list

Some might find it hard to believe that before their success with albums such as Rumours and Tusk, Fleetwood Mac was actually a blues rock band formed by guitarist Peter Green in 1967. Fleetwood Mac’s third album, Then Play On, is often considered by many to be their best effort when Green was in the band. The album is also the last the band would make with Green, as he left the band a year after the album’s release in 1970. Now in 2013, the album has been reissued and remastered with the original U.K. tracking list and segues.

Full Review at The Crown

Turns out Mick Fleetwood is Royalty after all

Prince William and Fleetwood Mac star Mick Fleetwood are COUSINS through Princess Diana's ancestor

Are we surprised?

Full story at the Mirror

Lindsey Buckingham Talks Music... with Malcolm Gerrie on "Talks Music" #FleetwoodMac

Ray Davies, Nile Rodgers and Lindsey Buckingham will be among the guests on a new Sky Arts music show hosted by Malcolm Gerrie.

Talks Music will launch on the channel at 9pm on November 4 and run for 10 weeks.

Talks Music takes an in depth look at key artists who have shaped modern music and shows them in a previously unseen light.  Each week legendary music-TV broadcaster and producer Malcolm Gerrie, whose extensive credits include The Tube, The Brit Awards and The White Room, will be joined by a legendary guest for an exclusive hour-long interview.

They will talk to Gerrie about their music, craft, passions and inspirations, explaining how they write, perform, and survive the pressures of being a popular music star. …Talks Music will feature a diverse mix of artists from different decades and different music genres who have all helped turn the pages of music history.

The series is directed by Jeff Wurtz, the acclaimed director and producer of the series Inside the Actors Studio. …Talks Music will be filmed live in front of a studio audience consisting of music students and fans that are looking for insights and inspirations in order to start their own music careers. Gerrie and his guest take questions from the floor giving the audience members a once in a lifetime opportunity to interact with their music idol.

Talks Music not only has a phenomenal pedigree it’s going to be the  must watch series for Sky Arts viewers who love music icons.”

Malcolm Gerrie, Executive Producer and Host adds “When Sky Arts asked me if I’d like to change my day job and talk to some of the coolest artists on the planet…in front of the camera not behind…I was pretty gobsmacked! The whole experience of talking music to some of my personal music heroes has been a labour of love and I’m delighted that Talks Music will be part of a channel so committed to music and musicians.”

Music Week
Sky Arts

Review: Fleetwood Mac Live in Dublin "Stevie Nicks reminds her followers she's still the coolest hippy chick in town"

Still going their own special way 

CHRIS WASSER
Herald (Ireland)

Photos by Aaron Corr
View Gallery 

THERE IS a story about a lost Fleetwood Mac demo that ended up on YouTube almost 40 years after it was recorded.

Stevie Nicks found it, showed it to Lindsey Buckingham and they stuck it on an EP. End of. Somehow, Nicks turns this simple anecdote into an epic bedtime story, apologising as a sweaty Buckingham places his hands on his hips and sighs. If the latter is right about there being "a few chapters left in the book of Fleetwood Mac", they'd be doing well to play Without You without the lengthy backstory. Thankfully, it's one of very few slip-ups in a sublime set from the British-American foursome. This is the Rumours line-up, minus Christine McVie. But Buckingham and friends are keen to explore the various guises of their intricate, colourful history together.

Thrilling

You don't expect them to dig into 1979's Tusk. Nor do you expect its experimental leanings to sound better than soft rock beauty Dreams. You sense the shake-up in the setlist was down to Buckingham – a thrilling guitarist who also trades under the "artist" title. The British gentlemen in the gang (bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood) are, it seems, just happy to be here. McVie, the group's backbone, has got the best job in the world. The always-reliable Fleetwood operates from a gorgeous workstation.

And then there's Stevie Nicks. Just as Lindsey likes to squeeze into his tight jeans and wink at the ladies in the front row, Stevie is also in the mood to remind her followers that she's still the coolest hippy chick in town. Prancing about with her scarves hanging from her microphone stand, and spinning in the spotlight like a stoned ballerina, you'd never guess she turned 65 this year. An enchanting songstress, her voice remains up to the task, too, not least on Sara, and acoustic favourite, Landslide.

Refreshed

Again, it's not all perfect – the new material falls flat and a few moments of self-indulgence creep in. They are, however, in the form of their lives; refreshed, re-engaged and ready for the next round. Buckingham's breath-taking solo on I'm So Afraid is incredible, and a crowd-pleasing, marathon version of Go Your Own Way is astounding. A few more chapters? Bring it on.

THE CHAIN

Fleetwood Mac "Eye Of The Hurricane" 5 Page Spread on "Tango In The Night" - Classic Rock Mag Oct, 2013

Fleetwood Mac: Colossal drug abuse, physical violence, epic strops... Forget Rumours, the Mac's craziest album was Tango In The Night.

Classic Rock Magazine - October, 2013 issue.  Available now

Fiona Sturges hails the legacy of the Fleetwood Mac, a band who have weathered more storms than the Atlantic

It’s not just a rumour: Fleetwood Mac are back
The Independent

Fleetwood Mac may have had their ups and downs but they sure know a thing or two about timing. Last year singer Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone that 2013 would be “the year of Fleetwood Mac”. And so it has proved. Thirty-six years on from their 40 million-selling album Rumours, a languid, harmony-laden work about heartbreak which now resides in one in six US households, the Mac are back on top.

Since their Seventies heyday the band have been as famous for broken marriages and drug addictions as their music, and only recently has their back catalogue been deemed ripe for reappraisal. Following a series of re-issued LPs, next week their comeback tour rolls into the UK. Meanwhile, a new generation of artists are making known their appreciation. Below some of them explain the band’s appeal and pick their favourite LP from the back catalogue.

Check it out at The Independent

REVIEW | PHOTOS: First night: Fleetwood Mac, The 02, Dublin

"The mighty Mac are back" 

BY PIERRE PERRONE
The Independent

Photos by Debbie Hickey
Studio 10 Media
View Gallery

Three songs into the first European date Fleetwood Mac have played since 2009 comes the first of several magical moments as mad-eyed drummer and ringmaster Mick Fleetwood suddenly hits his monogrammed kit harder to underpin the “loneliness of a heartbeat drives you mad” lyric of the US chart-topper ''Dreams'' Stevie Nicks is delivering in her trademark low yearning voice. This perfect marriage of musicians from two different countries united by a common language and purpose is part of what makes the Mac such a compelling concert attraction and must-see act into their fifth decade.

However, the main ingredient remains the soap opera of their intertwined relationships, acknowledged from the off with ''Second Hand News'' from 1977's epochal Rumours, and given a sense of closure with the apposite ''Say Goodbye'' at the end. Not many set lists have a narrative arc or the feel of a group therapy session but no band, not even ABBA, have lived their personal lives in public and used this emotional roller-coaster as inspiration like the Mac. Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, wearing a Ramones-like tight jeans and leather jacket combo, admits as much, talking about “the power of change” before an impassionate solo version of ''Big Love''. He has just been hugged by Nicks after a sublime double whammy of ''Sisters Of The Moon'' and ''Sara'', two of four selections from Tusk, the somewhat self-indulgent double set the Mac issued in 1979, since reclaimed by left-field acts like Camper Van Beethoven.

Nicks has made a specialty of these ethereal, floating ballads, mining the same rich seam from ''Rhiannon'' to

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the Velvet Underground-referencing ''Gypsy'', but they all prove so affecting it would be impossible to pick a favourite or indeed to omit any of them. Their inclusion also illustrates why Nicks has been such a strong influence on Florence Welch and Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes. Her writing remains as distinctive as the gothic, timeless look she fashioned for herself in the mid-seventies and she twirls around the stage – without quite essaying an Irish jig, an impossible feat in the high-heel boots she favours – and drapes herself dramatically in yet another shawl during ''Gold Dust Woman''.

Try as he might, including the dazzling solo which rescues a listing ''I'm So Afraid'', Buckingham knows that Nicks is the star of the show, even as she rambles on while introducing the sweet ''Without You'', the mid-70s demo they recently revisited for a digital download EP. She shoe-horns her own eighties electro hit ''Stand Back'' to add pop heft – and a groovy John McVie bassline – to a lengthy, nuanced, contrasting set which closes with the cross-generational audience on its feet for the evergreen ''Go Your Own Way''. Even Fleetwood's demented drum solo can't spoil the fun. The mighty Mac are back.

Fleetwood Mac play the 02 in London 24, 25 and 27 September, the LG Arena Birmingham 29 September, the Manchester Arena on the 1 October and the Hydro in Glasgow on the 3 October

GO YOUR OWN WAY

WITHOUT YOU (With intro)

SAD ANGEL