New Interactive Fleetwood Mac eBook Biography Available Now

A new eBook based on a long-out-of-print authorized biography of Fleetwood Mac was recently 

released via Apple's iBooks store and iTunes.  Before the Beginning: A Personal and Opinionated History of Fleetwood Mac , by author Sam Graham , tells the band's story from its late-'60s origins as a U.K.-based blues outfit through its Rumours -era heyday as one of the world's most popular pop-rock acts.

In putting together the eBook, Graham revisited his 1978 publication Fleetwood Mac -- The Authorized History , and added multimedia content with help from artist and illustrator Kirsten Huntley .  The eBook includes 30 digitized audio clips from cassette-tape interviews the writer conducted with Mick Fleetwood , Stevie Nicks , Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie ; former Fleetwood Mac members Jeremy Spencer and the late Bob Welch ; and early producer Mike Vernon .

Before the Beginning also offers scanned images of letters sent between Graham and ex-Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis , autographed photos, notes from conversations Sam had with Mac bassist John McVie and founding lead guitarist Peter Green , and a timeline of the band's history from 1967 to 1983.

With regard to what's included in the text of the eBook, Graham notes, "The Lindsey-Stevie era is by far the longest and most productive, but they had an inspiring and tumultuous prior history, so that's in there too.  We tried to satisfy both those who knew there was a Fleetwood Mac before 'Rhiannon' or Rumours and those who didn't."

Before the Beginning is available on iTunes for $4.99.

Congrats to Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold enters Billboard Top 200 at No.7 (6th Top 10 Album)

Rock legend Stevie Nicks nets her sixth top 10 solo album, as her quasi-archival release 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault set starts at No. 7 (33,000). It’s her 13th top 10 album (combining Fleetwood Mac and solo releases). The set consists of newly-recorded material that was written and recorded in demo versions in earlier years. 24 Karat Gold follows Nicks' In Your Dreams, which debuted (and peaked) at No. 6 back in 2011 (52,000 sold in its first week).

Full article at Billboard

Billboard have published their charts for October 25th... Here's where Stevie and Fleetwood Mac fair on the latest U.S Charts.  Big move for Rumours up to No.83 from No.164.  On the Catalogue albums chart Rumours is back in the Top 5 at No.4.

BILLBOARD TOP 200 - October 25, 2014
#     7 (New) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault
#   83 (164)  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 121 (177) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
# 148 (175) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

TOP 25 DIGITAL ALBUMS CHART
# 10 (New) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

TOP 50 CATALOGUE ALBUMS CHART
#   4 (30)   Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 12 (36)   Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
# 22 (34)   Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
# 50 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac

TOP 25 ROCK ALBUMS CHART
#  3  (NEW) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

STEVIE NICKS "24 KARAT GOLD - SONGS FROM THE VAULT"

Out Now! Order from Stevienicksofficial.com

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham On The Group’s New Album Plans

by Jim Fusilli
The Wall Street Journal

Extending their tour into 2015 won’t deter Fleetwood Mac from recording what might become their first album in almost three decades of new songs composed by Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.

During a telephone conversation last week, Buckingham said McVie had presented him with demos of her new compositions. “Piano and voice,” he said. He brought them back to his studio in Los Angeles. With McVie’s approval, he added, “I took massive liberties with them.”

Nicks was “otherwise engaged. A running commentary these days,” he said, perhaps referring to preparations for her exhibition of her self-portrait photography now ongoing at the Morrison Hotel galleries in Los Angeles and New York as well as the release last week of “24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault,” her album of new versions of old, mostly unfamiliar compositions. “Christine and I were able to concentrate on each other,” Buckingham said. “We were exploring some new turf. That became enlightening to me.”

With Christine McVie back in the band for the first time in 16 years, Fleetwood Mac will be on the road through next March. “We never envisioned finishing the album in the short term,” he said. “We set it aside. Stevie will come in and participate. I have material I had been working on. There’s no danger that it will slip between the tracks. It’s too profound to.”

Buckingham hinted the band might tour behind new material. The current “On With The Show” concert tour features only songs from Fleetwood Mac’s hit-making era from 1975 through 1987’s “Tango in the Night,” the last album to feature Buckingham, McVie and Nicks with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie.

“Once we finish it,” Buckingham said, “we can think about going out and trying something new.”

As for the vibe now among the quintet with Christine McVie back on board, he said, “It’s a very interesting thing when someone who helped to define the interaction leaves for that amount of time. You don’t know how it’s going to play out. But this something that feels really good. It feels really circular.”

Article from The Wall Street Journal

Reviews | Photos | Video: Fleetwood Mac Live in Pittsburgh October 14, 2014

Review: Return of McVie gives Fleetwood Mac show a nostalgic boost

By Kellie B. Gormly
Triblive
October 15, 2014

Photos: Jack Fordyce - View More at Triblive

Watching Fleetwood Mac on Tuesday night at Consol Energy Center felt like a high school reunion.

Christine McVie — after a 16-year absence — rejoined her former bandmates, providing her unique voice to songs from the 1970s and ‘80s that she helped to define.

McVie joined Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and other band members for a 2 1⁄2-hour “One With the Show” tour stop. McVie, a British singer and songwriter, filled the void that had been left in Fleetwood Mac for the past decade and a half.

The audience gave McVie a warm ovation, and it got to hear some Fleetwood Mac hits the band just couldn't do without her, like “Everywhere,” “Say You Love Me” and “You Make Loving Fun.” The added songs eliminated some of those Nicks' solos that had filled much of the setlist on recent tours.

Both McVie and Nicks, 60-something blonde beauties, still look glamorous and sound great, and their voices have not changed much. Both still have that highly distinctive and opposing sound.

Nicks still does her trademark shtick, as she stretches out her arms and twirls during “Gypsy.” At other points in the show, she wore a black magic hat and a glittery gold shawl. Nicks thumped her tambourine, with streaming pieces of decorative fabric, as McVie shook her maracas and played the piano.

Nicks also let the crowd in on some background stories about the origins of the songs and Fleetwood Mac's history.

With his guitar, Buckingham tore through songs like “Big Love” and “I'm So Afraid” with an in-your-face intensity that left him breathless, but energized the audience.

Review: Fleetwood Mac Live in Newark, NJ Oct 11, 2014

Don’t Stop: Fleetwood Mac Bring The Classics to Newark, N.J.
By Brian Ives
Radio.com
October 13, 2014

“Why don’t they just retire?” It’s a question often posed by cynics about legendary rock bands of the ’60s and ’70s who continue to tour, and are able to charge hundreds of dollars per ticket. Obviously, that cynical question doesn’t take into account the system of capitalism and the rules of supply and demand: if people want to pay for something, the market isn’t wrong to provide it for them. If people want to see a rock band — enough people, say, to fill three arena shows in the New York area in less than a week — why should a band call it quits?

Of course, music fans see music as more than just business, it’s art. And most fans have probably experienced at least a few band’s concerts, concerts that take place long after the magic is gone, the performances perfunctory. Many genre-specific bands — heavy metal groups, goth bands, punk rockers — may have a hard time convincingly performing angst-ridden anthems that they in their 20s, many decades and royalty checks ago.

Fleetwood Mac is not one of those bands.

Fleetwood Mac’s Oct. 6 concert was a robust recitation of familiar tunes from the group’s commercial glory days

New Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Jim Fusilli
The Wall Street Journal
October 14, 2014

Veteran rock artists are left with two honorable choices on how to extend their concert careers: play old music with renewed vigor, or perform new music with a sprinkling of old hits in the mix. Last week Fleetwood Mac took the first approach at Madison Square Garden, while Robert Plant—who could have filled an arena—took the second approach at a much more intimate venue, Brooklyn Bowl.

Fleetwood Mac’s Oct. 6 concert was a robust recitation of familiar tunes from the group’s commercial glory days of 1975-87. Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass remain the supple spine of their namesake band, founded in 1967. With Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks out front and the return of Christine McVie after a 16-year absence, the lineup from the act’s years of pop stardom was together again.

Playing material it hadn’t touched since her departure, the core quintet, backed by five musicians and singers, appeared energized. In a phone conversation on Friday, Mr. Buckingham, who at 65 is the youngest member of Fleetwood Mac, said working again with Ms. McVie has revitalized the band.

At the Garden, Ms. McVie’s songs retained their feathery center, and her burnished-by-the-blues voice was flawless on a dreamy “Over My Head.” Mr. Buckingham’s guitar snaked around her as she sang “You Make Loving Fun,” a bit of mid-1970s funk.

A fan favorite, Ms. Nicks seemed by turns delighted and detached, but her “Seven Wonders” was a highlight. Her compositions “Rhiannon” and “Gold Dust Woman” provided the springboard for some of the evening’s best instrumental exchanges, in which Mr. McVie was a revelation. A busy bassist who never intrudes, throughout the evening he provided buoyant support for the vocalists. In “I’m So Afraid,” the lone song in the set that nodded toward the group’s early days as a blues-based dynamo, he and Mr. Fleetwood rumbled in tandem, reviving one of rock’s sweetest sounds while Mr. Buckingham soloed furiously.

From the Garden stage, Mr. Buckingham spoke of Fleetwood Mac as a “band that continues to evolve.” There wasn’t much evolution on display during the 24-song performance, but he was looking ahead. He and Ms. McVie have recorded new material; when the tour concludes at the end of March 2015, he expects Ms. Nicks will bring songs to the studio and a new Fleetwood Mac album will emerge. Then, he added, the band can think about performing its latest songs in concert. Though the rabid audience at Madison Square Garden would probably disagree, Fleetwood Mac could use a touch of the new to avoid the perception that mining the past is all it can do.

REVIEWS: Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold "A beguiling collection of songs"

Stevie Nicks: 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault
by Brian Boyd
Irish Times
★★★★ out of 5 stars

A selection of old demos, some stretching back to the 1960s, the eighth studio album by one of the voices of Fleetwood Mac is one of the best things she has ever done. With perspective, she sings these songs with a lovelorn resignation, imbuing them with a rare sense of pathos and philosophical regret. Lady is a rueful, self-doubting ballad while Starshine is turbo-charged FM rock. Nicks’ voice is always a thing of wonder; from easy-listening Laurel Canyon-type stylings to fuzzed-out rock and electrified folk, she can handle anything. On the standout Blue Water, she sounds as forlorn as early Gram Parsons, while I Don’t Care is blues rock perfection. Contemporary retrospection this may be, but she gets to the emotional core of almost everything here. A beguiling collection of songs.

Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music
★★★★ 1/2 stars out of 5

With the subtitle "Songs from the Vault," you'd be forgiven if you thought 24 Karat Gold was an archival collection of unreleased material and, in a way, you'd be right. 24 Karat Gold does indeed unearth songs Nicks wrote during her heyday -- the earliest dates from 1969, the latest from 1995, with most coming from her late-'70s/early-'80s peak; the ringer is a cover of Vanessa Carlton's 2011 tune "Carousel," which could easily be mistaken for Stevie -- but these aren't the original demos, they're new versions recorded with producer Dave Stewart. Running away from his ornate track record -- his production for Stevie's 2011 record In Your Dreams was typically florid -- Stewart pays respect to Nicks' original songs and period style by keeping things relatively simple while drafting in sympathetic supporting players including guitarists Waddy Wachtel and Davey Johnstone and Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. It's certainly not an exacting re-creation of Sound City but Stewart adheres to the slick, hazy feel of supremely well-appointed professional studios, so 24 Karat Gold has a tactile allure. Sonically, it's bewitching -- the best-sounding record she's made since 1983's The Wild Heart but, substance-wise, it's her best since that album, too. If there aren't many remnants of the flinty, sexy rocker of "Stand Back" (the opening "Starshine" is an exception to the rule), there's enough seductive, shimmering soft rock and the emphasis on Laurel Canyon hippie folk-rock feels right and natural. Retrospectively, it's a surprise that Nicks sat on these songs for years, but that only indicates just how purple a patch she had during Fleetwood Mac's glory days. It's a good thing she dug through her back pages and finished these songs, as she's wound up with one of her strongest albums.

Album review: 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault by Stevie Nicks
Yorkshireeveningpost
by James Nuttall

Fleetwood Mac may have just started a mammoth tour of the United States, their first with songbird Christine McVie in 17 years, but Stevie Nicks has still managed to release a new solo album, this month.

24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault, is a collection of 14 songs from Nicks’ enormous back catalogue of demos that never made it onto her records- songs which were written between 1969 and 1995.

Recorded over a three-month period, Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart was once again on production duties. After producing her last album, In Your Dreams, which was something of a let-down both musically and lyrically compared to 2001’s Trouble in Shangri-La, 24 Karat Gold makes much more of a statement than both of the aforementioned releases.

This may be, in part, due to Nicks herself also producing the record, with the help of long-time collaborator Waddy Watchel, who featured heavily on her early solo albums.

The reason this record has much more of an impact than her more recent albums, is possibly because each of the 14 tracks follow the same theme. In the liner notes, Nicks states: “ Each song is a lifetime. Each song has a soul. Each song has a purpose. Each song is a love story… They represent my life behind the scenes, the secrets, the broken hearts, the broken hearted and the survivors.”

Kicking off with the Rolling Stones-esque Starshine, Nicks’ unmistakeable nasal voice remains as constant as her chiffon scarves and platform boots.

Next up is The Dealer, which was demoed for both her first solo album, Bella Donna, and her third, Rock A Little. Finally making it onto 24 Karat Gold, it is very similar to the superior first version, demoed for Bella Donna.

Other fine up-tempo tracks include I Don’t Care, the token snarling ‘rock-out’ moment, which features at least once on most of Nicks’ solo records; and Cathouse Blues, more honky tonk in flavour.

That being said, this album’s finest moments take shape in the form of its darkest tracks. The title track begins with a pounding bassline, and goes into a haunting piano rhythm and jarring guitar part from Mr Watchell, as Ms Nicks sings about the chains of love.

Mabel Normand is another highlight on the record. Originally demoed for the Rock A Little album in 1985 – a time when Nicks was paying the price for her years of cocaine abuse – it documents the life of the silent film actress it is named after, who had the same substance battle several decades before. It becomes clear that Nicks is writing about Normand and herself in the song, as she sings: “She did her work, but her heart was quietly crying. I guess she even felt guilty about even dying.”

Gorgeously simple ballads, such as If You Were My Love and Hard Advice, nicely juxtapose the rockier material on the album.

24 Karat Gold is probably the most consistently fine selection of Nicks’ self-penned material since her 1983 album, The Wild Heart. A fine selection of similar yet different songs, each holding their own within this album, which is not something that could be said for Nicks’ last solo effort.

This is a real insight into the last 45 years of the life of one of the most unique and mystical talents there has ever been. Nicks has held nothing back, this time.

Check out more reviews on 24 Karat Gold HERE

STEVIE NICKS "24 KARAT GOLD - SONGS FROM THE VAULT"

Out Now! Order from Stevienicksofficial.com