Monday, October 20, 2014

Christine McVie helps Fleetwood Mac stage a jubilant return to Columbus


By Martin Lopez
The Lantern

It’s a marvel that Fleetwood Mac were even on stage to perform last night.

It is a band that has gone through a great deal of emotional turmoil, and more recently, physical stress, as bassist John McVie was diagnosed with cancer roughly one year ago. Two other members have died within the last three years, one to suicide and the other to a haemorrhage.

They have four members who have gone through two failed relationships (one divorce) and have had several key members come and go. They even bared their emotional and romantic troubles out on their 1977 20-time platinum album “Rumours.” And when the band finally gained some stability during their 1990s reunion, singer and keyboard player Christine McVie left due to a fear of flying on tour.

And so it was immensely gratifying to see her make a triumphant return to the group at Nationwide Arena Sunday night — both for the audience, and clearly for the band. The band was firing on all cylinders with the original three-part harmonies that McVie brought back to their sound, Stevie Nicks sounding as gorgeous as ever, and lead guitarist and songwriter Lindsey Buckingham transcending with his stunning guitar solos.

The group opened up with “The Chain,” one of their most poignant and visceral songs off of “Rumours,” so they got into the soul-bearing business right away. And Buckingham immediately reminded me of why I consider him to be one of my favorite guitar players, a guitarist who, as George Harrison might put it, can make his guitar weep. His unusual finger picking, remarkable songwriting abilities, and brilliant lyrical guitar lines proved to be a constant highlight throughout the night.

Continue to the full review

THE CHAIN

RHIANNON - Stevie is wearing a cape that was hand made by Celeste Meyeres which Stevie chose as the winner in the Talent House "Design a show-stopping shawl for Stevie Nicks" Contest. You can read more about Celeste here and see Stevie's note to Celeste at the Talent House website.


Photo by vangoghtravels



Review: Fleetwood Mac Live in Columbus, OH Oct 19, 2014

Christine McVie makes singing fun

By Rob Harvilla
The Columbus Dispatch
Photos: Kristen Zeis

In sports, one player, no matter how transcendent, can’t single-handedly win a title: Just ask LeBron James. On the crowded classic-rock-nostalgia circuit, even two towering superstars might not cut it: Ask Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

So please welcome back Fleetwood Mac’s not-so-secret weapon, Christine McVie. As evidenced by last night’s transformative show in Nationwide Arena, her adoring fans missed her, but not half as much as the rest of her band.

Sure, the ’70s-chart-smashing pop juggernaut could subsist on the arena-touring circuit for decades hence off the poisonous fruit of the infamously doomed Buckingham-Nicks romance alone, but what fun is that?

McVie, a far sweeter and gentler singer and songwriter, had quit the band in 1998 (she hated flying) and vowed never to return. Thank God she relented this year. The crowd’s huge swell of adoration was palpable from the first few notes of You Make Loving Fun. Exquisitely mushy cloudbursts like Everywhere and Say You Love Me — a typical line of hers is “I'm over my head / But it sure feels nice” — were crucial counterpoints to Nicks’ siren songs and Buckingham’s wiry, pantherlike aggressiveness.

A shadowy back line of five singers and multi-instrumentalists quietly added any muscle the core quintet, rounded out by rock-solid bassist John McVie and incurably hammy drummer Mick Fleetwood, had lost over the years. (Nice gong, Mick.)

Nicks in particular deftly dodged the high notes on Dreams and Rhiannon, though her cuddly-goth charisma helped close the deficit: Nobody on Earth gets more applause just for twirling in a circle.

Still, Landslide, her colossally gentle acoustic duet with Buckingham, can always induce open weeping, and her entrancing Gypsy may be the band’s single most rapturous pure-pop moment. (The lost high notes on that one particularly hurt last night, though she did twirl a lot.)

Buckingham, meanwhile, is the mad virtuoso: His howling, classical-guitar-shredding, one-man version of Big Love (off 1987’s crazy-underrated Tango in the Night) is an awesome, terrifying thing, and his prowling, snarling, opera-length solo on the uncharacteristically heavy deep cut I’m So Afraid nearly knocked the audience unconscious.

Ultimately, though, it was Christine’s night: The show peaked with the Tango-era soft-rock classic Little Lies — featuring the night’s best harmonies by a long shot — and she closed out with the delicately strident solo-piano gem Songbird. Her bandmates appeared to consider carrying her offstage like a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. It’s not a bad idea.


SAY YOU LOVE ME


Sunday, October 19, 2014

Review: Fleetwood Mac play like they have something to prove ★★★ stars out of 4

With the return of Christine McVie, band restores its "classic" lineup and plays their greatest hits to a sold-out Air Canada Centre.

Fleetwood Mac Live in Toront - October 18, 2014
By: Ben Rayner
The Star


If Fleetwood Mac wants to take a victory lap, Fleetwood Mac can take a victory lap.

Another victory lap, I guess. They’re all kinda victory laps if you’ve got a reputation and platinum-plated catalogue of the sort Fleetwood Mac has.

Still, the last time the band passed through Toronto for an Air Canada Centre date in April of 2013, it looked surprisingly vital and revved-up for a pack of greying boomers that one might have been tempted to write off as a nostalgia act. For a band with nothing really left to prove, the Mac behaved like it still had something to prove.

For its current On with the Show tour, Fleetwood Mac has managed to restore itself to the “classic” lineup responsible for such landmark albums as Rumours, Tusk and Tango in the Night with the unexpected return of long-absent member Christine McVie to the fold for the first time since she quit the group — in large part due to a deathly fear of all the flying involved with touring the world in a rock ’n’ roll band — in 1998. This, of course, is a perfect excuse to stuff the set list with all the McVie songs that have been absent from Fleetwood Mac performances during the past 16 years, which made Saturday night’s sold-out performance at the Air Canada Centre a rather more straightforward, greatest-hits-oriented affair than the quintet’s last appearance in this town.

Not that that’s a bad thing. If Fleetwood Mac still wants to go out every night and play Rumours top to bottom, more power to it. A few other albums might have surpassed that megalithic 1977 pop smash in sales over the years since Michael Jackson’s Thriller usurped it as the biggest record of all time 30 years ago, but none of them — not Dark Side of the Moon, not Back in Black, not even Thriller itself — is as relentlessly pillaged, track for track (with the exception of maybe “Oh Daddy,” which I kinda feel sorry for), every single day, by classic-rock radio. Nowadays, though, the band no longer has to bound through “Don’t Stop” while politely ignoring the fact that the woman who wrote it isn’t there, and “You Make Loving Fun” and “Songbird” can resume their rightful, triumphant places in the set list.

McVie’s surprise return is, unfortunately, the sole real surprise the On with the Show production has to offer, at least as it was presented on Saturday night. Her presence onstage might herald a “beautiful, profound and poetic new chapter in the Fleetwood Mac story,” as guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham put it at one point — indeed, rumour has it he and McVie are already at work on new material — but at the moment it basically appears to be an excuse to take a fond stroll down memory lane.

Which is fine. It’s a nice stroll. McVie ditties like “Say You Love Me,” “Everywhere” and “Little Lies” are now back in circulation alongside such crowd-pleasing Stevie Nicks-sung staples as “Gold Dust Woman,” “Rhiannon,” “Gypsy” and the agelessly lovely “Landslide,” so Saturday’s two-and-a-half-hour show was a more relentless Fleetwood Mac hit parade than we’ve witnessed in years. There wasn’t a lot of room left to stretch out or get weird while dutifully covering all those bases, however. Oddball favourite Tusk got a passing glance in the form of the title track and Buckingham’s fiery “I Know I’m Not Wrong,” while the ace guitarist presided over a nimble-fingered acoustic deconstruction of “Big Love” and a slightly less successful, kinda-draggy remodelling of “Never Going Back Again” to shake off the usual a little bit. A few more drawn-out jams in the form of the late-set sprawler “I’m So Afraid” would have been welcome nonetheless, since it was those moments — the moments when Fleetwood Mac dug into its material enthusiastically and tore it up like a band doing more than just going through the expected motions — that made the group’s last ACC appearance so memorable. This time around, you tended to get exactly what you thought you were gonna get.

It kept the room in good spirits, anyway. And the band, still early into a 68-date tour that will extend well into 2015, seemed genuinely thrilled to be back in action with McVie at the keyboards. Drummer Mick Fleetwood looked positively gleeful, in fact, when he emerged onstage after the encore in a glittery red top hat to proclaim “The Mac is back!” If Fleetwood Mac is happy, we’re happy. These old dogs might have a few new tricks left in ‘em yet.

The Star

SO AFRAID

Chart Update: Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks

U.S.A. - October 25
As previously reported... here are the US Album charts for the charts dated October 25th.

BILLBOARD TOP 200 ALBUMS CHART
#     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 15 VINYL ALBUMS CHART
# 5 (NEW) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

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

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

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

CANADA - October 25, 2014
TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 29 (NEW) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

UK - October 25, 2014
As with most veteran artists, the second week drop on all the album charts is usually substantial and in Stevie's case 24 Karat Gold is not exception with the album dropping to No.56 after debuting at No.14 last week.  Scotland, Austalia and Ireland are showing pretty much the same type of results.

TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 56 (14) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault
# 90 (95) Fleetwood Mac - The very Best Of

SCOTLAND - October 25, 2014
TOP 40 ALBUMS CHART
# 40 (12) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

AUSTRALIA - October 20, 2014
TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 51 (16)  Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

TOP 50 CATALOGUE ALBUMS CHART
# 29 (25) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

TOP 50 DIGITAL ALBUMS CHART
#48 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

IRELAND - October 16, 2014
TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 59 (15) Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault
# 61 (57) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

GERMANY - October 17, 2014
New on the German top 100 this week - Stevie's album debuts at No.79

TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 69 (NEW)  Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault

BELGIUM - October 18, 2014
TOP 200 ALBUMS CHART
# 136 (144)  Stevie Nicks - 24 Karat Gold - Songs From The Vault


REVIEW: ★★★★ stars out of 5 Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold - Songs From the Vault

Stevie Nicks. 24 Karat Gold - Songs From the Vault
by Mark Orton
Otago Daily Times

For all the guys who fantasised about being with her and the girls who wanted to be her, Stevie Nicks is back to her best with an album of new tracks that could have been plucked from the '70s and '80s.

After the theft of demos from her house, Nicks put Dave Stewart in the producer's chair and with a host of rock legends reworked the previously unheard tracks.

24 Karat Gold is so laden with gems it seems absurd only to hear them now.

Stewart stays faithful to a hazy vibe synonymous with Nicks' sultry huskiness, as Stevie reels back her years of romantic misfortune.

Listen to Stevie Nicks talk about "Carousel" the one song included on the album that wasn't a previously written / archived demo. It was written by Vanessa Carlton and Stevie explains why she included it on the album.


STEVIE NICKS "24 KARAT GOLD - SONGS FROM THE VAULT"
Out Now! Order from Stevienicksofficial.com

Review | Photos | Video: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto October 18, 2014

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN TORONTO
OCTOBER 18, 2014
AIR CANADA CENTRE

Fleetwood Mac return to Toronto on February 3, 2015... Presale tickets go on sale tomorrow Oct 23rd at Ticketmaster. Password: GREATSEATS

 

Above Photos by Steve Russell - Toronto Star Photographer

Photos by Rock Xposure - View Gallery











Fleetwood Mac heavy on nostalgia at ACC
By Jane Stevenson
Toronto Sun

TORONTO - It truly was the return of The Mac at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night.

Fleetwood Mac’s most successful mid-’70s-and-onward lineup arrived at the arena with major anticipation given singer-keyboardist Christine McVie is touring again with the British-American rock band after a 16-year absence from the road.

“Imagine what it feels like for me to be given this second chance,” said the 71-year-old McVie as she played alongside ex-husband-bassist John McVie, drummer Mick Fleetwood, singer Stevie Nicks and singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham on a slick-looking stage with an eye-popping video screen and accompanying visuals.

The nostalgia-heavy night, which stretched a marathon two-and-a-half hours and two encores, appropriately began with The Chain, the first of nine songs performed from Rumours, the band’s 1977 juggernaut album that has sold 45 million copies worldwide and counting.

It is the only song on that disc, recorded as McVie’s marriage and Nicks and Buckingham’s relationship fell apart, written by all five members.

And when McVie took over on lead vocals for the second Rumours song, You Make Loving Fun, the crowd roared its approval, warmly welcoming her back.

“So Christine, where have you been?” joked Nicks, 66, who appeared thrilled, along with the rest of the group rounded out by two backing musicians and three backup singers, to have her on stage with them.

Buckingham, 65, later referred to McVie’s return “as a new chapter in the saga of Fleetwood Mac.” Other Rumours cuts that went down well included the Nicks-sung Dreams and Gold Dust Woman (the latter complete with gold shawl and interpretive dance moves) and the Buckingham-led Second Hand News and Go Your Own Way.

Holding up well too were tunes from 1975’s self-titled Fleetwood Mac disc, also known as The White Album, most significantly Nicks’ Welsh witch ode Rhiannon, which saw her perform the first of a handful of her signature twirls, and the gorgeous Landslide, along with the McVie-sung Say You Love Me and Buckingham’s I’m So Afraid during which he practically vibrated as he played.

McVie also pointed out she wrote another tune, Over My Head from that disc, when she was still married to John.

“Do you remember that John?” she said to the 68-year-old McVie, who battled cancer in 2013 leading to the group cancelling their Australian and New Zealand dates.

On the minus side, the title track from 1979’s double album Tusk was good if not great - I would have preferred a real marching band to the one pictured on the video screen - and some of the evening’s lighter fare like Sisters Of the Moon, Seven Wonders (with a Nicks dedication to American Horror Story which she appeared on last season), and Silver Springs, could have been edited out to make for a tighter set which dragged a bit in the middle and towards the end.

I’ve also never been able to hear Don’t Stop the same way again without thinking about its use by Bill Clinton for his first presidential campaign in 1992.

Of all the Fleetwood Mac members, Buckingham was the most wonderfully intense although the 67-year-old Fleetwood came a close second with his wild drum solo during World Turning pronouncing afterwards: “My head is on fire!” Buckingham blew kisses after some virtuoso playing on I Know I’m Not Wrong, also from Tusk, shouted and grunted during Big Love from 1987’s Tango In The Night, and made a major musical meal out of the Rumours track Never Going Back Again.

Otherwise, it seemed as if no time had passed between McVie and the rest of her Fleetwood Mac mates as she also took over on lead vocals for Everywhere and Little Lies, both from Tango In The Night, and the gorgeous show ending Songbird from Rumours.

Nicks’ Gypsy, from 1982’s Mirage, was preceded by a story about how she went shopping for clothes in the Janis Joplin and Grace Slick-frequented San Francisco store, The Velvet Underground, and had a premonition, as a 22-year-old, that “something big was coming.” That “something big” was Fleetwood Mac, which Buckingham Nicks (as the duo were then called), would soon join and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fleetwood Mac at the ACC
Christine McVie back after 16 years but Fleetwood Mac is still the Stevie Nicks show
By Sarah Greene

NowToronto.com

By the time Fleetwood Mac played Rhiannon, early on in their two and a half hour long revue at the Air Canada Centre, it was clear that despite the brouhaha over the return of long-time member Christine Mcvie after a 16-year hiatus, it’s still the Stevie Nicks show. Nicks oozes charisma; and can get a crowd excited by waving her arm or doing a little twirl. Every time she sang (and she was singing well) the packed house got out of their seats. No wonder so many fans arrived dressed like her.

Starting with The Chain, the Mac played through nearly every song from their bestselling hit-machine Rumours, pulling out Silver Springs in the encore with an abundance of ridiculous chime sounds (the band clearly love their synths – why, oh why, did they not bring along a live horn section?).

Not to be outdone by Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham prepared for solo turn Big Love by charging up his right hand like a robot before launching into the loudest, most ferocious classical playing imaginable (Buckingham, a ham, admirably never left the stage, though some of his other songs came across as overwrought).

He was at his best when he loaned his guitar chops in service of Nicks’s vocals on Landslide, though everyone had their moments (including Mick Fleetwood’s indulgent drum solo in the encore).

The band say this is a new chapter that will last long and bear fruit, and they’ve got a new album on the way. Time will tell how long those chains will hold. 

Stevie backstage with Marilyn Dennis