Sunday, June 21, 2015

Review and Photos Fleetwood Mac Live in Glasgow, Scotland



Fleetwood Mac Live in Glasgow, Scotland - June 16, 2015
by Stacy Auld

Tuesday’s show marked the much anticipated return of Fleetwood Mac but tonight there was a bonus, it also marked the long awaited return of Christine McVie to join the band in Glasgow. Having seen the band two years ago, minus Christine McVie, it wasn’t until this show that you realise just how much the band needed the full band back together. The famous three part harmonies from McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham can’t be matched by any other band.

Full Review at Musicboxunwinds

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Review Fleetwood Mac Live in Glasgow, Scotland - June 16, 2015

Fleetwood Mac, Glasgow, Scotland
SSE Hydro - June 16, 2015

By Marianne Gunn
Heraldscotland

On With The Show was merely a tagline last week for Fleetwood Mac when they had to cancel tour dates due to illness. Although they played the Isle of Wight festival at the weekend, Scottish fans were still on tenterhooks last night to see if the first of two nights in Glasgow would go ahead. It did - and, if it was a celebration of anyone, the members of Fleetwood Mac said this show was a "welcome back" to Christine McVie, who did not play the Hydro along with the rest of the band two years ago on their world tour.

After a warm greeting from the capacity crowd, You Make Loving Fun from seminal 1977 album Rumours highlighted the venue's tendency to challenge vocal clarity, even for legend Stevie Nicks. "This is Show 91!" screamed Nicks huskily, admitting that on many levels this was a truly amazing feat. Hits continued to be played early on: Dreams was given some minor alterations, while Everywhere saw Christine McVie take lead vocals on the classic track she penned in 1987, although the band's three-part harmonising was the main draw.

An acoustic set began with Lindsey Buckingham's contemplation on alienation (otherwise know as Big Love) which he disclosed mirrors the breakdown the band experienced at the height of their "recreational" activities. Gypsy, Little Lies and Go Your Own Way were the highlights of the closing section, although an extended Gold Dust Woman was played like a rebirthing of Nicks and Buckingham's I'm So Afraid guitar solo brought a much-needed crescendo.


Gig review: Fleetwood Mac, Glasgow SSE Hydro
by Fiona Shepherd

ACCORDING to the traditional concert closing remarks of Fleetwood Mac’s resident ringmaster Mick Fleetwood, “the Mac is most definitely back” - and now these MOR giants come with added Christine McVie.

Hydro, Glasgow
Rating: * * * *

The singer/pianist has rejoined the line-up after a sixteen-year absence and immediately made her leavening presence felt on the close harmony of opening number The Chain.

Her simply stated love songs, such as the sweet, girlish Everywhere and mellifluous Little Lies, made a welcome comeback to the setlist, providing a charming contrast to Stevie Nicks’ more melodramatic, impressionistic numbers - though the absence of Songbird from this show’s setlist was a great shame.

The eternal hippie chick Nicks was in her theatrical element, donning a black feathery shawl for extra gothic ambience on Rhiannon – though it hardly needed an atmospheric boost with Lindsey Buckingham’s burnished guitar and the ethereal harmonies as embellishing features.

Buckingham, meanwhile, was energised throughout, limbering up those fleet fingers to deliver an athletic, acoustic Big Love which climaxed with a primal yelp.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Reviews Fleetwood Mac Isle of Wight Festival - June 14, 2015


Preshow interview with Mick Fleetwood
Reunited Fleetwood Mac prove Dreams can come true
by Nick Hasted
The Independent

Fleetwood Mac can actually remember the idealism which spawned 1969’s original Isle of Wight festival. But the catastrophic marriage collapses and cocaine mountains which catalysed the classic Rumours, an album which they no longer try to live down, meant they embodied the Seventies far more.

So while their Sunday headline set taps into this festival’s founding traditions, they play the smoother, harder rock of later, and far more cynical times.

Dr Showbiz has cured the unnamed ailment which cancelled two UK shows in the nervous run-up, letting them at least make it on stage, as they were always somehow going to. A bounding Mick Fleetwood is first, arms aloft in premature triumph. He is the pounding, insistent motor, musically and personally, without which the band he co-founded in 1967 would sputter and die.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, by contrast, show steely determination. Buckingham, the band’s Brian Wilson-like songwriting mastermind since 1974, looks faintly above a band he has tried to put behind him many times, as if he’s too old for this foolishness.

But he gruffly leads the charge with “The Chain”, the charge of hearing its great, bass-heavy riff electrifying the huge crowd. Few have headed for the ferries with Fleetwood Mac in town.

The band’s secret, only recently returned weapon, Christine McVie dominates the early, Anglo-Californian harmonies; the English purity of her voice raises the band above the soured innocence which spawned Rumours.

When all their voices join in hippie harmony on that album’s “Dreams”, for a moment the AOR sluggishness and personal battles which have dogged them fade away.

Fleetwood Mac storm Isle of Wight Festival stage with incredible performance: See the excited reaction
by Rebecca Pocklington, Ben Mitchell
MirrorPhoto Gallery

Isle of Wight Festival 2015: Fleetwood Mac, Paolo Nutini, review: 'the best Isle of Wight in years'
by Patrick Smith
Telegraph

Fleetwood Mac managed to do the impossible at Isle of Wight: top Blur's performance from the previous night, says Patrick Smith.

If any act were to top Blur's glorious Saturday-night set, it would surely be folk-rock behemoths Fleetwood Mac. And so it proved, as the sun went down on what's been the best Isle of Wight festival in years, overflowing with nostalgia thanks to its affectionate nod to the 45th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's famous performance here.

Weary bodies, battered by rain on the Friday night, hauled themselves to the Main Stage to witness the American-English quintet, who seemed to have shrugged off the illness that forced them to cancel their Birmingham and Manchester gigs earlier in the week.

It was marvellous to behold. Making their first ever appearance at Isle of Wight, this volatile soap opera of a group are now restored to their original configuration, with singer-pianist Christine McVie returning after a 16-year hiatus. That they were here to close proceedings represented a major coup for the festival – especially when you consider Michael Eavis has been trying to sign them up for Glastonbury for ages.

The Mac, now in their 48th year and in the middle of a 130-leg reunion tour, opened with the familiar driving riff of The Chain, which saw thunderous drums, coruscating guitar lines and sweeping melodies collide to devastating effect, while its chorus of, "we will never break the chain," felt rather apt.

From there the hits kept coming. Vocalists Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and McVie, each dressed in black, all shared the limelight willingly, with the former's voice, admittedly less honey-toned than it once was, anchoring the beautiful Dreams, taken from their 1977 break-up album Rumours. "Welcome back Mrs Christine McVie," said a Nicks in one of many heartening showings of camaraderie. Everywhere, their gorgeous, twinkling ode to all-encompassing love, soon followed, with McVie taking centre stage and providing one of the high points of the festival.

Later, Buckingham stressed the importance of change, before a virtuosic performance of 1987's Big Love. How pleasing that the brilliance of Fleetwood Mac's music hasn't changed.

Earlier, in a packed-out Big Top tent, The Lightning Seeds, fresh from their appearance on TFI Friday on Friday night, were by turns wistful and energetic. Spearheaded by their charismatic frontman Ian Broudie, the Liverpudlian alt-rockers, who formed in 1989, began their 50-minute set with Sense. But it wasn't until a polished rendition of The Life of Riley, a song synonymous with Match of the Day's Goal of the Month segment in the Nineties, that the audience began to embrace them fully.

Because of the phenomenal success of Three Lions, the football anthem made with comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel for Euro '96 and rejigged for the 1998 World Cup, it's easy to forget that, in their pomp, Lightning Seeds were actually pretty inventive, purveyors of catchy, fey pop songs such as their 1990 track Pure which closed their set to grateful applause. Demands for Three Lions, meanwhile, were kept to a minimum – a good thing really, given that it didn't make the cut.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Fleetwood Mac fans vent disappointment after Manchester Arena gig is cancelled

BY EMILY HEWARD
Manchester Evening News

The news has come as even more of a blow as it is Christine McVie's first tour in 16 years with the band.

Gutted Fleetwood Mac fans have vented their disappointment at tonight’s cancelled Manchester Arena show.

Promoters announced earlier today that their On With The Show tour could not go on after all due to a band member falling ill.

It is the second date the 60s and 70s rock legends have had to call off on the UK leg of their tour after dropping out of their Birmingham gig at the last minute on Tuesday.

But while the Genting Arena show has been rescheduled for July 7, it is understood promoters have failed to find another Manchester date to fit the band’s tour schedule.

The news is especially disappointing as it is Christine McVie’s first tour in 16 years with ex-husband John McVie and bandmates Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

Christine is the songwriter and voice behind some of the band’s most enduring hits, including Don’t Stop, Little Lies and You Make Loving Fun.

The band’s second show in Manchester on July 1 is set to go ahead as planned but is already sold out, leaving fans with no option than to pay ramped-up resale prices or barter with touts to get their hands on tickets.

Among those hit hardest by the news was Hannah Owen, who wrote on Facebook: “Absolutely gutting. My dear dad bought tickets for my mum and him to go for Christmas. He has sadly passed away and poor mum was so keen to go as it’s what he wanted.

“No reschedule and no tickets left for 1st July show. Such a shame.”

Fans had been due to travel from far and wide for the Manchester gig and some had already arrived in the city before hearing the news.

Among them was Jeroen van Drunen, who flew in from Hungary yesterday just to see them perform.

Fran Haselden had also planned to travel across England for the show. She wrote on the MEN’s website: “I’m so gutted. I’ve been waiting for this since the tickets were released with anticipation.

“We were heading up from the south east this afternoon. We’ve lost a day of pay each to be able to drive up, and it was our last chance. I am so gutted, I cannot believe they are not rescheduling it.”

Amongst the disappointment was also sympathy and concern for the afflicted band member, whose identity has not been revealed.

Smalley (@nicksmallshaw) tweeted: “Hoping for a swift recovery, but no rescheduled gig is devastating. Can’t see me ever getting tickets again.”

Kay and Geoff Harrison wrote on Facebook: “Absolutely gutted, but do hope whichever band member is ill gets well soon!!! Sob sob!”

A few fans remained upbeat enough to see the punny side, with some questioning whether it was just rumours and others hoping the news was ‘lies, sweet little lies’. If only...

Fleetwood Mac have cancelled their Manchester show tonight (June 12) due to illness.



We are very sorry to announce that tonight’s Fleetwood Mac ‘On With The Show’ tour date in Manchester has been cancelled due to illness.

 Refunds for tonight’s cancelled date in Manchester are available from the point of purchase. Please contact your ticket seller directly for further information. 

The 1 July show will go ahead as planned.

Manchester Arena

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Review Fleetwood Mac Live in Birmingham - June 8th

Review: Fleetwood Mac at Genting Arena, Birmingham
BY ENDAMULLEN
Birmingham Mail


Birmingham marked a homecoming of sorts for Fleetwood Mac as they played their 88th date on a world tour that started out in the US in September 2014.

This tour sees the welcome return of singer-songwriter and keyboard player Christine McVie, the former Bearwood native making a big deal of the fact she was back in her old stomping ground.

"Well, hello Birmingham,"she said, as she stepped up to the mic to sing the smash hit Everywhere.

"This is my old stomping ground, many many years ago I used to go to art college here.

"It's fantastic to be back playing with Stevie, John, Lindsey and Mick."

Clearly the band really are firing on all cylinders with her back on board.

Always a slick, polished and consummate live act, there's no doubting there's a special synergy with McVie, her former husband John, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood reunited.

Arguably that synergy is as much about the musical bonds that hold them together as the broken relationships that drove them apart in their turbulent history - some which was alluded to by Buckingham during one of his many song introductions.

This Genting gig did not disappoint with the hits coming thick and fast, from the Formula One anthem The Chain, which got the evening off to a rousing start, John McVie's thundering baseline almost shaking the arena walls.

You Make Loving Fun, Dreams, Second Hand News and Rhiannon were next, the last of these demonstrating Nicks' voice is as rich and warm as ever.

I Know I'm Not Wrong, Tusk, Sisters of the Moon and Say You Love Me followed before an acoustic interlude featuring Nicks and Buckingham, with blistering versions of Big Love, Landslide and Never Going Back Again.

Next it was Gypsy, McVie's voice shining on Little Lies, Gold Dust Woman and I'm So Afraid featured some fine musicianship before Buckingham virtually raised the roof with Go Your Own Way.

That was the final song two hours in but it wasn't long before the return of The Mac for a singalong encore performance of World Turning featuring the requisite Mick Fleetwood drum solo and Don't Stop.

Despite their decades in the business and those previous 87 tour dates, Fleetwood Mac have still very much got it.

Will this be their last tour as some are saying? Who knows - but let's hope not.

Review Fleetwood Mac Live in Antwerp, BE - June 6th

Hitmachine Fleetwood Mac in het Sportpaleis: Eindelijk weer compleet
DeMorgen



Tijd heelt alle wonden. Niemand die een paar jaar geleden nog had durven dromen dat de klassieke bezetting van Fleetwood Mac ooit weer samen op tournee zou gaan, maar kijk: Christine McVie is terug, en in een tot aan de nok gevuld Sportpaleis zette de legendarische band zaterdagavond een fenomenale greatest hits-show neer.

Full review with photos at DeMorgen

Fleetwood Mac @ Sportpaleis: more craftsmanship than inspiration
by Dirk Steenhaut
Focus.be

Well half years after his last Belgian passage, even Fleetwood Mac failed again to fill in the Sportpaleis. With the attraction: singer Christine McVie, who, after 17 years of absence, was finally returned to the old nest. For the rest, we noted however few surprises.

Full Review at Focus.be

Photo Galleries:

(19 Photos)
Proximus Go For Music

(12 Photos)
Front View Magazine

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Tonights Fleetwood Mac concert in Birmingham has been postponed to July 7th


Fleetwood Mac have re-scheduled tonight’s show at Birmingham's Genting Arena due to artist illness.

"We are very sorry to announce that due to illness the Fleetwood Mac concert at Birmingham Genting Arena this evening will not take place and has been re-scheduled for Tuesday 7th July 2015.

All tickets remain valid for the re-scheduled performance. For refunds please visit your point of purchase."

– STATEMENT FROM THE GENTING ARENA

Saturday, June 06, 2015

Q&A: Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac's new fans and next album

Lindsey Buckingham, the Fleetwood Mac guitarist on why the band’s relationships are always a work in progress

I’ve noticed that the band seems to be connecting with a new, younger audience. True?
“We’ve gotten a multigenerational response. You’ve got people who were young adults when we first hit the market way back when, and then you’ve got young people who’ve just been introduced to our work. You can hear our approach in a lot of younger groups who are coming along now and have obviously listened to our music. Everyone seems to be appreciating the body of work.”

American Airlines Magazine - June, 2015
Fleetwood Mac is famous for how the relationships of the band members influenced the music. What is the dynamic now?
“When Stevie [Nicks] and I joined ­Fleetwood Mac, it didn’t look like we would all fit well together. But it ended up being this synergy created from the divergent sensibilities and different tastes and outlooks on how to approach creativity — how to approach life in general. It was greater than the sum of its parts. Now, you’d think all these years later that somehow we would have figured out our drill. That we know how to be on the same page or deal with a certain amount of chaos within the ranks. But on some strange level — and it’s kind of refreshing — the interaction between the members is still a work in progress.”

What does that stem from?
“A lot of it stems from the fact that there were these two couples that broke up. Things have settled down pretty well. But it is somehow reflective of the fact that we don’t all want the same things at the same time for the same reasons. So you’ve got elements of that, and it makes it that much more special when we do come together. And people do seem to buy into the subtext behind the scenes as much as they buy into the music.”

I’ve heard a new album may be on the horizon after this tour. Any truth to that?
“I think so. Christine [McVie] gave me some very rough stuff, of her just playing the piano and singing into a microphone. I took it home and, as I’ve always done, took some liberties with it. At some point, I sent it over to her before she came over to L.A. [before the tour]. Then we all spent about two months at ­Village Studios, which is where we cut Tusk, and we cut all these great new songs. It was really a transcendent experience.”

Fleetwood Mac’s worldwide tour includes a trip through the U.K. this month, with four nights in London.

June 16 - SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland
June 20, July 10-11 - 3 Arena, Dublin
June 22, 24, 26, 27 - O2 Arena, London


Fleetwood Mac set to bring 18th world tour to Glasgow

Fleetwood Mac on 18th world tour: Rock and roll still means pills and joints for Fleetwood Mac.. but now it's all about arthritis
by Halina Watts
Daily Record

Daily Record (UK) June 6, 2015
Mick Fleetwood snorted seven MILES of cocaine while Stevie Nicks has a hole bigger than a 5p
piece in her septum - but those hellraising days are behind them.

Multi-million dollars of cocaine ordered in bulk, 14 black limousines on tours where pink-painted dressing rooms had to have a white piano installed, and, of course, alcohol. Lots of it.

For years Fleetwood Mac rode a wave of drug-fuelled excess.

Drummer Mick Fleetwood last year revealed how he’d worked out that all the cocaine he’d snorted would make a line seven miles long.

And singer Stevie Nicks took so much she has a hole bigger than a 5p piece in her septum.

They once hired Hitler’s private railway car to travel across Europe, allegedly to avoid drug searches. It even came with the same elderly attendant who served the Fuhrer.

But as we meet it’s clear their days of hell-raising are well and truly over. They’ve swapped cocaine and champagne for, er, ice baths and physio.

Christine McVie talks about her return to the fold

Christine McVie: Why I went back to Fleetwood Mac
by Lydia Jenkin
The New Zealand Herald

She wrote some of the band's best known hits but walked away for a quiet life in the country. But now Christine McVie is back with Fleetwood Mac on a tour which is heading to New Zealand. She talks about her return to the fold.

Speaking from London, Christine McVie sounds a bit like a more mellow, less posh Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.

There's a lovely, light, warm huskiness, and plenty of character in the voice that's been missing from the Fleetwood Mac line-up for the past 17 years - the voice (and pen) behind many of their hits, like Don't Stop, Little Lies, Songbird, and You Make Loving Fun.
Weekend Herald (Australia) June 6, 2015

But now that voice is back.

Rumours swirled after McVie appeared on stage with the band in Dublin and London during their 2013 tour, and in January 2014 it was announced that she was officially back in the band.

And now, more than halfway through their current world tour - entitled On With The Show - the 71-year-old sounds totally convinced she made the right decision, and is thrilled to be touring again.

"We're having a ball. Every night, I look across the stage from where I'm playing piano, stage right, and I can see the rest of them, John, Mick, Stevie, and Lindsey, and it awes me every night. I just think, blimey, you guys are fantastic. I think the difference this time is that we're all smiling."

Friday, June 05, 2015

Review Fleetwood Mac Live in Cologne, Germany - June 4, 2015

Fleetwood Mac summon old ghosts
focus.de
[translated review - original at link above]


The very large time of Fleetwood Mac's over - but by no means forgotten. In Cologne, the rock band
plays exclusively hits their most successful albums of decades ago. For the first time since 16 years, Christine McVie is back on board.

Yes, she was missing. From the fans. And from the band. For 16 years, leaving singer and keyboardist Christine McVie is a gap in the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac - until her comeback last year.

On Thursday, the band came to a single concert in Germany of the current European tour to Cologne. See 14,500 fans in the nearly sold out Lanxess Arena as Fleetwood Mac summon half hours old ghosts.

Full review at focus.de

Legendary original lineup: "Fleetwood Mac" rocks Cologne
By Anna Jacobi and Bernd Peters
express.de

KÖLN –  „Lasst uns die Party starten“ - bei ihrem einzigen Konzert in Deutschland rockten Fleetwood Mac die Lanxess-Arena mit der legendären Original-Besetzung aus den 70ern. Erstmals seit 16 Jahren stand Sängerin Christine McVie (71) wieder mit ihrer Kult-Band auf einer deutschen Bühne.

Legendary Formation is back
Von Sascha Kinzler



Fleetwood Mac fühlt sich wieder komplett: Nach sechzehn Jahren kehrt Sängerin und Keyboarderin Christine McVie zur Band zurück. Mit neuer Energie spielten die Rock-Pop-Legenden vor 14.500 Zuschauern in Köln.  

PHOTO ALBUM (23 Photos)
Fleetwood Mac in Cologne
It was a historic event, the concert by Fleetwood Mac in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne.