Thursday, September 29, 2016

Check out Lindsey's collaboration with Empire of the Sun 'To Her Door'

Empire of the Sun, 'To Her Door'
NPR
by Megan Buerger

When Fleetwood Mac released Rumours in 1977, the band's lush instrumentals and melancholic harmonies reignited an obsession with bright, shining California pop. Decades later, modern folk bands like Mumford and Sons, Best Coast and Haim are still channeling the same bittersweet chords and joyful choruses.

Empire of the Sun is the latest group to pay tribute to Fleetwood Mac's lush legacy, but the Australian synth duo is far from folksy. It's better known for playing dance-music festivals in exotic Space Age costumes that feel, from a distance, almost like Cirque du Soleil. And yet, its forthcoming album, Two Vines, features a glistening collaboration with longtime Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham called "To Her Door."

"When you've got the undeniable, magical aura of Doctor Buckingham, things blossom," Luke Steele — one half of Empire of the Sun — tells NPR. Both he and bandmate Nick Littlemore consider Buckingham one of their heroes. "We jammed like we were in high school and it came together almost instantly."

The song captures a couple's dialogue the day after a big argument. One partner wakes up surprised and anxious, Steele says, eager for reconnection. "He says, 'Hey, good morning, what happened, can I come around and talk?'" The lyrics convey that desire: "I feel better when we're together / I know it's simple but I don't care / I try to say the things to make up for the mess I've caused."

Sonically, "To Her Door" reflects Fleetwood Mac's warmest records — such as "Hold Me" or "Gypsy," which overflow with richness. Steele says that when he and Littlemore conceptualized a direction for this album, they were drawn to an image of vines that grew out of the ground and into cities, wrapping around buildings and cars until they overtook the urban world. He couldn't get the image out of his head. When they traveled to Hawaii to record at Honolulu's Island Sound Studios, where Kanye West recorded My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the tropical, breezy setting cemented the return-to-nature concept.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Genesis Publications announce a signed limited edition book by Mick Fleetwood


Genesis Publications announces a new, signed, limited edition book by Mick Fleetwood.
Genesis Publications are delighted to announce a signed limited edition book by Mick Fleetwood that will chronicle the formation and rise of Fleetwood Mac. Genesis are looking for anyone who has photographs of the band during the years 1967 – ’75 for possible inclusion in the book.

For your photo to be considered, and to sign up for more information, please visit: www.mickfleetwoodbook.com

Review Fleetwood Mac's Mirage Deluxe Reissue


Mirage nixed any suggestion that intra-band drama was their sole animating force, and flourished in the emotional void they occupied: heartbroken, strung out, and alone at the top.

by Laura Snapes
Pitchfork

After two records about cheating on each other, it was inevitable that Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine and John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood would begin to cheat on Fleetwood Mac. They were traveling in separate limos by the end of the bad-tempered Tusk tour, where Buckingham had kicked Nicks onstage, and they’d circled Europe on Hitler’s old train. “Looks like the end of the line,” the New York Post warned in March 1981, as solo careers started to proliferate. Fleetwood released The Visitor in June. Where Tusk had taken a year to record, Nicks’ debut album, Bella Donna, was nailed in a few days, released in July, and certified Platinum by October—just as Buckingham’s Law and Order limped to No. 32. Her blousy mystique was the antithesis of his uptight theme, and to dent his fragile ego further, it had been validated by serious men: collaborators Tom Petty, Don Henley, and producer Jimmy Iovine, who she was now dating. According to Buckingham’s then-girlfriend, Carol Ann Harris, he liked to refer to “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” as “Stop Draggin’ My Career Around.”

Having accepted that the band weren’t interested in “shaking people’s preconceptions of pop,” as he sniffed to any reporter who would listen, Buckingham resolved that Fleetwood Mac’s next album should be a proper group effort. Mostly minus Nicks, they mingled their ghosts with those of the haunted Château d’Hérouville, just outside Paris, a destination chosen to accommodate Monaco resident Fleetwood’s tax affairs. Harris observed communal meals eaten in silence. The drug intake exceeded even that of Tusk, according to co-producer Ken Caillat. It’s hard to find any comment about why they chose to name their thirteenth record (and fifth under this lineup) Mirage, though the resonance is obvious in hindsight: It’s the illusion of the band, rather than the full-blooded beast. Buckingham tossed off his songs in under two months. “What can I say this time/Which card shall I play?” Nicks sings on “Straight Back,” sounding like a woman in search of an idea. She pulls out her well-worn tarot deck—wolf, dream, wind, sun—and whips up an unconvincing sandstorm about how “the dream was never over, the dream has just begun,” while Fleetwood Mac increasingly resembled an inescapable nightmare.

Full Review at Pitchfork

Review Fleetwood Mac - Mirage (Deluxe Edition)

Album Review: Fleetwood Mac - Mirage (Deluxe Edition)
September 26, 2016
By Jeff Burger
The Morton Report

If ever there was a case of the media building up and then knocking down a band, it was the one involving Fleetwood Mac in the late-'70s and early-'80s. The critics cheered when the group—newly energized by the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—delivered its chart-topping eponymous album in 1975 and the even better Rumours a year later. But many of those same critics spoke less kindly of the follow-up to Rumours, 1979’s Tusk. According to them, it eschewed commercialism in favor of self-indulgent experimentation, though major experimentation was in fact largely limited to the excellent title cut. Then, when the group reverted to fully accessible form on its next studio album, 1982’s Mirage, reviewers griped that the band was going backwards; never mind that this radio-friendly LP delivered exactly what the critics claimed was missing in its predecessor.

Well, as I noted last year, Tusk ranks among the most underrated albums of the rock era. But Mirage—which Fleetwood Mac’s members recorded in France after pursuing solo projects—is arguably even more underrated. Rolling Stone, for example, allowed that it found the group returning to “simple pleasures” but awarded it only three stars and said “the band seems to have lost its spirit.”

Continue to the full review

STEVIE NICKS returns to the Ellen Show Oct 3rd to perform her classic hit, "Edge of Seventeen."

October 3rd: Rock Goddess and rocker of shawls, STEVIE NICKS makes her return to the Ellen stage to perform her classic hit, "Edge of Seventeen." She's also here to tell us about her upcoming tour with The Pretenders. 


Stevie Nicks adds Dec 17th in Las Vegas to 24 Karat Gold Tour

NEW DATE: Stevie Nicks Live in Las Vegas at Park Theater at Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, Sat, Dec 17, 2016 Amex Pre-sale September 29th - General Public tickets on sale October 3rd.


Christine McVie Interview on Mirage, Fleetwood Mac's new album and touring future

Christine McVie on Fleetwood Mac's 'Peculiar' 'Mirage' Sessions, New LP
Singer-songwriter looks back on heady days at Château d'Hérouville, discusses band's future plans
By Richard Bienstock
Rollingstone


Christine McVie has a confession to make. The 73-year-old singer, songwriter and keyboardist is on the phone with Rolling Stone to discuss the new deluxe reissue of Fleetwood Mac's 1982 effort, Mirage; but, she admits, she hasn't actually listened to it yet. "I just now got my copy of the remastered edition in my hands," McVie says, calling from her home in the U.K. "But I just moved to a flat where I don't have my DVD or CD player yet. So I'm unable to play it. And there's all these outtakes and demos and things in there that I certainly haven't heard since we made them. So I'm most curious to listen."

Indeed, the new package is a treasure trove for Mac completists (and, apparently, band members). In addition to presenting the original 12-track album – which spent five weeks at Number One and spawned two of the group's biggest and enduring hits in McVie's "Hold Me" and Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy" – in remastered form, the three-CD and DVD set offers up a disc of B sides, titled "Outtakes and Sessions," as well as a live collection culled from two nights at the L.A. Forum in October 1982 on the Mirage tour. The whole thing is rounded out by a vinyl copy of the album and a DVD in 5.1 surround sound, as well as a booklet with extensive liner notes and photos from the era.

An impressive package, to be sure, and one that is perhaps necessary for an album that, for all its multi-platinum success, never quite gets its due, having been overshadowed in the band's canon by the career-defining trio of records that preceded it – 1975's Fleetwood Mac, 1977's mega-smash Rumours and 1979's sonically adventurous double album Tusk. In an earlier interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Mick Fleetwood acknowledged that, in such imposing company, Mirage often gets overlooked – a notion that McVie seems to agree with. "It does, and I don't know why," she says. But, she adds, "As it stands today, a lot of people know every track on it. Which is quite unbelievable. So I just take it for what it is."

McVie spent some time reminiscing about the album with RS, from the "unusual" experience of recording at the Château d'Hérouville outside of Paris, to the "nightmare" of filming the video for her song "Hold Me" in the Mojave Desert outside of Palm Springs. But she wasn't only looking backward. McVie also discussed Fleetwood Mac's plans for the future, which may include a new album and another world tour. "We're just gonna keep on doing what we do best," she said, then laughed. "Which, I'm not really sure what that is!"

What was the state of Fleetwood Mac going into the making of Mirage?

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Stevie Nicks to perform Oct 3rd on Ellen and Oct 7th on The Late Late Show with James Corden

Look for Stevie in early October on The Late Late Show with James Corden October 7th (Late night October 6th) and also on daytime TV with Ellen October 3rd.



Friday, September 23, 2016

Lindsey Buckingham On Writing With Christine McVie on 'Mirage'

Arriving in store today (September 23) are deluxe editions of Fleetwood Mac's 1982 album Mirage.

The new set comes as a single-disc remastered version of the album along with a two-disc Expanded edition and a Deluxe package that includes three CDs, a DVD and an LP. The latter two include bonus demos, rarities and alternative tracks, while the Deluxe also features a 1982 concert from Los Angeles.

Mirage was the more "traditional" follow-up to 1979's experimental Tusk and hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, going on to be certified double platinum. Lindsey Buckingham tells us that it was also on album on which he and singer-keyboardist Christine McVie -- who wrote the first single "Hold Me" -- clicked in a way that was different from the way he worked with Stevie Nicks:

"I would say that it's...an intangible thing. It's a very strong thing of what I always thought was, for lack of a better term, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts...and I think in that sense Christine and I as two musicians who are very well-grounded in their craft have a kind of symmetry of respect and love for each other on a creative and a musical and a personal level, and I think that was a big part of what that whole being greater than the sum of the parts was at the time. The fact that what I could do for her, I did it for Stevie too but the fact that she (McVie) could infuse her sensibilities into my stuff and I could tap into what I do as a producer, say, and give back so much to her."

McVie rejoined the band in 2014 following a nearly 16-year leave of absence. Fleetwood Mac has been working on new material but no release plans have been announced.

 - Gary Graff

Mick Fleetwood on if he's listened to the expanded version of Mirage

Released today (September 23rd) is the deluxe and expanded version of Fleetwood Mac‘s 1982 chart-topping Mirage collection. The album, which was released on June 18th, 1982, was the group’s first studio set of the decade and topped the album charts for five straight weeks. Mirage, which was released in the wake of Stevie Nicks‘ 1981 solo breakthrough, Bella Donna, was pushed by constant airplay of its first two singles and videos — Christine McVie‘s “Hold Me” and Nicks’ “Gypsy.” A third song from the set, McVie’s opening track “Love In Store” stalled at Number 22. In Britain, Lindsey Buckingham‘s neo-rockabilly track, “Oh Diane” was released as a single and scored the band its only Top 10 hit off the album there, when it peaked at Number Nine.

The newly expanded version of Mirage, features the remastered original 1982 album, a second disc of 19 alternate versions and outtakes, along with a third disc featuring highlights from the band’s brief U.S. tour in support of the album.

We caught up with Mick Fleetwood and asked him if he’s actually gone through the entire deluxe reissue of Mirage: 

“Oh yeah, we’ve all heard it — a while ago, to be quite blunt. So, we’re very happy with the way Warners. . . they do a lot of leg work. Y’know, we don’t actually have anywhere near — sadly — we don’t have anywhere near the archive (the) Beatles, and (Rolling) Stones, and Eagles and. . . I’m always happy when we do find something with outtakes and stuff like that that have been kept, and also it’s that time to do that. We’ve never really got into it. The Stones and the Beatles, they’ve been doing this for a long time.”

Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage has been re-released in three different configurations:

Deluxe: Three CDs, DVD and LP. Original album remastered, plus B-sides and rarities; the original album on LP; live performances; and a 5.1 mix on DVD
Expanded: Two CDs. Original album remastered, plus a disc of B-sides and rarities
Remastered: Original album remastered. A digital version is also be available.