Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Tribute concert for Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green premiering April 24


A film documenting the star-studded London tribute concert that Mick Fleetwood organized last year celebrating Fleetwood Mac's early work and the group's original leader, singer/guitarist Peter Green, will premiere April 24 as an on-demand event that will be streamed on nugs.net.

Tickets for the flick, titled Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac, go on sale to the general public starting at 3 p.m. ET on the 24th, while Citi card members can access tickets now. The event will be streamed in HD and the 4K video format and will be available for viewing for five days.

Mick Fleetwood & Friends will then be released in multiple audio and video formats and configurations on April 30, including a box set featuring the concert on Blu-ray, two CDs and four vinyl LPs, and a 44-page hardbound book offering sleeve notes, photos and more.

As previously reported, the concert, which was held February 25, 2020, at the London Palladium, featured Fleetwood playing drums alongside a house band of respected musicians, with special appearances by a jaw-dropping lineup of guest artists. Among them were Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, The Who's Pete Townshend, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, ex-Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Oasis' Noel Gallagher, and U.K. blues great John Mayall.

A number of other current and former Fleetwood Mac members also performed, including Christine McVie, Crowded House's Neil Finn, and founding guitarist Jeremy Spencer.

The show's house band included Who touring drummer Zak Starkey, and Jonny Lang and ex-Fleetwood Mac member Rick Vito on guitar.

Green didn't attend the event and, sadly, passed away in July 2020 at age 73.

Visit MickFleetwoodandFriends.com for more details.





Tribute: Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie




Women’s History Month Tribute: Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie

by Rozzi

When I was in seventh grade, Christine McVie was like a friend, probably because I had so few. It was one of those cruel middle school mysteries: I left sixth grade popular, the first girl in class to wear eyeliner, but when I returned from summer vacation, everything had changed. As I learned of loneliness, music took on a new role. My mother must have given me the CD—Rumours with a “u”—the spelling of it alone excited me. I used to play it every morning before school, while my cat Mr. Moon walked between my legs. A late bloomer, my hands were still childlike; I can see them in front of me now, red nail polish chipped at the edges, pulling the CD out of the sleeve and placing it in my parent’s old boombox. At first, I listened to Fleetwood Mac because no one else in my class did and, while I also secretly knew the words to the entire Christina Aguilera album, I preferred the feeling of rejecting whatever it was that everyone else accepted. But even then, I knew the band was magic. 

“Songbird” was the first song I learned. I used to sing it to myself in my bedroom mirror with a hairbrush in my hand. On a family trip to Colorado, I hung back on hikes and played it on repeat in my head while imagining myself in a romantic montage with a boy from middle school. That was my first taste of Christine’s romanticism, and perhaps my first taste of romanticism at all. “I wish you all the love in the world, but most of all I wish it from myself” is a lyric so deeply loving that I recently begged my brother to let me sing that song at his wedding. But the friendliness of Christine’s vocal allowed 12-year-old me to connect to it just as powerfully.

Christine is melodically brilliant (can anyone not readily recall the tune to “Everywhere”?) and her voice is rich and soulful, with an expert stability, and pervasive sexiness. But what I love most about her is her accessibility, her willingness to make songs for everyone. If Stevie Nicks is a spiritual deep thinker like John Lennon, then Christine McVie is a Paul McCartney-like optimist. She has a pulsing excitement for the moment she’s in, a belief in miracles, and she appears to fall in lust constantly. 

As a kid, this mirrored my passionate hope for the future, but as a young woman, it is her bravery that inspires me most. Sometimes I imagine her sitting down at the piano to play with her band (that included her bass player husband) “You Make Loving Fun,” a tune about her illicit affair with the group’s lighting director. When I write lyrics, my motto is if I’m embarrassed to put it in the song, I’m on the right track. In this pursuit, Christine is a guiding light—her loyalty to her art, and her paramount love for music, showing me the way.

My best friend and I went to see Fleetwood Mac at the Forum [in L.A.] a few years ago. Our seats were wedged into the stage right corner, and we spent the better half of the night pacing back and forth to the sections with better views until the security guards got wise to our plan. The band played hit after hit, but I went home thinking about Christine’s joy. And maybe that’s what first drew me to her as a lonely seventh grader: We shared a soulmate. For all her love songs, music appears to be the love of her life, at least she sings like it is. I didn’t know it then, but at 12 years old I was in the process of making the same lifelong commitment.

As I write this, “Say You Love Me” comes on and I hear it as if it’s brand new: the restrained confidence of her vocal, the enthusiastic piano at her fingertips, and the joyful honesty of her lyrics. Once again, I feel as if I’m with an old friend, pulled to the moment I’m in, and head over heels in love.

Rozzi is an L.A.-based singer/songwriter with new music to come in 2021.

Spin Magazine

Photo: Davidson/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Fleetwood Mac "LIVE" Red Vinyl Set For Release

 


Barnes and Noble have an exclusive release available for pre-order. Release date is July 16, 2021. Doesn't indicate whether 1LP or 2.

PRE-ORDER

Tuesday, March 02, 2021

MICK FLEETWOOD “I would love the elements that are not healed to be healed”

Mick Fleetwood Open to Reunion With Lindsey Buckingham, Imagines Fleetwood Mac Farewell Tour


“Fleetwood Mac is such a strange story,” says the drummer. “I would love the elements that are not healed to be healed”

By ANDY GREENE
Rollingstone

With the concert industry shut down for the foreseeable future and his bandmates spread to various spots around the planet, Mick Fleetwood truly doesn’t know what the future holds for Fleetwood Mac. But that hasn’t stopped the drummer from looking ahead and sketching out a possible farewell tour in his mind.

“I’m very aware that we’ve never played that card,” he tells Rolling Stone on the phone from his Hawaii home. “I think the vision for me, and I think it would be hugely appropriate, is that we actually say ‘this is goodbye’ and go out and actually do that. That has always been my vision and I’m a flatly confident that we can do that. We owe it to the fans.”

The comments appear to contradict Christine McVie’s recent statements to the BBC where she said that bassist John McVie was “a little bit frail” and no longer had “the heart for it.” She also said, “If we do it, it’ll be without John and without Stevie [Nicks], I think…I’m getting a bit old for it now. I don’t know if I can get myself back into it.”

McVie later walked back the comments, and Fleetwood says they shouldn’t be taken literally. “I think she got out of bed on the wrong side that day,” he says with a laugh. “She meant to say, ‘We’ve done so much. I don’t know whether or not we can keep going.’ Anything other than that, she can speak for herself. But I can assure you we are alive and well. And she has no regrets. She just got caught up in whatever she was saying and she also felt she had been misunderstood.”

Christine McVie also said that John McVie was focused largely on sailing the world on his boat, but Fleetwood says that’s never once stopped him from participating in band activities. “He’s always more interested in going sailing until you put it in front of his face,” he says. “He’s so not caught up in the drama of the workings of the band. That has always been my world. I’ve never not known John to answer the call and say, ‘Show me the gig and I’ll plug my bass in.'”

There hasn’t been any reason for McVie to plug his bass in since Fleetwood Mac ended their last world tour in November 2019. It was their first tour since parting ways with Lindsey Buckingham and bringing in Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to fill the void. “It was a massive, really lovely world tour that was beyond successful in every way,” says Fleetwood. “And a happy tour.”

They initially planned on booking about eight stadium shows with other big artists the following year, but the pandemic made that impossible. Last July, Fleetwood Mac founding guitarist Peter Green died just months after Fleetwood staged a massive tribute concert in his honor at London’s Palladium.

It was a devastating blow to Fleetwood, but it also caused him to get back in touch with Buckingham after two years of bitter estrangement. “I’ve really enjoyed being re-connected with Lindsey, which has been gracious and open,” says Fleetwood. “And both of us have been beautifully honest about who we are and how we got to where we were.”

The reconciliation leads to an obvious question: Might Buckingham come back into Fleetwood Mac for the farewell tour that Fleetwood is plotting out in his mind? “Strange things can happen,” says Fleetwood. “I look at Fleetwood Mac as a huge family. Everyone plays an important role in our history, even someone like [early Seventies] guitarist Bob Welch, who was huge and sometimes gets forgotten. Lindsey’s position in Fleetwood Mac will, for obvious reasons, never been forgotten, as it should never be forgotten.”

“My vision of things happening in the future is really far-reaching,” he continues. “Would I love to think that [reunion] could happen? Yeah. I’d love to think that all of us could be healed, and also respect the people who are in the band, Neil Finn and Michael Campbell.”

The major impediment to a reunion with Buckingham is his relationship with Stevie Nicks, which had been strained for decades and finally reached a breaking point in early 2018. No reunion tour can proceed without the two of them arriving at some sort of detente. “I can’t speak for the dynamic with Stevie and him,” says Fleetwood. “I don’t even need to protect it. It’s so known that they’re chalk and cheese in so many ways, and yet not.”

For now, Fleetwood is just happy he’s back on speaking terms with Buckingham. “I know for a fact that I intend to make music and play again with Lindsey,” he says. “I would love that. It doesn’t have to be in Fleetwood Mac. And Fleetwood Mac is such a strange story. All the players in the play are able to talk and speak for themselves. Somehow, I would love the elements that are not healed to be healed. I love the fantasy that we could cross that bridge and everyone could leave with creative, holistic energy, and everyone could be healed with grace and dignity.”


Sunday, February 21, 2021

FLEETWOOD MAC On The Album Charts - February 21, 2021


Chart updates February 21, 2021

USA BILLBOARD TOP 200 ALBUMS
#48 - GREATEST HITS (48)
#191- RUMOURS (166)
USA TOP 15 BLUES ALBUMS
#13 Fleetwood Mac 1969-1974 (12)
CANADA TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
#32- RUMOURS (29)
AUSTRALIA TOP 50 ALBUMS CHART
#24 - RUMOURS (21)
AUSTRALIA TOP 50 SINGLES
#36 - DREAMS (16)
UK TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
#14 - 50 YEARS - DON'T STOP (15)
#21 - RUMOURS (18)
UK TOP 100 SINGLES
#86 - DREAMS (80)
UK TOP 100 STREAMING
#57- DREAMS (49)
UK TOP 40 VINYL
#7 - RUMOURS (5)
NEW ZEALAND TOP 40 ALBUMS CHART
#17 - RUMOURS (15)
NEW ZEALAND TOP 40 SINGLS CHART
#22 - DREAMS (16)
IRELAND TOP 50 ALBUMS CHART
#11 - 50 YEARS - DON'T STOP (10)
#12- RUMOURS (11)

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Lindsey Buckingham is raising money for UK stage crews affected by the pandemic


In aid of Stagehand's #ILoveLive campaign, Lindsey Buckingham is raising money for UK stage crew affected by the pandemic. Donate now at this link for a chance to win his rare Lane Moller guitar!

Deadline March 17th

"During my many years of touring, I long ago came to understand that the real heroes of rock shows are not the artists, but rather the crews. Everyone involved in putting together a show - tour management, technicians, sound, lighting, and drivers -are all hugely invested in doing their part to contribute to putting on the best possible presentation every night, and they perform their duties with consistency and integrity, all for the benefit of the artists. In fact, artists could not succeed without the spirit, the love, and the craft their road crews bring to a tour. This is why I’m pleased that I can contribute in a small way to helping those who have been adversely impacted in the last year, and am proud to be aligned with Stagehand, which is bringing the music community together to help offset the adversity experienced by so many in our ranks." - Lindsey Buckingham