Truth In Advertising

The Times Online

Last week, Billboard magazine ran an interview with Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham on their Web site, where both expressed pleasure with not supporting any new material on their current tour.

Their stateside jaunt is appropriately titled "Fleetwood Mac Unleashed: Hits Tour 2009," which, at worst, gives Fleetwood, Buckingham, John McVie and Stevie Nicks means of income in this harsh economy.

And it appears to be working. Only one show originally was scheduled for their Chicagoland stop at Allstate Arena, but popular demand resulted in an added second show.

At this juncture in their career, it's fine for the veteran rockers to coast solely on their past. The Buckingham-Nicks configuration's debut with the band will be 35 years old next year with their biggest-selling effort, "Rumours," past the three-decade mark.

The band released its last original effort in the classic lineup, "Tango in the Night," in 1987, and cemented its place as a classic rock act a decade after that with the mega-selling live set "The Dance."

Christine McVie, the third cog alongside Buckingham and Nicks in the Mac's hitmaking songwriting machine, retired from the band after the lucrative "Dance," leaving the remaining foursome on its own with 2003's "Say You Will."

While the album sold respectably, the big treat for the fans -- and the band's accountants -- was the Brinks-backing world tour in support of it, loaded to the gills with their classic-rock standards.

The aforementioned Billboard interview, though, indicated new music from the Mac was forthcoming in the near future. But the masses will, by and large, pine for the band's mid-1970s to "Tango"-era chestnuts over the new material. This has, with only few exceptions, become the�rule of thumb�that classic-rock veterans must face in their elder days, for better or worse.

Fleetwood Mac, 8 p.m. March 5 and 6, Allstate Arena, 6920 Manheim Rd., Rosemont. $49.50-$149.50. FYI: (847) 635-6601 or allstatearena.com