FLEETWOOD MAC - TONIGHT THEY PLAY WEMBLEY

Sleeve Notes: Return of the Mac
by: Tim Jonze
Guardian

Twenty years ago, when my peers were having their parents' record collections enforced on them, I was receiving a rather more limited musical education (Paul Simon's Graceland and the soundtrack to Cats were the only albums my folks ever played, and even then on inexplicably long car journeys to a rainy French campsite). For this reason, I never received the inevitable schooling in Fleetwood Mac and their gazillion-selling Rumours album. Of course, you can run (into the shadows) but you can't hide. And by the time I hit my mid-20s, I surrendered to the Mac attack, especially the bizarre arrangements that make up their 1979 double LP Tusk. I think getting into them so late, when the first signs of complex, tangled, depressingly-adult problems were weaving their way into my life, helped me fall in love with them all the more. I ended up claiming them as my own, rather than as some guilty pleasure. Tonight, they play Wembley Arena. It will be emotional, especially if Dave Simpson's live review from Manchester is anything to go by ...