Fleetwood Mac, the irrepressible pop-rock engine, rolled into Milwaukee Thursday with a huff and puff

Fleetwood Mac Live at BMO Harris Bradley Center - Milwaukee, WI
February 12, 2015
By Michael Muckian
Express Milwaukee

Photo: Danielle Dahl

Fleetwood Mac, the irrepressible pop-rock engine, rolled into Milwaukee Thursday with a huff and puff and as much energy as its aging members could muster. All things considered, that energy proved to be considerable.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who turns 66 on Oct. 3, is the band’s youngest member, and the numbers only go up from there. But none of that mattered to a mixed-age audience of the faithful, who all but filled the BMO Harris Bradley Center. Given that the band’s lineup also included stalwarts Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass, vocalist Stevie Nicks on ribbon-bedecked tambourine, and for the first time in a long, long time, vocalist Christine McVie on keyboards, Fleetwood Mac’s most successful combination was back together again.

Given the age of its members, the band fairly well rocked the walls with a running list of favorite hits on the 54th concert of its current tour. The group played against a fairly engaging backdrop of downright inventive visual imagery that helped drive some the audience’s elder members to gyrate and throb as if on some virulent form of Ecstasy (or perhaps Metamucil).

Full review at Express Milwaukee


Fleetwood Mac turn back time in Milwaukee
February 12, 2015
by Daniel DeSlover
Examiner

On the road since August 2014, Fleetwood Mac pulled into Milwaukee’s BMO Harris Bradley Center on Feb. 12 for their “On with the Show” tour. Performing without an opening act, it was the 54th show on this extensive trek and featured the five core members who took the band to multiplatinum success with the chart-topping “Rumours” in 1977.

Christine McVie rejoined Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on this tour for the first time since her retirement in 1998. Opening with “The Chain” seemed an appropriate start to the show and quickly brought fans to their feet. “You Make Loving Fun” followed as a de facto tribute to Christine’s return to the band.

Major vocal highlights of the show included Buckingham’s acoustic and cathartic “Big Love,” McVie’s beautifully harmonic “You Make Loving Fun,” and Nicks’ haunting breakup anthem “Silver Springs,” arguably her best performance of the night next to “Gold Dust Woman.”

Full Review + Photos at Examiner

Review | Photos | Video: Fleetwood Mac Live in Milwaukee February 12, 2015

Moments of strength, and flatness, for Fleetwood Mac at BMO Harris Bradley Center
by Piet Levy
JSonline.com

VIEW GALLERY

With Christine McVie back in Fleetwood Mac after more than 16 years, singer and guitarist Lindsey
Buckingham told a near-capacity BMO Harris Bradley Center Thursday "we begin a profound, poetic and I think a prolific new chapter."

Can't say Thursday's show was always profound, and it's highly doubtful Mac — which dropped its self-titled album, the first with game-changing additions Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks, four decades ago this year — is going to be all that prolific going forward.

But it did seem that Buckingham and most of the band believed the words he was saying. And that conviction, coupled with enduring talent and classic rock songs, was enough to make Thursday's two-and-a-half-hour show, the 54th on its current tour, a nice little footnote for Milwaukee fans.

McVie, however, seemed to live by very different words she uttered: "I'm not as strong as I used to be," as sung during "Say You Love Me." Her appearance was welcome for sentimental reasons, evident by the warm response when she took lead vocals for the first time in the night, for "You Make Loving Fun."

But there were moments of vocal flatness — most obvious at concert's end for her signature "Songbird," alone on piano with Buckingham on electric guitar — and McVie lacked the charisma of her now more-seasoned singing bandmates. Even drummer Mick Fleetwood — perched behind his decked-out kit with chimes and gong — had more pizzazz, albeit perhaps too much when he disguised a lengthy and ultimately none too impressive drum solo during "World Turning" with hollow, hype-fanning pseudo scat-speak.

There were other moments of self-indulgence. "Go Your Own Way," one of several enduring singles from the band's mega-blockbuster "Rumours," ends on the album with a sudden, anti-climactic fade, but Thursday's drawn-out, jam-session finale wasn't much of an improvement.

And Buckingham, like Fleetwood, was a ham, yelping like a cowboy between some songs, cackling like a pirate at the start of a still-rollicking "Tusk," and stomping about like a toddler throwing a tantrum once the song was over. His voice, while emotionally charged, also was a touch raw compared with the heavenly harmonies of Mac's '70s heyday. But his guitar playing, from the bluesy build on concert-opener "The Chain" to the bittersweet beauty of his acoustic guitar on "Landslide," was consistently exquisite.

Nicks acknowledged before "Landslide" — performed with just Buckingham by her side — that the pair had performed the song hundreds of times. But in dedicating it to her late father — it was his favorite song, she said — she still conveyed the same quiet majesty she brought to the first recording 40 years ago.

Nicks' alluring voice and mystical charisma led the band through anthemic yet intimate soft rock charmers like "Dreams," "Rhiannon" and "Gold Dust Woman" — a set list of hits so great that the band can be excused if that "prolific new chapter" never comes. After all, Fleetwood Mac already created a story for the ages.

THE TAKEAWAYS

■ The best part of the concert was a more stripped-down five-song set that included a few fond recollections about the origins of "Big Love" and "Gypsy." If Mac is really seeking a profound new chapter, it should consider a storytellers-oriented tour in smaller venues.

■ One reason the harmonies sounded so great Thursday was because there were up to five backing singers (two of them also supporting instrumentalists). Fleetwood let those musicians take a bow — but not once did he acknowledge a second drummer who played hidden behind the speaker stacks. For most of the night, the drummer was helping Fleetwood fill out the sound, but Fleetwood himself did handle his drum solo actually solo.

■ Notable banter: "On a personal note, let me quickly say how grateful I am and how fantastic it is to be standing here on this stage with these amazing musicians who are my musical family." — Christine McVie.

SECOND HAND NEWS
DREAMS