Review: Fleetwood Mac Live in Phoenix December 10, 2014

Review: Fleetwood Mac celebrate Christine McVie's return
by Ed Masley
AZCentral

"Our songbird has returned," Mick Fleetwood told the sold-out crowd at US Airways Center Wednesday night before the reunited "Rumours" lineup treated the fans to an encore performance of "Don't Stop" that featured the songbird in question, Christine McVie, taking a turn on lead vocals and contributing a rollicking piano solo.

This is McVie's first tour with Fleetwood Mac since 1998. And Fleetwood was far from alone in viewing her return as cause for celebration, reuniting as it does the soft-rock icons' most successful lineup. The crowd responded with enthusiasm when she took her first lead vocal, two songs in, on "You Make Loving Fun," which was followed by a heartfelt tribute to McVie by Stevie Nicks.

McVie herself talked about "what a thrill it is for me to be standing on this stage singing with these amazing musicians and friends" before taking another lead vocal on "Everywhere."

Photos by: Johanna Dupuy - VIEW GALLERY (33 photos)

Lindsey Buckingham shared his thoughts on how "the return of the beautiful Christine" had signaled a new chapter in their history.

And the second encore started with McVie alone on piano and vocals for two verses and a chorus of an understated "Songbird" before Buckingham joined in on lead guitar.

That was it for the music, but Nicks returned to share a charming anecdote about a phone call she got last October in Italy, imitating McVie's British accent to ask, "What would you think if I decided to come back to the band?," ending her speech with "We so wanted her to come back. And we're so happy to have our girl back."

They did a lot of talking in the course of their nearly three-hour performance. Buckingham talked about how thrilled he was to be in Phoenix, where he and Nicks had spent a lot of time, saying "It kind of feels like a second home." He gave a lengthy monologue before tearing it up on a solo acoustic performance of "Big Love," talking about how although that "Tango in the Night" track is actually newer than much of the material in Wednesday's set, it feels like it came from "a whole different lifetime," before he "pulled back and made a few adjustments." The song began, he explained, as "a kind of contemplation on alienation perhaps" but had become "more a meditation on the power and the importance of change."

Several songs from the show, including full songs of Landslide, Go Your Own Way, and Silver Springs