CHRIS ISAAK HOUR (STEVIE PREVIEW)

Stevie appears right at the beginning of this Chris Isaak interview on Good Day LA in a clip from his upcoming Bio Channel show "The Chris Isaak Hour".  

The Chris Isaak Hour debuts on The Bio Channel February 26th.

FLEETWOOD MAC'S INTERNAL HARMONY

Group finds internal harmony on latest tour

By Alan Sculley
Post-Tribune correspondent

As a band that's been perhaps as famous for its internal romantic entanglements and conflicts as for its music, it qualifies as news to hear the the mood in Fleetwood Mac is quite sunny as the opening date of the band's spring/summer tour approaches.

But that seemed to be the exact case, as the four band members -- guitarist/singer Lindsey Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie fielded questions during a mid-February teleconference interview.

"As far as just the personalities have been going, to everybody, not just me and Lindsey, everybody has been getting along great," Nicks said, when asked how rehearsals had been going. "Everybody has been very kind to each other this time around, and when it's going like that, it's a pleasure."

A work in progress

The fact is that even though the Buckingham/Nicks split (as well as the divorce of John McVie and keyboardist/singer Christine McVie) are 30-plus years in the rear view mirror, the personal dynamics within Fleetwood Mac remain, as Buckingham put it, a work in progress.

And one of the main goals for the current tour is to find and maintain some internal harmony that wasn't always present when Fleetwood Mac toured behind its 2003 CD, "Say You Will."

"We did not succeed as well as we could have the last time we did an album and did a tour together," said Buckingham, who is now happily married. "We did not succeed as well as we could have on kind of an interpersonal level. (So) that (means) there was something to shoot for (on the new tour) that was a little higher."

Missing member

The band members didn't offer specifics about what caused tensions four years ago, but one issue was the absence of Christine McVie, who retired and bowed out of the group a decade ago.

This left Nicks as the only woman in Fleetwood Mac. Unhappy with that dynamic, Nicks spoke of wanting to possibly find a woman to take McVie's place in the band.

And in 2007, rumors surfaced that Sheryl Crow -- a good friend who had produced Nicks' 2001 solo CD, "Trouble In Shangri-La -- was going to join Fleetwood Mac, at least for the 2009 tour.

The band said nothing was ever set in stone with Crow, and in this interview Nicks explained what happened.

"Just to put the Sheryl Crow thing in a nutshell quickly, in fact we rented a studio and we hired a crew and we were ready to go in," Nicks said. "We called her and we needed her to come for three or four days to just play. It was Mother's Day and she had invited all, you know, 300 people in her family there. It was her first Mother's Day as a mom, and she could not do it. And at that point she said I'm going to have to pass. I said I think you're making the right decision. You have a new baby. You have survived breast cancer and Lance Armstrong. I don't think this is the right thing for you, Sheryl. So that's what happened with Sheryl Crow, and she is still our friend and I still adore her."

With Crow out of the picture, the group -- Nicks included -- settled on remaining a foursome. And Nicks now says that she is perfectly comfortable with the structure of the band.

"You have to understand I've been the only girl in Fleetwood Mac now since 1998," Nicks said. "And it's 2009, so I'm used to it now. I miss Christine every day because she was my best buddy. She was my best friend. … So the loss of Christine as one of my best girlfriends was horrific for me. But she's been gone a long, long time now."

Unleashed hits

One thing that should help make life easier in Fleetwood Mac this year is the nature of the tour. Called the "Unleashed" tour, it marks the first time the group has gone on tour without having a new album -- or at least new songs -- to promote and bring into its set.

Buckingham said concentrating on playing the band's greatest hits gives the tour an entirely different dynamic.

"What it does is it kind of frees you up to enjoy each other a little bit more as people," he said. "So it takes a little pressure off not having to kind of reinvent anything this particular time. I think because of that we are actually able to just look at the body of work and choose (the hits) from that and then just have a little bit more fun with it than we would normally be able to have when you're trying to sort of work out new stuff for the first time, (and) also integrate it into that body of work and have it all (work together)."

After this tour winds up, new studio album is possible, although the band members aren't guaranteeing this will happen.

"I think the feeling is and the consensus is that we would love to be challenged to go out and do, in a couple of years, something with some new songs," Fleetwood said. "I for one would love to see it happen and we have had loose discussions about doing that."

If you go:

What:? Fleetwood Mac

When: 8 p.m., March 5 and 6

Where: Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Road, Rosemont, Ill.

Tickets: $149.50, $79.50, $49.50

Information: (847) 635-6601 or www.allstatearena.com

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

Two Divas Named Lindsey and Stevie

Fleetwood Mac '09

Nostalgia, cash and a tale of two divas named

Stevie and Lindsey

Chicago Tribune

by Greg Kot

As the relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham goes, so goes Fleetwood Mac.

The band, formed as a British blues-rock outfit in 1967, has a history that reads like a soap-opera script. Band members have literally gone crazy. Some have gone AWOL. Others have slept with one another. Marriages were broken. More than 73 million records have been sold. And still the quarrels continue. Even a 2004 tour that raked in $22 million ended in acrimony, with a fed-up Nicks saying she was through and Buckingham returning to his solo career.

But now, on the eve of another Mac tour, the biggest problem facing Nicks is a sore arm. While being interviewed, she mentions that a physical therapist is working her over. “I strained my right arm doing arm curls, which I never do, so I’m trying to get it back so I can comfortably and enjoyably play tambourine.”

Such are the rigors of being a multimillionaire icon in a band that defined mainstream pop in the ‘70s. Mac is commanding as much as $149.50 per ticket (plus service charges) for a national tour that includes two concerts March 5-6 at the Allstate Arena. They promise few surprise; just a show with more than two hours of greatest hits --- just the way their fans presumably like it. “The songs we’re playing are the tapestry of not only our fans’ lives but our own lives,” Nicks says.

Buckingham has long detested the idea of doing a nostalgia tour, but he says he’s “just trying to ride the machine.” Part of Mac’s on-off existence the last three decades has been due to Buckingham’s creative restlessness; he’s maintained a solo career defined by adventurous albums in between Mac projects. As one of the band’s primary songwriters as well as its producer and arranger, Buckingham is first among equals, and his word goes a long way in determining Mac’s fortunes. This time, he agreed to do a hits tour to promote a box-set release of the band’s best-selling 1977 “Rumours” album.

“There’s still a push-pull inside me that says I need to redefine myself creatively, but I did two solo albums in the last three years, so it allowed me to feel a little more relaxed about doing something like this,” he says. “I am very consciously going into this not wanting to drive anyone in the band crazy if I can help it --- and sometimes it doesn’t take a lot for me to do that. My priority is working on the interaction within the band, especially between me and Stevie. I’m doing a tour that the industry and the listeners and the rest of the band want, and maybe sow some seeds of stability for once.”

That sounds like a man compromising his artistic instincts in the name of peace, harmony and cash. Buckingham laughs.

“Why am I doing this? It’s a good question… let me see, why am I doing this? Well, we’ll probably make a ton of money, and that’ll make everything a bit easier. But the other reason is that there’s unfinished business with Fleetwood Mac. Stevie left the last tour saying she wasn’t going to do this again, and that’s not right. It’s been a difficult road, we’ve been through a lot, and I want to see it play out and come out the other side in a bit better place than we were last time.”

Mac’s last tour followed the release of a 2003 studio album, “Say You Will.” That’s where the troubles began. Buckingham had interrupted his solo work to make the album with Mac, and brought finished songs into the recording session. Christine McVie had retired from the music business, leaving Buckingham and the founding rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie to focus on Nicks’ songs. Buckingham and Nicks already had a long, fractured history; they were former lovers and old tensions would resurface whenever new conflicts emerged.

“It felt weird, working for nine months in a Bel Air mansion on just my songs,” Nicks says of the Los Angeles recording sessions. “It started to grate on everyone. It started to grate on Lindsey. It ended up not being our happiest album. Then we went on tour, and it was just a continuation of something that had already gone off track.”

Nicks says the departure of Christine McVie had a huge impact on band chemistry: “She was the voice of reason.” Nicks hunted for another female foil after the tour ended. “I vowed not to do it again unless we had another person who could act as a buffer,” she says. She recruited Sheryl Crow, but the singer backed out when she realized how big the commitment would be.

“She just had a baby, and once you’re in Fleetwood Mac, you don’t have a life of your own,” Nicks says. “It’s like joining the National Guard and being deployed to Iraq in two weeks.”

Well, no, it isn’t, actually. But melodrama is as much a part of Fleetwood Mac as hit songs.

Nicks says she agreed to hit the road with Buckingham and risk opening up old wounds again because she sensed a change in her old sparring partner. “He has little girls who are 8 and 4 years old, plus a wife, and he has been living in girl land since coming off the road in 2005. It’s softened him up. Instead of treating me as a miserable ex-girlfriend, he’s looking at me more like a beloved daughter. He’s been very nice and loving to me. This is the guy that I met and fell in love with when I was 17, and I hope it stays that way. No one could come in and make peace between us. Lindsey and I had to.”

Buckingham says if they pull off the tour without any meltdowns, there may be yet one more Fleetwood Mac studio album down the road. But he makes no promises. He has left the band in the past, and he says he will again if he feels things are growing stagnant.

“We all want this to work,” he says, “but there are only 45 dates scheduled. I’m sure there are people in back rooms somewhere talking about more dates in America and elsewhere in the world, but nothing is in the books, nothing has been agreed to. In this band, it’s best not to plan too far in advance.”

Fleetwood Mac's revolving door: A timeline

• 1967: Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac forms in England with Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass, Jeremy Spencer and later Danny Kirwan on guitars.
• 1970: Green leaves group amid drug problems; he later drops out of music altogether.
• 1971: Spencer leaves in middle of a tour to join a religious cult. Band reassembles around Christine Perfect (who marries John McVie) and Bob Welch.
• 1975: Welch exits, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham join.
• 1976: Christine and John McVie divorce, Buckingham and Nicks separate, yet recording for “Rumours” continues.
• 1987: Nicks is treated for chemical dependency, Buckingham quits on eve of tour, and is replaced by Billy Burnette and Rick Vito.
• 1991: Vito quits.
• 1993: Nicks and Burnette exit, replaced by Dave Mason and Bekka Bramlett.
• 1995: Mac disbands after “Time” album stiffs.
• 1996-97: The “Rumours” era lineup reunites for a live album and tour.
• 2003: Christine McVie retires, but rest of “Rumours” lineup records “Say You Will,” first studio album in 15 years.
• 2009: Once more on the road, this time with “Rumours” box set as marketing hook.

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ROLLINGSTONE Q&A WITH STEVIE NICKS

Fleetwood Mac's singer on their new tour, turning 60 and making mixtapes

By Austin Scaggs
Rollingstone Magazine

"It still gives me goose bumps, and it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up," says Stevie Nicks, who is eagerly anticipating the first Fleetwood Mac tour in five years, which kicks off on March 1st in Pittsburgh. And later in the month, Nicks is releasing a DVD, Live in Chicago, and a concert CD, The Soundstage Sessions. With her dog barking in the background, Nicks checks in from her home in Los Angeles: "We still feel like Fleetwood Mac have a lot to give to the world. In this time of trouble and turmoil, I think the world needs Fleetwood Mac."

What's the latest from the Mac rehearsals?

I don't want to give the set list away, but it's pretty exciting. The fact that we haven't been on tour since 2004 makes every song sound fresh. It's just bang, bang, bang- all fantastic songs. We always start with the staples: "Go Your Own Way," "Gold Dust Woman," "Rhiannon" and "Dreams." We will play one song we've never done at all. If I were going to see Fleetwood Mac, this is definitely the set I'd want to see. It's like a big steam locomotive that doesn't stop until

 we walk offstage.

How are you getting along with Lindsey Buckingham?

When Lindsey and I aren't getting along, nobody's getting along. We haven't had one disagreement since we started rehearsing. And instead of treating me like his miserable old ex, he's treating me like his difficult but beloved older daughter. He's been very sweet.

How often do you speak with Christine McVie?

We check in with each other, but we can't hang out, because she lives in England, and she won't fly. The only time I've seen Chris since 1998 was when we did three nights in London in 2003. I miss her every day. But we've all finally started to accept that nothing could make Chris go back out on the road.

Last May you turned 60. How do you feel about that?

I don't feel any different at 60 than I felt at 50. Age is a state of mind. You can either get old or not get old.

On the "Live in Chicago" DVD you're joined by Vanessa Carlton on a couple of songs. What other artists of her generation do you mentor?

I love Vanessa - I feel like she's an adopted child, in a way. And Michelle Branch and I had dinner the night before last. I have a lot of information for all of these women. I should do a "Dear Stevie" column in Rolling Stone. When Mariah Carey was going through her craziness a few years ago, I wrote her a long letter telling her how everybody else is crazy - not her. I saw her recently, and she told me she keeps the letter with her jewelry! I love that.

What's wrong with the record business today?

The internet has destroyed it. I miss buying an album and lying on the floor for three days and going over it with a magnifying glass. I still go to the record store and spend hours there and buy a big bag of CDs. I don't have a computer of a cellphone, because I don't want to be that available to anybody. I'm all about mystery. Little girls think it's necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it's a shame.

You've always made mix-tapes on cassette. Do you still do that?

That's how I do it. Cassettes sound so much better. And I'm deaf as a doornail, so I like to crank my little boombox.

What songs are worthy of a Stevie Nicks mixtape?

I was just in Hawaii, and I made a mix called "Lahaina Twilight." It's got songs by the Goo Goo Dolls, Jackson Browne, Sting, Coldplay, Tom Petty, the Fray, Snow Patrol.

What albums do you love in their entirety?

I don't, usually. In the beginning, I was inspired by songwriters like Jackson Browne, David Crosby, the Eagles, Neil Young, Buffalo Springfiled - those are the people I learned from. And I probably listed to Joni Mitchell's For the Roses, Blue and Court and Spark a hundred million times. But now, I can't listen to a whole album unless it's a Fleetwood Mac record, where I made sure that every song is spectacular. Sequencing is my forte. I sequenced Rumours. Lindsey doesn't like to admit it, but he will admit it.

Last year, Sheryl Crow claimed that she would be part of the 2009 Fleetwood Mac tour, but Buckingham later denied it. What really happened?

It was absolutely discussed and she was absolutely invited to join. The reason was because I missed Christine [McVie] so much, and I wanted another woman in the band - it's hard to be in the boys' club. I explained to Sheryl what it was like to be in the group - that it's all-encompassing. Like, on 2003's Say You Will tour, we went out expecting to do 40 shows, and it turned into 135 shows. So Sheryl called me and said, "I'll have to pass." As Stevie Nicks, I was disappointed. As her friend, I told her she made the right decision. Sheryl Crow passed on Fleetwood Mac - I want that out there.

What are the origins of your patented onstage twirl?

A lot of ballet and a lot of dance. I wanted to be a ballerina, but I realized I was not going to be Pavlova, so I became a rock singer instead.