REVIEW: Fleetwood Unleashed on TD Banknorth

BCHeights.com
By Chris Dewey

Fleetwood Mac Live 

in Boston, MA 

March 11, 2009

Last Wednesday night, Fleetwood Mac brought their Unleashed tour to the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. The tour marks the first time the group has been on the road since 2004. The band, currently a quartet, includes singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks, bassist John McVie, and drummer Mick Fleetwood.

Fleetwood Mac kicked off their set with "Monday Morning," an upbeat song about Buckingham's frustration with love that dates back to the group's self-titled 1975 album. Without missing a beat, the band launched into "The Chain," a song that found Buckingham and Nicks sublimely combining their voices with urgent intensity. Half-way through, the song transitioned into an increasingly faster section marked by an ominous bass-line and an unrestrained guitar solo.

While Nicks' voice seemed to struggle slightly on songs like "Gypsy" and "Rhiannon," there were other times where it was nothing short of outstanding. Her rendition of "Landslide" was just about perfect. "Gold Dust Woman," a song chronicling her past struggles with cocaine, demonstrated that she is at her most powerful and haunting when harmonizing with former lover Buckingham. Donned in flowing dresses, scarves, top hats, and other eccentric pieces of clothing, Nicks twirled about the stage like it was 1977, a move that would have been more ridiculous if the 60-year old singer did not look so remarkably youthful.

FULL REVIEW

Photo by Matt Becker

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto - Rolls Out The Hits

Fleetwood Mac rolls out the hits
Live in Toronto, ON at Air Canada Centre - March 17, 2009

By JANE STEVENSON

TORONTO SUN

It felt like the mid-to-late '70s all over again at the Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night as Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits - Unleashed tour pulled into the hockey hanger for the first of two shows on St. Patrick's Day.

And while the opening song, Monday Morning, wasn't a very smooth start to the two-hour-plus concert - singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham's first words weren't on microphone - and the followup tune, The Chain, sounded a bit disjointed and unpolished, the evening eventually picked up as the veteran rockers found a decent groove by the third number, Dreams.

"We are Fleetwood Mac, and we're thrilled to be here tonight. We hope you have a wonderful time. And now I think we should get this party started," said iconic singer Stevie Nicks, 60, decked out in her usual costume of flowing black dress and black suede boots with black scarves and silver chains decorating her microphone stand.

On their first tour together in five years, the band - rounded out by Brits Mick Fleetwood, 61, on drums and John McVie, 63, on bass - played material primarily from 1975's Fleetwood Mac, 1977's juggernaut Rumours (30 million copies sold worldwide and counting) and 1979's Tusk, embracing their most commercially successful years after Americans Nicks and Buckingham joined the group. (British keyboardist Christine McVie - and John's ex - gave up touring in 1989.)

Notable deviations from that trio of albums were Gypsy from 1982's Mirage, Big Love from 1987's Tango In The Night, Oh Well from 1969's Then Play On, Buckingham's 1984 solo tune, Go Insane, and Nicks' 1983 solo song, Stand Back, all highlights in a set brimming with hits.

"We're a band of complex, convoluted emotions," said Buckingham, 59, a recent visitor to Toronto's Music Hall last October on behalf of his latest solo album, Gift Of Screws.

"Every time we reconvene it's different. As we got into rehearsals this time we just said, 'We're just going to have fun, and because there's no new album to promote - yet - we're going to do the things that we love and hopefully they are the things you love as well."

The fun quotient picked up considerably as the initially remote Nicks and Buckingham, a former couple who met as teenagers and split up shortly after joining Fleetwood Mac (Nicks would later have an affair with Fleetwood), actually started to sing while looking at each other and even embraced - it was more of a lean actually - during Sara.

Eventually, they held hands and were arm-in-arm, respectively, as they returned to the stage for their first and second encores.

Standouts proved to be Nicks' signature songs, Rhiannon, Sara, Goldust Woman (complete with her in a gold shawl) and Stand Back with a crowd-pleasing twirl; the fiery Second Hand News and Go Your Own Way, with Buckingham letting out one of his big whoops when the first song ended and Nicks decked out in a black top hat for the second; Buckingham's acoustic-guitar-driven Big Love and Never Going Back Again and then electrifying electric guitar work on I'm So Afraid; Landslide, which featured Nicks in a new burgundy dress and matching suede boots and Buckingham on acoustic guitar alone together on stage; and the old Peter Green blues-rocker Oh Well with Buckingham taking over lead vocals and a grinning Fleetwood having a grand old time behind his kit.

They also played the pretty and haunting Storms, from Tusk, which they have never performed on tour before.

"A stormy song for a stormy group of people," explained Nicks.

Less successful was Say You Love Me as Nicks and Buckingham traded verses on one of Christine McVie's signature tunes and her absence was definitely felt and Fleetwood's primal drum solo during World Turning.

The band were backed by two other musicians on keyboards and guitar and three vocalists but it was hard not to imagine how the lineup might have sounded given they briefly flirted with the idea of having Sheryl Crow join them on this tour.

There was also large curved video screens behind and above the stage that could have been put to better use with a montage of old footage or photos of the group given this was a Greatest Hits show.

Fleetwood Mac returns to the ACC on March 26.

SET LIST:

• Monday Morning
• The Chain
• Dreams
• I Know I'm Not Wrong
• Gypsy
• Go Insane
• Rhiannon
• Second Hand News
• Tusk
• Sara
• Big Love
• Landslide
• Never Going Back Again
• Storms
• Say You Love Me
• Gold Dust Woman
• Oh Well
• I'm So Afraid
• Stand Back
• Go Your Own Way
• World Turning
• Don't Stop
• Silver Springs

SUN RATING: 4 out of 5

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto March 17, 2009

Fleetwood Mac fuelled by 'stormy' conflicts
Band draws crowd into the band's `convoluted' history

ASHANTE INFANTRY
POP & JAZZ CRITIC

THESTAR.COM

For a group that's conquered its demons, again and again, Fleetwood Mac sure does love to wallow in the memories.

No less than three times, during last night's Air Canada Centre show, either singer Stevie Nicks or guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who do all the talking for the foursome rounded out by founding members, sneaker-shod bassist John McVie and ponytailed drummer Mick Fleetwood, alluded to the well-noted upheavals of the four decades-strong pop-rock group. These traumas included changing lineups – both Buckingham and Nicks departed for a time – and failed intraband marriages or romances.

But to hear the players tell it, these conflicts fuelled the songs and artistry that define them.

"Fleetwood Mac, as most of you know, has a complex and convoluted emotional history and it's actually turned out to be kind of cool," Buckingham said last night. Without a new album to push – "yet," he explained, the quartet was indulging themselves and fans with a 23-song, two-hour-and-20 minute hits concert, which drew heavily from 1977's Rumours – "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way," "The Chain," "Never Going Back" – and 1975's Fleetwood Mac – "Rhiannon," "Say You Love Me," "World Turning," "Landslide."

They also turned in a not previously toured tune, the moody, aptly titled "Storms" from 1979's Tusk, which allowed Nicks to again reference the group's peripatetic past – "it's a stormy song for stormy people and a stormy bunch of relationships and stormy problems."

She's actually the group's weakest component on this tour, which kicked off in Pittsburgh March 1 and returns to the ACC on the 26th.

If it weren't for that inimitable tremor in her voice, any female singer could've been substituted.

What Nicks lacked in energy and charisma, Buckingham delivered tenfold. He proved a crack showman whose fierce playing and vocal drama – replete with karate screams and maniacal laughter – was smoothly supported by Fleetwood's glee and tomahawk pounding and McVie's cool, steady groove.

And with a catalogue this deep – they didn't even get to "Everywhere" and "You Make Loving Fun" – it's great to have these sexagenarians back on the road after a five-year break.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM - EQ MAGAZINE

Lindsey is featured in the April, 2009 issue of EQ Magazine  Multiple page spread where Lindsey discusses his approach in the studio and his technic.

FLEETWOOD MAC - TORONTO PHOTOS 3/17/09

Fleetwood Mac are currently playing in Toronto. A few TwitPics courtesy of concertaholics:

(Review) Mistress Stevie Nicks lived up to expectations

ROCHESTERCITYNEWSPAPER

By Dale Evans

It was a celebratory crowd that nearly filled Blue Cross Arena for Fleetwood Mac Monday, March 16. And I think most of them had filled their bellies at the Dino prior to the concert. The rib-running-jam was so backed up that the hostess pleaded via loudspeaker for patrons to exit their tables ASAP and move on over to the bar because hundreds of concert-goers were still waiting to eat. Last I heard it was a two-hour wait, but it didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. Everyone was happy as they strolled the bridge over to the arena.

As they aren't promoting anything -- yet -- Fleetwood Mac is playing just for fun. And it could have been catching if enthusiasm for the concert hadn't already infected everyone. Most of the crowd spent the night up on their feet getting down, which made me wonder why-oh-why the promoter wouldn't book this as a general admission ticket instead of the dance-in-front-of-your-seat celebration that it was.

All the fave songs were played, and even if a few made me cringe inwardly at their corniness, I was more surprised at just how many of the band's songs are really, really good.

Lindsey Buckingham floored me with his playing; he gave his guitar such passionate spankings that I'm sure some bottoms blushed. And if you were in the nose-bleed section, it mattered not, as the videos were masterfully manned. Yeah, that was him looking right at me.

Mistress Stevie Nicks lived up to expectations, slowly swirling and twirling in her shawl-draped costumes, caressing the glittering boas adorning her mic stand, topping off songs with poignant silhouetted poses.

Mick Fleetwood, well, he was just insanely spectacular. Yes! We're with you! And John McVie's bass was profoundly anonymous, just like one should be.

When the band stopped playing, no one moved. After being called back for two long encores, we were finally too tired to put up much of a fight. If it could be possible, everyone left even happier than they arrived.