REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in East Rutherford, NJ March 21, 2009

FLEETWOOD MAC EXPLORES ITS PAST
by Jay Lustig

The Star-Ledger
March 22, 2009

At Fleetwood Mac's Saturday night Izod Center concert, singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham talked about getting together in January, after several years apart, to rehearse for the current tour. Band members told each other "Let's just have fun," he said.

At the Meadowlands, Buckingham, seemed to be doing just that, belting out songs, taking long, flamboyant guitar solos and stomping around the stage. Drummer Mick Fleetwood also seemed to be enjoying himself immensely -- every time the video camera caught his face in a closeup, he was smiling like a mischievous schoolboy who just got away with an outrageous prank. Bassist John McVie didn't seem to be having fun, or experiencing much emotion of any kind. Then again, he's been a stoic figure throughout his 40-plus years with the band, so it would have been foolish to expect anything else of him.

The biggest problem with the show was that singer Stevie Nicks, who co-fronts the band with Buckingham, didn't seem to get the fun memo. Granted, most of the songs she sang, such as "Dreams," "Sara," "Gypsy" and "Rhiannon," are low-key affairs, powered by subtle hooks and an air of mystery. But she sang them so half-heartedly they didn't exert their usual charm. It wasn't until the second half of the show, on songs like "Stand Back" and "Gold Dust Woman," that she seemed fully engaged.

Nicks' diffidence didn't kill the show: the repertoire the band has assembled over the years is too indestructible for that. But it kept a solid show from becoming transcendent.

The band's history goes back to the British blues-rock explosion of the '60s, But it wasn't until the mid-'70s, when the lineup settled on Fleetwood, McVie, Buckingham, Nicks and McVie's then-wife Christine McVie, that Fleetwood Mac became a hit-making machine. This is the band's second tour without Christine McVie, who retired from touring in 1998.

It's also a rare example of a Fleetwood Mac tour that doesn't follow the release of a new studio album. The band isn't necessarily done with recording, though. "We do not have a new album to promote -- yet," said Buckingham, as part of his "Let's just have fun" speech.

The four band members, who range in age from 59 (Buckingham) to 63 (John McVie), were joined by three other musicians and three backing vocalists at the Meadowlands. A sped-up beat added some urgency to "Monday Morning," while "Never Going Back Again" was slowed down to a melodramatic crawl. Singing together, Buckingham and Nicks turned Christine McVie's "Say You Love Me" into a lovers' duet, and Nicks sang McVie's parts on "Don't Stop." The band reached back to one of its earlier incarnations for the explosive blues-rock song "Oh Well" (written by the band's original frontman, Peter Green).

Buckingham shined on "Oh Well," as well as several other songs that gave him the opportunity to stretch out on guitar ("Second Hand News," "I'm So Afraid," "Go Your Own Way"). Mick Fleetwood also took a long solo during the first encore, "World Turning," though he is really at his best offering propulsive support to the rest of the band, not pounding away on his own.

Since the band doesn't have a new album to take up slots in the setlist, it was able to explore some past non-hits. Buckingham resurrected "I Know I'm Not Wrong," a song from the band's 1979 "Tusk" album that brims with manic energy. Nicks also went back to "Tusk" for "Storms," a song that was as calm and pensive as most of her other material, despite lyrics like "Never have I been a blue calm sea/I have always been a storm."

The band closed with "Silver Springs," a Nicks-written song inspired by her failed '70s romance with Buckingham. At times in the past, Nicks and Buckingham have seemed to relive their own stormy history as they performed this song together -- Nicks snarling out the angry lyrics, Buckingham answering with screaming guitar riffs. But on this night, they barely even looked at each other.

They're still in the same band. But in many ways, they seem to live in different worlds now.

REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham Still Snorting Lines of Something... Fleetwood Mac Live in NYC

FLEETWOOD MAC - MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

Blender.com
by Jonah Weiner
(4 Stars)

When Fleetwood Mac calls a tour “Unleashed: The Hits,” it prompts two questions: No. 1. Will I go to the bathroom during “Dreams?” “Go Your Own Way?” “Tusk?” “Say You Love Me?” The only answer is, I will not go to the bathroom at all, or I will go to the bathroom during my pants. This is the band that put out Rumours, after all – the Thriller of dentist’s waiting rooms! (That is meant as a very big compliment). Question No. 2. “Unleashed?” What leash are they referring to? Mick Fleetwood’s crisp, clockwork drumming? Christine McVie’s airy, lovely, shmaltz, absent this go-round? The need to promote a new album and thus fill a set list with the new, unfamiliar, and unwelcome?

There is no new album on the way, which means they started last night’s Madison Square Garden set with “Monday Morning,” closed it with “Silver Springs,” and played nary a whatsit in between.

Some revelations:

• The band is loud. Surprisingly, rockingly, putting-peers-half-their-age-to-shame-ingly loud.

• Since the mid-‘70s arrival of Cali songbirds Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks propelled the group from Brit bluesoid also-rans to superstars, you don’t appreciate quite so vividly on record that Mick Fleetwood is the band’s secret weapon. Last night he was great at putting the downbeat where you weren’t expecting it, and whacking his sticks with a hungry clobber without losing the in-the-pocket snap he’s famous for.

• He was also wearing the weird testicle-ball thingies he wears on the cover of Rumours. And sans culottes. Made out of velvet.

• Buckingham has probably quit cocaine by this point in his life. Yet he is still very thin, and ridiculously energized: Every other band member took a break but him. He howled when it wasn’t entirely appropriate, sometimes nowhere near a mic. He is clearly still snorting lines of something. We are guessing crushed wheatgrass.

• Stevie Nicks still twirls across a stage with a lace shawl draped around her shoulders better than anyone else in the business.

• The whole “I’m getting older, too” refrain from “Landslide” gained a new power now that Stevie is thirty-odd years older than when she first sang it. She delivered it with a moving, impossible combination of verve and woundedness – it was one of the night’s biggest applause lines.

• John McVie, stoic in a black-vest-and-white-button-down combo, said not a word, hardly looked up. This is only fair, since your average rhythm section has room for only one extrovert with eyes the size of emu eggs and a penchant for skipping around the stage and cackling.

• Kirsten Dunst and someone we are pretty sure was an Olsen sister, both in attendance, are big Fleetwood Mac fans. Including your Blender correspondent, that made three people in the building who weren’t in college when, like, Millard Fillmore was president. That was so long ago, I’m not even sure Millard Fillmore is actually the name of a president.

• They didn’t play “Beautiful Child.” Sniff.

• Roving merch people were actually selling little tambourines with a sticker of the four current touring Mac members – for $40. Meaning if you bought one and two of the good-seats tickets (see pic right), you were shelling out well over $400 for the evening. (And that assumes you skipped the $13 sushi rolls for sale at concession stands).

Let’s make sure you got that: Next to hot dogs and Bud Light, MSG was selling Sushi. We did not try it, because, ew.

PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac in New York City "Nicks twirls as the rest of the members of Fleetwood Mac rock on"

HERNAN HERNANDEZ PHOTOS OF MSG (more photos)

LIZBALLER PHOTOS (more pics)

Third Estate Sunday Review: Stevie Nicks, rocking it her way

Third Estate Sunday Review: Stevie Nicks, rocking it her way

"Nicely Done" MICK FLEETWOOD BLUES BAND "Blue Again" (Review)

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, “Blue Again” (SLG).
Buffalo News

Though it is now emblematic of the dulcet tones of ’70s California pop, Fleetwood Mac was born a blues band in the latter ’60s, one whose influence was everywhere in the arenas and stadiums of ’70s rock. Originally, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer sprung from the same soil that sprouted Led Zeppelin, Free and the Jeff Beck Group. Tunes like “Rattlesnake Shake,” “The Green Manalishi With the Two-Pronged Crown” and “Black Magic Woman” were vehicles for Green’s gorgeously understated solos, beneath which the Fleetwood-McVie rhythm section toiled like tireless journeymen, shoveling coal in the engine room for all they were worth. It’s that Fleetwood Mac that Mick Fleetwood celebrates with “Blue Again,” a live album that ably documents the fire and finesse of his touring band, led by another Mac alum, guitarist Rick Vito. The disc centers on songs Green wrote— “Looking For Somebody,” “Stop Messin’ Around,” “Rattlesnake Shake,” “Albatross” and the like —and is as much a tribute to Green as it is a paean to the music Fleetwood fell in love with as a teenager with a drum fetish. Nicely done. ★★★( J. M.)

Stevie Nicks, The Soundstage Sessions (Review)

The Independent

Reviewed by Simon Price

Stevie Nicks' voice is one of the musical wonders of the world – she's almost alone in making the concept of adult oriented rock seem enticing and not a soul-crushing bore – so any opportunity to hear it in full flight, such as this televised concert, is welcome.

Though slightly ravaged, her voice remains a miraculous thing, able to make even a Dave Matthews Band song tolerable ("Crash"). Nicks's stripped-down versions of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" and "Sara" are things of traffic-stopping beauty.

Pick of the album: Where everyone would love to drown: 'Sara'