MITCHELL'S COURT AND SPARK (By Stevie Nicks)

THE RECORD THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Thoughts on Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark

By Stevie Nicks | Elle.com

Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark. I was over at [Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olson’s] house, and he had these great speakers that were as tall as me, and Joni’s record had just come out, and I put it on. He went away, it was just me, and I listened to this record for three days. She was able to stuff so many words into one sentence and not have them sound crowded. She was talking about what it was like to be very famous and to be a woman living in a man’s world. She had been in the world of fame much longer than me, and she had gone out with every famous rock ’n’ roll star that there was. And she was such an amazing guitarist that they all respected her. That was unheard of. She was in the boys’ club. She talked about what I saw coming. Even though Buckingham Nicks had tanked, I knew that we were going to be very famous, very rich, and that this fame thing was going to overwhelm us. So when I listened to this record, it was like a great old premonition just being laid out in front of me. There is a song on it called “The Same Situation,” and that song just would kill me when I’d hear it. Because I knew it was coming.

(VIDEO) STEVIE NICKS "NEW ORLEANS SONG"

A couple of years ago during various press interviews when asked about recording new material Stevie mentioned that in the wake of Katrina she wrote a song for New Orleans. Fast forward a couple of years later in New Orleans on June 20th - the last date of the American Unleashed Tour - Stevie sang a few lines of this mystery song. For Stevie Nicks fans, this is a hopeful sign that one day, in the not to distant future she will record it and include it on a new studio album.

The lyrics in this clip appear to be:

I want to sing in the streets of the French Quarter

I want to dress up, I want to wear beads, I want to wear feathers and lace

I want to brush by the vampires that go down Bourbon Street

(PHOTOS) FLEETWOOD MAC IN EDMONTON

Photos by: JORDAN VERLAGE/Sun Media

STEVIE NICKS FAN SEES EDMONTON CONCERT

Fleetwood Mac ensures P.E.I. Steve Nicks fan sees Edmonton concert

THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON — A lifelong dream finally came true Wednesday night when a fan from Prince Edward Island finally saw her idol Stevie Nicks up close and personal at a Fleetwood Mac concert in Edmonton.

“I am beside myself, I’m ecstatic,” Pauline Doucette said before the show, wearing a black T-shirt bearing the singer’s image and holding a bag of gifts for the band.

“This is unbelievable, a memory of a lifetime.”

Doucette originally held tickets for Fleetwood Mac’s May 13 concert in Edmonton. She had saved money for months to pay the airfare.

But the concert was cancelled at the last minute when a member of the band fell ill.

In some ways, it didn’t surprise Doucette — in her hometown of Summerside, P.E.I., her nickname is “Black Cloud Polly,” an indicator of a long string of bad luck and her struggle as a 45-year-old single mother living off a disability pension.

But her luck changed when the band heard her story.

For the rescheduled concert, they ensured she had a room at a posh hotel, filled with band memorabilia including T-shirts and autographed photos, as well as a chance to meet the band members with a backstage pass.

The band had also offered to fly her back out to Edmonton, but she had already accepted an offer from a woman — a complete stranger — who offered to give Doucette her Air Miles for free.

“I’m still speechless,” Doucette said Wednesday. “It’s beyond anything I had expected.”

(REVIEW) FLEETWOOD MAC EDMONTON "A Study In Contrast"

A study in contrasts
By MIKE ROSS, Edmonton Sun

It was the last date of this particular leg of this particular tour -- till Denmark in October -- and Fleetwood Mac didn't seem the least bit tuckered out.

It was more like one last hurrah. It was drummer Mick Fleetwood's 66th birthday last night. Perhaps that explains it.

Actually, Stevie Nicks has always seemed a bit sleepy on stage, but that's just her style, you know?

While she omitted a few high notes during the show at Rexall Place last night, her sultry, sleazy, captivating voice was largely intact.

There's no one quite like this singer. She often plays with her notes in the manner of a bored cat toying with a doomed mouse, which might be an unpleasant image to associate with such a beautiful voice, but at heart I think Stevie Nicks is a cat person. She'd understand.

Anyway, her ex Lindsay Buckingham provided most of the fireworks during the extra-long hit parade (rescheduled from a date cancelled in May).

He comes off a bit too much in love with himself, but he's such an awesome guitarist that he's entitled, don't you think?

GREY PONYTAILS

The grey ponytailed rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, meanwhile, provided an oblivious rock solid accompaniment to this rock 'n' roll study in contrasts: the laid-back Stevie vs. the fiery Lindsay, the witchy woman vs. the howling wolf, pick your metaphor.

How these two ended up together is a mystery, but they did, the tension of their relationship and ensuing break-up supposedly providing some kind of magical, creative juice that resulted in one of the finest rock records ever made, Rumours.

Would it have been the same if they hadn't split? We'll never know. Fans should be pretty sure, however, that without this colourful couple, Fleetwood Mac would've probably been just another garden variety British blues band.

The pair of frontpeople made hash of their stormy past onstage -- for our amusement, surely.

In one of his bits of canned patter, Buckingham laughingly referred to the band's "complex and convoluted emotional history." He would expand on the theme later.

You can try to read body language into it. While Nicks gave Buckingham a hug at one point -- was this, too, rehearsed? -- the two largely kept to their respective sides of the stage, and their respective musical domains, too.

At times, she also twirled like a tasselled ballerina and played air guitar during his solos. Lindsay made a lot of guitar face, sometimes howling "oh yeah!" at the end of a particularly great solo.

Like I said, it was a study in contrasts, two concerts in one, really. Buckingham got the up-tempo, high energy stuff and the blistering solos -- especially shining in songs like I Know I'm Not Wrong, Go Insane and the distinctive Big Love.

Stevie took the mellow side of the road, haunting hits like Gypsy and Rhiannon (no relation to Chris Brown's girlfriend). She was especially "sleepy" -- let's just say hypnotic -- in one of her signature songs, Landslide.

TWO-HOUR HIT PARADE

Overall, it was a two-hour-plus hit parade that was promised to contain no new music, only "songs that we love to play and I'm sure you want to hear!" Buckingham declared. (Bachman Cummings take note.)

They played a bit with the arrangements, but not so much that you'd have to play "guess that tune" after the song kicked in.

The Chain -- with huge vocals provided by a trio of backup singers who couldn't possibly replace departed singer Christine McVie (talk about complex, convoluted emotions) -- came early.

The tribal groove of Tusk had the crowd cheering with joy. The canned horns filled the arena.

There are always things to nitpick about a bunch of 60-ish millionaires touring on their laurels -- they're doing it more for money than fun, let's get real here -- but this is Fleetwood Mac.

I always say that rock stars don't become famous by accident. They're up there for a reason. They're up there because they're great.

By the two-hour mark, Buckingham was still uncorking one wild solo after another, Nicks was still in good voice -- and several different outfits -- and Mick was still banging out the beat (and that damn gong) like a champ.

You couldn't ask for more. Well, you could, but let's not get greedy.

Fleetwood Mac

IN THE SEATS

12,000 in Rexall

NOTE PERFECT

One last hurrah for the last date of the tour -- and happy birthday to Mick Fleetwood.

RATING

4 out of 5

(REVIEW) FLEETWOOD MAC EDMONTON JUNE 24th

EDMONTON — So, was it worth the wait, you ask?

BY TOM MURRAY, EDMONTON JOURNAL

Where: Rexall Place

When: Wednesday night

With multiple stories running in all media about fans distraught at last month’s postponement of Fleetwood Mac’s Edmonton date, you just knew that anticipation would be running high when they finally rescheduled — and that the band would be fully aware they had to deliver.

Well, deliver they did, with a stomping two hours plus set of hits that eschewed almost all recent material and honed in on the hits.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham in particular was on fire from opener Monday Morning on, playing as though his life depended on it, sizzling leads igniting The Chain and Second Hand News, vocals coming straight from the heart. His ex-girlfriend and constant foil Stevie Nicks was a step behind, a strong singer but unable to hit the notes she once did on Rhiannon and Sara, or sharing missing member Christine McVie’s Say You Love Me with Buckingham.

Even with these slight reservations it was still an at times powerful experience — made so in part by one of the greatest and oft overlooked rhythm sections in rock history, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood — with songs that could’ve been glossed over after over thirty years of constant radio and live play. It was especially impressive considering the fact that all of the interior drama that made Rumours and Tusk such fantastic albums has now dissipated over the years as the various members have reconciled with each other. And although Buckingham made a special point of noting those tensions, you could still feel those old emotions rise up on songs like Second Hand News — or maybe it was simply the combined memories of 12,000 fans as up to date on the band’s romantic entanglements as they are.

A strange, strange situation to be in — personal hurts played out for entertainment — but then that’s where the band has always excelled.

And it has to be said that while they have little competition when it comes to muscular California pop, Nicks and Buckingham also slay when the acoustic numbers come out. Buckingham started it off alone with an impassive, almost vengeful Big Love that fully deserved the near unanimous standing ovation it got, with Nicks joining him for Landslide — good, but almost a letdown in comparison.

Buckingham’s intense performance reminded that while he was lumped in with the California folk pop movement of the ‘70s he always considered himself in some ways allied with the British punks — and that Tusk, their experimental to Rumours, was meant to take the band out of formula. It never did, but a few cuts have survived into the stage show — a long version of the hit Sara, and a reserved take on Storms.

To see a group as involved in their back catalogue as Fleetwood Mac is a heartening thing — especially with so many other bands simply playing by rote. They may not be breaking new ground as they once tried, but Buckingham did acknowledge with a wink that there is something in the works — fingers crossed that playing these old classics will give us a new Rumours and not, say, Mirage.