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Thursday, October 15, 2009
Mick Brown charts the remarkable history of Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac: sex, drugs, fear and loathing
Telegraph.co.uk
Ahead of a new tour, Mick Brown charts the remarkable history of Fleetwood Mac.
There is probably no group in the history of pop music that would provide such a diverting evening’s worth of pub quiz questions – and not one of them to do with the groups’s musical output.
Telegraph.co.uk
Ahead of a new tour, Mick Brown charts the remarkable history of Fleetwood Mac.
No points for identifying Rumours as Fleetwood Mac’s biggest-selling album. But how much money did the drummer Mick Fleetwood fritter away on cocaine? Name the guitarist who in the middle of a tour walked out of a hotel one day to “buy some groceries” and instead vanished into a religious cult? Which prescription drug was the singer Stevie Nicks addicted to for eight years after she’d freed herself of her addiction to cocaine. And which male members of the group did Nicks not have an affair with – or at least, not as far we know?
The Rolling Stones might have been more dangerous, Led Zeppelin more debauched, but, when it comes to grand guignol drama, soap-opera bathos and sheer flagrant excess, it is Fleetwood Mac who take the biscuit – or, in their case, make that a crate of the Dom Perignon ’66, and be quick about it.
Fleetwood Mac are back on the road again for the first time in six years. It is the latest chapter in a saga that has lasted for 37 years, featured a cast of dozens and often resembled nothing so much as a kind of soft-rock version of the misery memoirs of Dave Peltzer.
In the beginning, they were a blues band, their name a cannibalisation of those of two of the founder members, the drummer, Mick Fleetwood and bass guitarist John McVie. The third founder was Peter Green, the most brilliant guitarist of his generation.
In 1969, the group had their first number one single, Albatross, and for a while their albums were matching the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in sales. Then the soap opera began. In 1970, Green took LSD for the first time, beginning a catalogue of events that would lead to him attempting to give away all his money and culminating in him being diagnosed as schizophrenic. On an American tour, the guitarist Jeremy Spencer walked out of his Hollywood hotel one morning “to buy some groceries” and didn’t come back – claimed by the Children of God cult. A third guitarist, Danny Kirwan, ended up in psychiatric hospital. A fourth, Bob Weston, was fired after conducting an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife.
By the early Seventies, Fleetwood and McVie were marooned in Los Angeles, seemingly on their uppers. They joined forces with a young couple Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, to form what would become the classic version of Fleetwood Mac, built on an improbable chemistry of opposites: the reliable old stagers Fleetwood and McVie; Nicks, the unreconstructed fantasy flower-child; Buckingham, the Byronic, brooding musical genius; and John McVie’s wife Christine, a sensible English girl who sang like an angel and, like her husband, was fond of a drink.
An eponymous album went to number one in America. The follow-up, Rumours, released in 1977, was the apoethosis of the California soft-rock sound, but what added immeasurably to its appeal was the tangled and incestuous mess that the album chronicled. Buckingham and Nicks were breaking up after five years together. The McVies’ seven-year marriage was coming to end, Fleetwood was conducting an on-off affair with Nicks while divorcing his own wife, Jenny Boyd.
Heartache, loathing and recrimination had never sounded so beguiling. Rumours, as Lindsay Buckingham put it, “brought out the voyeur in everyone”, and went on to sell more than 40 million copies, propelling the group into the realms of bacchanalian self-indulgence.
Christine McVie bought two Mercedes, with licence plates bearing the names of her dogs, to park outside her Beverly Hills mansion, and went on to have affairs with the band’s lighting director and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. Buckingham took up residence in the swanky Four Seasons Hotel – for two years.
Nicks went on to have affairs with both Joe Walsh and Don Henley of the Eagles.John McVie, meanwhile, bought an ocean-going yacht, suffered an alcohol-induced seizure and was arrested for possession of firearms.
“We decided to be comfortable and lost control,” Fleetwood would later reflect in his autobiography. He somehow managed to go bankrupt after a series of disastrous property ventures, while at the same time remarrying Jenny Boyd, only to divorce her again.
In the years since then, the group have broken up and and reunited with a regularity that has bewildered even their most devoted followers. Buckingham departed in 1988, following a particularly heated meeting. “It got physically ugly,” John McVie would later recall. “I just said, 'Lindsay, why don’t you just leave?’ He left. But what I meant was, 'Why don’t you leave the room?’” He was gone for nine years. In 1998, apparently exhausted by it all, Christine McVie retired altogether and now leads a quiet life in Kent.
But it is Nicks who has remained the most intriguing member of the group. With her improbable black-chiffon confections, her songs about Celtic witches and gipsies, her enthusiasm for Tiffany lamps and illegal substances, Nicks embodied the idea of rock music as a sort of romper room for grown-ups to act out their fantasies.
During the Seventies and Eighties, her addiction to cocaine became the subject of myth. She finally kicked her cocaine habit in the Betty Ford Clinic, but then became addicted to tranquillisers.
When the group toured in 2003, relations between them were said to be difficult. But, like so many groups of their era, they have discovered that the cachet of the brand name is far greater than the sum of its individual parts, and that no matter how painful it may be, habit, financial imperatives or the simple want of a better idea will inevitably bring them together again. Psychotherapists call it co-dependence. Nobody would call it love.
Reports from the current tour suggest the group are getting along famously. It would be the most unbelievable chapter in the saga yet.
REVIEW: Bluesy is Fleetwood Mac Live in Antwerpen, Belgium
(Translated Review)
Bluesy Fleetwood Mac was at its best
Nineteen years after their previous Belgian Fleetwood Mac concert is still alive enough, though we heard nothing new in the Sportpaleis and Stevie Nicks has lost some allure.
"The Unleashed tour has only one goal," said singer Lindsey Buckingham. "There is no new album promotional needs, so we brought our favorite songs"
No problem. The band kicked off with "Monday Morning", one of those songs that jittery Buckingham the band in 1975 gave a whole new impetus. Immediately "The Chain" was also well behind: a muscular, energetic version that reminded us of this band in 1977 made a great record on the thin line between love and hate ".
Fleetwood Mac in the year 2009 has four of the five members from the golden seventies. Christine McVie is no longer, because fear of flying. In its place we got three backing vocalists and a keyboardist. Sometime back someone was still playing guitar and Mick Fleetwood Sat back, almost invisible, someone along to drumming.
That was enough to forge a powerful sound, which in Stevie Nicks 'Dreams' just had to finish. Nicks, the most obvious victim of the drugs used by the band, still falls short of the high notes anymore. It was endearing to hear what she sang her songs in minor thereby said it reinforced the melancholy, but it sounded more tired than enthusiasm.
The star of the evening was Lindsey Buckingham, who at sixty patent looks great and the audience repeatedly brought into raptures with his guitar solos, his energetic vocals or just a oerschreeuw between. His solo spot in 'Big Love' Sat good, especially after he had verklapt us that "meditation on alienation" had grown to a song about "the importance of the power of change '. Voilà !
The group played at all in all a sober, but tastefully decorated stage, which mainly gave the message that this is unadulterated live music should go. The video screens showed details of the guitar and the concentrated faces of Mick Fleetwood, even 62, but also of Stevie Nicks, her facial expression did not really experience.
So the concert went up and down, with explosive pieces of Buckingham and Nicks sleepy passages. That her vocal chords finally got warmed up in "Gold Dust Woman" that raw guitar work aegis of one of the highlights unexpectedly grew. And there was still 'Oh well' back, the only song from the first Mac-incarnation of the band with Peter Green, and an effortless topper.
Conclusion: the FM-rock that Fleetwood Mac fame gedeit definitely on the radio and in the living room, but the group has live blues more energy. Buckingham's "Never Going Back Again" was a real heart cry because that song has brought so fragile and vulnerable, and the long guitar solo in "I'm afraid so" clearly touched a chord with the audience already quite quiet.
At the end everyone was still right for a disco-driven "Stand back", a solo album of Nick, a dutiful "Go your own way ', and - that was long ago - a real drum solo in" World Turning " . And "Do not stop, of course.
Nice concert, quite. As for dessert the notice of Buckingham that no new album. Fans can hope.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
REVIEW: FLEETWOOD MAC - ANTWERPEN, SPORTPALEIS OCT 14, 2009
Fleetwood Mac niet vies van nostalgie
Het Belang van Limburg
ANTWERP - Long live the music crisis! You buy no more CDs, and artists must be the farmer to earn a penny. So finally reached last night Fleetwood Mac again our region for a concert in the Antwerp Sportpaleis. The strong holders of yesteryear - Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Stevie Nicks - are still part of the strong performance of "cash machine" that finally Europe calling again. Christine McVie is no longer, and thus pulls the cart Stevie only female voice alone. That probably explains the fact that the group already during the U.S. leg of the tour songs 'Everywhere', 'Little Lies' and 'Seven Wonders' deleted. The originals sparkled for a large part by the polyphonic singing woman.
Classics Hits "Go Your Own Way ',' Do not Stop ',' Dreams ',' Rhiannon ',' Tusk 'and' Sara of The Chain" are on the setlist. Fleetwood Mac has its own classics: over half of successful album Rumors passes in review, in versions that have no chance of complacency, though sometimes it wins power of elegance. This rock and roll hall of fame members are pretty much the royalty of pop music, which can be heard. These unusual voice of the possessed guitar Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham play of the main building blocks in this retro circle. Whether this means the end of Fleetwood Mac or calls for a new album? That should tell the future. But this nostalgic evening of traditional music fans can continue to cherish.
ANTWERPEN - Leve de muziekcrisis! U koopt geen cd’s meer, en dan moéten artiesten wel de boer op om een cent te verdienen. Zo bereikte gisteravond Fleetwood Mac eindelijk nog eens onze contreien voor een concert in het Antwerpse Sportpaleis. De sterkhouders van weleer – Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie en Stevie Nicks – maken nog altijd deel uit van de goed draaiende ‘cash machine’ die nu eindelijk nog eens Europa aandoet. Christine McVie is er niet meer bij, en dus trekt Stevie de kar als enige vrouwenstem alleen. Dat verklaart wellicht het feit dat de groep al tijdens de Amerikaanse poot van deze tournee songs ‘Everywhere’, ‘Little Lies’ en ‘Seven Wonders’ schrapte. De originelen sprankelden voor een groot stuk door de meerstemmige vrouwenzang.
Klassiekers Hits ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Don’t Stop’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Tusk’ en ‘Sara of The Chain’ staan wel op de setlist. Fleetwood Mac kent zijn eigen klassiekers: ruim de helft van succesalbum Rumours passeert de revue, in versies die gezapigheid geen kans laten, al wint energie het soms wel van elegantie. Deze rock and roll hall of fame-leden zijn zo’n beetje de royalty van de popmuziek, en dat laat zich horen. Die ongewone stem van Nicks en het bezeten gitaarspel van Lindsey Buckingham zijn de belangrijkste bouwstenen in dit retrorondje. Of dit het einde betekent van FLeetwood Mac of de aanloop naar een nieuw album? Dat moet de toekomst uitwijzen. Maar dit nostalgische avondje ambachtelijke popmuziek kunnen de fans blijven koesteren.
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