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FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN ROTTERDAM
OCTOBER 15, 2009
Photos by: Robert van der Bruggen
Thank you to Robert for providing the link
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
SEX AND DRUGS AND FLEETWOOD MAC . .Superstars are Coming to Dublin
The soft-rock superstars are coming to Dublin -- but in another part of town, original guitarist Peter Green is still playing the blues
By Richie Taylor
This Saturday and Sunday night, Fleetwood Mac will perform in the O2 venue in Dublin to over 20,000 fans.
Twenty-fours later, on Monday night, Peter Green, the original creative genius behind the band when they formed in 1967, will also play the capital -- probably to a turn-out of around 200 diehard fans in the Academy venue on Middle Abbey Street.
It may be a coincidence but it puts the contrasting fortunes of Green and his former bandmates in sharp focus.
Fleetwood Mac are still living off Rumours, their classic album that won a Grammy over three decades ago. They're billed in the radio ads for the O2 gigs as "the Rumours line-up", but the 2009 version of the Mac are actually missing keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, a key member who was responsible for writing half the hit singles on Rumours.
Peter Green is living off his reputation as a genius composer and a guitar great. Ranked 38th in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", BB King once said of his guitar playing: "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard."
A key figure of the British Blues movement in the 1960s, Green was a sometime member of 1960s supergroup John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.
But it was his work with Fleetwood Mac that he is best remembered for. Alas, he had long since left the band when they went supernova in 1977.
In the late 1970s, The Mac, as they were known to their fans, personified the idyllic Californian lifestyle: luxury homes in Malibu, crates of booze, an endless supply of cocaine, flash cars and studios block-booked for years until the creative juices finally flowed. There was also plenty of romance between various band members -- something which both got the creative juices flowing but also sowed the seeds of their split.
Lead singer Stevie Nicks -- a blonde beauty whose poster adorned many a teenage boy's bedroom wall in the 1970s -- was originally with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, but they split and she had an affair with lanky drummer Mick Fleetwood, who was married.
Christine McVie had been married to bassist John McVie, but they split and she had an affair first with one of their road crew and later with ill-starred Beach Boy Dennis Wilson.
In the late 1960s Fleetwood Mac set the charts ablaze with a string of hits -- mainly written by Peter Green -- which included 'Albatross', 'Man of The World', 'Black Magic Woman', 'The Green Manalashi (With The Two-Prong Crown)' and 'Oh Well'.
Then on tour in America, one morning pint-sized guitarist Jeremy Spencer left the hotel in Los Angeles and never returned.
He had been sidetracked on the street by members of the Children of God cult, and is with them to this day. Spencer finally broke cover a couple of years ago and revealed his location, declaring he was still happy with them.
After Spencer's departure, further cracks appeared in the band. Peter Green, who later admitted that he had taken one acid trip too many, started to act strange. He gave all his money away to charity, quit the band in 1970 and lived the life of a hermit. He later took a job as a gravedigger in order to make ends meet. He was never to rejoin Fleetwood Mac.
Meanwhile, third guitarist Danny Kirwan had also been behaving weirdly and quit music. When last heard of he was living in sheltered accommodation in London.
The remaining members of Fleetwood Mac -- Mick Fleetwood and John McVie --recruited new members, transforming themselves from an English blues band with pop leanings into an outfit that personified the hedonistic lifestyle of West Coast America.
Their soft rock was full of sunshine and melody and their playing was never less than spellbinding.
Now they're out on tour for the first time since 2004, playing a full Greatest Hits set. Christine McVie left the group in 1998, and bought a plush pad overlooking the Thames in London.
But the others can't seem to give it up. It's not as if they need the money -- 1977's Rumours has sold over 30 million copies to date.
Original member Mick Fleetwood revealed: "This time out we're giving people what they want; it's like a fans' fantasy. The new challenge for us is that we'll be playing some of Christine's songs onstage. These songs are her legacy."
Meanwhile, Peter Green continues to plough a lone furrow, playing the blues music that initially attracted him to first pick up a guitar.
In the late 1960s Green was on a par with greats Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Now he's overweight, has weird facial hair and doesn't say very much. But according to those who have seen him perform with his own band, the guy can still play the blues like he really means it.
Fleetwood Mac play the O2 on Saturday and Sunday. Peter Green and his band play The Academy, Dublin, on Monday
Irish Independent
FLEETWOOD MAC'S ROCK N ROLL HALL OF FAME PERFORMACES RELEASED NOV 3
25th Anniversary
3-disc DVD set out Nov 3rd
INCLUDES FLEETWOOD MAC'S PERFORMACE OF
"SAY YOU LOVE ME"
AND
"STEVIE AND LINDSEY SINGING "LANDSLIDE".
ALSO INCLUDED IS THEIR ACCEPTANCE SPEACH
AND
"STEVIE AND LINDSEY SINGING "LANDSLIDE".
ALSO INCLUDED IS THEIR ACCEPTANCE SPEACH
Buy the DVDs on Amazon.com here.
CERTIFIED GOLD! Fleetwood Mac - Landslide Single
Thanks to Gary for the tip.
TICKETS DROPPING FOR FLEETWOOD MAC AT WEMBLEY NOV 6TH
Apparently really good tickets are popping up on Ticketmaster for Fleetwood Mac at Wembley - November 6th.
RETURN OF THE MAC - FLEETWOOD MAC IN GLASGOW THURSDAY
As Fleetwood Mac return to Britain 40 years after they first formed, the band that once outsold The Beatles have proved extraordinary survivors
RETURN OF THE MAC
‘We were selfabsorbed… it’s more fun now’
By Adam Edwards
IF THE brass trumpet that kicks off the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love is the defining sound of the late-Sixties then the falsetto chorus of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way is the soundtrack to the second half of the Seventies.
It was the opening track to the band’s 1977 album Rumours, the best-selling LP of that decade and still one of the 10 best-selling albums of all time. I doubt if there are many fortysomething men who don’t think fondly of blonde singer Stevie Nicks when they hear The Chain, the music that nowadays introduces Formula One motor racing on TV.
Yet there was no more curious group than this unstable offspring of the Sixties that metamorphosed into a soap opera. And despite the madness that was “The Mac”, the one-time blues combo still managed to become one of the biggest bands in the world.
This week The Mac return, starting tomorrow in Glasgow and taking in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Dublin and London’s Wembley Arena, after a six-year absence. The Unleashed Tour is their latest offering in a saga that has lasted 40 years.
And yet when they started the band’s fans believed that there was not a gang of more ordinary blokes. Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, so-called because its three stalwarts were Green on lead guitar, John McVie on bass and Mick Fleetwood on drums, was heir to the legendary British blues acts such as John Mayall, the Yardbirds and Cream.
The music transcended the fashion – or lack of it. The band’s raw first LP, released in 1968, called simply Fleetwood Mac, has variously been described as “a masterpiece” and “the best electric blues album in a generation”.
It had to be good, as were its two follow-ups, because when one looked behind the album covers it was impossible to believe that the collection of hairy musicians could ever be rock stars, let alone one day win adulation as superstars.
The 6ft 7in drummer looked like an upturned mop, the brilliant lead guitarist Peter Green went bonkers after taking too much LSD, a second lead guitarist Jeremy Spencer joined a religious sect and guitarist Danny Kirwan was such an alcoholic that he was sacked. And all this was before the girls joined.
In California, left with only the rump of the band, Fleetwood and McVie teamed up with singer Stevie Nicks and her partner Lindsey Buckingham. With McVie’s wife Christine on vocals the five began to evolve into what the world would come to know as the classic Fleetwood Mac.
Furthermore, while the members were beginning to establish themselves as a first-rate soft rock outfit their relationships were in turmoil. Nicks and Buckingham were breaking up while the marriage of McVie and Christine was on the rocks. Meanwhile Mick Fleetwood (who was having an on-off affair with Nicks) was in the throes of divorce from his first wife Jenny Boyd – sister of Eric Clapton’s wife Patti.
The break-ups were chronicled in the Rumours album, so-called because the band members were all writing songs about one another (Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way was aimed at Nicks, for example, while Christine McVie’s Don’t Stop was about her husband.) The record was described by one band member as “bringing out the voyeur in everyone”.
Whether that was true or not it was a piece of recording brilliance that sold more than 40 million and sent the band into the stratosphere.
But the record came with a price. Christine McVie began a series of relationships with various rock stars including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. Nicks became addicted to cocaine and then prescription drugs and had affairs with two different members of The Eagles.
McVie became an alcoholic and was arrested for possession of a gun while Fleetwood incomprehensibly went bankrupt after a series of property deals. He also remarried Jenny Boyd and then divorced her again.
“We decided to be comfortable and lost control,” was how Fleetwood would later describe those years in his autobiography.
Since those heady days the band has broken up and re-formed at regular intervals. Buckingham left for nine years and in 1998 Christine McVie retired and lives quietly in Kent.
Now The Mac are about to perform their greatest hits across the UK. Despite the current incarnation of the band featuring Nicks, Buckingham, Fleetwood and John McVie, it is, says Stevie Nicks, very different to its heyday in the Seventies. There are no drugs, no dippy guitarists and no damaging affairs (and no Christine McVie of course).
“Thirty years ago we were all so self-absorbed,” says Nicks. “Things are a lot more fun now.”
But it is worth remembering that self-absorption produced one of the great post-war musical achievements. For if the Sixties legacy was Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, then the Seventies have left us Rumours by rock ’n’ roll’s strangest band – Fleetwood Mac.
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