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Fleetwood Mac Performing Live in Concert at
Wembley Arena
Wembley Arena
London, England - 30.10.09
Additional Shots HERE
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
(BLOGGER REVIEW) FLEETWOOD MAC
"So very bittersweet - waited so long. and so disappointed. Still had a great antagonisingly fun night singing and being me. Shame though."
Read/view the review Shootingatthescreen
REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in London - Night #1 Return of the Mac
Fleetwood Mac, Wembley Arena 30 Oct 2009
I was just a little tinker when Fleetwood Mac were notching up chart success in the late 1970s and early 80s when my parents were listening to the ‘Rumours‘ album.
But having obviously passed their good taste down to me, by the time I was 10 years old I was listening to ‘Albatross‘ and ‘Dreams‘ on my then industrial size Sony walkman whilst everyone else at school was being fed on a diet of Wham!
I’ve always liked The Mac, favourites being ‘Sara‘ and ‘Gypsy’ which sometimes transport me away from the hustle and bustle of a busy tube into my own little bohemian world, through the hypnotising vocals of Stevie Nicks.
And hypnotise she did tonight, as they performed at London’s Wembley Arena on their ‘Unleashed Tour’
Continue to Showbiz-i.com
FLEETWOOD MAC - A FLEET IN GLIMPSE...
A Fleet in glimpse
By david dunn
Sheffield Star
By david dunn
Sheffield Star
MICK Fleetwood makes no excuses for having no new music to put our way when his legendary band get to the UK.
In fact, as the tour that has already thrilled cities across the USA crosses the 'pond', he'll go as far to say he is glad.
"For the first time we've gone on the road without a new album and there's less pressure for us," he says.
"There's no one thing no-one knows. People are loving it, probably because they are not sitting through five or six songs they don't know and are not as emotionally connected with.
"Because there's less pressure, we are in a healthy position and the energy is up a few notches."
For now The Unleashed Tour coincides with a re-mastered double greatest hits album, but the plan is to make new music.
"There are a lot of bands who have been completely resting on their laurels for a long time because they've not made new music.
"We all turned around and said 'We actually did do something worth half a damn'. It was like looking into the mirror. We are older and some of us have young families. Certainly we're more responsible second time around – you try to do a better job second time around."
Fleetwood Mac intended to tour before now, around the time they released Say You Will, the first album without Christine in the band.
But with a solo career flourishing, Lindsey Buckingham was making a double album that turned into two single albums and he toured both.
Then Stevie Nicks toured.
"Getting us all on the same page was easier for me and John. He is sitting there sailing his boat," recalls Mick. "But five years went by before we realised it was five years."
Mick, Cornwall-born and now 62, says he is glad the tour brings the band back to Sheffield on Monday and recalls some of his earliest career gigs at Peter Stringfellow's Mojo club.
The lofty drummer was in a short-lived band called Shotgun Express with Rod Stewart and Beryl Marsden.
"Those were brilliant days. The club was so advanced in terms of the way music was presented – they fed you and did the things other people were not doing.
"Peter and his wife were brilliant promoters.
"They used to give us records to listen to and say 'You should do this as a song'. They turned us on to all sorts of great music.
"Everyone had an energy about music – that place reminds me of an energy that was so important."
Both he and Rod went on to become major stars, of course.
And, much like his Scottish friend, Mick has no intentions of calling it a day just yet.
"If you enjoy playing your music and people want to come and see you… I hope I can do this for another 10 years.
"About 20 years ago the Stones said 'This is our farewell tour'. Then they said it a few more times. Then they stopped saying it and have carried on.
"We have not said it yet.
"Jagger is like a freak of nature, though. I'm 62, practically no different than the Stones. Physically I think, touch wood, I'm in pretty good shape to do what I do. Maybe I will not be banging the drums so loud at 70.
"I will never think I will not play again, though – I will play at the local bar.
" I hope we do another couple of tours and I hope we don't implode where we say 'I can't stand to see your face anymore'.
"It has happened before and I hope it won't happen again.
"But we are older now; we are ex-lovers and old friends."
Hawaii home suits Mick
HOME these days for Mick is Maui – the same Hawaiian island base as US country legend Kris Kristoffersson, the late George Harrison and fellow Mac John McVie.
"It's a reclusive place," says Mick, "but I did not move for that reason. I like the people and I'm living a very social life here.
"I came in the '70s when it was a lot less commer-cialised and I've been coming ever since.
"Life got crazy, the rock and roll time, and we never made the move way back then.
"We bought property here years ago and it was always my dream to one day make the move."
And he did, with his twin daughters from his third marriage.
"From time to time I miss the culturally solid feeling I get when I go to England – by the nature of the oldness, not that the Hawaiians don't have an old culture."
As well as his side project, the touring Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, the legendary drummer also maintains a 10-piece Hawaiian band.
"We play Mac stuff in a Hawaiian style," he says.
"We have a lot of fun."
FLEETWOOD MAC - THE MAC IS BACK (Sheffield Star)
The Mac is back
By david dunn
Sheffield Star
By david dunn
Sheffield Star
MICK Fleetwood is the first to admit his band is not entirely normal.
"We are sort of like a dysfunctional family, a unique bunch of people," he tells The Star from Hawaii ahead of Fleetwood Mac's first UK dates in six years.
And looking at the headlines down the years the people behind some of the best-known music in the western world – Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie – were not exactly short of excitement off stage.
"We've all been extremely close but we also had to become friends and ex-lovers and all the rest of it.
"The bottom line, the umbilical chord that links us, is not about business.
"Stevie and Lindsey were pretty much married for 20 years – it was part of the Fleetwood Mac soap opera."
Beyond the sometimes complicated romance issues, the drugs and the rows, Mac have been an incredible success story with global hits like Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way. The landmark Rumours album alone accounts for 25 million of their album sales.
"We're not a bunch of guys who hate each other but make great music and turn up and play. We cannot do that.
"Because we were probably too forthcoming while washing our laundry in public the upside now is not having to talk about it. We are sort of lucky we were talking too much before.
"Now the great thing is people identify with us being human beings and not iconic, rock and roll untouchable creatives.
"After the blood and guts of drugs and alcohol abuse there's a real connection with us as people.
"We are no different to someone who has had a love affair in the office. It has to be worked out.
"We are hearing and feeling - we are having a good comfortable celebration and that's a good feeling."
REVIEW: FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE "The most surprising thing about the group" - Dublin
REVIEW of the week: Fleetwood Mac * * * *
DUBLIN, IRELAND - 02
By Ed Power
Friday October 30 2009
Fleetwood Mac used to be something of a bad joke among the rock cognoscenti, a guilty pleasure best enjoyed with a generous side-serving of irony. However, in recent years a new generation of musicians has stepped forward to claim them as an influence -- Bat for Lashes, Florence and the Machine and The Feeling are among the artists who have publicly acknowledged their debt to the Anglo-American FM rockers and their dreamy sound.
Live, the most surprising thing about the group, back for an umpteenth reunion tour but minus singer and songwriter Christine McVie, is how full-on they are -- "soft rock" has seldom felt this prickly or intense. Snapping the whip and stoking the engine is Lindsey Buckingham, the 60-year-old frontman who throws himself into the performance as though he were a 20-something competing in a battle of the bands contest.
From the opening note of Monday Morning, he's a whirlwind of manic, live-wire energy. He grimaces, shrieks and batters his guitar. At the conclusion of Tusk, Fleetwood Mac's anti-commercial curve-ball from 1979, he's bent over yelling his lungs out, a river of sweat sluicing down his face.
In contrast, vocalist Stevie Nicks, in a chiffon dress similar to the one she sported on the cover of the group's gadzillion selling 1977 album Rumours, cuts a surprisingly slight presence. Her voice is buried in the mix, wavering when it should soar. That's a shame because her dusky croon is the moon dust that elevates Fleetwood Mac's best songs out of the ordinary (nonetheless, she does provide one of the evening's most affecting moments, dedicating Landslide to Stephen Gately).
Solid accompaniment, meanwhile, is provided by drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, the blues veterans after whom the band is named -- though it's clear they are glad to leave the pyrotechnics to Buckingham
Much of the set is drawn from Rumours. Recorded when the two couples in the line-up -- Buckingham and Nicks and John and Christine McVie -- were going through messy break-ups (and hopping in and out of bed with each other), it's the easy listening equivalent of a Tolstoy novel, a multifaceted epic that gains in stature with each passing year.
Not that these tracks are ever in danger of sounding like museum pieces: teetering between Buckingham's guitar and McVie's bass, The Chain verges on proto metal; there's a palpable bitter sweet ache to Don't Stop and a euphoric tingle to Go Your Own Way, surely among the best kiss-offs to a lover ever written.
Standing at the lip of the stage, Buckingham, is as happy to bask in the attention as the rest of Fleetwood Mac are to surrender it. So it's no surprise that the concert's finest moment comes when everyone else is ushered into the wings and he bashes out an acoustic version of their 1987 hit, Big Love. It's one of many stunning turns by the lanky vocalist tonight. If only Nicks had delivered some fireworks of her own.
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