REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac - Manchester "Mystery-and-Magic isn't merely an act for Stevie Nicks"

Fleetwood Mac, MEN Arena, Manchester
Reviewed by Simon Price
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Independent on Sunday

If she didn’t mean it, it wouldn’t work. Stephanie Lynn Nicks may have been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when Fleetwood Mac found her, and cleaning the producer’s toilets to pay for her first record, but the bucktoothed blonde from Phoenix never stopped imagining herself as a Welsh witch goddess.

Thirty-five years on, she hasn’t ceased: swishing about in a bat-winged cape and a diamante half-moon pendant, and bleating about a “ woman taken by the sky”. Mystery-and-magic isn’t merely an act for Stevie. She believes it, and bless her to bits for that.

If Stevie on a British stage is what really sends the hackles tingling for the faithful, then it’s only in the context of a truly stunning Fleetwood Mac concert. Her foil and sometime lover Lindsey Buckingham, spindlylegged and still offensively handsome, is a fast-fingertipped phenomenon on guitar. His solo spots for “ Big Love” and “ Oh Well” are breathtaking; the title track of his 1979 folly Tusk is so berserk you can almost taste the Hollywood A-grade in your septum.

Together, they conjure such an electricity that the rhythm section John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, whose British blues band was transformed by the BuckinghamNicks takeover in 1974, can only stand and watch. “ I think I had met my match,” she sings in the sublime “ Sara”, and she looks at him with lazy eyes. He catches the glance, and bites his lip. As the song ends, they waltz and he kisses her hair. It must drive their current partners insane. Because it sure as hell sends a shiver through everyone else.

Sunday: Don't Stop Documentary... Johnnie Walker's Sound of the 70's

[repost - reminders]
FLEETWOOD MAC
DON'T STOP DOCUMENTARY
BBC ONE

NEXT ON:
Today, November 1st - 22:20
(except Northern Ireland)

Fleetwood Mac, one of the biggest-selling bands of all time, are back on the road again. Their story, told in their own words, is an epic tale of love and confrontation, of success and loss.

Few bands have undergone such radical musical and personal change. The band evolved from the 60s British blues boom to perfect a US West Coast sound that saw them sell 40 million copies of the album Rumours.

However, behind the scenes relationships were turbulent. The band went through multiple line-ups with six different lead guitarists. While working on Rumours, the two couples at the heart of the band separated, yet this heartache inspired the perfect pop record.

BROADCASTS
Sun 1 Nov 2009 22:20 BBC One (except Northern Ireland)
Sun 1 Nov 2009 22:50 BBC One (Northern Ireland only)
Fri 6 Nov 2009 21:00 BBC Four
Sat 7 Nov 2009 02:25 BBC Four
Mon 9 Nov 2009 01:30 BBC Four

DURATION
60 minutes

Johnnie Walker's Sounds Of The 70's
On BBC Radio 2's Johnnie Walker's Sounds Of The 70's - Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham join Johnnie Walker to discuss the stories behind their incredible 70s back catalogue, which includes the hits Go Your Own Way, Dreams, The Chain and Rhiannon.

Mick and Lindsay have reunited with Stevie Nicks and John McVie for Fleetwood Mac's first live tour in five years and have released a remastered collection of their greatest hits.

Next on: Sunday, November 1st - 15:00 on BBC Radio 2

The Broadcast is now available on the BBC2 site to re-listen to: HERE

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Manchester "These Old Mac's Need a Makeover"

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE - MEN ARENA

MANCHESTER, UK

10.27.09

The Mail on Sunday Section 2

November 1, 2009

(click to enlarge)

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live at Wembley in London

Fleetwood Mac at Wembley
Making Strange
"Even though it probably isn't so, it feels like every lyric about lost love is about the sad end to the relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The way they move around and connect with each other on stage is either a very clever act to engage the audience or they made a terrible mistake all those decades ago when they broke up."


Continue To Full Review

COMING UP... MICK FLEETWOOD INTERVIEW ON SMOOTH RADIO 97.5 & 107.7

Mick Fleetwood will be a guest on The Mark Goodier Show on Smooth Radio 97.5 & 107.7 in the UK next week - 10am... Not sure of the exact date yet... Will post when I find out..

REVIEW: FLEETWOOD MAC - Live in London October 30, 2009

Fleetwood Mac, Wembley Arena
by Joe Muggs
The Arts Desk

The first signs were good. I've been to a lot of shows by “heritage bands” in my time, but I don't think I've ever seen a crowd for a band of Fleetwood Mac's vintage that had such an even age distribution. Sure, it was heavily weighted towards the greying end of the scale, but every age group down to teens – including teens there in groups under their own steam, not just with parents – was well represented, right across class boundaries too.

But then Fleetwood Mac have always been a lot of things to a lot of people. From the bluesy 60s underground Peter Green era, through the spectacular 70s pinnacles of rock-Babylon mega-success following Green's decline and departure and the arrival of sparkly-eyed Californians Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, to the shiny pure pop of their late-80s Tango In The Night creative swansong, they covered an awful lot of ground. Everyone was hoping their setlist might suit their own tastes – in my case the Tango In The Night songs of my schooldays. Sadly they did not play this.

On stage, the band managed the extraordinarily impressive feat for such a repeatedly split-and-reformed act of actually looking like a band. Other than the lack of Christine McVie, who has seemingly permanently retired from live performance, this was the classic 70s/80s lineup of Nicks and Buckingham out front and the founder-members' British rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie (the original “Fleetwood” and “Mac”) on drums and bass behind them – plus backing vocalists and two session musician multi-instrumentalists in the wings.

Fleetwood and McVie looked rather like a multimillionaire Chas & Dave with their matching flat caps, waistcoats and beards, while Buckingham had the air of an over-dressed pervy music teacher and Nicks of a wonderfully batty goth aunt, complete with one black glove, tinsel hanging from her sleeves and a mic stand draped with witchy decorations. But somehow, among the arena lightshow and moving set decorations, despite all the history, they still looked like their relationship was musical.

And it is. From the swagger of “The Chain” (from the quintillion-selling Rumours) onward it was clear this is more than just some ageing drug casualties propped up by technology and extra staff. The 12-string guitar jangle of Tusk's “I Know I'm Not Wrong” showed how much Fleetwood Mac's work prefigured the whole of eighties alternative rock as well as the mainstream – making them the missing link between The Byrds and The Cult. “Second Hand News” was a mighty country-rock stomp, showing precisely how much the band were always connected to heartland America. And “Rhiannon” and “Sara” showed how much Nicks's voice was born to age gracefully, it's catches and cracks only made more affecting by age's emphasis.

Source: The Arts Desk