(REVIEW) FLEETWOOD MAC "DON'T STOP" DOCUMENTARY

Review:
Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop, BBC One
Written by: Adam Sweeting
The Artists Desk

Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop lacked the caustic edge of the Rock Family Trees film about the band from 1995. That contained some great stuff about the fake Fleetwood Mac launched by their former manager Clifford Davis, true confessions from ex-guitarist Bob Weston about his affair with Mick Fleetwood's wife, and the one about addled guitar hero Peter Green wandering around with pieces of cheese in his hair. But inevitably director Matt O'Casey's new film had the advantage of being able to bring the story up to date, notably in a bittersweet coda reflecting on the still-unbridged chasm between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

For all the doggedness of founding father Mick Fleetwood, who increasingly resembles a castaway from a tropical island - funnily enough, he now lives in Hawaii, along with original bassist John McVie - the Mac became the biggest band of their era because of Buckingham and Nicks. Of all the inter-band traumas, theirs was the most spectacular, intense and creative, and it still bites both of them hard to this day.

Nicks, in particular, wasn't pulling any punches. It hurt her when Buckingham wrote "Go Your Own Way" about her, and it still does: "Ladylike, prudish Stevie, which I am, was very offended by him saying 'shacking up is all you want to do', because I was not in any kind of shacking up mood. I was not shacking up with anybody."

By all accounts Buckingham has always been a gifted but bloody difficult band-mate - "one of those people that will go up on the cross to make a point, and die," as Nicks put it - but marriage and children have given him some equilibrium. Yet his history with teenage sweetheart Stevie is still a weeping scab. "Maybe in 10 or 15 years when Lindsey and I are 75, we'll be friends again, when Fleetwood Mac is a distant memory," she said wistfully. But like the Flying Dutchman, maybe the Mac can never stop.

Watch Don't Stop on the BBC iPlayer here.

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Sheffield - November 2, 2009 - at Sheffield Arena

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN SHEFFIELD

November 2, 2009

by: Steve Newson Dot Net

Am coming down from an awesome performance by Fleetwood Mac at Sheffield Arena. If you have a chance to go see them I most heartily recommend. Can't sleep yet so I thought I'd record a few thoughts for posterity. 

It was my first time at Sheffield Arena, what a great venue. I much prefer it to the NEC. I managed to trade my two tickets at the back of the arena for 1 ticket just 12 rows from the front plus cash. So had a fantastic view. The only marginal downside was being sat next to the scouser from hell. Clearly short of the odd marble he kept shouting at Lindsey Buckingham to play "Go your own way", which was the last song of the main set, so he kept it up most of the night.

Such minor annoyance could not detract though from the greatness of the Mac. Lindsey Buckingham really is a maestro. I can't think offhand of a better guitarist that I've seen live. Even when he went off into guitar solo heaven he held a meaningful tune that you could not help but tap, sway or dance along to. Contrast that with most solos that show off guitar competency but really aren't musical. Case in point Mick Fleetwood and his drum solo, ok so it proves he can play but I just wanted it to end and them to move onto a song. 

Stevie Nicks was fantastic, she's still got one hell of a voice and together with Buckingham they belted out all the great anthems. 

Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide a solid backbone to the band and with supporting cast the delivery was faultless. The only missing member of what you might consider the classic Mac line up was Christie McVie. 

I don't know what's happened to the average British concert goer since I last went to a gig, but when did they start all sitting like lemons? You can't go to a live gig like this and not dance! What's the point of shelling out £60 for a ticket if you're not even going to try being moved by the music. If you just want to watch them play competently buy the DVD. Have we lost our soul or is it just good old British stoicism? Have to admit I got up and boogied. Showing my age I guess. 

An electrifying night that will live in my memory for some time to come. 

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FLEETWOOD MAC NOVEMBER, 1979

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

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REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Survived 42 Years of Madness

John Walsh:
Independent.co.uk

'Fleetwood Mac survived 42 years of madness, sex, drugs, failure and success'

I went to see Fleetwood Mac at Wembley Arena and, musically speaking, it was wonderful. The strains of "If You Go Your Own Way" (which Lindsay Buckingham wrote about Stevie Nicks after their stormy relationship came to an end), the passion that Stevie Nicks put into "Sara" (the song she wrote about her best friend, for whom Mick Fleetwood left his wife after he'd ended his affair with Stevie), the tenderness of "You Make Loving Fun" (which the keyboards player Christine McVie wrote in a tribute to the lighting-rigger for whom she conceived a passion when her husband, the bassist John McVie, hit the bottle), [note: that song was not in the setlist] and the final singalong of "Don't Stop" (which Christine wrote after her eight-year marriage packed up,) were inspiring indeed, although my favourite moment was Buckingham's gorgeous solo rendition of "Never Goin' Back Again" (about Stevie's breakdown, after her well-documented cocaine addiction...)

You can try and keep the music separate from Fleetwood Mac's emotional serpentinings, but it wouldn't be so much fun. No beat combo in rock history has had such combustible permutations of personnel, or such terrible luck. They've survived 42 years of madness, drugs, marital bust-ups, sexual rivalry, drink, failure, bankruptcy, wild success, rehab clinics, and a whole gamut of peculiar hairstyle choices. Their heyday was of course 1975, when Fleetwood and the warring McVies signed up Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and they made Rumours out of their tormented relationships. Many thought it commercial schlock at the time, but the tunes got inside your head and stuck like fishhooks.

So I went to see them at Wembley – and what a weird sight they make these days. Mick Fleetwood, now 62, shiny-pated and white-bearded, whacked the drums like a deranged pirate king, widening his scary eyes until the whites glowed. During an extended solo, he appeared to hold a conversation with the tom-toms. McVie, the inscrutable former tax inspector, wore a white Kangol beret and a black waistcoat. We looked at him and Fleetwood, their grizzled chins and stolid Britishness. "My God," breathed the person beside me, "it's Chas 'n' Dave."

Buckingham, in skinny leather jacket and collarless T-shirt, talked about the band's emotional rollercoaster, struck attitudes and scrubbed his guitar during long solos. It was very much the Lindsey Show. Ms Nicks sang gorgeously in her low contralto and did her twirling-with-a-shawl routine, but sounded emotionally conflicted, like a pissed-off Pollyanna.

They look absurdly different – how did they ever work together? Mick and John, like retired yeoman farmers, relaxing after a hard day's pig-scratching. Lindsey and Stevie, seeming half a generation younger, so Californian, neurotic, theatrical. Buckingham, though an astounding guitarist, seemed prattish and full of himself beside the cool beardies. At the end, he teased the crowd with hints of another album. Mick Fleetwood wasn't bothered about such things. "Look after each other in this crazy world," he told the crowd, with evident emotion, and was rewarded with a mighty cheer – not for being a rock star, for being such an indestructible old (English) buzzard.

***

MICK & LINDSEY (FLEETWOOD MAC) GUESTS ON RADCLIFFE & MACONIE

BBC - Radio 2 (link)

Monday November 9th

Fleetwood Mac's Mick and Lindsey

will be Guests

REVIEW: FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE IN LONDON... "The Band were in implausibly good form"

Fleetwood Mac, Wembley Arena, London
Financial Times
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
4/5 STARS

Expectations for a sedate night of heritage rock from a group of sexagenarians notorious for living well but unwisely were shattered as soon as Fleetwood Mac struck up “Monday Morning”. The 1975 track sounded vibrant and crisp, with Mick Fleetwood hammering his kit and Lindsey Buckingham giving some Springsteen-style welly to the vocal. The band were in implausibly good form.

The “Unleashed” world tour is their first get-together in five years. The songs mainly dated from the band’s 1970s heyday, when the Brit blues outfit founded by Fleetwood and John McVie in 1960s London morphed into Anglo-Californian soft-rockers with the addition of Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

It wasn’t quite the return of the full Rumours-era line-up: McVie’s keyboardist ex-wife Christine was missing, having quit touring in the 1990s. The surviving foursome showed no scars of their turbulent past, an epic tale of excess encompassing drugs, drink, chaotic romantic affairs and Spinal Tap-style follies.

The grey-bearded, pony-tailed Fleetwood, clad eccentrically in black knee-breeches and red court shoes, with a trademark pair of wooden balls dangling from his belt in the style of a mysterious fertility symbol, played with an antic gleam in his eyes: Prospero with a pair of drum sticks. His flat-cap-wearing sidekick McVie was rock-solid on bass, giving tracks such as “The Chain” bite beneath the irresistible West Coast harmonies.

Nicks, “our lady of Fleetwood Mac”, as Fleetwood introduced her, suffered from a low mix on “Dreams” but this was soon rectified. Her look combined rock-chick leather boots and floaty outfits that flowed poetically around her, stirred by a wind machine and her slow, swirling dance moves. Yet there was nothing mystical about her vocals, which had the powerful nasal twang of a country-rock grande dame.

Buckingham led from the front, barking out vocals and playing scorching guitar solos, such as the virtuoso axe heroics at the climax of “I’m So Afraid”. His whoops and “Yee-aahs!” were pure arena-rock ham. No wonder there was no stage scenery – Buckingham would have chewed it up. Yet his performance was tight as a spring. There was nothing bloated about this group of rock survivors.