(Sales Update) FLEETWOOD MAC'S "GREATEST HITS"

Released in 1988, Fleetwood Mac's "Greatest Hits" continues to sell well.

For the most recent Billboard 200 Catalogue chart for the week ending September 19, 2010 "Greatest Hits" is sitting at #83 with sales for the week of 1,582 units down from the previous week of 1,798 units. Total US sales (1991 to present) the disc has sold 4,384,136 units. Since September, 2009 the compilation has sold a total of 112,152 units in the US.

"Greatest Hits" was last certified by the RIAA in 2000 at 8x platinum (8 million units shipped in the US).  Soundscan tracks actual sales, over the counter and digital, the RIAA tracks shipments.

Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. It began tracking point of sale (POS) sales in early 1991. SoundScan is the sales source for the Billboard music charts, making it the official source of sales records in the music industry.

Never going back again | The Australian

Never going back again | The Australian: "MICHAEL Chugg was an up-and-coming 30-year-old music promoter when his employer, Paul Dainty, gave him the gig of looking after the now legendary Fleetwood Mac tour in 1977."

Just as the band’s recently released album, Rumours, raised the bar for pop albums (it would go on to sell 40 million copies), the corresponding tour would similarly set new standards for rock and roll excess, especially in Australia.

“The promoter’s rep will meet the band’s tour manager in the car park of Sydney Airport with two ounces of cocaine,” was one of the first instructions Chugg received from Fleetwood Mac’s management. It set the scene for the rest of the tour, if not Chugg’s ensuing career.

Chugg was not a coke user – not then, anyway – and enlisted a roadie to score for him. The band had a crew of 67 people, which meant that they were able to float from one gig to the next with only their cocaine-fuelled performances to worry about.

Despite the lavish demands the band put on catering – extensive banquets accompanied by French champagne and Courviosier – Mick Fleetwood and his colleagues were never seen consuming food. “All of them were too wired to eat,” Chugg recalls. “The excess was outrageous. There was just too much coke and too much weed.”

Chugg, originally from Tasmania, was soon embracing the lifestyle. “That 1977 tour was the entrée to many wayward nights on the rock’n’roll circuit,” he says. “At its most outrageous, the nights rolled into days and just occasionally the days turned into weeks.”

Read more about Chugg’s initiation into rock promoting in Go Your Own Way, by music writer Iain Shedden, tomorrow in the Weekend Australian Magazine.

The Story of Rumours by Fleetwood Mac BBC Radio 2

Next on: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 22:00 on BBC Radio 2
Duration: 60 minutes

DOWNLOAD (53mb MP3)
OR
LISTEN NOW

On 4 February 1977, an album was released that would go on to be one of the best selling albums of all time. Paul Sexton tells the remarkable story behind the making of Fleetwood Mac's Grammy Award-winning album.

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was made under the most bizarre circumstances. The two couples at the heart of the band, John and Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, were in the process of splitting up. No songs were written before going into the studio. And everyone was zonked on cocaine. So they wrote about it all as it happened, and one of the most successful albums of all time was the result.

The Story Of Rumours is told through new interviews with Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham, as well as some amazing studio tales from producer Ken Caillat. The other band members feature through archive interviews.

It's interspersed with classic hits from the album, including The Chain, Dreams, Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way.

Listen Now

STEVIE NICKS MOURNS THE LOSS OF TOM WHALLEY AT WARNER

[excerpt]

The move came as a shock to some who hailed Whalley's commitment to Warner's acts. "He's an artist-friendly guy," one former staffer said. "A lot of the artists love him, and he loves them."

Among those mourning Whalley's departure was Fleetwood Mac singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks. "I love Tom Whalley," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "He has always been there for me and has been a huge support to artists during his tenure at Warner Bros. I'll miss him."

Hollywood Reporter

Shake-Up At Warner Brothers, Whalley Out

Warner Brothers Records has shuffled its executive team. Rob Cavallo has been named chairman, Todd Moscowitz will serve as co-president and CEO and Tom Whalley, who has served as chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Records since 2001, is exiting.

Tom Whalley

"Tom Whalley is one of this industry’s most accomplished executives and his contributions to WMG are enormous, having restored Warner Bros. to its leadership position. Just consider his near-decade of creative and operational success at Warner Bros., including ranking as one of the country's top three labels every year since 2003 and as the country’s top label in two of the last five years. Tom embodies a rare combination of great creative instincts with a deep understanding of the music business, and we are privileged to have had him lead Warner Bros." said Lyor Cohen, WMG’s Vice Chairman and Chairman and CEO, Recorded Music – Americas and the U.K.

Rob Cavallo

One of the top-selling producers in the world, Cavallo has produced or had creative involvement in albums that have sold more than 125 million units over the past 16 years, nearly 30 million of those units in the last five years alone.

In 1997, Cavallo was an instrumental force in reuniting the members of Fleetwood Mac at Warner Bros. for the band’s reunion album, DVD video and TV special, The Dance, which combined have sold more than six million units, and was a producer on the band’s following album Say You Will.

Diarmuid Quinn

Diarmuid Quinn, President of Reprise Records and Chief Operating Officer of Warner Bros. has decided that he will be stepping down from his position as well.

Source

[hope this shuffle has no effect on the release of Stevie's album in 2011 through Reprise. Tom Whalley has reportedly heard what Stevie has recorded so far and according to an interview with Stevie she's quoted as saying he loved it!]

A LITTLE MORE STEVIE NICKS IN ATLANTIC CITY

Photos by Donald B Kravitz - DBKphoto 
Link To GALLERY