Audio Interview: Lindsey Buckingham Talks Fleetwood Mac Tour, Stevie Nicks, "Sad Angel", Christine McVie

Lindsey Buckingham

93.7 The Arrow Houston's Classic Rock Station

May 1, 2013

FLEETWOOD MAC MOTHER’S DAY CONTEST - B.C. Canada Residence Only

You could win a "Landslide" of a prize for Mother's Day! from The Vancouver Sun

Grand Prize includes a pair of front row tickets to the Vancouver show.

ELIGIBILITY:

To be eligible for this Contest, an individual must:
(a) be a legal resident of the province of British Columbia;
(b) be of the age of majority or older in his/her province or territory of residence at the time of entry; and
(c) not have been selected as a winner of a Postmedia (as defined below) contest within the past ninety (90) calendar days

Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on May 9, 2013

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Fleetwood Mac "Extended Play" "Sad Angel," shimmers with the glossy textures of 1987's "Tango in the Night."

First impression: Fleetwood Mac's four-song 'Extended Play'

By Mikael Wood
LA Times

The four songs on the new Fleetwood Mac EP -- which the legendary pop-rock outfit put up for sale on iTunes on Tuesday morning with little advance warning -- arrive steeped in echoes of the past, in at least one case quite literally: 

"Without You," a strummy acoustic number overlaid with harmony vocals by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, reportedly dates back to sessions for the two singers' 1973 album as a long-haired vocal duo deeply opposed to shirts.

But the other tunes on "Extended Play," newly composed by Buckingham and co-produced by him and L.A. studio pro Mitchell Froom, feel no less rooted in earlier iterations of this on-again/off-again institution.

"Miss Fantasy" has some of the folky back-porch guitar action of "Never Going Back Again," while the stripped-down "It Takes Time" could be Buckingham's version of Christine McVie's big piano ballad, "Songbird." And opener "Sad Angel," which you can hear below, shimmers with the glossy textures of 1987's "Tango in the Night." (Incidentally, if you want to get a sense of Fleetwood Mac's enduring influence on synthed-up young rock acts like Phoenix, go straight to "Tango" -- it looms larger these days than the vaunted "Rumours" does.)

Nothing about this self-reference surprises, of course, especially given that Fleetwood Mac is in the midst of a giant arena tour that will bring the band to the Hollywood Bowl on May 25 and Anaheim's Honda Center on May 28. Old hits are what the members are playing onstage -- "Don't Stop," "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way," "Silver Springs" -- so old hits are what the members are hearing in their heads.

And yet "Extended Play" -- Fleetwood Mac's first studio output since "Say You Will" in 2003 -- doesn't sound stale or overworked; indeed, the songs have an impressive crispness (after only a handful of spins, anyway) that makes their familiarity seem less like evidence of a tapped creative supply than like proof that this is simply the kind of music Fleetwood Mac writes.

"I remember you," Buckingham sings over and over again near the end of "Miss Fantasy," and he might be addressing his own melody. But it's a good one. You'll remember it too.

Get the EP on iTunes $3.96

First Single "Sad Angel"

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac "Extended Play" - "a joyous 18 minutes, strongly melodic, filled with dreamy hooks

New music review: 
Extended Play, Fleetwood Mac
By Bernard Perusse

The Montreal Gazette

It wasn't quite the blindside of David Bowie's sudden emergence in January with new music. Lindsey Buckingham had started the jungle telegraph with an announcement at Fleetwood Mac's April 6 concert in Philadelphia that the group would release an EP of new material "in a few days." 

But the actual appearance of the music yesterday on iTunes still came as a surprise in an era when release dates are etched in stone and the hype machine gets going ages before the music surfaces. 

Four tracks from the Mac - one of them a rediscovered oldie - is not the feat Bowie accomplished with 17 unheard songs. But it shares the same decade-long gestation period: this is the group's first fresh recording since the 2003 album Say You Will. 

And it's a joyous 18 minutes. 

Fans will read all sorts of meanings into the lyrics, which are hard not to connect with Buckingham's often-troubled relationship with Stevie Nicks. It is, after all, the backdrop for rock n' roll's longest-running soap opera. 

"It's still evolving, and that's the beauty of it too. I've known Stevie since high school. We were a couple for many, many years, and we've been a musical couple forever," Buckingham said to Rolling Stone. "After all this time you would think there was nothing left to discover, nothing left to work out, no new chapters to be written. But that is not the case - there are new chapters to be written." 

"I had a really good time working with him for four days at his house. I got to hang out with his family and his kids, his grown up kids, and really connect with him again. We're pretty proud of what we have done, and we're looking at it through the eyes of wisdom now, instead of through the eyes of jealousy and resentment and anger," Nicks told the same publication. 

""Hello, hello sad angel, have you come to fight the war?" Buckingham and Nicks sing in harmony during the killer chorus of opening track Sad Angel, an uptempo, catchy pop-rocker written by Buckingham. In many ways, in fact, the entire EP sounds like a Buckingham solo release: strongly melodic, filled with dreamy hooks and neurotically self-aware. 

Without You, which, tellingly, comes from the pre-Mac Buckingham-Nicks era, is the sole track penned by Nicks. It finds the two in a grizzled update of the Everly Brothers sound: over a gorgeous, crisp acoustic jangle, Nicks's rough nasality blends with Buckingham's high tenor in a celebration of where the two have brought each other. The perspective might be 40 years old, but it seems oddly poignant now. 

It Takes Time, a stark, but sweet piano ballad, finds Buckingham's protagonist struggling to connect with his own feelings, while Miss Fantasy is quite the stunner: a sunshiny, bittersweet look back, with a chorus that evokes the Beach Boys. As Nicks comes in on harmony, the track soars higher than we could have hoped for. 

No word yet on when, or even whether, a physical release will follow. 

Fleetwood Mac release new four-track EP on iTunes without warning - Immediately goes Top 10

The songs are the band's first new material since 2003, but there is no news on whether an album will follow
Sean Michaels
The Guardian.co.uk

Fleetwood Mac have unveiled their first new music in a decade. Without fanfare or a marketing campaign,

the band released their four-song EP direct to iTunes on 30 April.

The release, simply titled Extended Play, comprises a quartet of tunes: three originals by Lindsey Buckingham and one by Stevie Nicks, written in 1973 when the pair were still the duo Buckingham Nicks. This is hardly a set of sexagenarians' basement tapes: Without You – not be confused with the Danny Kirwan-written Mac song of the same name – and Sad Angel are as shiny as Rumours, and even the lonely piano ballad, It Takes Time, has a dramatic synths/strings coda.

Buckingham revealed plans for the EP at a gig in Philadelphia earlier this month – the band have been performing some of the new songs on their current tour. "It's the best stuff we've done in a long time," he said, promising that the record would be out "in a few days". It took a few weeks, instead, but within hours of appearing on iTunes, Extended Play had appeared in the digital shop's top 10 chart, though it has since dropped.

"We all felt that it would be great to go into the studio and record new material before embarking on this tour and the result has been remarkable," Buckingham said in a statement. Nicks has previously indicated that Fleetwood Mac would only record another full-length if she felt certain fans would buy it. "Big, long albums don't seem to be what everybody wants these days," she told Billboard in February. "[Let's] see if the world does want more music from us … If we get that feeling, that they do want another 10 songs, we can reassess."

One of Buckingham's new songs is an explicit response to Nicks's musical reticence. "At the moment [Sad Angel] was being written, I was really thinking about the fact that [Stevie] and I were not agreeing on the idea of an album," he recently told MSN. "The chorus is, 'Hello, sad angel, have you come to fight the war?' It goes on to talk about 'the crowd's calling out for more' … [Sad Angel and Miss Fantasy] are songs about Stevie and me."

Prior to Extended Play, Fleetwood Mac's most recent new recording was the 2003 album Say You Will. That record reached No 6 on the UK album charts, and achieved gold sales, but fell well short of the band's commercial peak from 1975 to 1987. The band have sold more than 100m albums worldwide.

Fleetwood Mac are currently in the midst of a North American tour, with plans to visit the UK and Europe this fall.

Fleetwood Mac "Extended Play"
Current Top iTunes Albums Charts

# 3 - Canada
# 3 - Ireland
# 5 - USA
# 6 - Netherlands
# 6 - Sweden
#10 - UK
#10 - Finland
#11 - Australia
#11 - Norway
#21 - New Zealand
#25 - Germany
#30 - Belgium
#41 - South Africa
#44 - Spain
#48 - Poland
#54 - Switzerland
#90 - Denmark
#91 - France

Get the EP on iTunes

REVIEW | PHOTOS: Classic Rockers Fleetwood Mac Perform Live in Kansas City 4/30

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE

KANSAS CITY, MO - Sprint Center

April 30, 2013

Fleetwood Mac gives big crowd reasons to look back and ahead

by Timothy Finn

The Kansas City star

When this tour was announced, the initial reaction was dubious. Fleetwood Mac hadn’t been on the road in more than three years. Its previous appearance in Kansas City exceeded that: May 2009, and back then the band looked as if it might be delivering its unofficial swan song.

Four years later, no one is younger than 63, and its oldest member, bassist John McVie, will turn 68 in November. Yes, the world is turning, and time makes you bolder and older, but Fleetwood Mac somehow manages to keep its chain intact.

Tuesday night, more than 12,500 fans showed up to watch a group founded as a British blues band nearly 50 years ago reprise nearly two dozen songs from the past 38 years of its catalog, including several from the fabled “Rumours” album, which celebrated its 35th anniversary last year.

Surprisingly, this show was more polished and energetic than the 2009 show. The setlist was significantly different, too. It included a brand-new song and one drawn from the days when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham had not yet joined the band.

As he was back in 2009, Buckingham was the focal point for much of the show, as much for some of his guitar-god pyrotechnics (electric and acoustic) as anything. He was the only one on stage, as drummer Mick Fleetwood pointed out, who didn't leave the stage for a minute of the two and a half hour show. (The four were backed by two singers, a guitarist, a keyboardist and a percussionist.)

Despite that, he was nearly overshadowed by Nicks, 64, who is the gypsy-spirit, if not the soul, of this band. Women of several generations still adore her; at least two who looked no more than one-third her age showed up Tuesday night in Rhiannon costume. And she gave them reason to cheer. She has pretty much given up all the dancing and twirling, and her voice has lost range, but she still sings with plenty of heft in her lead vocals and her harmonies with Buckingham.

From the outset, it was evident this is the Buckingham-Nicks band. They are exes, but in concert that estrangement disappears, like Richard and Linda Thompson or George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Or Sonny and Cher. They took the stage last, together, like a couple. That dynamic resonates through the show. More than once there were displays of affection, during and between songs. Halfway through, they sang “Without You,” a song from their Buckingham-Nicks days, back when they were more innocent and naive, Buckingham said.

The rest of the show was pretty much a greatest-hits rundown. Its 23 songs featured more than half of “Rumours,” several from “Tusk,” a peppy new song called “Sad Angel” that was neither sad nor angelic and one of Nicks’ better-known solo hits, “Stand Back.” They altered the arrangements of a few songs, like “Tusk,” which was slowed a bit and included some surf-guitar in its intro. Otherwise, songs were played like everyone remembers them.

There were several explosive moments, none bigger than “Go Your Own Way,” which included Buckingham’s second-most volcanic guitar solo (the one during “I’m So Afraid” was first) and ignited a voracious and immediate sing-along. “Don’t Stop” was another. Some of the quieter moments were stellar, too, like “Landslide” and “Never Going Back Again,” which was given a bluesier treatment.

The sound was a mixed-bag. I listened from the floor for about five songs, and it was fine. Then I took a spot at the top of the lower-level, where, during the more percussive songs, a noticeable (and distracting) echo was apparent from off the back wall. Otherwise I thought the sound was OK, but others expressed otherwise..

They wrapped up the night with “Silver Springs,” a song from the “Rumours” session, and then “Say Goodbye,” a song Buckingham told the crowd he wrote about 10 years ago to put into some perspective his relationship with Nicks, which now exceeds 40 years.

It was a fitting valediction to a night filled with nostalgia, but in a larger context it seemed like “Don’t Stop” was a better closer. At least for this night, this band sounded like it has a lot more tomorrows to think about.

SETLIST

Second Hand News; The Chain; Dreams; Sad Angel; Rhiannon; Not That Funny; Tusk; Sisters of the Moon; Sara; Big Love; Landslide; Never Going Back Again; Without You; Gypsy; Eyes of the World; Gold Dust Woman; I’m So Afraid; Stand Back; Go Your Own Way. Encore: World Turning; Don’t Stop; Silver Springs; Say Goodbye.

Photos by Joe Ledford - The Kansas City Star
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