One of my earliest music memories is Peter Green singing Need Your Love so Bad, and his composition Green Manalishi (with the two prong crown), which to my pre-teen brain sounded bewilderingly mystical. Strange to now see Fleetwood Mac, in its present form, live in 2013, over 30 years later.
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Mick Fleetwood and John McVie command the audience’s attention as the band opens with Second Hand News. This position is swiftly usurped by flamboyant performers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks and Buckingham: the two former lovers hold the audience’s attention throughout the performance, their body language indicating that drama, tension and chemistry are alive and well. We can only watch and make of it what we will. Lindsey periodically moves to the front of the stage, crouching down with his guitar, to the obvious delight of the fans clustered at his feet.
Stevie Nicks has, gratifyingly, lost none of her hippy charm, she’s all drippy scarves, butterfly gestures and long hair (at 65 – yes, it still looks great). A tanned Lindsey Buckingham looks as if he’s been whisked straight from a California health spa.
The after effects of Fleetwood Mac's two shows in Dublin September 20th and 21st are being felt on the Top 100 Albums Chart in Ireland. Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" moves up the chart this week to No.27 from No.87. "Greatest Hits" moves down to No.83 from No.76 last week and surprisingly "The Dance" re-enters the chart at No.94 in only it's 8th week on the chart.
Top 100 Albums Chart
# 27 (87) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 83 (76) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
# 94 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Dance
UK - October 5, 2013
With 3 shows last week in London leading up to today's UK Chart Update (dated October 5th), Fleetwood Mac have three albums within the Top 100 - two of these are re-entries.
Fleetwood Mac's 4CD Box Set "25 Years - The Chain" re-enters the chart this week at No.22. "Rumours" moves up to No.53 from No.74 and "The Very Best Of" re-enters the chart at No.87. On the Digital Top 40 Albums Chart "Rumours" moves up to No.31 from No.78 last week. On the Catalogue Albums Chart "Rumours" is top 5 sitting at No.5
Top 100 Albums Chart
# 22 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years The Chain [box set]
# 53 (74) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 87 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
Top 40 Digital Albums Chart
# 31 (78) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Top 40 Catalogue Albums Chart
# 5 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Scotland - Oct 5, 2013
In Scotland, "25 Years - The Chain" is back in the Top 40 at No.16 this week while "The Dance" continues to be popular in it's 31st week on the chart moving down to No.18 from No.14 last week.
Top 40 Albums Chart
# 16 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years The Chain [box set]
# 18 (14) Fleetwood Mac - The Dance
U.S.A. - October 5, 2013
Fleetwood Mac's Starbucks exclusive Opus Collection in it's 3rd week on the US Top 200 moves down to No.125 from No.79 last week. On the Top 200 Current albums chart which are new releases, the album is sitting at No.119.
Top 200 Albums Chart
# 125 (79) Fleetwood Mac - Opus Collection
# 184 (145) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Top 200 Current Albums Chart
# 119 (79) Fleetwood Mac - Opus Collection
Australia - September 30, 2013 Top 100 Albums Chart
# 14 (7) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years The Chain [box set]
# 78 (71) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 85 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
Top 50 Catalogue Albums Chart
# 1 (1) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years The Chain [box set]
# 19 (11) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
# 20 (26) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
# 36 (34) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Top 50 Digital Albums Chart
# 33 (22) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
Top 40 DVD Chart
# 7 (7) Fleetwood Mac - The Dance
New Zealand - Sept 30, 2013 Top 40 Albums Chart
# 5 (5) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years The Chain
This week's NME Digital edition is available... In it Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks speak about Christine's return.
This link at NME has the interview video that provided the text version of the article... If you've seen the video, you've read the article... Nothing new. If you want the digital version of the mag.. Check out NME
They were back – and talking to each other as well. But despite the hits, fine musicianship and Stevie Nicks's array of shawls, there was still one thing missing.
You're looking at your watch, consulting the set list from a recent Fleetwood Mac gig in Dublin and thinking: it has to happen soon. We're running out of songs.
But we're 20-odd tunes into the first of the band's three-night London run and the icing on the cake made of soap has not materialised. We've endured Mick Fleetwood's mammoth drum solo on World Turning, one that has lasted eight minutes at previous stops on this world tour. Tonight it clocks in at four. We've had Don't Stop, one of this outlandishly successful band's most galumphing hits, the song where you assumed It Would Happen. But no. The Mac have gone off, and come back, and Stevie Nicks is trilling Silver Springs, and there is no sign of the return of the second of Fleetwood Mac's two Macs. That Mac is not back.
One of the major draws of these gigs – their first in the UK since 2009 – has been the rumour that Christine McVie might appear as a special guest. The Birmingham melodicist retired from the band in 1998, technically for the second time, citing a fear of flying. Touring with her ex-husband, bassist John McVie, and weariness of the long-running dramas of her band might well have been contributing factors.
But the USP of this umpteenth Fleetwood Mac reunion is that everyone is getting along quite swimmingly. Indeed this Gordian sexual knot of a group have long since put their libidos and coke habits behind them, and tonight are even mining the residues of the chemistry for laughs (and sniffles). Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the California duo who joined the blues-rock outfit in 1974 and turned it into gold dust, are holding hands, hugging at the end of Sara, and singing at one another. Mick Fleetwood – an increasingly jester-like figure, sitting worryingly near a gong – affectionately clasps hands with Nicks at the end of one song. Their affair in 1977 complicated an already star-crossed love polygon that has defined this band as much as their mellifluous soft rock.
Still, despite all the lovely closure, Christine does not show (although she does the following night). Anyone hoping to hear Little Lies, or the barbed You Make Loving Fun (written about Christine McVie's relationship with the band's lighting guy), or even Hold Me, the band's later-period US hit about another McVie conquest, Dennis Wilson, is going home a little disappointed tonight.
Probably not by much though. This nearly three-hour set is nothing if not generous value, packing in significant swaths of Rumours, the band's most famous album. It has sold something like 40m copies, a figure that, in all likelihood, no one album released in the 21st century will ever match. Its reissue entered the UK charts at No 3 last February. Of its vast riches, Go Your Own Way remains a sulky gem. It ends the band's first set with Buckingham mock-chasing Nicks around the stage and letting the front rows paw at his guitar.
It's salutary to be reminded what a fine player Lindsey Buckingham is. He's lithe and leather-jacketed, full of thoughtful song preambles. Hearing him playing Big Love solo – hollering the words, plucking at his hollow-bodied electric – is one of the unexpected highlights of a set that can sometimes feel like a rewrite of history.
It seems unthinkable now, but there was a time when not everyone thought Fleetwood Mac were cool, or survivors, or ripe for homage by Haim or Florence and the Machine. Indeed, if you were alive in the 1980s, Fleetwood Mac were the grown-ups' music, and as such as attractive as uncooked liver. Mac songs seemed pat, mid-tempo affairs with needless, false harmonies. (They all hated each other!) It wasn't just a question of age – the Rolling Stones were old – it was that Fleetwood Mac's music felt fluffy and smug. At least it did from the vehement hauteur of the spiky, directional 80s.
Now, though, 30 years on, one of their newer songs, Sad Angel, is pacier than you'd imagine. And there is widespread respect for Fleetwood Mac's awkward, angry Tusk album of 1979. Tonight the title track exudes bitterness, evil laughter and deranged keyboard horns: there is nothing pat about it.
Arguably it was Courtney Love who first rehabilitated Fleetwood Mac – or at least Stevie Nicks – thanking "Rhiannon the Welsh Witch" on the sleeve of Hole's Pretty on the Inside album (1991), and often declaring Nicks her hero. At the O2 Nicks recalls being Buckingham's "hippie girlfriend", accepted into the Mac package when Fleetwood hired Buckingham.
She is the sort of woman who paints angels, and wants to set Welsh epic The Mabinogion on the screen with the help of the Game of Thrones creator, but down to earth with it. Tonight her buddy Christine may not be here, but Nicks's throaty husk sounds masterful on Gold Dust Woman. And – living up to billing quite spectacularly – she has a different shawl for nearly every song.
Fleetwood Mac Sept 27th - London
Photos by Muzzy_ Full Gallery
LANDSLIDE:
Dedicated to Christine McVie
RHIANNON:
Stevie changed up the ending of Rhiannon a bit during the last show... I thought Friday's performance was exceptionally strong and I really liked what she did with the ending.
GOLD DUST WOMAN: is still really creepy and eerie at the end when Stevie's voice gets all echoee and she deeply growls into the mic... It's just an awesome song live and this extended version they are doing on this tour is really cool. Most of the video from the last show is posted below.
Fleetwood Mac Live in London September 27, 2013 - The O2 Arena
Yet one more memorable night! Big thanks to Fleetwood Mac for another great show... You never disappoint! And a massive thanks especially to Christine McVie. You've made an extremely large amount of people very happy with your return... Please don't make it another 15 years before we hear from you again with Fleetwood Mac!
Check out Erin Brown's pics from the show... 37 of them in a gallery HERE.
Rock’s greatest soap opera rolled into London this week as Fleetwood Mac began their UK tour with a marathon concert dominated by the hits of the Seventies. Emotional punch was added by the presence of two ex-members who were major players in the Anglo-American group’s chequered history.
For a rollicking encore of Don’t Stop, the band were joined at the O2 Arena by keyboardist Christine McVie — onstage with them for the first time in 15 years.
Earlier, singer Stevie Nicks dedicated a poignant Landslide to original Sixties guitarist Peter Green, who was watching from the wings.
As a generation-spanning audience demonstrated, our love for Fleetwood Mac shows little sign of abating, partly because their biggest hits are still so intertwined with their love lives.
The classic 1977 album Rumours was made amid drug-fuelled excess and personal turmoil, with drummer Mick Fleetwood in the throes of a divorce, the marriage of bassist John and keyboardist Christine McVie on the rocks, and the romance between singer Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham in meltdown.
To complicate matters, Nicks and Fleetwood later had their own two-year affair.
As the return, albeit for just one song, of Christine McVie confirmed, everyone is the best of friends these days, although the sexual tensions of old lingered in songs like Don’t Stop (Christine’s kiss-off to John) and Go Your Own Way (Lindsey’s bitter adios to Stevie).
The Buckingham-Nicks relationship was also played out for theatrical effect onstage. The former couple, a formidable creative double-act, hugged each other and slow danced during Sara, and walked on holding hands before the encores. At one point, Lindsey — to loud cheers — gave Stevie a gentlemanly kiss on the hand.
Having played 47 American shows in 2013, the band were perfectly cooked. With McVie and Fleetwood providing a fluent rhythmic backbone, Buckingham drove the show musically, setting the tempo with some impressive soloing in the Rumours-era opening salvo of Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams.
But it is Nicks who gives the group their charisma. Teetering around in black stiletto boots, her microphone stand draped in hippy beads and scarves, she was mesmerising on Rhiannon and Landslide, the latter an acoustic duet with Buckingham.
Alongside the enduring excellence of their songs, it is also the presence of Nicks that connects the band — now all in their 60s — with a younger crowd. Most of the junior members of this audience were female, and it is no coincidence that the new acts most obviously influenced by the group’s classic hooks and harmonies are girl bands like The Pierces and Haim.
Fleetwood Mac’s ongoing appeal also says a lot about the value of experience. From the Stones at Glastonbury to Rod Stewart and Springsteen, many of this year’s best gigs have been played by the veterans, and there was certainly an impressive level of artistry on display here.
As Mick Fleetwood bellowed from his drumkit as the 11 o’clock curfew beckoned: ‘The Mac are back!’ Indeed they are.
The Fleetwood Mac tour continues tonight at the O2 Arena
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