Review | Photos | Video: Fleetwood Mac Live in Montreal - February 5, 2015

No weak links in Fleetwood Mac's chain
by Jordan Zivitz
Montreal Gazette

Photo: John Kenney
VIEW PHOTO GALLERY (17 photos)

For a band that was once famously defined by personal drama and rancour, Fleetwood Mac’s members were almost as generous toward one another as they were to the nearly 12,400 fans who spent 2 1/2 hours in their company at the Bell Centre Thursday night.

The narrative of this tour is the return of keyboardist Christine McVie, which completes the group’s most popular lineup for the first time since 1998. She certainly received her due welcome from the audience and from her bandmates, but the quintet shared the glory, both between its members and as an ensemble.

And what glory. There’s no new album to promote (although one is in the works), and the most recent numbers in Thursday’s show were from the 1987 disc Tango in the Night, with more than half of the set list drawn from the 1975 self-titled release and 1977’s world-conquering Rumours. But this didn’t feel like a nostalgic evening. The performance was absolutely contemporary and, with McVie back, there was an air both of taking care of unfinished business and setting up a new venture.

The crackling energy was there from the walk-on to The Chain, while drummer Mick Fleetwood’s clockwork timekeeping, John McVie’s strapping bass and Lindsey Buckingham’s swampy guitar telegraphed that the band’s locked-in interplay hadn’t diminished. (About the only wrong note of the night was a breakdown in the Bell Centre welcome staff’s usual military efficiency, with security checks causing a chaotic logjam at the entrance.)

Speaking of precision, Stevie Nicks made an early note that this was the 51st show of the tour. “In the beginning, I would have said: a) ‘Welcome, Montreal,’ and second, ‘Welcome, Chris.’ … Today I think we can say, with caution abandoned, ‘She’s ba-ack!’ ”

Charismatic even when she was rooted in place, Nicks went on to lose herself inside Dreams before Buckingham — the only member to routinely venture to the lip of the stage — led a bracing Second Hand News as if the 38-year-old cut was being shared for the first time. Although Christine McVie’s upper-register vocals were a touch strained in Everywhere (but appealingly earthy everywhere else), that sunny delight was also rejuvenated, and stripped of its ’80s gloss.

Buckingham offered his own welcome to McVie when he spoke of “beginning a profound and prolific new chapter.” It may not have been a coincidence that Fleetwood Mac’s most forward-thinking member said this before a mini-block from 1979’s Tusk, the band’s messy masterpiece of art over commercialism.

The title track’s marching-band strangeness remained delightfully odd — and not just by this group’s classicist standards — with Christine McVie on accordion, Buckingham playing the madman card to the hilt, and three auxiliary players contributing more than the almost imperceptible shading offered elsewhere. Nicks’s carefully possessed lead in Sisters of the Moon was supplemented by haunted harmonies from an understated trio of backup singers.

The quick-change pacing of the show’s first hour or so turned far more casual in the back half, starting with an intimate acoustic section that could have taken place in a club setting. Buckingham made conversation before his solo performance of Big Love, once “a contemplation on alienation and now a meditation on the power and importance of change.” True to his words, the solemn but flashy fingerpicking was a revelation, and far removed from the slick original. Nicks joined Buckingham for Landslide, stunning in its stillness, before the duo added a note of darkness to Never Going Back Again.

Over My Head saw the return of the full band, the introduction of Fleetwood’s front-of-stage “cocktail kit” and a reminiscence from Christine McVie about the time spent “sort of floundering, looking for a new guitarist” before Buckingham joined for the eponymous 1975 album. Setting up Gypsy, Nicks offered a history lesson of her own, a touching recollection of window shopping at San Francisco’s Velvet Underground rock-star clothing boutique before she was a star herself. The songs-and-stories format may have helped slow the show’s momentum, but they also helped make one of the top-selling bands in the world seem approachable.

The home stretch included a number of extended showcases: Gold Dust Woman climaxed with Nicks swaying across the stage in a glittering shawl; Buckingham enjoyed a caustic centrepiece in I’m So Afraid; Fleetwood had the stage to himself for a crazy-eyed shamanic routine in the middle of World Turning.

But of course, Go Your Own Way and Don’t Stop were the real climactic crowd-pleasers. The quintet’s camaraderie was at its strongest in the former, with the tireless Buckingham speeding around Nicks, who had donned a bejewelled top hat, and careering into John McVie.

Fleetwood’s splashy introductions of his colleagues in the encore were brimming with affection: Buckingham with his “beady eye on the future,” Nicks the “eternal romantic,” John McVie “always on my right-hand side,” Christine McVie “making all of this so complete — our songbird has returned.”

Nice tee-up, as McVie returned for a second encore of Songbird, delivering her most tender vocal of the night accompanied only by Buckingham. It was a poignant final word, given an equally poignant afterword when Nicks made an endearingly rambling speech. In all her cosmic wisdom, she credited the audience for willing McVie back into the band. Her gratitude for the circle being unbroken tied into Buckingham’s earlier prediction of a “profound and prolific new chapter.” We’ll see about prolific. In light of the rewards from Thursday’s concert, profound is a fait accompli.

Fleetwood Mac au Centre Bell en PHOTOS
Le Huffington Post Québec

Le groupe Fleetwood Mac était de passage au Centre Bell jeudi 5 février. Amorçant son spectacle avec des pièces de son célèbre album Rumours, le groupe a su ravir les 12 000 spectacteurs qui occupaient l'amphithéatre.

Voici la prestation en photos:

by David Kirouac

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Fleetwood Mac à Montréal: ce n'est qu'un au revoir
by Ismaël Houdassine
Photo Ben Pelosse
fr.canoe.ca

MONTRÉAL - C'était soirée nostalgie jeudi soir au Centre Bell pour l'ultime tournée du groupe mythique Fleetwood Mac. Baby-boomers et amateurs de folk rock atmosphérique 1970 se sont donné rendez-vous dans une ambiance où le quintette a enchaîné les succès.

Sans perdre de temps, les cinq membres du groupe britano-américain dont les vétérans Mick Fleetwood et John McVie (qui ont donné leur nom à la formation), pour la première fois réunis à Montréal, ont amorcé le spectacle en interprétant coup sur coup The Chain, You Make Loving Fun et le superbe Dreams, tous tirés de Rumours, leur légendaire album, vendu à 40 millions d'exemplaires.

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Photo: Ben Pelosse

Fleetwood Mac Au Centre Bell
La totale définitivement totale
by Sylvain Cormier
Le Devoir

Photo: Annik MH De Carufel

Mais comment donc avais-je pu sortir si pleinement satisfait la dernière fois, en 2009 ? Alors qu’elle n’était pas là ? Alors qu’il manquait tant de chansons à la liste des essentielles ? « Toutes jouées, toutes bien jouées », avais-je titré. Toutes ? Sans You Make Loving Fun, Over My Head, Say You Love Me, Little Lies ? Sans la ballade piano des ballades piano, exquise Songbird ? Comment avais-je pu me contenter d’un Fleetwood Mac sans Christine McVie ?

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DREAMS

Review | Video: Fleetwood Mac Return to Toronto - February 3, 2015

Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto
February 3, 2015 - Air Canada Centre

by Jane Stevenson
Toronto Sun

The return of The Mac proved to be just as sweet the second time around.

British-American ’70s folk-rockers Fleetwood Mac, boasting their most successful lineup of singers Stevie Nicks, keyboardist Christine McVie and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham (Nicks’ ex-boyfriend), bassist John McVie (Christine’s ex-husband) and drummer Mick Fleetwood, returned to the Air Canada Centre Tuesday night after performing at the same venue on the same tour with the same set list back in mid-October. No matter. Torontonians — another 17,000 or so of them — liked a double serving of The Mac particularly since this tour features the return of the 71-year-old Christine McVie who stayed off the road for 16 years.

With everyone else in the group in their mid to late 60s, there was no time like the present for this reunion.

Thankfully, the Fleetwood Mac back catalogue has held up so well with special mention to the songs from their beloved 1977 discs Rumours that’s sold 45 million albums and counting.

Not surprsingly, the group kicked off the night with The Chain from that album before McVie took over on lead vocals for You Make Loving Fun, also from Rumours.

“Welcome back, Toronto.” said Nicks in her usual black flowing outfit, black suede boots and various shawls throughout the night.

“Tonight is our 47th show and I think we can safely say, ‘She’s back!,’ ” added Nicks, referring to McVie. “So that being said, let’s get this party started!”

McVie told the crowd later: “I love you very much!”

What followed was a nostalgic but mostly riveting evening of music as the group, propelled by the guitar maniac that is still the fastfooted, lightning-fingered Buckingham, made their way through such crowd pleasers as the Nicks-sung Dreams and Rhiannon — with some twirling from her on that latter one — the McVieled Everywhere and the Buckingham-sung I Know I’m Not Wrong in the first third of the show.

Five other musicians and an impressively large video screen and smaller video strips certainly helped to fill out the group’s sounds and sights.

“Well, we were here not too long ago — I guess a few more people wanted to see us,” Buckingham said with a chuckle. “So we came back.... I think it’s safe to say we’ve seen our share of ups and downs and I think that kind of makes us what we are. In this particular moment, with the return of the beautiful Christine, she is a beautiful soul, and I think her return now signals the beginning of a poetic, profound and I think prolific new chapter of this band — Fleetwood Mac!”

The next two thirds of the main set saw such highlights as Tusk, with McVie breaking out the accordion, but the marching band appeared only on the big screen and not as a live accompanmient, sadly; Buckingham’s incredible guitar display and gutteral shrieks on Big Love, his quieter vocals but no less stellar playing on Never Going Back Again and plugging in big time for I’m So Afraid; and Nicks’ ’60s San Franreminiscent Gypsy and Gold Dust Woman (complete with gold shawl) with yet more twirling from her on both.

But the emotional centre of the show proved to be the pretty and delicate Landslide, with just Nicks and Buckingham on stage with the former couple holding hands toward the end of the song and again at its conclusion.

Otherwise, the tunes that made me sleepy last time did it to me again, Nicks’ Sisters of the Moon and Seven Wonders but these are small quibbles.

The mighty Mac is back and they don’t appear to be going away again anytime soon.

Fleetwood Mac Live in Toronto
T-MAK WORLD also reviewed the Toronto show and took the below shot of some fancy new footwear that I've never seen Stevie wear before... Check out the review and what Stevie had to say about her boots, along with more photos from the show, here.

Photo by T-MAK WORLD

Gypsy
Gold Dust Woman
Introductions
Don't Stop

Review | Videos: Fleetwood Mac Live in Buffalo, NY - January 31, 2015

Fleetwood Mac bewitches crowd at First Niagara Center
By Jeff Miers
Buffalonews.com

View Photo Gallery (18 Photos)

There needs to come a point when you believe in the band. Otherwise, you’re watching a classic rock jukebox.

We look for that moment when we forget about the baby sitter, the $200 or so spent on the ticket, the fact that we’ve heard these tunes more than a million times.

On Saturday, during Fleetwood Mac’s close-to-sold-out performance in First Niagara Center, that moment came early. Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham strode to the edge of the stage after the lights had been dimmed, looked around, said a brief hello to the front rows, and then dug into the swampy and sultry deep blues riff that signifies the beginning of the Mac’s evergreen hit, “The Chain.”

Buckingham hunkered down, dug into it, and made it plain to all that he had come not merely to collect a paycheck, but to play.

From there on, it was smooth sailing.

Buckingham led the version of Fleetwood Mac that most of us know and love – the group responsible for “Rumours,” “Tusk,” and “Tango In the Night” – through a hits-heavy set that walked the tightrope between easygoing ’70s pop-rock and deep-cutting avant-garde pop.

Of course, Buckingham is not the most famous member of Fleetwood Mac. That would be Stevie Nicks, his ex, and forevermore his partner in pop. Nicks is an icon, but Buckingham is a musical genius. On Saturday, their sparring made for abundant entertainment.

Fleetwood Mac has made a habit of including Buffalo in its tours since re-forming in the late ’90s. But this particular tour stop boasted something more than simply a run-through of “Rumours” and associated hits. This was in fact the first time area audiences have seen keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie perform with the band in more than 15 years. McVie’s tunes – her “You Make Loving Fun,” “Everywhere,” “Say You Love Me” and “Over My Head,” among others – offered soulful highlights. She seems to have lost nothing in the vocal department – she nailed every part she should have, and did so with soul.

This was a hits show, to be certain, but in Fleetwood Mac’s case, that needn’t be a negative. The group has scored platinum with some rather adventurous tunes, and a mid-set focus on the freak manifesto that is “Tusk” made this plain. Buckingham’s “I Know I’m Not Wrong” and “Tusk” led nicely into Nicks’ “Sisters of the Moon,” and earned the crowd’s respect, apparently. The place exploded.

Nicks doesn’t have the voice she once did, but then, who would? She’s in her later 60s now, and if she couldn’t hit the high notes during “Rhiannon” and “Dreams,” she wisely chose the low road, while three backing vocalists, joined by Buckingham and McVie, fleshed out the harmonies. None of it felt fake or forced – this was a band that seemed grateful to be playing for an appreciative audience.

Nicks told a particularly cool story that involved her trademark top hat, an accessory she was rarely seen without during Mac’s “Rumours” heyday. The singer told the assembled that it was during a tour stop in Buffalo – one assumes that it would have been the 1975 pre-”Rumours” stop that is recorded as having taken place at the old Century Theatre – that she purchased said hat. This brought a huge roar from the crowd, which was made up of a cross section of 50-, 40-, 30- and, surprisingly, 20-somethings.

Fleetwood Mac still has it, as Saturday’s show made plain. Everyone pulled their weight, especially the recently returned McVie, whose voice was pure gold.

But like every other Fleetwood Mac show since he joined the band in 1974, this one belonged to Lindsey Buckingham. He is one of the true pop geniuses to have emerged from the ’70s, and on Saturday, he proved it one more time.

Fleetwood Mac Live in Buffalo
T-MAK WORLD also reviewed the show... Check out their review here.

Gold Dust Woman
Silver Springs
< Don't Stop

Video: Fleetwood Mac Live in Washington, DC - January 30, 2015

Fleetwood Mac Live - Washington, DC
Verizon Center - January 30, 2015

Gypsy intro story.... Different angle from what you normally see.. Shot from the side of the stage showing Christine and John taking a break while Stevie tells her story.

Go Your Own way... Stevie let's a couple of people in the front row touch her tamborine as she passes by.

I Know I'm Not Wrong

Landslide... including the dedication

REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac Live in Providence, RI January 28, 2015

Fleetwood Mac celebrates its songbird’s return
by Andy Smith
Providence Journal

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — “She makes us all complete,” said Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood.

He was referring to singer and keyboard player Christine McVie, back with the band after a 16-year absence. Her return brings the band back to its most successful lineup, the one that sold a zillion copies of “Rumours” back in 1977.

McVie doesn’t have the mystic gypsy-witch appeal of Stevie Nicks, nor the guitar prowess of Lindsey Buckingham, but her presence solidifies the band — and she’s written some of the most appealing songs in their catalog.

Fans at the band’s show at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center Wednesday night looking for prime-time Fleetwood Mac got their wish, with a two-and-half hour show that included big chunks of “Rumours” and its predecessor, 1975′s “Fleetwood Mac.”

The three singers, McVie, Buckingham and Nicks, ranged across the front of the stage, with the rhythm section of Fleetwood and bassist John McVie just behind. At the back of the stage were some reinforcements — an additional guitarist, keyboard player and three backup singers.

As a wise man once said, we get by with a little help from our friends, and the augmented Fleetwood Mac mostly sounded good Wednesday. The exception was the drums, which were mixed too loud, particularly early in the show, and nearly drowned out the singing on numbers such as “Second Hand News.”

The show opened with a potent string of hits: “The Chain,” “You Make Loving Fun” “Dreams,” “Second Hand News,” and Nicks’ signature “Rhiannon.”

Band members were in a talkative mood, heaping praises upon McVie. They had come to Providence from New York, which has been spared the brunt of the snowstorm, but thanked the packed audience at the Dunk for coming out after the storm.

Buckingham took center stage on a rocking “I Know I’m Not Wrong” “Tusk” and “Big Love,” the latter a showcase for his solo acoustic guitar playing.

The band offered some interesting new takes on familiar songs.

For “Never Going Back Again,” Buckingham and Nicks sang very quietly, sometimes just above a whisper. There was an extended version of “Gold Dust Woman,” with Nicks donning a glittering gold shawl over her black outfit. The song faded to a ghostly echo as Nicks turned her back to the audience and stretched the shawl out like an angel’s wings.

Not that familiarity is a bad thing. “Go Your Own Way,” once it revved up, it had the crowd dancing and singing along, while Nicks shook her tambourine festooned with streamers and Buckingham leaned his guitar over the front row.

For their encore, the band did “World Turning,” with a drum solo from Fleetwood while he exhorted the audience (“Give it up!) through his headset mike. I have a “Just say no” policy towards drum solos, but many in the audience seemed to like it.

“Don’t Stop” might be over-played by now, but it had the audience singing along anyway.

The last word — or at least the last song — fittingly went to McVie, who did “Songbird” solo until she was finally joined by Buckingham at the finish.

VIDEO | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Uniondale, NY January 25, 2015

Fleetwood Mac Live - Uniondale, NY
Nassau Coliseum - January 25, 2015

TUSK
SILVER SPRINGS

SO AFRAID

GOLD DUST WOMAN

Fleetwood Mac Live in New York City and Uniondale, NY
Photos by Paul Searing
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