FLEETWOOD MAC Live in Dublin June 13, 2019

Fleetwood Mac roll back the years with RDS stunner
BY: STUART CLARK
Hotpress

Despite the Lindsey Buckingham-shaped hole on stage, the band were in serious crowd-pleasing mood, says Stuart Clark

When they last played Dublin in 2015, it was obvious from the body language and the yawning space between them on stage that all was not well between Lindsey Buckingham and the rest of Fleetwood Mac. Even so, it was still one hell of a shock when his services were dispensed with before this latest lap of the world.

I know of quite a few conscientious objectors who aren't in the RDS tonight to see whether Tom Petty's former Heartbreakers lieutenant Mike Campbell and Crowded House's Neil Finn can between them fill the Lindsey-shaped hole to the right of the drum-riser. The answer is they can’t – nobody can - but let us not forget that four of the people who magicked up the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk, Mirage and Tango In The Night are still present and correct.

Opening with a rambunctious version of ‘The Chain’ – the Mac have always kicked considerably more ass live than in the studio – and following it up with the close harmony swoon of ‘Little Lies’, it’s evident that the reconfigured band are in serious crowd-pleasing mood tonight.

Occupying as she does that middle ground between Homer’s The Odyssey and Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, I was a bit taken aback to see Stevie Nicks wandering past the Permanent TSB on Grafton Street on Wednesday afternoon. Tonight, though, in front of a seriously sold-out Showgrounds she is once again not quite of this world. Her first solo turn is ‘Dreams’, a song that despite being played approximately every 27.2 minutes on classic hits radio has lost none of its spellbinding allure.

Neil Finn takes care of the vocal heavy lifting for the first time on 'Second Hand News', and proves himself to be more than able for the task. Dublin being a lot colder at this time of year than L.A., he's wrapped up in a Rupert The Bear-style green scarf. The crowd's cockles are warmed by the rendition of 'Black Magic Woman', which features some fabulous interplay between Finn and Campbell - who's one hell of a cool dude guitarist. Quite how much he can see from beneath the heavy duty shades he's wearing is debatable. The song also serves as a reminder of how fine a keys player the perma-smiling Christine McVie is. She struggles to hit the high notes on the following 'Everywhere', but hey...

Nicks is at her sublime best again on ‘Rhiannon’, with the "Would you stay if she promised you heaven?” line a seductively delivered tease that puts goosepimples on this writer’s goosepimples.

The first call and response of the show comes when Mick Fleetwood, sounding uncannily like Chas Smash at the start of 'One Step Beyond', commandeers 'World Turning'. His exhortations to "unleash the hounds" as a bongo is pulverised don't go unheeded. The greatest showman drummer of all time? He's definitely there or thereabouts.

Having told us he loves our dirty old town, Mike Campbell lends 'Oh Well' a distinctly southern Elmer Fudd-ish drawl. Five decades on, it remains a fine slice of dirty blues.

A reminder of Neil Finn’s other job comes halfway through when, following a Mick Fleetwood big up, he strums the opening notes of 'Don't Dream It's Over'. When Stevie joins in, it's genuinely gobsmacking. She dedicates 'Landslide' to "my good friend Joe Elliott who's from here... well, I hope he is." She's sort of right. Anyway, it's easily her best performance of the night.

There's laughter from the band as they fluff the intro to 'Hold Me': the execution thereafter is pure pop perfection. Also falling into that category is 'Go Your Own Way', inadvertently the cheeriest break-up song ever, which survives not being sung by its author Lindsey Buckingham.

The double-whammy encore of ‘Freefallin'' – somewhere up above us Mr. Petty is shaking a serious leg – and ‘Don’t Stop’, another song that still sounds factory fresh after all these years, bring the curtain down on what, by even Fleetwood Mac’s high standards, is a stunning show.

THE MAC CHECK INTO PLUSH DIGS AHEAD OF SOLD-OUT DUBLIN GIG

Mick Fleetwood, Christine and John McVie, Neil Flynn and Mike Campbell were pictured entering the five-star Merrion Hotel in Dublin on Tuesday June 11th.

Singer songwriter Stevie Nicks is staying at a different hotel.

PHOTOS Fleetwood Mac Live in Landgraaf, Netherlands June 10th at Pink Pop Festival

June 10 - Landgraaf, Netherlands - Pink Pop Festival

Fleetwood Mac Live in Werchter - June 8, 2019

Fleetwood Mac offered a refined best of Werchter Boutique
LUC LORFÈVRE
Moustique

Elegant and enthusiastic, the Anglo-American group celebrated with emotion fifty years before 45,000 fans. Mosquito was in the plain of Werchter to witness what looked like the last Belgian concert of a rock legend.

Despite the qualifying match of the Red Devils, despite the threats of the storm Miguel, more than 45,000 Belgians were present this Saturday at Werchter Boutique. This 2019 edition featured more musical aperitifs ( The Pretenders ) or less (the others) digests before welcoming Fleetwood Mac for the second European leg of his tour fiftieth anniversary and for, no doubt also, his last appearance in Belgium.

Fleetwood Mac on stage in 2019 is an enthusiastic group whose timeless "classic rock" repertoire always lights up with one or the other surprise. Fleetwood Mac, after fifty years of a story worthy of a soap with all that it includes excesses, betrayals, ruptures and reconciliations, it is a formation that brings together today the elite. Either the two irremovable founding members who gave their name to the group (71-year-old drummer Mick "Fleetwood", 73-year-old bassist John "Mac" Vie), English keyboardist / singer Christine McVie, the cultured Stevie Nicks, the guitarist Mike Campbell (former right-hand man of Tom Petty and Heartbreakers member) and Neil Finn (leader of Crowded House). Yes, a band of rock stars accustomed to stadiums able to play everything with their eyes closed but who, as with the Stones or the side of the E Street Band, remember that to last you must also continue to live and enjoy.

Logically, Fleetwood Mac focuses his repertoire on his two albums that brought him glory. No less than five songs are taken from the LP "Fleetwood Mac" (1975) and seven are from the huge "Rumors" (1977) which, with its 40 million copies, remains one of the most popular albums. sold out of history. The highlight of Werchter's two-hour concert is without hesitation any of Stevie Nicks' poignant interpretation of Rihannon . Covered with dark-colored shawls and a black dress of pity, Stevie Nicks puts all her emotion into this " song about a Welsh witch " as she presented it in the 70s. Behind, on the screens, wild horses gallop in the waves while the guitars Mike Campbell and Neil Finn duel. And to add more in the format " postcard" , it will be specified that it is pile-pile at the end of Rihannon, that the dark night fell on Werchter. Very very strong…

Rihannon arrives at the first hour of the show. A perfect first hour where the pieces are linked without taking into account the times: The Chain in intro; the MTV Little Lies hit Nick echoes his accomplice - especially moved this Saturday night - Christine McVie; Everywhere sung at the center of the stage by the same Christine McVie, Gipsy performed by a weightless Stevie Nicks or Second Hand News , a break song from "Rumors". The double album "Tusk" is, however, not visited. Probably because it symbolizes too much the investment of the guitarist / producer Lindsey Buckingham, a great absentee of this anniversary tour. On the other hand, Fleetwood Mac unearths the Black Magic Woman of its blues period. Written by Peter Green in 1968 and popularized by Santana on her first album released a year later, Black Magic Woman is now "the point of view of a woman" in the voice of Stevie Nicks who is completely embracing this prayer hippie evoking a mesmerizing female creature " who has the power to make blind" .

Fleetwood Mac version 2019 is not immune to clichés and tributes. Mick Fleetwood's long drum solo works well in a plain but you can do without it. Tube among the tubes, Go Your Own Way is one of the few titles that seems to run in autopilot, but Fleetwood Mac had to play it. The Crowded House Neil Finn has the opportunity to remember his science pop on the ballad for lighters and smartphone Do not Dream Is Over, included in a setlist that also includes a salute to the late Tom Petty with his cover of Free Fallin sublimated a new once by Stevie Nicks. Other highlights of this " back to seventies" evening include Christine McVie's You Make Lovin Fun and the "Cocaine" song by "Rumors" Gold Dust Woman . A very nice evening. 

REVIEWS - FLEETWOOD MAC Live in Berlin June 6, 2019

Fleetwood Mac in the forest stage
Go your own way
Powerful and dignified in spite of little wobbly: Fleetwood Mac gave a fine concert in the Berlin 

Waldbühne. NADINE LANGE
Der Tagesspiegel

Drama, quarrels and rearrangements - they are part of Fleetwood Mac even in old age. Just like their constant since 1967 rhythm section, consisting of the two founding members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. In the preliminary final chapter of the sometimes soap opera-mature band biography guitarist Lindsey Buckingham had to go because he and his ex-sweetheart Stevie Nicks just could not get along. At first he threatened to sue the rest of the band, but then settled out of court with her.

Buckingham, who played a key role in the most successful phase of Fleetwood Mac as a musician, composer and producer, is being replaced on stage by two newcomers. His vocal parts are taken over by Neil Finn, formerly of Crowded House, on guitar replaced by Mike Campbell, who once played for Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. The two are doing well at the only Germany concert of the group on Thursday evening in the Berlin Waldbühne. Although Finn irritated in the opening piece "The Chain" first by a slightly too dashing and over-motivated lecture, but that is soon, also because the pieces with female lead vocals move into the foreground.

Full Review




Great singalongs and little magical moments: That's how it was with Fleetwood Mac in Berlin
by Christina Wenig
Discover

Almost everything would have been all right: While heavy rain and storm clouds hung over Berlin, the beginning of the current European tour of Fleetwood Mac threatened to fall into the water. The band still came to the Berlin Waldbühne, as well as about 20,000 fans, the storm subsided - and it was followed by an unforgettable evening.

Full Review


Fleetwood Mac in the forest stage
by Frank Junghanel
Berliner-zeitung.de

The Fleetwood Mac show on the Waldbühne was opened with a special effect that you would not have liked. "Thunder only happens when it's raining" Stevie Nicks sings in "Dreams". Donnerregen formed the meteorological supporting program for the performance of the - here fits the superlative once - legendary band, which on Thursday (!) In Berlin has given the first of only three European concerts.

Full Review


Fleetwood Mac rock the forest stage despite rain
At the only German concert, the mega band of the seventies and eighties plays with many hits through 52 years of band history.

by Ulrike Borowczyk
Morgenpost.de

Both arms raised in greeting, Mick Fleetwood is a fleshed victory sign. A good omen. And in fact, Fleetwood Macs do it. Already in the second song "Little Lies" is the sold out Waldbühne head. The smartphones at the ready to record the gig for eternity sing and dance with the audience.

Full Review

INTERVIEW Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie speak with the UK's Independent

Fleetwood Mac: ‘We’ll burn in hell if we don’t play Glastonbury one day’
Cocaine, fights, love affairs and break-ups. Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie speak to Chris Harvey about the success, the hardship and the torment of the band as they prepare to play Wembley in June

The Independent

This strange, funny band is complicated,” says Mick Fleetwood. “It’s all about people, it’s not horrific.” I’m talking to the man who has been the only member of Fleetwood Mac to appear in every line-up of the band since they were formed. When they step out on stage at Wembley Stadium in June, that will be coming up to 52 years ago.

We’ve been chatting about the period when Fleetwood Mac moved from stars to superstars with the release of Rumours in 1977. It was during the era of Seventies rock excess, when band mythologies are wreathed in tales of groupies, sexual exploitation, drug addiction and death.

Fleetwood Mac were no strangers to drugs: LSD had cost the group its original leader, Peter Green, at the end of the Sixties, and cocaine was an integral part of the band’s Seventies. Fleetwood wrote in his autobiography that Rumours was written with “white powder peeling off the wall in every room of the studio”.

“I think we were damned lucky that our music never went down the drain because we went down the drain,” the 71-year-old drummer says now, “and I think in truth there are moments where you could have said we got pretty close, you know.

“Cocaine was everywhere, people who worked in banks [used it]. Personally, I had a run on that lifestyle, but fortunately, I didn’t get into any other type of drug that would have been more damaging – I don’t even know why, but I’m very thankful. Brandy and cocaine and beer,” he says, naming his poisons, as he describes the 20 years of “high-powered lunacy” that he put his body through. “That lifestyle became something that had to come to an end… hopefully, you come out of it with your trousers still on, and not taken out in a plastic bag.”