Fleetwood Mac News

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Stevie Nicks sends off Bonnaroo 2022 weekend in timeless form

Stevie Nicks sends off Bonnaroo 2022 weekend in timeless form: 'For the women!'

Dave Paulson,

Nashville Tennessean

Every year, tens of thousands of ticket holders pack and prepare for Bonnaroo with an idea of how they want to dress, act and feel at this hippie-rooted fest. And for many, that image looks a lot like Stevie Nicks.

You see her trademark style and free spirit reflected in countless attendees, regardless of age or gender. So when the 74-year-old took Bonnaroo’s biggest stage on Sunday night — as the fest’s final performer — it was beyond overdue, and not just because of her influence here.

On Sunday, Nicks became the first female headliner in Bonnaroo history. It’s not a flattering fact for a 20-year-old event, but a cause for celebration nonetheless.

“I am very honored to be the first girl to be the last person on tonight,” she said. “For the women! Yes! But of course, the girl in me says I’m also really glad that there’s a lot of cool men here tonight, too. So do not feel left out.”

From our vantage point in the field, everyone felt more than welcome here, especially as the opener “Outside The Rain” blended right into “Dreams” — a Fleetwood Mac classic, to be sure, but also a recent TikTok sensation.

Soon, she was sharing “Landslide,” and seemingly every other person — whether they were watching intently or weaving their way through the crowd — was singing along. As she sang “I’m getting older too,” a voice nearby shouted, “Never, Stevie!”

Another early treat was her collaboration with the late Tom Petty, “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around.” It’s the song that brought her to Bonnaroo for the first time, when she joined Petty to sing it in 2006.

That tune aside, Nicks and her band kept the set fairly mellow, and for awhile it seemed like she was bringing Bonnaroo down gently after four-plus hectic days and nights. But this set soon got to a roiling boil, culminating in the thunderous “Edge of Seventeen.”

“Bonnaroo, it has been a serious pleasure to be here with you tonight,” she said afterwards. “I might just drop by to tell you some more stories at some point in the future. I’ll call it ‘Stevie 101.’"

After Nicks said goodbye, the crowd chanted for one more song, and were thrilled when she returned for an encore – an inevitable one, if you checked online. Either way, cell service was non-existent in the packed field.

It began with another Petty nod, “Free Fallin’,” plus “Rhiannon” and finally a rousing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” (for the second time that weekend, as Robert Plant himself sang it with Alison Krauss on Friday).

“What an awesome audience you’ve been,” Nicks told them. “We couldn’t ask for any more."

Photos:

Matthew Baron, Jenn D Photography

Stevie Nicks Casts a Spell at Bonnaroo

There are many reasons why it became a tradition to close out Bonnaroo with a legacy act. Not least among them: When you’ve been coated in dust and sunscreen and roasted in the sun for four days, it feels good to sing along to songs you know, which may have been part of your life for a long time. When Bonnaroovians shuffled over to What Stage to end this year’s fest with rock ’n’ roll fairy godmother Stevie Nicks — the first woman solo artist to play a headline slot since the festival launched in 2002 — we certainly got that.

Nicks and her band, led by guitar hero Waddy Wachtel, played “Dreams,” “Landslide,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Rhiannon” — bar-setting songs that she added to the Fleetwood Mac canon in the 1970s — as well as the hard-rocking “Edge of Seventeen” from her 1981 solo debut Bella Donna. The lush, many-layered presentation felt like watching your (or your parents’) album collection come to life in vivid detail, and the songs elicited ecstatic tears from more than a few in the crowd. There were also plenty of deeper cuts, like the poignant “Destiny” from Nicks’ 1984 LP Street Angel, that stood tall next to the hits.

That would’ve been plenty, but as seems to be her style, Nicks brought even more to the table. In one of many asides, Nicks noted that she was wearing a bespoke dress from the photo shoot for the Bella Donna album cover — and how her mom had pooh-poohed her decision to invest the equivalent of a house payment in the piece, which has since paid off. There were nods to her camaraderie with Tom Petty, from performing a gentle cover of the late rock hero’s “Free Fallin’ ” to introducing the Petty-penned “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with a story that mentioned how she’d wanted to be in The Heartbreakers. The anecdote also mentioned how condescending producer and then-boyfriend Jimmy Iovine had been at the time, one of many instances when Nicks was subject to the misogyny that seems to have always been endemic in the music business.

The oldest song in the main set was the nuanced and rollicking gem “Crying in the Night,” which Nicks wrote for Buckingham Nicks — the lone eponymous album from her band with guitarist and then-partner Lindsey Buckingham, before the two joined the already-established Fleetwood Mac. The record has since become a cult favorite, but poor performance when it was released, coupled with unfulfilled promises that “Crying in the Night” would be released as a single, convinced her that her fledgling music career was finished. To borrow a phrase from late, great Scene editor Jim Ridley, here was one of the heads on Mount Rushmore, taking a pause from rocking out to open up about the pain of rejection and what kind of perspective five decades has afforded her.

“Not only was it not a single, the whole record actually tanked,” Nicks recalled. “Down the road, everybody thought [Buckingham Nicks] was this great record, but who knew? We certainly didn’t know. If you think your dreams are just trashing out and you’re never gonna make it to where you want to go, that’s not true. … It might take a while to get to your dreamy place, but you will get there, I promise you.”

Later, at the conclusion of an encore that seemed to be finished twice before it actually ended, Nicks & Co. fired off a ripping rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.” It made Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ thoughtful reworking from a few days prior seem sleepy by comparison, and it was the friendly push we needed to get moving back to the non-Bonnaroo world.

KELSEY BEYELER, STEPHEN TRAGESER AND KAHWIT TELA

Nashville Scene

Photos: Angelina Castillo

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Stevie Nicks 1st Woman To Close Bonnaroo Music Festival

Stevie Nicks kicks off the final set of Bonnaroo 2022 with "Outside The Rain"

Stevie Nicks kicked off the final headlining set of this year's Bonnaroo to the sounds of Tom Petty‘s "Running Down a Dream."

She then took the stage in her signature black dress, long blonde blocks and streamers dangling from her mic stand. The crowd cheered and sang along as she launched into "Outside the Rain" which segued into the Fleetwood Mac classic "Dreams."

In the history of the festival, this is the first time a woman headlined the closing set on the final night. Way to go Stevie!!

Nicole Hester / The Tennessean

Friday, June 17, 2022

Christine McVie Releases Orchestral 'Songbird' and discusses Fleetwood Mac's Future

Christine McVie On Her New Solo Collection ‘Songbird,’ Uncertain Future of Fleetwood Mac

Listen to her new version of the 1976 Fleetwood Mac classic “Songbird” where the original vocal track has been paired with a new string arrangement

By ANDY GREENE

Rollingstone

Christine McVie has spent the vast majority of her professional career in Fleetwood Mac, but she did take a brief break in 1984 to record Christine McVie and followed it up 20 years later with In the Meantime. This solo material is largely unknown to the general public — especially in America — but she hopes to change that on June 24 with the release of Songbird (A Solo Collection). It’s a mixture of songs from her two solo albums plus a handful of unreleased songs, including “All You Gotta Do,” a duet with George Hawkins originally cut for In the Meantime.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham maintained active solo careers during their time in Fleetwood Mac, but McVie says she never really had that desire. “I’ve never felt like I was a solo artist,” McVie tells Rolling Stone from her London home. “I always liked to be part of a group. I also felt a little ill at ease doing a solo tour for that material. It just made me uneasy.”

For the new collection, McVie “went for my favorite songs that weren’t on Fleetwood Mac records,” working with producer Glyn Johns and redoing the tracks with extra instrumentation.

“The Challenge” from McVie’s self-titled 1984 album features backing vocals by Buckingham and guitar by Eric Clapton. “I clearly remember asking Eric to play on it,” McVie says. “And to my delight, he agreed. Like all of my songs, it’s about life and remorse and rejection.”

A majority of the Songbird (A Solo Collection) songs come from 2004’s In the Meantime. She released the album a few years after parting ways with Fleetwood Mac and retreating to her home in the English countryside. It peaked at #133 in the UK and didn’t even ding the U.S. charts. “I really like that record,” says McVie. “I think it wasn’t advertised as well as it could have been.”

The lone Fleetwood Mac song on the record is her 1976 ballad “Songbird,” and it’s a new rendition that pairs her original vocal track with a new string arrangement by composer and arranger Vince Mendoza. Check out the song right here:

Fleetwood Mac have been completely inactive since the conclusion of their 2018/19 world tour. It was their first outing since their bitter split with Buckingham, when he was replaced by Crowded House frontman Neil Finn and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell. “Those guys were great,” McVie says. “We have a great time with them, but we’ve kind of broke up now, so I hardly ever see them.”

“I don’t communicate with Stevie [Nicks] very much either,” she says. “When we were on the last tour, we did a lot. We always sat next to each other on the plane and we got on really well. But since the band broke up, I’ve not been speaking to her at all.”

Does she mean to say that Fleetwood Mac no longer exists? “Well, not as we know it,” McVie says. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. We might get back together, but I just couldn’t say for sure.”

Mick Fleetwood has been open about his hopes to see the Rumours-lineup come back together for a grand farewell tour, but McVie is highly dubious. “I don’t feel physically up for it,” she says. “I’m in quite bad health. I’ve got a chronic back problem which debilitates me. I stand up to play the piano, so I don’t know if I could actually physically do it. What’s that saying? The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

In theory, McVie could sit at the keyboard to make it easier for her to get through a show, but she says that wouldn’t work in practice. “I couldn’t sit at the rig I play,” she says. “You have to stand up to play the piano and the Hammond Organ is beneath that, so it’s a bit difficult to think about sitting down and doing it. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

According to McVie, bassist John McVie is in a similar predicament. “I don’t think John’s up for another tour,” she says. “He’s got health issues, so I don’t know if he would be up for it. You’d have to ask him.”

If a tour does somehow happen, McVie hopes that they’ll find a way to bring Buckingham back into the fold. “I’d always want Lindsey back,” she says. “He’s the best. Neil and Mike were such a cheerful couple, but Lindsey was missed.”

“But I’m getting a bit long in the teeth here,” she continues. “I’m quite happy being at home. I don’t know if I ever want to tour again. It’s bloody hard work.”

This may disappoint Fleetwood Mac’s legions of fans, not to mention some of her own bandmates, but they’ll be relieved to know she’s not closing the door on a tour completely. “I really can’t say for sure,” she says, “because I could be wrong. So I’ll just leave it open and say that we might.”