Fleetwood Mac says: ‘Don’t stop’

San Diego U T
By George Varga
4:56 P.M.  JULY 3, 2013

It’s been a turbulent ride, but the group is back. “We are the kind of people who don’t all belong in the same band together,’ says Lindsey Buckingham.

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It’s been 39 years since Lindsey Buckingham and his then-girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, joined Mick Fleetwood and John and Christine McVie in Fleetwood Mac.

Faster than you can say “Landslide,” the 8-year-old English blues-rock band and its two new American members shifted gears, changed musical styles and soared to international pop stardom. The 1975 album “Fleetwood Mac” was the group’s first release to top the U.S. charts, while its 1977 masterpiece “Rumours” has now sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and yielded such enduring hits as “Don’t Stop” and “Go Your Own Way.”

Did Buckingham ever imagine then that the band would still be active in 2013 and embarked on a world tour, which includes a Friday stop here at San Diego State University’s Viejas Arena?

“Well, time kind of slips by and it doesn’t seem that long,” said the veteran guitarist and singer-songwriter, speaking from a recent tour stop in Boston. “You know, when you’re in your 20s and contemplating that (long an) amount of time, you think: ‘Gee, will I even still be alive by then?’ So, it’s all kind of relative to your perspective. And it certainly is a surprise, although there are bands that have managed to stick around that long.

“The one thing that probably would have disabused me from thinking then that we’d still be around now is that the chemistry was always so volatile. Not just because there were two couples in Fleetwood Mac who had broken up (before ‘Rumours’ was completed), and that whole subtext, but from the point of view that we are the kind of people who don’t all belong in the same band together.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac says: ‘Don’t stop’

Fleetwood Mac’s Buckingham Nicks to re-issue rare album?

Published Wednesday, Jul 3 2013, 18:28 BST  |  By Tom Eames
Digital Spy

Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks has revealed plans to re-issue her debut album with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham.

Before joining the band in 1974, the former lovers recorded a single album under the name Buckingham Nicks in 1973.

However, it has remained out of print for many years and has not seen an official release on CD or download.

Nicks told Rolling Stone: “I went into Lindsey’s house two weeks ago and spent four days there. We recorded a very old Buckingham Nicks song that we loved and couldn’t figure out why it didn’t go on the album. It got brushed under the carpet somehow. We recorded it, so that’s a third song.

“[2013] is the 40th anniversary of Buckingham Nicks, and we’re hoping next year to get the record out. Then we’ll take that lost song and put it on the record.

“That’s kind of exciting, though it doesn’t have anything to do with Fleetwood Mac. People have been waiting forever for that record to come back out. Fleetwood Mac is totally good with us doing that. They know.”

She continued: “It was great spending time with Linds. We’re old enough now that we’ve laid down our weapons. We started this whole thing in 1968 and we’re proud of what we’ve done. We look at each other in a slightly different light now. It’s a good light.”

When asked if they might release a deluxe edition box set of the album, she said: “It is the 40th anniversary, because it was released in 1973. We have this new version of an old demo.

“So, we should put the album back out, and if we can make that happen then Buckingham Nicks should go out on the road next year. It would be great to do it in the 40th anniversary year. This might not just be the year of Fleetwood Mac, but we might throw in the Buckingham Nicks album for a special, sparkly, extra present.”

On whether they may fully reform as a duo on tour, she added: “There’s always a possibility. That is a situation where we would actually go on stage and do the complete Buckingham Nicks album.

“It would be a trip to bring it back with Waddy Wachtel and some other people from San Francisco. It would be trippy for Lindsey and I to revisit those songs.”

Fleetwood Mac released a new Extended Play collection earlier this year

Fleetwood Mac’s back with a love-fest vibe

Pop and Hiss
The L.A Times Music Blog
By Randy Lewis
July 3, 2013, 7:30 a.m.

For a notoriously perfectionist band like Fleetwood Mac, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that its live show leaves nothing to chance.

John McVie and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac perform at the Prudential Center on April 24, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey.
John McVie and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac perform at the Prudential Center on April 24, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey. (Brian Killian, Getty Images / April 24, 2013)

Fleetwood Mac’s 2013 tour, which wraps up with a final run of shows this week in California, is built around a song list that’s gone virtually unchanged since the concert run began in April.

“We’re not one of those bands that throws the names of all their songs in a hat and pulls them out right before they go on stage,” guitarist, songwriter and singer Lindsey Buckingham said last week from a tour stop in Charlotte, N.C. (Buckingham and the band play Staples Center Wednesday.) “Years ago I was hanging out with Peter Buck and went to several shows R.E.M. did and they literally did just that. That’s one end of the spectrum.

“We’ve always had the sensibility that you work on the set and you structure it, much like a play, where once you’ve got the lines down and blocking right, you freeze it, and then you go out and do what you’re doing night after night,” he said. “You want to structure something that has form and that builds the right dynamic from start to finish.”

This time out that set list runs from “Second Hand News,” the “Rumours” opening track that serves the same function on this tour, through cornerstone hits including “”Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Go Your Own Way” that are interspersed with deeper tracks such as “Not That Funny,” “Eyes of the World” and “I’m So Afraid.”

When it comes to touring, the group stresses a sense of stability onstage that rarely existed for the members off stage. The group famously channeled feelings unleashed by the disintegrating relationship of Buckingham and Stevie Nicks as well as the failing marriage of John and Christine McVie into the songs that catapulted “Rumours” and the band into the commercial stratosphere. Ever since, interpersonal dynamics have been nearly as big a part of Fleetwood Mac’s history as the music it made. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s back with a love-fest vibe