Tuesday, 30th June 2015
The Yorkshire Post

Fleetwood Mac, complete with returning member Christine McVie, are on tour and head to Leeds next week. Andy Threlfall reports

It’s been 15 years since Cumbrian-born Christine McVie retired from Fleetwood Mac, but now she is back, completing the classic Rumours-era line-up of the band on the current tour.

“I didn’t really know exactly what Christine McVie was up to in those missing years,” says a sprightly 65-year-old Lindsey Buckingham. “She pretty much took permanent leave of the performing world and moved back to England and lived somewhere out in the country.”

But now she’s back and that has meant the band’s live show is receiving unparalleled critical plaudits reinvigorated as it is by classics like You Make Loving Fun, Everywhere and Songbird (which closed the London 02 show I witnessed) penned and sung by Christine who turns 72 next month.

For a band famed for its musical chemistry and fabled failed relationships, to close it’s homecoming show with just one (the returning) member at the piano was startling. Art at its most naked. Stripped bare. The song. The voice.

Whichever way you want to decipher this moment after two and a half hours, the sheer brilliance remains intact of this band who can select a 25-song setlist matched only in gargantuan sales figures and magnificence by fellow Brits who still dominate American radio the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin & The Beatles.

If the return of McVie had been one cause for celebration, that of ex-husband John to the current tour is even more poignant. He very nearly didn’t make it. Continue reading The return of Fleetwood Mac & Five Things You Need to Know | Yorkshire Post →