Music Review: 50 Years – Don’t Stop from Fleetwood Mac

A new career-defining set from Fleetwood Mac that spans their 50-year existence, released in multiple formats on Nov 16th, 2018.

This career spanning collection from Fleetwood Mac has been released as a single CD, three-CD set, 5-LP vinyl set, digital download and streaming edition and is a fine collection of songs that make up the career of Fleetwood Mac from the blues era of the late 60s, to the transition period of the early 70s, the later adult orientated rock era of the late 70s and 80s, to the final set of songs that make up the swansong of the band’s recording output. Each album is represented on this set, including one song from the  2013’s ‘Extended Play‘ release.

The set is chronological in sequence except for the streaming edition (of which I will cover off later in the piece) and most tracks have been remastered for this collection and sound extremely nice and bright. The highlighted of this set for me is the single mix of ‘Fireflies’ and the first-ever physical release of ‘Sad Angel’ from the 2013 ‘Extended Play‘ release, whereas most other tracks have been made available in remastered form on recent deluxe editions of Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk, Mirage and Tango In The Night, special mention should be made for the early to mid 70s songs that have also been remastered and should appeal to casual observers of the band who would not be familiar with these tracks. Continue reading Music Review: 50 Years – Don’t Stop from Fleetwood Mac

Don’t Stop: 50 years on, Fleetwood Mac are still rising from the ashes of their own self-destruction | The Independent

The Independent
Alexandra Pollard
15th Nov 2018

The storied band, who are about to embark on a European tour, have found a home for themselves teetering on the brink of implosion – unwilling, or perhaps unable, to let each other go. Their new anniversary album, ’50 Years – Don’t Stop’, could hardly be more aptly titled.

Fleetwood Mac taking part in a US interview broadcast in 1975 ( Polaris )

Affairs, breakups, terrifying brawls between lovers, damage to instruments (and skulls), divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, rows about money, musical differences, and lots and lots and lots of hit records: Fleetwood Mac might have sounded mellow at times, but off stage they were anything but.

“We’re a group of people who, you could make the argument, don’t belong in the same band together,” Lindsey Buckingham once said of his fractious group. “It’s the synergy of that that makes it work.”

Whether they’ve triumphed because of their famously volatile relationship, or in spite of it, Fleetwood Mac have risen from the ashes of their own self-destruction more times than seemed possible. In the past 50 years, they have found a home for themselves teetering on the brink of implosion – unwilling, or perhaps unable, to let each other go. Their new anniversary album, 50 Years – Don’t Stop, released a month after they announced a 2019 European tour, could hardly be more aptly titled.

Not that the current members haven’t tried to stop. Stevie Nicks left the band in 1990 over a dispute with Mick Fleetwood, but rejoined a few years later. Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham quit in 1987, just before the band’s world tour, to “get on with the next phase of my creative growth” – only to spearhead a reunion a decade later. When Christine McVie packed the whole thing in 1998, she even went as far as moving to a sleepy village in Kent. “There’s no more chance of [McVie returning],” said Stevie Nicks in 2012, “than an asteroid hitting the earth.” A little over a year later, McVie was back in the band, no asteroid in sight. Continue reading Don’t Stop: 50 years on, Fleetwood Mac are still rising from the ashes of their own self-destruction | The Independent