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Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity, Still Going Insane

Lindsey Buckingham – The rock star hits midlife | LA Times

The rock star hits midlife

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham offers an intimate self-portrait on
his first solo album in 14 years.

lindsey_latimes

By Ann Powers
Times Staff Writer

October 3, 2006

Lindsey Buckingham, the sonic architect of Fleetwood Mac, has been through a lot: megastardom during the decadent 1970s; a split with bandmate and girlfriend Stevie Nicks that defined the rock ‘n’ roll breakup; 20 years of balancing pop stardom with an irrepressible avant-garde urge; the only band reunion by presidential request (for Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration); first-time parenthood at 48. But he never expected to live in Brentwood.

“I was living in this Neutra-style house way up in the hills in Bel-Air,” Buckingham said, chatting in his comfortable den just west of the San Diego Freeway. “I’d had that property for 30 years — it was my bachelor pad. Fleetwood Mac cut ‘Tango in the Night’ there in 1987, and Mick [Fleetwood] lived in a Winnebago in the front yard.

“When my wife and I started having children, I decided to knock it down,” continued the 57-year-old father of three. “We built a Spanish. But it’s not a great area for kids, you can’t really go outside the gates or you’ll fall down the hill. So we decided to get into a more ‘Father Knows Best’ environment.”

Soon the Buckingham clan will inhabit a freshly built fairy tale home — complete with turret — a few blocks away from this rental. The children will have space to run circles around their dad. But Daddy will certainly also claim a room with a locking door, where he can protect his other progeny: his well-nurtured songs.

Today, Buckingham releases “Under the Skin,” his first solo album in 14 years. Recorded mostly in hotel rooms during Fleetwood Mac’s reunion tour in 2003, using little more than a guitar delay pedal and an acoustic guitar, it includes material dating 10 years or more. Two songs were recorded in the studio with Mac drummer Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, and one features Memphis-style horns arranged by Beck’s father, David Campbell. Otherwise, it’s all Buckingham, chasing that part of himself that life’s responsibilities often steal away.

“I spent a long time focusing on something very narrow, probably in reaction to being part of such a large machine,” he said of these songs. “With Fleetwood Mac, I walled up a lot of things. Part of the process is taking down those walls to see if there’s anything left inside.”

“Under the Skin” is a locket portrait of the pop star at midlife, trying to honor but also escape a weighty reputation. “Cast Away Dreams” and “Not Too Late” confront the conflict between domesticity and the artist’s way. “Hearts will break with the choices we must make,” Buckingham sings, sadly noting the rift that often arises in a family (including that other kind of family, the band) and the individualism that inspires enduring art.

On this quiet, intense album, Buckingham’s guitar lines form delicate knots around incantatory melodies, and the echo of heavy delay helps his quavering tenor capture the full-court press of time. Buckingham finds the cadence of one of life’s most difficult passages — the journey into unequivocal adulthood.

Artists have a particularly hard time with that transition; Buckingham’s personality, friends say, is quintessentially artistic. That may be why his music so vividly captures the tension between imagination and real life. “His driven sensibility — it’s almost childlike,” Fleetwood said in a separate interview. “Lindsey protects his own innocence. You think he realizes something, and then you see he really doesn’t. He’s in his studio, focused, and that’s that.”

Having children blew open Buckingham’s well-guarded self-absorption. “As a parent, there is a push-pull,” he said. “When I was trying to finish, and one of my kids would say, ‘Dad, you wanna … ?’ I had to make a choice, and not a very good one. I was either shaming myself as a father, or shaming the idea of following through on something that’s been in motion for many years.”

Buckingham has been tormented by conflicting loyalties before. After the record-breaking success of Mac’s 1977 album “Rumours,” he felt coerced into generating hits. “Tusk,” the double album that came next, was Buckingham’s act of resistance. It’s a benchmark of experimental rock.

” ‘Tusk’ was an impulse,” he said. “Over time, everyone in the band got drawn in. And then, because it didn’t sell 16 million albums — it sold four or five — there was a backlash. There was a meeting. The band said, ‘Lindsey, we’re not going to do that anymore.’ That’s the only reason I started making solo records.”

Buckingham made three fantastically odd solo albums. He also stayed in Fleetwood Mac for one more decade, then left the band, returned and repeated the cycle. It was a Fleetwood Mac song, “Big Love,” that set the template for “Under the Skin.” It became his spotlight number during Mac shows, a whorl of guitar picking and swooning vocals.

He began exploring other artists’ songbooks in search of similarly powerful guitar vehicles; two, the Rolling Stones’ “I Am Waiting” and Donovan’s “Try for the Sun,” appear on the new disc. His own material began to coalesce. But the machine asserted itself again, when Buckingham found himself at odds with his label, Warner Bros., over the album’s focused sound.

“They didn’t want me to put it out,” he said, quickly adding that he’s on good terms with the company now. “They wished me to put some rock material on, to make a hybrid, normal album. It might have been easier for them to market. But for 14 years I’d been trying to get something out from my heart, and I’m sorry, this is it.”

The final version of “Under the Skin” is an innocent thing, more in sync with the experiments of younger artists such as Sufjan Stevens and Joseph Arthur than with typical rock-legend side projects. He hopes new fans will find him on tour. “I don’t know who my audience is,” he admits.

He does know where to find the old machine, and the fans who keep it well-oiled. Fleetwood Mac will tour again, and Buckingham is planning an electric record, maybe with a producer, probably with input from Fleetwood and McVie. The world may not have to wait a teenager’s lifetime for his next release.

“After Christmas, we’ll start, in theory,” he said, not letting this project peep too far out of the cocoon yet. “I think it’s going to rock. I don’t know what it’s doing yet.”

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Reviews, Solo Activity, Tour Info

Lindsey Buckingham – Under The Skin – More Reviews

Lindsey Buckingham: Under the Skin
(Reprise)
The Guardian (UK)
Mat Snow
Friday September 29, 2006

Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac’s dominant songwriter for 32 years, is a pop genius: his sunny harmonies pull you one way while an undercurrent of anguish tugs you the other. His extra-curricular work has always been intriguing, and this fourth solo album is a small masterpiece of tightly balanced musical contrasts. Buckingham’s filigreed melodies echo such heroes of his youth as the Byrds and Donovan; in a voice more echo-drenched and multi-tracked than any since John Lennon’s, he tremulously exhales such lines as “My children look away, they don’t know what to say,” only to burst into the yearning rapture of “It’s not too late.” As spacious as Buckingham’s native California yet as fraught with unease, this is another gripping postcard from the edge of paradise.

—

Lindsey Buckingham
Under the Skin
Reprise
The Times (UK)
September 29, 2006
Pop

The Fleetwood Mac guitarist’s stripped-down acoustic album is luxuriant rather than austere. Sparse arrangements boast lush harmonies, while the imaginative production drapes Buckingham’s whine in eerie reverb. It works, though. High spots include the frenetic fingerpicking of Not too Late, the sunny Show You How and the howling Flying Down Juniper, evocative of Fred Neil and Tim Buckley.

—

STEVE JELBERT
Lindsey Buckingham
Under the Skin (Reprise) £12.99

The Observer
Sunday October 1, 2006

If Fleetwood Mac are a guilty pleasure, enjoying a solo album by their former guitarist should be a heinous crime. But there’s little MOR bombast on Lindsey Buckingham’s fourth solo record; these are dusty redemption songs which draw on the sparest of elements. ‘Show You How’ summons and sustains a groove with little more than a guitar and cleverly layered vocals. And ‘Under the Skin’ builds on a simple, strummed motif with Buckingham’s voice shimmering beautifully like a heat-haze. When he does at last display his knack for the heroic chorus, he unleashes another aspect of a singular musical talent.

—
Ally Carnwath
Entertainment Weekly
October 6, 2006
Issue 900

Section: THE REVIEWS: MUSIC ‘Skin’ Tight

CHRIS WILLMAN

A gloriously unhinged return from Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham .

Lindsey Buckingham Under the Skin (Reprise) Rock

In the opening minutes of Under the Skin, Lindsey Buckingham sings of “visions always deferred,” alluding to 14 years passing since his last solo album. He’s griped that every time he gets one under way, Fleetwood Mac bandmates rope him into another reunion, cannibalizing his song stockpile. So if these songs lean toward his eccentric side, maybe that was intended as an early defensive measure against any further Mac attacks.

Skin is high-concept in that it’s theoretically stripped-down, consisting almost entirely of Buckingham’s voice and acoustic guitar. But he’s too much the Brian Wilson-worshipping studio maestro not to multitrack that voice into nearly choral rounds of oddly punctuated pop harmonies, and he’ll certainly use the marvels of engineering to make those nylon strings sound deliriously big. It might be acoustic, but the last thing you’d call it is unplugged.

Unhinged? Sure. Some lyrics recall his most neurotic LP, 1984’s aptly titled Go Insane; other times, he’s a newly placid family man, or trying (“a madman… looking for paradise”). But on this album, quieter means less gentle: His fingerpicking is impossibly frantic in its nervous virtuosity, and each near-whisper is miked to sound like a scream. It’s the spartan-yet-gonzo sound of a guy remembering he can go his own way. B+

—

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Nashville Scene
Saturday 7th Oct 2006 live at The Ryman Auditorium

Our Critics Picks:

Lindsey Buckingham is at once a driving force behind one of the most successful commercial enterprises in rock music and an idiosyncratic cult artist. As a singer, songwriter and producer in Fleetwood Mac for most of the last 32 years, he wrote classics like “Go Your Own Way” and “Second Hand News,” while helping to shape the songs of bandmates Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie into irresistible ear candy. But the eccentricity of his work on Mac albums like Tusk and Say You Will only hints at the singularity of vision heard on his first solo album in 14 years. On Under the Skin, Buckingham buttresses his reputation as a pop visionary by orchestrating very basic elements—mainly voice, acoustic guitar and percussion—to create a textured sonic picture unlike any he could have painted at his day job. Casual fans—i.e., you own Rumours but not Tusk—might want to wait this one out: Buckingham is planning a more rock-oriented album and tour next year, followed by a Fleetwood Mac road trip in 2008.
CHRIS NEAL

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Lindsey Buckingham: Gone His Own Way I New York Times, Sept 2006

Who’s that strange new folkie? It’s Lindsey Buckingham, the brain of Fleetwood Mac.

574.x231.mr.buckinghamSept 29th 2006
New York Times
By Jay Ruttenberg

“Reading the paper, saw a review,” Lindsey Buckingham sings at the outset of his new album, Under the Skin. “Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew.” The song ends on a punch line—”You should never believe what you read”—but its reviewer actually makes a valid argument. Despite his membership in Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham himself has long been accorded the status of a cult artist: beloved by music nerds, but a shadow next to the band’s iconic singer, Stevie Nicks.

Considering that Fleetwood Mac has sold more than 100 million records, this is a strange oversight. After all, Buckingham wasn’t just some backroom knob-twister! He was the guitarist with the bushy Afro and perennially exposed chest hair, one of the quintet’s three dynamite singer-songwriters, and the production wizard behind the hazy soft rock that came to symbolize ’70s Los Angeles. Most critically, he was the man who broke Nicks’s heart—or was it the other way around?—giving birth to the notion of rock band as soap opera, as well as 1977’s megaselling Rumours.

That album will always define Fleetwood Mac. Yet Buckingham’s own legacy may rest with a different work: Tusk, the sprawling, marching-band-adorned follow-up to Rumours, a sort of Paul’s Boutique or Kid A of its day. “Can you imagine us delivering that album to the record company?” asks Buckingham, 58, speaking from L.A. after putting his kids on the school bus. “Even within the band it was difficult for me. [Drummer] Mick Fleetwood will now say that Tusk is his favorite album—but that took a long time. After it came out and wasn’t a 16-million-copy seller, there were politics within the band that said we weren’t going to make records like it anymore. I probably never would have made solo albums had there not been that limitation.”

Flash-forward a few decades, and Buckingham remains on the path paved by Tusk. Recorded mostly in hotel rooms while the singer was on a Fleetwood Mac reunion tour, Under the Skin is intimate and spare, with masterful acoustic picking and percussion consisting of Buckingham beating on a chair. “Hopefully it’s only a step above sitting in the living room playing guitar for somebody,” he says. “I was trying to return to my center, which is the folk medium.” Ironically, in reaching back to old folkies, Buckingham has achieved a sound that’s very much in accordance with contemporary West Coast artists like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart; even without trying, this guy has an ear tuned to his era.

Skin is Buckingham’s first solo album since 1992, the year Bill Clinton borrowed Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his campaign anthem. These two events are not unrelated. Buckingham, who had angrily left the band in ’87, rejoined when they were summoned to perform at Clinton’s inaugural gala. Ever since, the guitarist has had a boomerang relationship with the group reminiscent of Michael Corleone’s bond to the mafia. “It’s like a black hole that pulls me in,” he says. Before the quintet’s ’97 reunion, “we had dinner at [singer] Christine McVie’s house. Everyone literally stood around me in a circle, as if it was an intervention, saying, ‘We’ve got to do this!’ But these are people that I love—I don’t take it lightly.”

The handsome, late-summer mistiness of Skin is a far cry from Fleetwood Mac’s rote reunion material, and Buckingham doesn’t hesitate to say which lies closer to his heart. But he also credits his return to the group with allowing him to grasp his past and arrive at his current work. “It took a long time for me to get over many things,” Buckingham says. “I think it took a long time for me to get over Stevie. It took time for me to come to terms with this huge success we had, which in my mind didn’t seem connected to anything that we were doing. But I’m a family member now and can be friends with the band in a way that I never was before. I’ve come to a point where I’m refining my craft—it doesn’t feel like I’m marking time or sliding down. It feels like an ongoing process of growth.”

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity, Tour Info

Buckingham Readies One Album, Finishing Another…

buckingham_lindsey_01l

September 07, 2006, 6:05 PM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Billboard Magazine

Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham will release his first solo album in 14 years next month. Due Oct. 3 via Reprise, “Under the Skin” includes two tracks featuring the Fleetwood Mac rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The other eight tracks find Buckingham generating all the rhythm simply via his own percussive guitar playing.

“It’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time: trying to distill down the essence of that certain thing I do,” the artist tells Billboard.com. “I want to still have it sound like a record, but very much in the spirit of someone sitting and playing guitar.”

Buckingham wrote most of the material for “In This Skin” while on the road with Fleetwood Mac in support of its 2003 comeback album, “Say You Will,” and looked to his own life for lyrical inspiration. “It gets into a more bare-bones look at what’s going on with me after all this time,” says Buckingham, who at 57 now has three young children. “I’ve finally gotten married and am slowly shedding the dysfunctional thing everyone in the band seemed to have emotionally.”

The guitarist is also well into work on another new record, which will focus more on electric guitar-driven rock. Label execs initially asked Buckingham to include some of this material on “Under the Skin,” but “I feel it has much more integrity by keeping it held back in the way it is. It seemed to be more truthful in terms of what the songs were saying and what I was trying to look at.”

 
Eight songs are complete for the second album, due sometime next year, although Buckingham says he may re-record some of them with a yet-to-be-chosen producer once he finishes a fall tour in support of “Under This Skin.” The outing, which is only his second solo trek ever, kicks off Oct. 6 in Atlanta.

Buckingham will be backed on the road by Fleetwood Mac percussionist Taku Hirano and guitarist Neal Haywood, plus guitarist/keyboardist Brett Tuggle. The set list is still coming together, but Buckingham speculates the show will be broken into three sections: “one with me out there by myself, another with the band but you hold a line in terms of the kind of material and the last section, where you’d rock it.”

As for the status of Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham says he and the other band members are all up for future touring but unsure if any recording is in the cards.

“It’s important that we end up in a place where we are good, as a group of people,” he observes, “A place where all the politics are left behind for what’s really real. Despite what has gone on, this is a group of people I’ll know as well as anyone I’ll ever know except my family. I’ve been through more with them than I’ve ever been through with my own family [laughs]. I’d love to see that continue. It’s a matter of everybody somehow moving toward the center a little bit, and that means me too.”

Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Nicks – Still Fabulous After All These Years I Napa Sentinel, Aug 2005

Friday, August 5, 2005
Page 10
By Holly LaPorta

You would think after more than 25 years of making music, Stevie Nick’s popularity would have drifted over the years, but from the reaction of the crowd last Saturday night, her popularity is as strong as ever.  After a brilliant opening by Vanessa Carlton at the Chronicle Pavilion in Concord, it was apparent to see why Stevie keeps her fans close, as she and her nine-member band rocked through nearly a two-hour set that included hits from her solo career as well as her time in Fleetwood Mac.

With her blond hair and a continuous costume changes, mostly black sparkly outfits, Steve’s presence leaves her looking timeless.  Nicks blended hits from her marriage with Fleetwood Mac such as “Dreams” and “Rhiannon”.  With an unexpected cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “Circle Dance” and Led Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll”.

But it was her solo career that packed the most power, including “Stand Back” and “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” with long time friend and guitarist Waddy Wachtel covered Tom Petty on the vocal duet with Stevie.

The audience screamed everytime she twirled in place or returned from a costume change.  Fans screamed out “I love you, Stevie.”  Near the end of the show, several dozen fans ran down to the front of the stage, gathering for a Nick’s tradition.  As her nine piece band and two back-up singers carried out the end of “Edge of Seventeen” Stevie slowly worked her way across the stage greeting her fans as she went.

Stevie brings her past to song and her emotions to the surface and perhaps that is why she touches me so personally–and everyone in the audience simultaneously.  Her songs have the uncanny sense that she seen into the life of every woman (and man)–ever since “Bella Donna.”  I have written about so many artists in the past, but this show meant the world to me for this unreasonable, irreplaceable connection I feel between her music and my own experiences in life.  (If it is true that we all get a soundtrack to go with our lives, I know mine already).

This summer’s Gold Dust Tour ends Saturday, August 6 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.  With the right juggling of my budget, I might just be able to…oh well, Rock on Stevie – thanks for another great concert

This article was sent to me by Dark Angel, with thanks

Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Puts Vacation On Hold, Aug 2005

She’ll bring her hits and those of Fleetwood Mac for Reno show

by Neil Baron
7/28/2005
RGJ.com

Stevie Nicks returns to Reno July 31.

When Stevie Nicks performs July 31 at the Reno Events Center, she’ll do it with a show that shouldn’t exist and an opening act that makes her cry.

“This tour wasn’t even supposed to happen,” Nicks said by phone during a tour stop in Laguna Beach, Calif. “I was supposed to have this whole year off.”

So much for rest. When Eagles frontman Don Henley invited Nicks on a co-headline tour, she accepted (Henley is not performing in Reno). Nicks then was offered four dates to perform in Las Vegas at the Celine Dion Theater in Caesars Palace.

“I would like to be able to play Vegas a couple times a year because then I don’t have to travel,” said Nicks, who lives in Los Angeles. “So I said, `OK, I’ll put my summer off. Let’s go do this.’ But this is a show that we would never have put together had it not been for going into Celine’s theater that is like 110 feet wide with 300-foot IMAX screens. You just can’t take your band in there and play. You have to build a world, and we did. We spent two months doing it and it’s an amazing world. So we came out of Vegas with an outrageous show that we never would have had otherwise.”

Without giving away too much, Nicks’ concert features lots of film and video from the vaults of the past. She also got permission to use the art and paintings of her favorite painter, the late Sulamith Wulfing.

“This has touches and moments of, say, Fillmore West or Winterland or the Avalon Ballroom,” Nicks said. “It reminds me of an amazing show from 1971.”Nicks would know. In 1971, she was a 23-year-old musical neophyte. Now, she is arguably one of the most influential and recognizable female artists in rock `n’ roll history.

With her sultry good looks and gypsy-like appearance, Nicks helped Fleetwood Mac in 1977 create, “Rumours,” one of the best-selling rock albums of all time at more than 17 million copies.When she branched out to release her debut solo album, “Bella Donna,” in 1981, it was an instant hit. Buoyed by the top 20 hits “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Leather and Lace,” and “Edge of Seventeen,” the album reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

After 35 years of entertaining audiences, some might say that Nicks owes her fans little more than to show up, sing her hits and go home. But the 57-year-old chanteuse couldn’t disagree more. During every show, Nicks takes 10 minutes to walk slowly across the stage to shake as many fans’ hands as possible while her band continues to play. For some artists, such a gesture would seem staged and bogus.But not for Nicks.

“It’s physically very hard on my back,” she said by phone during a tour stop in Laguna Beach, Calif. “But it’s something that I’ve always felt was important to do. And I love it because then I have that emotional connection every night with the people that come to see me.

“We also do meet-and-greets every night except for when we have to leave right away. It’s something Fleetwood Mac has always done and I’ve done it in my solo career. It’s a thing that’s good to do. It gives you a minute to have some personal time with your fans. And I have the greatest fans in the world.”

If record sales are any indication, she’s right. Every album Nicks has released has gone platinum, she said. The only exception is her 2001 release, “Trouble in Shangri-La,” which is soon to go platinum, she said. That album, Nicks first studio release since 1994’s “Street Angel,” is one of her favorites. She spent nearly four years pouring her emotions into her words at a time when she was having doubts about her songwriting skills.

When it came time to record, Nicks recruited the vocal talents of Macy Gray, Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, each of whom performed on one song. Nicks’ main collaborator was Sheryl Crow, who credits Nicks as one of her main musical inspirations.

“I really felt that was my masterpiece,” Nicks said. “But considering what happened, I can’t be too upset.”Like many albums released in the summer of 2001, “Trouble in Shangri-La” got lost in the madness that was the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Nicks said she is unsure if she’ll release another solo record.

“I really don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m totally writing. I could go into the studio tomorrow and start a solo record. I think I get better as a writer every day because I work on it constantly. So it’s not like I couldn’t do it, but …”Her voice trails off. Why bother when it has little chance of playing on the radio, which means fewer people have a chance to hear the record?

Nicks doesn’t lament the current state of radio as much for herself as she does for those she’ll likely never know.”There’s a lot of amazing talented groups and solo singer-songwriters that are never going to make it because there’s nobody to give them a chance. I know they’re out there, but whether or not we ever get to know they exist is another question.”

Nicks is helping to change that in her own small way by offering Vanessa Carlton the opportunity to open the show.”She is my baby chick,” Nicks said. “I adore her and I think she is one of the best singer-songwriters to come along in a long time. Like many others,
if she has some people behind her that nurture her and let her spend time to develop who she is, I think that she’ll be around in 30 years, like myself. “She kills me every night. Sometimes, I can’t watch her because she makes me cry. She makes me think of me when I was 24 and it chokes me up. It chokes me up so bad I have to leave. I can’t watch her. That’s the biggest compliment I could give to anybody. She’s amazing.”

—

A random thought from Nicks

Usually in interviews, we’ll ask if the artist has anything they want to add. The answer usually is “no.” Stevie Nicks had something to add. She took time from her busy schedule recently to visit extremely injured soldiers returning from war at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. “I spent the whole day with them,” she said. “It opened my eyes to the fact that there’s a lot of kids out there that are so injured their lives will never be the same. If you happen to be in a city with a military hospital, get a plate of cookies together and go visit them because they are so isolated and so lonely. It broke my heart. It was an eye-opening experience for me. It really doesn’t matter how you feel about war. What matters is that these kids are paying a price and they’re alone and they’re lonely. That’s what I would like people to do. Take some candy and spend a little time with them. You’d be amazed what it means to them.”

* Stevie Nicks online:
www.stevienicks.net

If you want to go:
Stevie Nicks performs at 8 p.m. July 31 at the downtown Reno Events Center with opening act Vanessa Carlson. Tickets are $85, $65, $55 and $45 at Ticketmaster outlets and fee-free at the Silver Legacy, Eldorado, Harrah’s Reno and Circus Circus.

Details: 787-8497.

..

Reviews, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Nicks and Vanessa Carlton, Borgato Casino Pre Show, June 2005

Stevie Nicks with Vanessa Carlton

June 24, 2005
By ROBERT DiGIACOMO
For At The Shore, (609) 272-7017

Stevie Nicks’ latest concert is even `more witchy’ than some of her previous tours.

Nicks shows off `dark side’

Nicks’ “Gold Dust Tour,” making a stop at Borgata on June 30 and July 1, will have a touch of Vegas flash, thanks to the unlikely influence of Celine Dion and Elton John.

The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman originally designed her latest solo concert for a four-night stand in May at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, the 4,100-seat theater where Dion and John each perform on a massive 110-foot-wide stage.

“We watched Celine Dion — we don’t have 50 dancers. We watched Elton John — we don’t have 50 years of film … Elton filmed everything he did,” Nicks recalls of her first visits to the theater. “We said, `What in the world are we going to do?'”

The singer/songwriter and her team developed elaborate visuals, including images from one of her favorite films, Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version of “Beauty and the Beast,” and her favorite artists, Sulamith Wülfing (for whom she named one of her beloved Yorkshire terriers), to create a “dark” show that’s even “more witchy” than previous efforts.

“The show we’ve come out with now is pretty amazing because of all that extra thought that went into putting it all together,” Nicks says. “If we hadn’t had the Vegas show, it would have been good, but it wouldn’t have been like this.”

Having warmed up with the Vegas gig, Nicks moved into a tour with Don Henley, with whom she recorded “Leather and Lace” on her 1981 solo debut, “Bella Donna.” The two played sets of their own material and performed several duets.

“I sang `Hotel California’ (and I thought) I lived through that,” says Nicks, who kicked off the joint tour on June 3 in Philadelphia. “Don and I went out when he was recording `Hotel California’ at the end of the `Rumours’ recording. We lived those words in `Hotel California.’

“I’m up there singing, going, `Oh my God, here’s my life.’ I couldn’t help but be somewhat groupied out. I was a little stunned every night at the amazing gift to be able to sing that song every night with an Eagle.”

When the tour was shortened to 10 dates due to Henley’s commitments with the Eagles, Nicks decided to schedule her own summer outing; originally she planned to take most of this year off after wrapping a two-and-a-half-year, 135-date tour with Fleetwood Mac last fall.

“It’s always interesting to leave the Fleetwood Mac world and come back into my own world,” she says. “`Gold Dust Woman’ is different in my world, and so is `Dreams’ and so is `Rhiannon.’ I always feel with these songs that it’s been a blessing for me to be able to go back and forth.

“We always go back and start from the original version with Fleetwood Mac and my band. But they always come out slightly different.”

In addition to those staples and hits like “Edge of Seventeen,” “The Chain” and “Stand Back,” Nicks has added to her set list some little performed gems, including “Beauty and the Beast” and “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You.”

“I’ve taken the French movie `Beauty and the Beast’ from the ’40s, which is the reason I wrote the song — we put (footage) behind me,” Nicks says. “It’s just stunning. I can hardly keep from bursting into tears … it’s so poignant when I’m singing it.”

Joining Nicks for “Circle Dance,” a Bonnie Raitt cover, will be her opening act, up-and-coming singer/songwriter Vanessa Carlton, who’s touring behind her sophomore release, “Harmonium.”

“I’ve been friends with Vanessa for quite a while,” Nicks says. “Really, I think she’s one of the great ones. I want to take her on tour so I can put her in front of a lot of people, so people can see how great she is and remember that amazing first album.

“She’s a new artist … in this age of total chaos in the music business, if you don’t sell 10 million copies of your album, you’re just out of luck. It’s so hard. I want to do what I can to help her. I think she’s great. I think she’s one of those people who will still be around in 30 years when I’m dead. I want some of these women to not give up. We need them.”

Having survived numerous personal and career ups and downs, including drug addiction and sometimes turbulent relations with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks has been embraced by many female artists who followed her.

Her last solo album, 2001’s “Trouble in Shangri-La” featured contributions from Sheryl Crow, who produced some tracks, Macy Gray and Dixie Chick Natalie Maines, who subsequently covered “Landslide,” Nicks’ 1975 Fleetwood Mac hit.

“I’m thrilled that I can be some sort of an influence to these women,” Nicks says. “I hope I’ve been a good influence to them, so they’ll totally keep going.

“I think the music business is in terrible trouble. They don’t nurture artists. If you have a big hit record and a big hit single and you don’t follow it up, you are s–t out of luck.”

Nicks knows of what she speaks. Originally a duo with Lindsay Buckingham, her then-boyfriend, the two were dropped by their label after their 1973 debut didn’t sell well.

“Lindsay and I were dropped like a rock,” she recalls. “If it weren’t that we had a great producer who supported us full on for three years, we never would have made it.”

They joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and helped turn the band into one of the most successful groups of the 1970s and ’80s. The group’s Grammy-winning 1977 release, “Rumours,” sold 17 million copies, making it one of the best sellers of all time. Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Today, the group’s best-known line up, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Buckingham and Nicks (minus Christine McVie), is on hiatus, but still together. Nicks says the Mac probably will tour in 2007.

“We get all the rumors that Fleetwood Mac is going to break up,” Nicks says. “Fleetwood Mac is never going to break up. We have our problems. We go away from each other. We spend time with family and and friends and the problems go away, and you get back together and everyone’s excited.”

However, Christine McVie, has left the group, much to Nicks’ disappointment.

“In my wildest dreams, I would hope Christine would change her mind and come back,” she says. “If there’s anything I could do to change her mind, I would be in London to get her back.

“Unless she has a total mind meld and decides she’s ready to rock again, I don’t think she’s every going to come back.”

Once Nicks wraps her solo tour in September, she will come full circle to a favorite project: to make a film based on the books of Rhiannon, the mythical character who inspired one of her best known songs.

“This would be somewhere between `Braveheart’ and `The Lord of the Rings’ and `Star Wars,'” Nicks says. “It’s generations of gods and goddesses … it’s the stories the Welsh left behind — how to be in love, how to have kids, how not to fight your benefactors, how to run the world basically — told through the eyes of a fairy tale.

“I feel like it’s my spiritual path to do this. I wanted to do this in 1980. It was in my original contract with Atlantic Records. I was excited then as I am now. Then my whole solo career was busting. It had to be put on the back burner. I feel like it’s come to the surface in a big way.

“People might go, `Oh, I’m so sure.’ But when I get in my head I’m going to do something, I’m never not successful. I feel like when you’re as passionate about something like this as I am, you can make it happen.”

 

Stevie Nicks with Vanessa Carlton
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, June 30, and 8 p.m. Friday, July 1
WHERE: Event Center at Borgata, Atlantic City
HOW MUCH: Tickets are $75, $95 and $125 and available at Borgata box office or Ticketmaster at (800) 736-1420 or www.ticketmaster.com

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/entertainment/casinos/cas_inter.shtml
Reviews, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Nicks – Summerfest Review, OnWisconsin.com July 2005

Nicks’ power isn’t fleeting – She makes most of her own show

summerfest05

By GEMMA TARLACH
OnWisconsin.com
July 4, 2005

Who needs Don Henley?

Stevie Nicks performs Monday night at the Marcus Amphitheater. The amphitheater was only half-full, but Nicks gave a full-scale performance in her Summerfest appearance.

Stevie Nicks, originally scheduled to co-headline a Summerfest show with her occasional duet partner, put on a heady “Leather and Lace” show all on her own Monday night at the Marcus Amphitheater. Alternating dreamy power ballads with utter rock-outs – including her first encore, a feisty run-through of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” -Nicks was more force of nature than mere front woman during a two-hour set. At a time when the women of pop music are too often stripper wannabes lip-synching to a song someone else wrote, Nicks’ classy and commanding presence felt like a revelation.

With her sleek blond hair and a succession of floaty, sparkly, mostly black outfits, Nicks’ appearance remained timeless, as did her voice. Her distinctive smoky alto was as powerful as ever, particularly on “Landslide,” final encore “Beauty and the Beast” and “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You,” a song Nicks dedicated to “all those kids who we’re going to help” after making a pitch to the audience to sign an online petition to end world poverty.

Nicks mixed signature hits from her time in Fleetwood Mac, such as “Rhiannon,” with unexpected gems that included a cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “Circle Dance.”

But it was arguably the chunks of the set from her own successful solo career that packed the most power, including “Fall From Grace” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” with longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel standing in for Tom Petty on the vocal duel with Nicks.

Despite an amphitheater that was barely half-full, Nicks and her nine-piece backing band never lagged in their energy or seemed in a hurry to get back to the tour bus.

Before the encores, the band riffed on “Edge of 17” for several minutes as a gracious Nicks shook fans’ hands and kissed one little girl in the crowd.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that little girl went home realizing chicks can write their own songs and rock out well into their 50s?

Self-possessed beyond her years and downright charming, opening act Vanessa Carlton overcame some early breathiness on set opener “Ordinary Day” to wow the crowd with a half-hour collection of songs, including the new “This Time.” Alone on stage with her piano, Carlton proved she has much more substance to offer than her vanilla hit “Thousand Miles.” Among the highlights was “White Houses,” a thoughtful reflection on losing one’s virginity – and a song deemed too risqué for booty-loving MTV, an irony Carlton noted during her tart introduction of the song.

Reviews, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Stevie Nicks – Nostalgia Is A Good Thing, Cincinnati.Com, June 2005

For Stevie Nicks Nostalgia is a Good Thing

June 29, 2005
By Chris Varias
Cincinnati.Com

bildeStevie Nicks performed Tuesday night at Riverbend.

At this point in her career, it’s hard not to label Stevie Nicks a nostalgia rocker. This isn’t discrimination. It’s less a case of ageism (the fabled Fleetwood Mac alumna turned 57 last month) than one of no-big-hits-in-a-mighty-long-time-ism. There wasn’t one significant new song performed during her show at Riverbend Tuesday night, probably because she hasn’t recorded a significant song in at least 20 years.

However, as far as the crowd was concerned, the last two decades don’t matter, and nostalgia is a good thing. As long as Nicks’ 2005 singing voice resembles the 1975 version, and the old tunes deliver those bygone chills, she will continue to twirl her way into her fans’ hearts.

Backed by a seven-man band and two singers, Nicks belted her way through a 16-song set that focused on her solo career, with occasional nods to the Mac. The band was outstanding, stacked with lace session players like guitarist Waddy Wachtel and longtime Fleetwood Mac collaborators like multi-instrumentalist Brett Tuggle

The hit parade began with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” her 1981 duet with Tom Petty. Wachtel helped out on vocals for Petty’s parts.

It was soon followed by the one-two Fleetwood Mac punch of “Dreams” and “Rhiannon.” Nicks played with each number’s phrasing a bit, but never to the point of getting in the way of the song. She knew better than to spoil what was for the crowd a moment of back-to-back, adult-contemporary, yesteryear magic.

The lesser-known “Sorcerer,” with its fanciful imagery, offered Nicks the opportunity to switch into witchy-woman mode, as the video screen flickered with medieval visions of crystals and skeletons and wizards and such.

The next song, “Stand Back,” began with a long percussion intro, which served as the moment for Nicks to fetch her black and gold shawl from backstage. She would need the shawl to accentuate her many twirls (unofficial count: 18 360-degree turns) during the song’s guitar solo and climactic ending.

Other highlights that measured up to repeated spinning included a version of “Gold Dust Woman,” with its tick-tock drum opening immediately setting off cheers; a true-to-the-original acoustic version of “Landslide”; an epic “Edge of Seventeen,” with a lengthy percussion piece starting things off and few great Wachtel guitar solos along the way.

Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” was an interesting choice for an encore song. “It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled,” she sang, which could be her way of telling the world she’s a nostalgia act and proud of it.

Singer-piano player Vanessa Carlton, a 24-year-old who sings as pretty as she plays, did a 30-minute solo opening set that included familiar songs like “A Thousand Miles” and “Ordinary Day” plus a few new and unreleased tunes.

Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks – Long Distance Winner

LONG DISTANCE WINNER – Surviving the 70s
ANDY CAPPER
Viceland.com
May 2005

I’m 56 now, but music still has the same effect on me as when I was 15. Every so often, I’ll hear a couple of songs that will just kill me and make me go instantly to my desk to write, and then straight to the piano to compose. That feeling is something that’s never gone away and I feel really blessed by that.

I know some people say they used to write better when they were younger, but I feel the greatest writing for me is yet to come. I’m always working on new material and I’m always inspired. At the moment, I’m going between preparing for a short residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and composing a series of songs based on the books of Rhiannon, these Welsh legends that I really love. They’re such beautiful stories. It’s what the old Welsh people left behind to teach future generations about how to raise their children and how to deal with relationships—how to run their lives, basically.

Another thing that inspires me in my music at the moment is my niece Jesse. She’s 13 but she’s an inch taller than me, with black hair and blue eyes. Sometimes when I’m running on my treadmill and listening to music on my CD player, I’ll be singing and howling along while Jesse’s in the same room and I’ll make her listen to how the singer is singing. Jesse was with me when I wrote four songs for the last Fleetwood Mac album, and she even got to sing on the title track, “Say You Will.” That was fun. Continue reading Stevie Nicks – Long Distance Winner →