Category Archives: Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac, Interview Audio Clip, Mick Fleetwood, Tour Info

Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie: This might be my final tour | Daily Telegraph (Aus)

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October 21, 2015 2:00pm
By Annette Sharp
The Daily Telegraph

TWO years after pulling the pin on their 2013 Australian tour following bass player John McVie’s cancer diagnosis, Fleetwood Mac’s most famous and most successful line-up landed in Sydney this week ahead of what McVie has indicated might be his last tour with the band that bears his name.

Mick Fleetwood at Allphones ahead of Fleetwood Mac tour. Picture: Cameron Richardson
Mick Fleetwood at Allphones ahead of Fleetwood Mac tour. Picture: Cameron Richardson

Founding member Mick Fleetwood, 68, was respectful when he spoke of McVie’s recent health crisis during a sound check at Allphones Arena yesterday.

“I raised a toast the other night with Christine (McVie). He’s well as well, absolutely (in) tip top health and that’s pivotal. And outside of it, it’s great to be here and playing.

“It’s a revisitation,” Fleetwood enthused of his 69-year-old creative partner with whom he founded the band in 1963.

“John’s very practical. He didn’t get into it (cancer talk) one way or the other. I’m an old drama queen but John just said, ‘OK, let’s get it fixed’ and that was that. Never heard any more about it and it was fixed, and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

In May, McVie said his playing days would soon be at an end: “How much longer can the Mac be a working band? Not much longer, for me anyway. It’s not the music. It’s the peripherals, the travelling. Mick will go on until they put him up against a wall and shoot him.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie: This might be my final tour | Daily Telegraph (Aus) →

Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Tour Info

Rumours of Fleetwood Mac’s demise prove wrong | The Australian

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THE AUSTRALIAN
OCTOBER 22, 2015 12:00AM
Iain Shedden
Music Writer
Sydney

Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood takes pride in being part of one of music’s greatest soap operas, the band’s landmark 1977 album Rumours.

Mick Fleetwood in Sydney after paying tribute to a ‘bunch of wonderful, crazy people, present and past, that have come through Fleetwood Mac’. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Source: News Corp Australia
Mick Fleetwood in Sydney after paying tribute to a ‘bunch of wonderful, crazy people, present and past, that have come through Fleetwood Mac’. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Source: News Corp Australia

“The album is a chronicle of everything that happened with us on a personal level, which became a story almost too out of control, but the quality of the way we ­approached that album sonically, it’s very natural,” Fleetwood, 68, said in Sydney yesterday.

The drummer, a founding member of one of the world’s most successful and enduring rock acts, will be joined by Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Christine McVie on stage in Sydney tonight as the veteran band begins its On With the Show Australian tour.

The shows, which come at the end of a world tour, mark the return to the Australian stage of Christine McVie, who quit the band in 1998, but rejoined at the beginning of last year. Her return reunites the line-up whose fractious relationships formed the lyrical backbone of the Rumours album and shot them to international superstardom.

“She is a dear friend to all of us,” said Fleetwood, “even when she wasn’t in the band, so to have her back and with such a level of enthusiasm is a joy to see. It’s fair to say that Stevie is happy to not just be surrounded by a bunch of ex-boyfriends.”

Nicks was in a relationship with Buckingham when they both joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, but after they split she had an affair with Fleetwood, who was married at the time.

Fleetwood has been the only constant in the band since it began as a blues rock outfit in ­England in the 1960s and believes he has been partly responsible for keeping the group together through its many turbulent ­periods.

“I don’t write the songs, I don’t sing the songs, but in a way that has been my contribution to a bunch of wonderful, crazy people, present and past, that have come through Fleetwood Mac.”

The drummer, who has also toured Australia with his blues band, said that a new album would be forthcoming from Fleetwood Mac.

“There will be a new record,” he said.

“John and myself and Lindsey cut a lot of stuff about three years ago, which remains in our swollen archive. Much later we recorded with Christine. Whether Stevie becomes a part of that we’re not quite sure. I live in hope that it will work out.

“We’re not done yet, that’s the main thing.”

Fleetwood Mac, Tour Info, UK Articles

Glasto your own way as Fleetwood Mac set to sign for music festival | Daily Mirror

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19th Oct, 2015
Halina Watts
Daily Mirror (Uk)

Glastonbury organisers are in the final stages of signing Fleetwood Mac , we can reveal.

Fleetwood back: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham
Fleetwood back: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham

It comes after they headlined Isle Of Wight festival last year as a UK exclusive.

But now having kept that promise to Isle of Wight bosses, they are free to Go Their Own Way.

A festival source at Q tells us: “Glastonbury was always on the cards and they wanted to do it last year but they couldn’t because of the deal they have signed with Isle Of Wight organisers. Now they are free of that they can do what they want.”

It is not yet known how much Glastonbury mastermind Michael Eavis has offered the British-American rockers.

Fleetwood-MAIN
Fleetwood Mac performing at IOW

But it will be significantly less than what Isle Of Wight organiser John Giddings splashed out to get them last year.

Giddings said he managed to get the five stars – including Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham – by showing them the dollar.

Apparently Michael Eavis was blown away by their tactics. Giddings revealed: “Michael Eavis said, ‘How did you get Fleetwood Mac?’ I said, I paid them!”

He said he had to invest in a show-stopping headline act to fill the festival.

“Glastonbury are in a privileged position, whereby they sell out in advance,” he explained. Continue reading Glasto your own way as Fleetwood Mac set to sign for music festival | Daily Mirror →

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

Introducing… Fleetwood Mac: The Ultimate Music Guide – Uncut

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“There’s blood and guts and disagreements still to this day…”

FM_Uncut

Early 1969. California has been hit by a series of destructive floods, so bad that the international telephone operator is sceptical a connection can be made between London and Los Angeles. When the call goes through, however, the NME’s Nick Logan has a few demanding questions for the first leader of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green. One is how Green’s band will sustain their reputation as blues purists in the wake of a big hit single, the expansive “Albatross”. Will their next single be another change from what their fans have come to expect?

“I don’t really care,” says Green, yawning. “I never have done really. We’ve never done what was expected of Fleetwood Mac – we’ve always done the opposite. We just do what we want to do.”

Thus begins the remarkable story of Fleetwood Mac – a saga unparalleled in rock, as our new Uncut Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to the band makes clear (on sale in the UK on Thursday Sept 10, but available to order now at our online shop). Over the next four and a half decades, the band’s history has often read like an infinite series of surprise plot twists, where radical upheavals arrive with every new album. Key members come and go, lost to religious cults and mental breakdowns, victims of multiple romantic traumas. Musical directions and locations change as frequently as the lineup: the blues evolve into the apotheosis of sophisticated pop; and a remote Hampshire commune is swapped for the LA highlife.

As the revealing features collected in this Ultimate Music Guide prove, the journalists of Uncut, NME and Melody Maker have been alongside Fleetwood Mac every step of the way. They documented the rise and fall of Peter Green’s band, the emergence of Christine McVie, the transitional lineups of the early ’70s, the dramatic arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and the glory and devastation that soon followed. “Being in Fleetwood Mac is more like being in group therapy,” noted the mostly redoubtable Mick Fleetwood in 1977, as he contemplated the seismic impact of “Rumours” and laid bare – not for the last time – the private lives of its key players

Continue reading Introducing… Fleetwood Mac: The Ultimate Music Guide – Uncut →

Fleetwood Mac, Reviews

‘Fleetwood Mac’ (1975) Turns 40 | The Young Folks

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Imagine, if you will, you’re a teenage blues rock fan in 1974 recovering from the odd new melodic sound of one of your favorite bands, Fleetwood Mac. After their 1974 album Heroes Are Hard to Find was much more chart-friendly than previous outings, you start to wonder what kind of band this will become. It’s even more shocking to find out that Fleetwood Mac have apparently changed their scenery from bustling England to sunny California. More so, two new members have joined the band, and when you go to find out what music they’ve done in the past, you’re shocked to find an album cover featuring a couple that look more like models than rock stars. Fast forward to July the next year as you pick up Fleetwood Mac’s brand new album. To you, the blues-rock junkie looking for dirty riffs and Elmore James covers, what you hear is a more shocking musical departure than the last record. But to someone else, say the hot next door neighbor you’ve been crushing on since pre-k with long blonde hair and sunflowers on her sun dress, who rides with top down in her car, it’s the coolest album around.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the album that gave everyone a sneak peek of the sound that would turn Fleetwood Mac into superstars. It makes sense that the band’s first self-titled album (their 1968 debut) has been re-dubbed Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac over the years, since the 1975 self-titled album served as a new identity for the band. Hints of folk, country, and FM-friendly pop rock are all over the 1975 album thanks to the presence of finger-picking Lindsey Buckingham and cooing gypsy woman Stevie Nicks. Funny enough, Nicks only joined the band as a package deal with Buckingham, as he only joined the band on the condition that Nicks (his girlfriend at the time) join too. Since bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie didn’t want to be hypocrites (they were married at the time), they and drummer Mick Fleetwood (the only man from the original line-up) brought the duo on board, and the rest is history.

Continue reading ‘Fleetwood Mac’ (1975) Turns 40 | The Young Folks →

Fleetwood Mac, Reviews, Tour Info

Review: Fleetwood Mac light up 3Arena Dublin | Independent.ie

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Ed Power
12/07/2015 | 11:58

How fitting that Fleetwood Mac should close the European leg of their latest comeback tour with a brace of sold-out shows in Dublin.

SHOWBIZ Io_140

It was at this very venue in 2013 that erstwhile singer and keyboardist Christine McVie reunited with her bandmates for the first time in 16 years. The success of their soundcheck jam that night persuaded the reclusive Englishwoman to rejoin full-time – and now here she was, back where it started.

The sense of a group operating at full tilt was evident from the outset as McVie, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks plunged into the harmonized introduction to The Chain, a tug-of-love ballad written while Nicks and Buckingham were in the throes of their notoriously messy late ’70s break-up (heartbreaking fuel for the 40-million selling Rumours album). Half a lifetime later the tune still gleamed with acidic vim as Nicks and Buckingham locked gazes and spat accusatorially lyrics at one another.

With McVie in the fold once more, it was as if a missing piece of a puzzle had clicked into place. In her absence, Buckingham’s pop eccentricities wielded an outsize influence over Fleetwood Mac, his oddball histrionics threatening to capsize the ship. Tonight confirmed that McVie’s classic songwriting and calm persona served as a vital counterpoint. Earlier Fleetwood Mac reunions felt like glorified Buckingham solo affairs. This was assuredly no longer the case. Continue reading Review: Fleetwood Mac light up 3Arena Dublin | Independent.ie →

Fleetwood Mac

40 Years Ago: Fleetwood Mac Finally Have Their Break Through With ‘Fleetwood Mac’

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Ultimate Classic Rock
By Jeff Giles
July 11, 2015 12:19 PM

Fleetwood Mac released their ninth album, Heroes Are Hard to Find, in the fall of 1974. Although it gave the band their first Top 40 hit in the U.S., it also led to yet another in the seemingly endless series of lineup changes that had dogged them since co-founding guitarist Peter Green quit in 1970. But it also resulted in Fleetwood Mac, which changed the course of their history.

Guitarist Bob Welch departed after Heroes was released, leaving the band in a state of flux that was compounded by the fact that they’d been in the middle of a long legal struggle with ex-manager Clifford Davis, who claimed he owned the Fleetwood Mac name and tried to prove it by sending a “fake” version of the group out on the road. Forced to find a replacement for Welch just as they settled things with Davis, Mac mainstays Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and John McVie ended up adding two new members — and setting themselves up for a massive commercial breakthrough.

It all started, according to Fleetwood, with a trip to the supermarket. In a 1976 interview with Melody Maker, he recalled having a chance encounter with “a guy” he told he was searching for a new studio for the band’s 10th LP. “He told me about a studio, Sound City in Van Nuys,” said Fleetwood, whose tour of the facility included a fateful demonstration of the studio’s gear: “They played me a tape of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham which they had done a couple of years ago. At the time I made a mental note about them, and soon after made a phone call to them asking if they wanted to join.” Continue reading 40 Years Ago: Fleetwood Mac Finally Have Their Break Through With ‘Fleetwood Mac’ →

Fleetwood Mac, Original Content, Tour Info, UK Articles, Website Content

Fleetwood Mac in the UK over the last six weeks: A few thoughts…….

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Fleetwood Mac completes the European leg of the On With The Show tour tonight in Dublin, Ireland at the 3 Arena.

Thinking back over the last six weeks we have seen many highs, with their first UK festival appearance since the early 70s at the Isle of Wight festival, six nights at the O2 in London and lots of positive reviews in the press.

However we have also seen some lows, the cancellation and non re-schedule of the Manchester show was poor form from the logistics team, we understand that illness can cause last minute cancellations, but this date should really have been rescheduled as the cancelled Birmingham date was, so not to disappoint thousands of loyal fans who had paid an enormous amount of hard earned money on travel arrangements and hotel stays, the reimbursement of the ticket cost is only one element of the overall cost.

But my gripe with this leg of the tour is not with the band or the tour, but with the UK TV and radio media, there has been next to nothing mentioned on the main channels in the UK on the momentous re-joining of Christine McVie and her first live appearances in the UK since 1990, or the first time that the Rumours-five had played in the UK since 1979 and the TUSK tour.

I would have thought that the BBC would have lapped this up with a new TV special that chronicled this ‘never thought would happen’ event. The tour stops were sell-outs, the band was playing their hearts out, celebrities from music, TV, and film were attending the shows, the MAC was well reviewed in the national press, but for radio and television next to nothing. We did get a bare minimum appearance on Sky Arts of four live songs and a small interview with Stevie and Mick from the Isle of Wight Festival, but that was it! Continue reading Fleetwood Mac in the UK over the last six weeks: A few thoughts……. →

Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

Top ten Fleetwood Mac tracks from the Stevie Nicks era | Saga Magazine

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By Andy Stevens,
Wednesday 20 May 2015

From Rhiannon to Silver Springs, our round-up of the top ten Fleetwood Mac tracks from the Stevie Nicks era. Plus, read our in-depth Stevie Nicks interview in Saga Magazine.

Fleetwood+Mac+Performs+Staples+Center+-7XgGNjkDm_x

Fleetwood Mac became – and remain – giants of transatlantic adult-orientated rock. In fact, if that genre was patented, they could confidently lay claim to owning the term. But the band are defined by two distinct, successful eras.

First, there were the (arguably) hairier, hippier British blues-rock years of Fleetwood Mac’s late Sixties incarnation, led by Peter Green. Here, the band variously plugged-in, progged-up and blissed-out with hits including Albatross, Man Of The World, Oh Well and the memorably-titled The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown).

But Fleetwood Mac’s career banked high into the commercial stratosphere in the mid and late Seventies when American singer Stevie Nicks flounced onto the scene to transform the band into global stadium fillers, her voice at once ethereal and earthy while oozing western promise.

Fleetwood Mac’s gazillion-selling 1977 Rumours album remains a credible counterweight to the punk era in its biggest and noisiest year, and is recognised more so as years pass.

And here’s a thing: take a straw poll of first generation punks and we bet many would have had a copy of Rumours in their record collections at the time, a heavily-played guilty pleasure lurking behind The Clash and Sex Pistols’ first albums.

We’ve picked out ten of the best tracks from Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks era for your listening pleasure here. And we’ve done so with the shamelessly commercial premise in mind that some of the most popular and biggest-selling songs become both of those things for a reason. Continue reading Top ten Fleetwood Mac tracks from the Stevie Nicks era | Saga Magazine →

Fleetwood Mac, Reviews, Tour Info, UK Articles

Hit Parade, Fleetwood Mac Review at The Forum, Los Angeles | Q Magazine, July 2015

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And then there were five. Again.

FLEETWOOD MAC – THE FORUM, LOS ANGELES
FRIDAY, 10 APRIL 2015

****

It might be that for Fleetwood Mac there’s no other option: they have to start their show with a brace of their biggest hits because hits are all they have, and because hits are alI their generation-spanning fanbase will accept. And that expectation and appreciation are, in part at least, what are keeping these multi-millionaire 60- and 70-somethings trucking along on a year-long world arena tour (another one), even as decades-old “issues” refuse to go quietly into the night.

Band_Q

The name of this new jaunt defiently tells it like it is: this is Fleetwood Mac’s On With The Show tour. They hit the stage running in Los Angeles. They open with The Chain, its signature bass solo ground out with cool aplomb by John McVie. Flat-capped and rocksteady as ever, the 69-year-old is clearly very much back In the saddle after his 2013 cancer diagnosis.

Also back-in-Mac: his former wife, Christine McVie. After 17 years out of the fold – fear of flying and, well boredom of rocking caused her to exit, stage right, for retirement in the Kent countryside – the singer/keyboard player rejoined the band 18 months ago. Song two tonight is one of the 71-year-old’s signature classics from the era-defining Rumours album. You Make Loving Fun is defiantly funky, sprightly and blushingly giddy four decades on from its composition. Vocally. Christine sounds fantastic — aII the more remarkable considering that this is the 77th show of the tour.

Whether the subject matter still narks John is a moot point: Christine wrote it for her new fella after she and the bassist had split —her new fella being Fleetwood Mac’s lighting director Curry Grant. Badtimes for John, goodtimes tor Rumours, the 40 million-selling 1977 album whose grooves contained a whole soap opera of hits, splits and lovers’ tiffs.

Continue reading Hit Parade, Fleetwood Mac Review at The Forum, Los Angeles | Q Magazine, July 2015 →