Category Archives: Fleetwood Mac

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

ANDY GILL
FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2013
THE INDEPENDENT UK
star number 1star number 2star number 3star number 4star number 5
Pitch-perfect pop before they went their own way
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It speaks volumes about the enduring quality of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – here repackaged in an expanded heritage edition comprising, in its most lavish format, four CDs, one DVD and audiophile vinyl album – that not even the twin taints of appropriation as Top Gear theme and political anthem have managed to diminish its appeal. It remains one of pop’s most impervious generational touchstones.

Rumours represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America’s Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism. Its very sound, with those winsome melodies, those West Coast harmonies, and that rhythm section lagging fractionally, imperceptibly behind the beat conjures a fantasy world of luxurious, liberal excess and Californication, captured with sleek perfection.

The album’s story is well-known now, rock’s premier case of strife bringing forth sweetness, as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham batted the tattered remnants of their relationship back and forth in song. She had only to refer to “thunder” in “Dreams”, for him to snipe back “You can roll like thunder” in “Go Your Own Way” – but both songs are equally sublime, as too are Christine McVie’s attempts to cheer the troops up in songs like “Don’t Stop” and “You Make Loving Fun”.

Heaven only knows how they managed to remain focused (and civil) enough to bring the project to such glorious fruition, a process here sketched out across two CDs of revealing demos and outtakes, the best of which may be Buckingham’s exquisite “Brushes” – the original demo for “Never Going Back Again” – on which his delicate, lace-like threads of multi-tracked guitar intertwine with the crystalline sparkle of dulcimer or harp.

Hearing the band develop its definitive voice in these performances, one’s interest is sharply piqued for the imminent reformation tour: it may not be as intriguing as Bowie’s comeback, but there’s a peculiar magic in operation here that deserves treasuring.

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

Will Hodgkinson
January 25 2013

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Thirty-five years after its release, we can revel in the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made

Rumours is unique in being a 20th-century masterpiece that did more damage to rock’n’roll than any other album in the history of music. It’s impossible not to revel in the songcraft of Christine McVie’s Songbird. Lindsey Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way is the ultimate drivetime anthem. The Chain is the last word in soft rock excitement and the slick studio sophistication of Don’t Stop is too tasty to resist. But Rumours is also the 30 million-selling monster that, by making it OK to be a moaning, self-obsessed rock star peddling commoditised emotion to the record-buying public, set in motion a terrible chain of events. We can blame Rumours for the vast majority of horrific middle-of-the-road rock that blighted the 1980s, not to mention any number of bland singer-songwriters aiming to sound intimate while also wishing to appeal to the widest demographic possible, and we can thank it for helping make punk happen as a reaction to it.

Now, 35 years after its release, on a three-CD special edition or, better still, a 45rpm vinyl double album that expands the clarity of this exercise in sonic science, we can revel in the simple pleasure of listening to the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times

It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist

Daily Mail Online
By ADRIAN THRILLS
24 January 2013

FLEETWOOD MAC: Rumours (Rhino, Expanded and Deluxe editions)
Verdict: Rock’s greatest soap opera revisited    Rating: 5 Star Rating

article-0-0B078D75000005DC-182_306x327Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours wasn’t so much a rock record as a fully fledged soap opera.

Fuelled by drugs and  tangled romances, it chronicled the five members’ raw emotions with classic songs like Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way and Dreams.

Keyboardist Christine McVie described the sessions as a ‘nightly cocktail party’ while drummer Mick Fleetwood said they were ‘crucifyingly difficult’.

But the Anglo-Americans pressed on to finish ‘the most important album we ever made’.

On Monday — 35 years after its original release — Rumours is back.  The landmark album is being re-issued in two packages with bonus material, out-takes and live recordings to mark the band’s reunion tour (UK dates are expected to be in late September).

A three-CD version, selling at around £12, contains the original album, bonus tracks and the live material. For Mac maniacs, a ‘deluxe’ edition, close to £50, is  bolstered by further outtakes, a DVD and copy of Rumours on vinyl. Continue reading It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist

Christine McVie To Re-Join Fleetwood Mac?

Christine McVie To Re-Join Fleetwood Mac?

Thursday, January 24th 2013 11:30

Planet Rock can exclusively reveal that Mick Fleetwood is trying to persuade Christine McVie to re-join Fleetwood Mac. 

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McVie retired from the band in the late 1990’s and hasn’t performed with them since.

He also confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will announce the European leg of their forthcoming world tour in the coming weeks.

Mick told Planet Rock’s Darren Redick, “I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with my sister, Christine McVie, and that’s sort of a lovely, nice thing to be doing. Getting her out of the English cold there for a few weeks …and me and Chris will be flying back [to Mick’s home in Hawaii] after my work in London”.

Darren asked Mick if Christine would be with them for their shows in the UK and Mick went on to say, “I would love that and I would welcome that as we all would and I truly hope that happens. And it might just be the case and I will take that to the fore and be reminded that a lot of people would love to see that happen. It would be an emotionally charged moment that would be lovely to have happen. And I know everyone in the band would welcome that. So you never know!”.

As far as the world tour goes, Fleetwood Mac look likely to be in England by the autumn. Mick said, “We’re going to be touring in September and October in England and in Europe, we’re going on a massive world tour, which is getting more massive by the second, and those shows will be announced in the next few days”.

Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac

The Guardian UK
Caspar Llewellyn Smith
Jan 12th 2013

Stevie Nicks’s tumultuous life as a rock queen led her to addiction, heartbreak and “insanity”. As Fleetwood Mac reunite, she tells Caspar Llewellyn Smith why she’s going back for more
Stevie NicksStevie Nicks: ‘I always wanted to be a songwriter: I told my parents when I was 15 and a half.’ Photograph: Jason Bell/Camera Press

 

 

Before I meet Stevie Nicks, I hear her. She is downstairs somewhere in the houseshe’s renting on the beach in Malibu – a short drive, traffic allowing, up the Californian coastline from the two homes she owns in LA – and looking for her dark glasses. It’s early eveninginDecember and has long since turned dark outside, but if you’re the ultimate rock goddess – NME‘s recent description, testament to an ongoing revaluation of interest inFleetwood Mac among the younger generation – wearing shades at night goes with the territory.

Scented candles are spaced throughout the room and there’s a well-thumbed copy of the first book inThe TwilightSaga on a side table – signsthat suggest that the 64-year-old singer is comfortably in residence. Plus there’s her Yorkshire terrier, getting stuck continuously under my feet. But, as Nicks says, when all five feet one-and-a-half inches of her does emerge at the top of the stairs, she can’t seem to settle.

In factshe shouldn’t be here at all (and wasn’t planning any interviews), but on holiday in the Florida Keys she was getting bitten to death by bugs and, besides, felt bored. Going home to either of her places in the city wasn’t an option because right now she’s “making a molecular change”: parking her solo career, which saw her tour the world with her solo album In Your Dreamsfor the past two years, and getting ready for the return of the Mac.

Instead she asked to see if this place, which she’d rented previously, was available. “I’m trying to rest and it’s really hard to rest because in either one of my own houses I feel like I should be working,” she explains. “I’ve been coming here off and on for nearly 10 years and there’s absolutely nothing for me to do except draw or sit and write poetry or bring the electric piano down.” Problem is, “I’ve been here since Tuesday and I haven’t managed yet to actually come up here at three in the afternoon and go sit on that miserable couch and draw for a few hours – because that’s when I know I’ve made a change.”

Despite the homely touches, the house looks perfectly nondescript from theoutside, and it’s modestly apportioned by the standards of LA rock aristocracy. But then Nicks doesn’t play the diva either – kooky fan of fantasy, yes (her fondness for the oeuvre of Stephenie Meyer and liking for US fantasy TV series Game of Thrones fits right into that), but not the figure who insisted during Fleetwood Mac‘s Tusk tour that every hotel room she stayed in be painted pink and must house a white piano.

It is now 40 years since her first album, Buckingham Nicks – the fruit of her relationship, both musical and romantic, with Lindsey Buckingham – and life is coming full circle. Later this month, the most classic of all Fleetwood Mac albums, Rumours, gets the full reissue treatment, and the band will hit the road again for a US tour that will also likely come to Europe. (Of the rumours that they’ll headline Glastonbury, Nicks is noncommittal, though she does say she’d love to do it.) Continue reading Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie at Peace With Fleetwood Mac Past

CHRISTINE MCVIE AT PEACE WITH FLEETWOOD MAC PAST

Christine McVie enjoyed a wild ride as a member of Fleetwood Mac, but nowadays the retired rocker prefers a quiet life out of the spotlight. In a new interview, the legendary singer and songwriter shares her fond and not-so-fond memories of the past, and says she has no problem with her former bandmates moving on without her.

McVie looks back on the landmark album ‘Rumours’ in a rare public interview with Mojo magazine. Released in February of 1977, the album spawned a string of commercial hits including ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘The Chain’ and ‘Dreams.’ McVie contributed ‘You Make Loving Fun,’ ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘Oh Daddy’ and ‘Songbird,’ but she recalls that her rocky relationship with ex-husband John McVie, as well as the strain between Lindsey Buckingham and Steve Nicks, made for a stressful situation.

“John and I have long since made friends, and I’m sure Stevie and Lindsey have as well. But I am often still flabbergasted at how the hell we managed to make [the album] in the first place,” McVie says incredulously. “But that was what tied us together — we knew that the music was good. The chemistry was such that we brought the best out in each other.”

Still, McVie acknowledges that the group’s crazy, drug-fueled antics impacted the recording sessions. “They were wild days,” she admits. “I can’t deny there was a lot of lunacy in the studio. But Stevie and I rented a condominium in Sausalito to get away from all of that. It was the boys who all stayed at the Record Plant house. So that’s where all the madness was happening.”

The musician still enjoys the music on ‘Rumours’ after all these years. “It was a real pleasure to listen to it again,” she states. “I’ve had it lying around but not listened to it for years. It’s like if you live next door to Buckingham Palace, you don’t go and look at it every day.”

McVie departed Fleetwood Mac in 1998, returned to her native England and has since kept a very low profile. She has seen her old band in concert a few times since, though she has steadfastly not joined them onstage. “I have a really good time when I go. I can stand at the sound board and watch them sweat,” she says with a laugh. “They do my songs, ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘World Turning,’ but they are limited to what they can do of mine. I think they tried ‘You Make Loving Fun,’ but I don’t think the sound of their vocals were right. But I wish them well.”

McVie appears to have no future plan to return to music, and she says she has shelved any plans she once had of opening a restaurant, which was part of her intent when she left the group. “I didn’t open a restaurant but I did go to a few cooking schools,” she says, adding, “It was too much like hard work!”

THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE! FLEETWOOD MAC TO REISSUE LANDMARK ALBUM

PRESS RELEASE
from Rhino Records

Expanded And Deluxe Versions Of Fleetwood Mac’s Pop Masterpiece Include Unreleased Session Recordings And Live Performances

Current Band Lineup To Embark On 34-City U.S. Tour In April With Tickets On Sale Today

Rumours Available January 29 From Rhino

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 5CD 1LP

Fleetwood Mac, one of rock’s most enduring, beloved and successful bands, will circulate a fresh round of Rumours next year with expanded and deluxe versions of the album in celebration of it’s 35th anniversary. Rumours made the band one of the most iconic bands of the 1970s and garnered wide critical praise, earned the Grammy® for Album of the Year, and has now sold more than 40 million copies worldwide since its 1977 debut.

In celebration of the release, the current lineup of the band, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, both original members since 1967, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who joined the band in 1975, will kick off and their first U.S. tour since 2009 in April. The 34-date jaunt features stops in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Chicago and a special appearance at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Tickets for the first run of shows are on sale now at LiveNation.com.

The expanded edition’s three CDs includes the original album and the b-side “Silver Springs,” a dozen unreleased live recordings from the group’s ’77 world tour, and an entire disc filled with unreleased takes from the album’s recording sessions. The deluxe edition includes all of the music from expanded version, plus an additional disc of outtakes a DVD that features “The Rosebud Film,” a 1977 documentary about the album, and the album on vinyl. RUMOURS will be available January 29 from Rhino as the expanded edition and the deluxe edition. Digital versions will also be available.

Fleetwood Mac Rumours 3CD

Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded Rumours against a backdrop personal turmoil, chronicling their raw emotions in songs like “Go Your Own Way,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Dreams,” the latter becoming the band’s first number one smash.

The disc of 12 unreleased live recordings from the band’s 1977 Rumours tour features performances from concerts in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Nashville and Columbia, S.C. The songs include album tracks like “The Chain,” “Oh Daddy” and “Songbird” as well as “World Turning” and “Rhiannon,” two tracks from the group’s 1975 eponymous release.

Producers also have compiled a selection of 16 unreleased recordings from the album’s sessions including early takes of “Go Your Own Way,” “I Don’t Want To Know” and the popular b-side “Silver Springs.” There are also several demo recordings, including one for the outtake “Planets of the Universe,” plus an instrumental version of “Never Going Back Again.”

The deluxe edition of Rumours features three additional pieces. First is an 18-track compilation of session outtakes originally released in the 2004 reissue of the album. Next is the original album on 140-gram vinyl. Finally, there is a DVD with “The Rosebud Film.” This 1977 documentary by Michael Collins includes interviews, rehearsal footage and live performances of: “World Turning,” “Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” “Go Your Own Way,” “You Make Loving Fun” and “I’m So Afraid.”

RUMOURS: DELUXE EDITION
Track Listing Continue reading THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE! FLEETWOOD MAC TO REISSUE LANDMARK ALBUM

Ringing in the New Year With Fleetwood Mac

Huffington Post
Jane Heller
Posted: 3rd Jan 2013

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s Eve. There’s so much pressure to do something out-of-this-world fabulous, not to mention have someone out-of-this-world fabulous to do it with. I remember prix fixed restaurant dinners that weren’t worth the money and too-big parties whose forced gaiety made everyone feel tense and champagne hangovers that wrecked me for days. And I remember occasions when my husband was suffering from flare-ups from Crohn’s disease and was too ill to celebrate at all.

My favorite memories are of quiet evenings with him and a few close friends, and this past New Year’s Eve was a case in point. He was in better-than-usual health and good spirits, so out we went.

Our hosts were Martha and Michael Collins, who had lost their house in the 2008 wildfire that destroyed over 200 homes in the Santa Barbara area. After living in a trailer for four years, Martha and Michael rose from the ashes, literally, and moved last month into the spectacular new house they built on the same site — a meticulously-crafted beacon of resilience. Some people would have been thrown by the very notion of losing everything (short of the clothes on their backs and their laptops), but Martha and Michael thrived, their marriage and partnership more solid than ever.

We were in the midst of their scrumptious meal when Michael, a filmmaker whose specialty has been chronicling the lives and music of our most accomplished rock ‘n’ roll artists, mentioned that among the very few material possessions he’d been able to grab before a wall of flames drove him and Martha out of their house was the documentary footage he’d shot 35 years ago of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Japanese tour to promote their “Rumours” album.

“I’m finishing up the documentary now,” he told us.

“The public has never seen Fleetwood Mac like this before,” Martha chimed in. “They were so young and it was such an innocent time, and the music is beyond great since they were in their prime.”

I put down my knife and fork (not easy when your hosts have prepared a feast that would rival any restaurant), and said, “Can we see this documentary? Like, tonight?”

Michael hesitated. “It’s still raw — a work in progress. But I guess I could show you clips.”

I was not taking “I guess” for an answer. Fleetwood Mac has always been one of my favorite bands and on this particular New Year’s Eve, when I’d felt barraged by news of Kanye West, the Gangnam Style guy and Rihanna’s latest Twitpic, I was so in the mood for a little boomer music. Continue reading Ringing in the New Year With Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks: Fleetwood Mac would love to headline 2013 Glastonbury Festival

Stevie Nicks says Fleetwood Mac would ‘love to’ headline the 2013 Glastonbury Festival as part of their world tour.

The band have announced more than 30 shows in the USA, which begin with a gig at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on April 4.

glastonbury-pyramid-stageStevie Nicks says Fleetwood Mac would love a headline slot on the Pyramid Stage at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival

The last of those concerts is in Detroit on Wednesday, June 12 – exactly a fortnight before the Glastonbury Festival returns to Worthy Farm.

Singer Nicks said she fell in love with Glasto after watching the 2011 festival on television following her own appearance at Hyde Park’s Hard Rock Calling.

“When we were there (in the UK) in 2011, I watched it,” Nicks told NME. “I watched Beyonce and it was pretty amazing!

“I had just got home from the Hyde Park thing, so I was just home from my own show and I turned on the TV and we had a pretty big screen in the hotel where we were, so I sat and watched like three hours, four hours of it, so would I love to do it? I’d Love to do it!”

Nicks also told NME that Fleetwood Mac hoped to announce “seven or eight” summer shows in the UK.

After its break in 2012, Glastonbury Festival returns from Wednesday, June 26, to Sunday, June 30. Tickets sold out in less than two hours when they went on sale in early October.

Later that month, visitors to This is Somerset voted for their dream 2013 Glastonbury Festival line-up and chose The Rolling Stones, Daft Punk and Fleetwood Mac.

Posted Originally Here
Monday Dec 17th 2012

Christine McVie will never rejoin Fleetwood Mac, says Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks has downplayed the likelihood of Christine McVie reuniting with Fleetwood Mac.

McVie left Fleetwood Mac following the highly successful ‘The Dance’ tour in 1998 and has largely shunned the music business, aside from the 2004 solo LP In the Meantime.

© PA Images / Fiona Hanson/PA Archive

Fleetwood Mac will launch their latest reunion tour in 2013, but Nicks has stressed to Rolling Stone that McVie will not be involved at all.

“I would say there’s no more a chance of [McVie returning] than an asteroid hitting the earth. She is done,” Nicks explained to the publication.

The ‘Rhiannon’ singer continued: “You know when you look in somebody’s face and you can just tell? She doesn’t want to do it anymore. She doesn’t want to fly. She doesn’t want to come back to America. When she left, she left. She sold her house, her piano, her car.

“She went to England and she has never been back since 1998, so it’s not really feasible, as much as we would all like to think that she’ll just change her mind one day. I don’t think it’ll happen. We love her, so we had to let her go.”

McVie has largely refrained from public appearances in recent years, but did attend a Fleetwood Mac concert in London in 2008.

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham expressed hopes this week that the band will tour Europe in addition to their 34-date US and Canadian trek.

 

Digital Spy
Thurs Dec 6th 2012