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Category Archives: Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green dies aged 73 | BBC News

Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green has died aged 73.

Solicitors acting on behalf of his family said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep.

“A further statement will be provided in the coming days.”

Blues rock guitarist Green, from Bethnal Green in east London, formed Fleetwood Mac with drummer Mick Fleetwood in 1967.

Green left the band after a last performance in 1970, as he struggled with his mental health. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in hospital in the mid-70s.

He was among the eight members of the band – along with Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, Christine McVie, Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer – who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

In February this year, artists including Fleetwood, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and guitarists Jonny Lang and Andy Fairweather Low performed at the London Palladium in a gig celebrating the early years of Fleetwood Mac and its founder, Green.

Originally posted on July 25, 17:10 at this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53539989 

 

Fleetwood Mac Early Years CD And LP Collections Available On September 4 From Rhino

FLEETWOOD MAC’S EARLY YEARS SPOTLIGHTED IN TWO NEW BOXED SETS

8-CD Set Fleetwood Mac 1969-1974 Includes Remastered Versions Of Seven Studio Albums Plus An Unreleased 1974 Concert

4-LP Fleetwood Mac 1973-1974 Collection Features Penguin, Mystery To Me,

And Heroes Are Hard To Find, Plus 1974 Concert And A 7” Single Limited Edition, Colored-Vinyl Edition Available For Pre-Order Now exclusively From Rhino.com

All Three Sets Will Available On September 4

LOS ANGELES – After Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, John McVie, and Jeremy Spencer started Fleetwood Mac in 1967, they quickly found an audience eager for their British-style blues. Over the next seven years, the band would sign with Reprise Records, release seven studio albums, and release many classic tracks that are still beloved today. Fleetwood Mac’s early rise to fame takes centerstage on two upcoming Rhino releases that spotlight the group’s deep-blues roots.

The first release is an 8-CD boxed set that includes remastered versions of all seven studio albums the band recorded between 1969 and 1974, several bonus tracks, and an unreleased 1974 concert recorded just a few months before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the band. On September 4, FLEETWOOD MAC 1969-1974 will be available on CD for $54.98.

The set covers a five-year time frame that encompasses several different band lineups, from founding members Fleetwood, Green, McVie and Spencer; to later additions like Danny Kirwan, Christine McVie, Dave Walker, Bob Welch, and Bob Weston.

The collection includes seven studio albums: Then Play On (1969), Kiln House (1970), Future Games (1971), Bare Trees (1972), Penguin (1973), Mystery To Me (1973), and Heroes Are Hard To Find (1974). Those records fueled Fleetwood Mac’s early popularity in the U.K. and propelled them into the Top Ten with singles like “Man Of The World,” “Oh Well – Pt. 1,” “The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown),” and the #1 hit “Albatross.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac Early Years CD And LP Collections Available On September 4 From Rhino

Stevie Nicks on Her Life in Isolation: ‘We Have to Believe’ | Rolling Stone

April 30, 2020
Rolling Stone
by Brian Hiatt

Group chats with Fleetwood Mac, listening to Harry Styles and more snapshots from Nicks’ quarantine life

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock (10182025e)
Inductee Stevie Nicks performs at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center, in New York
2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony – Show, New York, USA – 29 Mar 2019

Stevie Nicks had always intended 2020 to be a relatively quiet year, but not quite this quiet. She’s been battling a case of Epstein-Barr virus since January, and has been safely holed up in one of her California properties with three friends and her dog Lily for weeks now. She was in good spirits in a late-night phone conversation not long ago, where she answered our quarantine questions and more. “You really do start to understand, maybe, what our parents went through in World War Two,” she says. “You start thinking of all the things that have happened that have caused people’s lives to just turn upside down.”

How are you holding up emotionally through all this?
I had planned to take this year off. We’ve been on the road one way or another, whether it was me or whether it be with Mac, since basically since 2009. I had seven months off in 2016. That’s the only vacation I had, and I worked at home doing all kinds of different stuff during that seven months. It’s been solid touring ever since. So last year I made a pitch to everybody that when this Fleetwood Mac tour is over. I’m taking next year off because I want to work on my “Rhiannon” book/movie [based on the original Welsh myth that inspired her song]. And I want to maybe work with some different producers… I don’t know what I want to do! I just know that I don’t want a tour! So I think it’s not as hard for me as it is for the bands that had a tour coming up this year. Because they’d be getting ready to go into rehearsal right now. So not only is your tour canceled and your rehearsal cancelled, but you’re quarantined to your house? Continue reading Stevie Nicks on Her Life in Isolation: ‘We Have to Believe’ | Rolling Stone

Keith Olsen obituary | The Times

The Times

Producer who turned Fleetwood Mac into superstars only to have a falling out when he banned them from taking drugs in the studio

Fleetwood Mac: Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie and John McVie in 1975
GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS

On the last day of 1974, Keith Olsen received a phone call that was destined to change the face of popular music.

On the line was Mick Fleetwood, the drummer with Fleetwood Mac, calling from a payphone at Los Angeles airport. Olsen was booked to produce the struggling English band’s next album in the new year but Fleetwood had some bad news to impart. His services would no longer be required because Bob Welch, the group’s guitarist, singer and main songwriter, had quit and Fleetwood Mac were facing extinction.

The two put their heads together in search of a rescue plan. Olsen had recently discovered a talented young guitarist named Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend Stevie Nicks. They wrote songs together and Olsen had produced an album for them. The record had flopped and “sold bupkis”, as he put it: at the time of Fleetwood’s phone call the duo were without a recording contract and Nicks was working as Olsen’s house cleaner for $250 a month.

However, Fleetwood had heard their record and was one of the few to be impressed. Perhaps, he suggested, Buckingham might be persuaded to join Fleetwood Mac? Olsen told him that he thought it was unlikely and, in any case, they wouldn’t be split up and he came as a pair with Nicks.

“Well, maybe that will work. Can you see if you can convince them to join my band?” Fleetwood asked. Abandoning his new year plans, Olsen drove to the couple’s apartment, taking with him “the obligatory bottle of bad champagne”. Continue reading Keith Olsen obituary | The Times

Fleetwood Mac – The Alternate Rumours to be released on vinyl on Record Store Day 2020

RECORD STORE DAY 2020 Fleetwood Mac – The Alternate Rumours

Release Date: 9/26/2020 (postponed from 4/18/2020)
Format: LP
Label: Rhino/Warner Records
Quantity: 16000
Release type: RSD Exclusive Release

The album of alternate takes mirroring the original album, from the Rumours deluxe edition. Alternate takes include early versions and alternate versions for “Gold Dust Woman”, “The Chain”, “Don’t’ Stop”, “Dreams” and “Second Hand News”. On vinyl for the very first time.

Side 1 – 1.  SECOND HAND NEWS (Alternate) 2. DREAMS (Alternate) 3. NEVER GOING BACK AGAIN (Acoustic Duet) 4. DON’T STOP (Alternate) 5. GO YOUR OWN WAY (Alternate) 6. SONGBIRD (Alternate)

Side 2 – 1. THE CHAIN (Demo) 2. YOU MAKE LOVING FUN (Alternate) 3. I DON’T WANT TO KNOW (Early Take) 4. OH DADDY (Early Take) 5. GOLD DUST WOMAN (Early Take)

Mick Fleetwood’s All-Star Peter Green Tribute review — a ‘dream come true’ celebration | The Times

James Jackson
The Times

★★★★★

It’s not often that you get members of Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, the Who, Aerosmith, Metallica and Oasis jostling about on the same stage. In fact, this never happens. Except, that is, when it’s Mick Fleetwood organising a “dream come true” celebration of his onetime bandmate and mentor, Peter Green. The drummer clearly has quite an address book.

Former bandmates Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spencer on stage together for the first time in 50 years

It’s not just Fleetwood who reveres Green either. The Syd Barrett of blues burnt briefly but brilliantly in the late 1960s before LSD triggered mental collapse (Green is an elusive presence today, but by all accounts more content). As with the best guitarists, you could always hear something deeper in his playing, some indefinable evidence of a fragile soul.

No one could quite capture that magic, not even the top-tier musicians on this night, but several came close. Not least the former Mac member Rick Vito, who took charge of the breezy opening numbers Rollin’ Man and Homework. From there the star cavalcade began: Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top added a Texas shuffle to Doctor Brown, John Mayall gave some vocal welly to All Your Love (at 86 he still has the blues) and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith brought rock-star charisma to Rattlesnake Shake.

With respect to these luminaries, early on it was Jonny Lang’s earthy solo attacks and Vito’s slide-playing on Love That Burns that offered the most mesmeric moments — far more so than Noel Gallagher’s attempt at acoustic blues or even the windmilling Pete Townshend’s demonstration of the link between Won’t Get Fooled Again and Station Man. Continue reading Mick Fleetwood’s All-Star Peter Green Tribute review — a ‘dream come true’ celebration | The Times

Mick Fleetwood on His Peter Green Tribute Show, Future Plans, and Lindsey Buckingham | Rolling Stone

By Andy Green
Jan 28, 2020
Rolling Stone

“Lindsey’s legacy is alive and well, and as it should be,” says the drummer. “It will never be taken away, and never be down-spoken by any of us.”

phone via: Randee St. Nicholas

Mick Fleetwood should be relaxing. He just wrapped up a 13-month world tour — Fleetwood Mac’s first since parting ways with Lindsey Buckingham and replacing him with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Crowded House frontman Neil Finn — but the 72-year-old drummer is already deep into planning his next project: a tribute concert to Peter Green, who co-founded Fleetwood Mac and wrote many of the group’s early classics before being sidelined by mental illness and addiction issues. The show is set for February 25th in London, with special guests David Gilmour, Christine McVie, John Mayall, and Steven Tyler. “I wanted people to know that I did not form this band — Peter Green did,” Fleetwood says. “And I wanted to celebrate those early years of Fleetwood Mac, which started this massive ball that went down the road over the last 50 years.”

Peter Green hasn’t been seen much in public over the past decade. When is the last time that you and he spoke?
It was about a year and a half ago. I went out with my girlfriend, and spent the day with him. He’s not the Peter that I knew, clearly. But he plays acoustic guitar. He loves painting, and fishing is his hobby. It’s no secret that he took a left turn and never came back, but he’s OK. He also has really little or no ego at all, which is unbelievable. You want to go, “Do you realize what you did?” “No, no. Yeah, I suppose so.” He has no ego about what he did. Continue reading Mick Fleetwood on His Peter Green Tribute Show, Future Plans, and Lindsey Buckingham | Rolling Stone

“Finally, Fleetwood Mac’s unsung hero Christine McVie is getting the spotlight she deserves” | Stylist

Posted by Christobel Hastings
28 Dec 2019

She’s the longest-serving female member of Fleetwood Mac, and the group’s most successful singer-songwriter, but Christine McVie has always been overshadowed. But in a BBC documentary profile, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird, the unsung hero of one of the world’s biggest bands finally gets to take the spotlight

There is one quiet moment of reflection in the BBC documentary, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird, that perhaps sums up its subject more than anything else in the 90-minute retrospective of rock music history. It comes when Christine McVie, the longest-serving female member of Fleetwood Mac, and the group’s most successful singer-songwriter, speaks affectionately about her longtime friend, Stevie Nicks: “I could no more do twirls in chiffon than Stevie could do blues on the piano.” As she acknowledges her friend’s affinity for the spotlight, she showcases her brilliant talent for saying so much with so few words. It was this gift, we discover, that was intrinsic to the band’s success, and one that has ultimately allowed Fleetwood Mac to connect with people all around the world for over five decades.

Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird: Christine McVie in 1975

How and why the driving force behind one of the world’s best-selling bands was overlooked for so long is a question that is slowly unravelled in this fascinating profile of the legendary singer-songwriter, which traces McVie’s early beginnings in Birmingham, the British blues explosion in 1960s London, and her first foray into music. We learn that McVie was working as a window dresser in the department store Dickins & Jones, until she moved back to Birmingham to join her old friends Andy Silvester and Stan Webb in a blues band called Chicken Shack. Although she was initially tasked with playing keys and singing background vocals, when the band scored a hit with a cover of Etta James’ I’d Rather Go Blind with McVie on lead vocals, it quickly became evident that she was destined for greater things. Continue reading “Finally, Fleetwood Mac’s unsung hero Christine McVie is getting the spotlight she deserves” | Stylist

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know | Rolling Stone

By Ryan Reed
Rolling Stone Online
October 11, 2019

How an in-studio bathroom replica, juvenile dick jokes, and a Peter Green guitar cameo informed the band’s sprawling, experimental follow-up to Rumours

BOSTON, MA – NOVEMBER 17: Stevie Nicks performs with Fleetwood Mac at the Boston Garden on Nov. 17, 1979. (Photo by Janet Knott/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Fleetwood Mac’s 12th album is both demented and debonair, familiar and foreign — a sprawling double LP that, like the Beatles’ White Album before it, reveled in its own messiness, jumbling together the work of three distinct songwriters. Singer Stevie Nicks and keyboardist Christine McVie carried the commercial weight on Tusk, penning playful pop grooves (the latter’s “Think About Me”) and stormy rockers (the former’s “Sisters of the Moon”) that massaged the same sweet spot as their previous record, the mega-platinum 1977 masterwork Rumours.

But Lindsey Buckingham was unwilling to repeat himself. Savoring the edgier modern sounds of New Wave and punk, the singer-guitarist prepared to march into the unknown — whether or not his bandmates were interested in the journey. That friction ultimately defines Tusk, the band’s fractured masterpiece. 

“The explosion of the punk movement had changed the musical landscape, and the popular conception was that bands like ours, Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Elton John and everyone else from our era, were a bunch of dinosaurs who’d lost touch with the real world,” drummer Mick Fleetwood wrote in his 2014 autobiography, Then Play On. “That wasn’t true, of course — we were in touch and aware of all those changes in culture, Lindsey most of all. He was intrigued by punk bands like the Clash and lots of New Wave artists such as Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson, and he wanted to follow that muse creatively. The issue for him was whether or not he was going to be able to do that with the rest of us.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know | Rolling Stone

Classic Fleetwood Mac Albums to be reissued on Coloured Vinyl | Far Out

Fleetwood Mac released five back-to-back multi-platinum albums between 1975 and 1987, an effort which led to them being one of the best-selling bands around the globe.

Now, those classic albums will be reissued individually on coloured vinyl on November 29. The albums include Fleetwood Mac on white vinyl; Rumours on clear vinyl; Tusk on a silver vinyl 2-LP set; Mirage on violet vinyl; and Tango In The Night on green vinyl. On the same day, all five coloured-vinyl LPs will be presented together in slipcase as a limited edition, individually numbered set of 2,000 copies, available exclusively at the Rhino store. This collection is available to pre-order now.

A new incarnation of Fleetwood Mac debuted in the summer of 1975 that included Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie, along with new members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The group’s first album together, Fleetwood Mac (sometimes called “The White Album”), topped the Billboard album chart, spent more than a year in the Top 40 and sold more than five million copies in the U.S. thanks to songs like ‘Landslide’, ‘Say You Love Me’, and ‘Rhiannon’.

In 1977, the band followed up with Rumours, considered by many to be among the greatest albums of all time. It won the Grammy for ‘Album of the Year’ and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Its unforgettable tracks include: ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Gold Dust Woman’ and the band’s first number one smash, ‘Dreams’.

The double-album Tusk arrived in 1979. It sold more than four million copies worldwide and introduced fans to hits like ‘Sara’, ‘Think About Me’, and the title track. Three years later, in 1982, Fleetwood Mac again topped the charts with Mirage. Along with hits like ‘Hold Me’ and ‘Gypsy’, Mirage also features great album tracks like ‘Oh Diane’ and ‘Straight Back’.

In 1987, Tango in the Night became the second-most successful album of the band’s career, selling more than 15 million copies worldwide with the massive hits ‘Everywhere’, ‘Big Love’ and ‘Little Lies’.

Pre-order the collection, here, and have a closer look below.