Fleetwood Mac With Stevie Nicks Singing Rhiannon Live, 1976
Ed Condran
January 23, 2015
Never say never in the world of music. Many moons ago Cher said she would never tour again and her 2014 tour was one of the most enjoyable events of the year. A half-decade ago Tommy Stinson said that the Replacements would never reform but there was one of the greatest bands of the '80s at Coachella last spring. During a 2012 interview Stevie Nicks said that Christie McVie would never reunite with her Fleetwood Mac bandmates for a tour. The sensual singer insisted that the band's 1997 tour was McVie's swan song.
"There's no chance of Christie coming back," Nicks said. "You can just tell that she will never come back to America. She doesn't want to fly. She doesn't want to deal with the hassle. There's a better chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth than Christie coming back for a tour with us."
Well, make sure to look up when you go your own way (those going solo) Saturday to catch Fleetwood Mac at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City and Feb. 8 at the Prudential Center in Newark.
It was just like old times when the classic Fleetwood Mac lineup of Nicks, McVie behind the keyboard and singing lead, vocalist-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, bassist John McVie, 69, and drummer Mick Fleetwood, 67, took the stage at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia three months ago.
After kicking off a two-and-half-hour tour de force of a concert aptly with "The Chain"' a song about unbreakable bonds, Lindsey Buckingham beamed and looked to his right.
"And now the beautiful Christine is back," Buckingham said just before Fleetwood Mac delivered "You Make Loving Fun."
Vocally McVie and her counterpart, the beguiling Stevie Nicks, have to dial it down. The former is 71 and the latter is 66. What they lack in range, they make up for in character.
Fleetwood Mac still has it. It's just different than it was in '97 and especially than it was during the summer of '77 when the band's breakthrough album, "Rumours," was ubiquitous.
Fleetwood Mac wowed the enthusiastic crowd with cuts from the emotional "Rumours," the second biggest selling album of all-time, and a plethora of other hits.
"We love being in this band," Buckingham said. "We do the solo stuff and I really enjoy making the solo albums but there is nothing like being in this band. There's such a spark, such chemistry in Fleetwood Mac. I'm just glad we found each other."
Buckingham and Nicks proved to be the missing ingredients for Fleetwood Mac when they hooked up with the British act in 1975.
"Just before we joined the band, Lindsey and I lived in San Francisco and there was this amazing store (the Velvet Underground) which had incredible clothes and all of the rock 'n' roll women with money shopped there like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick," Nicks said. "I remember thinking that when I make it, I'll shop at that store and I did. If you do believe in your dreams, they can come true."
Not long after Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, she was no longer a window shopper. The wild success of Fleetwood Mac enables Nicks to shop anywhere and it also gave the band considerable creative freedom to craft some of the most enduring songs from a generation ago.
"We had all of the autonomy in the world with this band," Buckingham said. "We always had this wild creativity. And we created this amazing batch of songs."
The gorgeous "Rhiannon," the acrimonious "Go Your Own Way" and the bohemian anthem "Gypsy" are just some of the many hits crafted by the quintet, which were once comprised of two couples and Fleetwood.
"We survived our personal breakups and band issues and we keep coming back for the music and the appreciation of what we've accomplished," Buckingham said. "We still love performing together."
Buckingham, 65, still performs with the enthusiasm of a teenager even though he has joined the geriatric club. His solos are among the many highlights of the concert. But ultimately the band is at its best with the members toiling as a collective, particularly when rendering the standards from "Rumours."
"We're still so proud of what we did when we made that album," Buckingham said.
And Buckingham, judging by his last three solo albums has plenty of gas left in the tank. But will he and his longtime bandmates get creative once again with Christine McVie?
"We've started a new and poetic chapter with Christine," Buckingham said. "It'll bear much fruit."
FLEETWOOD MAC
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Boardwalk Hall, 2301 Boardwalk, Atlantic City
TICKETS: $49.50 and $179.50
INFO: 800-736-1420, www.boardwalkhall.com
ALSO: 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8 at the Prudential Center, 25 Lafayette St., Newark. Tickets $49.50 to $199.50, 973-757-6600, www.prucenter.com
No comments:
Post a Comment