VIDEOS 12/19: BB&T Center, Sunrise FL

Fleetwood Mac performed at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida (near Fort Lauderdale), on Friday night, the 39th show of the tour. The band has one final show tonight at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa Bay before taking a one-month break for the holidays.

Stevie dedicated “Landslide” to Eve, a woman from Key West, who showed Stevie the area when she visited in 2013. Stevie also acknowledged a fan in the audience holding a sign that read “I had a stroke. This is on my bucket list.” In response, Stevie said, “I want you to know that we totally appreciate the fact that coming to see Fleetwood Mac is on your bucket list. I feel in my heart that you are going to be fine and that you’re just going to have another 20-30 fantastic years. So not to worry, you’re going to be fine!”

Leg 2 of the “On with the Show” Tour kicks off at the Xcel Energy Center in St Paul, Minneapolis, on Friday, January 16.

Read the interesting pre-show writeup of the show, at the bottom of the page, that goes over Fleetwood Mac’s rich 47-year history.

Videos

Special thanks to datflys, donutcookiepie, edu figueroa, Ken Hartfield, Eduardo Miguel, Hawkeye75, David S Kessler, Patrizia Rojaz, Christine Rollo, and skip2eight for sharing these videos!

The Chain (courtesy of Hawkeye75)

Dreams (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Rhiannon (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Everywhere (courtesy of Patrizia Rojaz)

Tusk (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Sisters of the Moon (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Seven Wonders (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Big Love (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Landslide with dedication (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Landslide (courtesy of datflys)

Never Going Back Again (courtesy Hawkeye75)

Over My Head (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Gypsy (courtesy of skip2eight)

Little Lies (courtesy of edu figueroa)

Gold Dust Woman (courtesy of datflys)

I’m So Afraid – partial (courtesy of donutcookiepie)

Go Your Own Way (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Go Your Own Way (courtesy of Christine Rollo)

Go Your Own Way (courtesy David S Kessler)

Don’t Stop (courtesy of edu figueroa)

Don’t Stop (courtesy of Eduardo Miguel)

Silver Springs (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Songbird / Closing remarks (courtesy of Ken Hartsfield)

Set List

Review

Rocking Rumours at Sunrise concert (Miami Herald)

Preshow Write-up

The return of Fleetwood Mac

I can still hear you saying/You would never break the chain.

The Chain, Fleetwood Mac (1977)

Just two years ago, Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone that the chance of Christine McVie returning to Fleetwood Mac — a band she was a member of for 28 years —was as likely as “an asteroid hitting the earth.”

LATE ’70s: For ‘Tusk’ in 1979, which drew some musical inspiration from New Wave bands like the Clash and the Talking Heads, but sounded like no one else, not only the music changed. The band, pictured on the inner sleeve of the cutting-edge LP, seem to be admiring a newly-shorn Lindsey Buckingham (right). Pictured (l-r): John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
LATE ’70s: For ‘Tusk’ in 1979, which drew some musical inspiration from New Wave bands like the Clash and the Talking Heads, but sounded like no one else, not only the music changed. The band, pictured on the inner sleeve of the cutting-edge LP, seem to be admiring a newly-shorn Lindsey Buckingham (right). Pictured (l-r): John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. | Warner Bros.

Nicks’ image as the group’s resident mystic poet behind gauzy, hypnotizing tunes like Rhiannon, Sisters of the Moon and Gypsy, took a hit with that prediction.

Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood can only laugh when you suggest he would be well suited to a diplomatic position within the U.S. government. If anyone could bring the combatant political parties together it would this 6-foot-6-inch drummer from Cornwall, England.

After all, he is largely responsible for McVie’s unexpected return to Fleetwood Mac after her 16-year retirement. She left after the close of a reunion tour in 1998 and the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Fleetwood held McVie’s hand on a flight from England to his home in Maui to soothe her nerves and get her on the plane. One of the reasons McVie left the group was her intense dislike of travel, which she’d revealed as far back as 1972 on her pleading track, Homeward Bound, from the group’s Bare Trees album. She’d sold her house in Los Angeles and returned to England and lived a mostly reclusive, rural life near Canterbury.

The Maui trip led to McVie’s participation on a couple of songs with Fleetwood’s side project blues group. In September 2013, McVie performed her Rumours single and President Clinton inauguration tune, Don’t Stop, with Fleetwood Mac at a London concert. After a hiatus for her ex-husband John McVie to seek treatment for cancer, the band announced its official reunion earlier this year.

McVie’s return reunites the classic Rumours-era lineup as she once again folds her bluesy, warm English alto with Nicks’ and Lindsey Buckingham’s Southern California harmonies. Her comeback also allows the band to reintroduce her buoyant, hit songs like Little Lies, You Make Loving Fun and Over My Head into the set list.

Between McVie’s welcome return, and Nicks’ acting debut on FX’s popular American Horror Story: Coven earlier this year in which she played a version of her witchy woman persona, the resulting On With the Show Tour is a smash. The band plays Sunrise’s BB&T Center Friday and a new leg of dates have been added for 2015. The group will also play Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena on March 21.

“It is beyond amazing,” Fleetwood said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles earlier this month. “Looking at this stage that used to be empty, and now all of her keyboards and stuff are there, it’s magnified. The whole story of this band is that we carried on and we did fine without Chris and, sadly, it was without Chris, but we got a separation and you get used to it when you lose somebody. So having it come back … full circle is huge musically for me and John. It’s major, major, major having the rhythm section truly complete.”

To have this musical chain gang intact is major for fans, too.

“The most astounding thing is what it does with the relationship within this band and with the audience — it literally is performance art at this point,” Fleetwood said as fans relive the soundtrack of their lives through featured songs like Dreams, I’m So Afraid and The Chain.

“It’s astoundingly powerful that for the vast majority of that audience their lives are unfolding in their own world and we’re triggering that. The fact a Neil Young or any of us who have managed to last and have been blessed and retained an audience for this amount of time, you get this performance art happening and emotionally it’s at a peak. The celebration of Chris being thrown in there, as well, it pretty much can’t get any better than this.”

During Fleetwood’s near 48-year career with the band, he has been the musical timekeeper, the constant, the cheerleader, the father figure. (Christine McVie’s affectionate Oh Daddy is for him; and he’s the protective “great dark wing” in Nicks’ Sara.)

Fleetwood even served as band manager when its previous one created a fake version of Fleetwood Mac in 1973, sent it on the road, and claimed ownership of the name. He weathered the defections of band mates to mental illness, religious cults, affairs, solo careers, and fear of flying and exhaustion in McVie’s case. All along, he has kept a version of Fleetwood Mac intact, for better or worse, since its formation in 1967.

Today, Fleetwood is also a photographer. Reflections, his images of Hawaiian landscapes, nature and vintage vehicles, will be on exhibit through Sunday at Fort Lauderdale’s Wentworth Galleries.

In the late ’70s, amid the record-setting sales, excesses — chemical and otherwise — and romantic uncoupling that saw the McVies divorce and the Buckingham-Nicks relationship split there were songs documenting the turmoil.

You can go your own way, Buckingham brayed at Nicks.

You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman who loved you, responded Nicks.

There were couplings within the band, too. Nicks had an affair with Fleetwood, he writes in his new memoir, Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac (Little Brown; $30). “What unfolded was a therapeutic session,” he said of reliving the memories of a lifetime with co-author Anthony Bozza.

There were dreams to be sold/(Chain of chains)/You’re like my 24 karat gold, Nicks wrote of the ill-fated romance with Fleetwood on her illuminating new album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault, which features recordings cut earlier this year in Nashville of songs she wrote from 1969 to 1995.

They’ll sing about it all over again Friday night, while the more optimistic McVie closes the 150-minute concert with Songbird’s tender, And I love you … like never before.

More than 45 million copies of the aural soap opera document Rumours that contained these songs in 1977 have been sold worldwide. A 2011 Glee episode that paid tribute to the album led to Rumours’ return to the Billboard and iTunes sales charts that extends to the current day, along with greatest hits compilations. A whole new generation of pop, rock and country acts like Little Big Town, One Direction and Haim revere and emulate the Mac’s sound.

Fleetwood credits his father, late Royal Air Force wing commander John Joseph Kells Fleetwood, with giving him the fortitude to keep the band an ongoing concern even after key members like founding guitarist Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, the late Bob Welch, Buckingham, Nicks and McVie had all departed.

“I truly believe, and I’m trying not to sound all humble and stuff, but I have a sense of humor and it’s about my dad,” Fleetwood said. “By the nature of his position in the Royal Air Force he was a people organizer and a successful one. Dad, from time to time, would say, ‘Mick, remember this, as long as whatever it is gets done, you don’t need to take the credit. If, for the good of the whole thing, if it involves you and you put in a good stead, if it gets done, hey, it’s done, you got it done, move on.’ And that’s what I try to remember.”

But as the echoes of an old song, one that has opened Fleetwood Mac concerts for decades, come to mind —Chain, keep us together/Running in the shadows — Fleetwood reveals one last link in the chain.

“I’m allowing myself to say I am not responsible for writing all these fantastic songs but I’ve been a major part of the process. I don’t mind owning that in good humor.”

Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.

IF YOU GO
What: Fleetwood Mac in concert

Where: BB&T Center, 1 Panther Pkwy., Sunrise

When: 8 p.m. Friday (a second show has been added for March 21 at Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena)

Tickets: At press time the show was nearly sold out

Information: Ticketmaster or 800-745-3000

Photo exhibit: ‘Reflections: The Mick Fleetwood Collection’ runs through Sunday at Wentworth Galleries, 819 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale; 954-468-0685.

FLEETWOOD MAC TIMELINE
Fleetwood Mac has had 14 different lineups since its formation by guitarist Peter Green in 1967 as a traditional blues band. Green, uncomfortable as a band leader, named the group after its rhythm section, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. His decision was sound: the rhythm section has been this band’s only constant.

Here’s a timeline of various incarnations of Fleetwood Mac, along with the albums these lineups recorded. The essential album is listed in bold.

1967: Band forms with Peter Green, guitar; Jeremy Spencer, guitar; Mick Fleetwood, drums; Bob Brunning, bass. (John McVie briefly resisted joining the band that carried his name.)

1967-68: Green, Spencer, Fleetwood, McVie.

Albums: ‘Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac,’ ‘Mr. Wonderful.’

1968-70: Green; Spencer; Fleetwood; McVie; Danny Kirwan, guitar.

Albums: ‘English Rose,’ ‘The Pious Bird of Good Omen,’ ‘Then Play On,’ ‘Fleetwood Mac in Chicago.’ The group’s 1968 single, ‘Black Magic Woman,’ would become famous in the States thanks to a 1970 cover by Santana.

In his new memoir, ‘Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac’ (Little Brown; $30) Fleetwood cites ‘Then Play On’ as his favorite Fleetwood Mac album, followed by 1979’s ‘Tusk.’ “On the surface, ‘Then Play On’ and ‘Tusk’ have little in common sonically, but listen deeper and you’ll hear a band with its back against the creative wall, recording music at the brink of its existence.”

1970: Fleetwood, McVie, Spencer, Kirwan. Christine McVie joined as a touring member, sang background vocals on ‘Kiln House’ and drew its album cover.

Album: ‘Kiln House.’

1971-72: Fleetwood; John and Christine McVie; Kirwan, Bob Welch, guitar.

Albums: ‘Future Games,’ ‘Bare Trees.’ The latter features the original version of Welch’s ‘Sentimental Lady,’ a song he would re-record and have a hit single with in 1977 as a solo artist (with assistance from Fleetwood, Christine McVie and his replacement in the band, Lindsey Buckingham.)

1972-73: Fleetwood; John and Christine McVie; Welch; Dave Walker, vocals; Bob Weston, guitar.

Album: ‘Penguin.’

1973: Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, Welch, Weston.

Album: ‘Mystery to Me,’ the finest album of the post-Green, pre-Buckingham Nicks eras and the soft rock bridge to what was to come. Includes the FM radio hit, ‘Hypnotized.’

1974: Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, Welch.

Album: ‘Heroes Are Hard to Find.’ The band’s first Top 40 album in the United States.

1975-1987; 1997-98; 2014: Fleetwood; John and Christine McVie; Lindsey Buckingham, guitar; Stevie Nicks, vocals.

Albums: ‘Fleetwood Mac,’ ‘Rumours,’ ‘Tusk,’ ‘Live,’ ‘Mirage,’ ‘Tango in the Night,’ ‘The Dance.’ ‘Tusk’ was the most daring, four sides of Buckingham’s wack New Wave and punk-influenced experiments paired with McVie and Nicks’ more traditional pop/rock tunes. But the passionate ‘Rumours’ remains the soundtrack of a generation. This lineup has recorded new music for a possible 2015 release.

1987-1991: Fleetwood; John and Christine McVie; Nicks; Rick Vito, guitar, Billy Burnette, guitar.

Album: ‘Behind the Mask.’

1994-95: Fleetwood; John and Christine McVie; Burnette; Dave Mason, guitar; Bekka Bramlett, vocals. Christine McVie did not tour with this lineup.

Album: ‘Time.’ The 1995 album was a commercial failure, but two overlooked Christine McVie songs, “Sooner or Later’ and ‘Nights in Estoril,’ are obscure gems worth a download.

1998-2014: Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks.

Albums: ‘Say You Will,’ ‘Live in Boston’ (CD/DVD), ‘Extended Play.’

Howard Cohen / Miami Herald / Friday, December 19, 2014