By Jim Beal Jr.
San Antonio Express-News
Friday, October 3, 2003

Lots of bands change. Few have changed as much as Fleetwood Mac. But few bands, especially rock bands, manage to stick it out for 36 years.

Since drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie joined forces in London in 1967 to play the blues with guitarists Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan, there have been several distinct, and distinctive, Fleetwood Macs. There’s the British blues band, the early ’70s quirky rock band, the mid-to-late-’70s pop/rock superstars, the mid-’80s “let’s all make solo albums” pop/rockers, the ’93 Bill Clinton presidential inauguration Fleetwood Mac, the mid-’90s Bekka Bramlett/Dave Mason/Billy Burnette band and, in 2003, the reunion of the pop/rock superstar band sans keyboardist/songwriter Christine McVie.

“I see them as separate bands, really,” Fleetwood said from a tour stop. “But John and myself are different from anyone else because we’ve been there from the beginning in 1967, just making our way through.

“The major innovations are fairly defined. When we started we were a blues band. The band we have now began with the advent of Christine though Christine has decided not to make this journey.”

The current Fleetwood Mac journey, a long tour supporting the release of the “Say You Will” CD, will stop Sunday at the SBC Center. Showtime is listed as 8 p.m.

“The band on the road now is the major part of Fleetwood Mac history,” Fleetwood said. “The band has been, on and off, together for 30 years. The changes came more often in the early days. It’s all part of an unusual story, a fairly fascinating road.

“We welcomed the people who came in with their talent. We never wanted to be what we were before. Our road has been about bringing people in who are talented and who had their own story to tell; songwriters, which me and John are not.”

The band on the road is Fleetwood and John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham (guitar, vocals, songwriter) and Stevie Nicks (vocals, songwriter). That quartet is augmented in concert by backing vocalists Sharon Celani and Mindy Stein, keyboard player Brett Tuggle, guitarists Neale Heywood and Carlos Rios and percussionist Taku Hirano. Most of the support players and singers have done a considerable amount of road and/or studio work with the band members.

“With Stevie, Lindsey, John and myself, we’re blessed with an extreme amount of material,” Fleetwood said. “With Christine deciding not to be part of this chapter, it brought Stevie and Lindsey together in a different way. We are now in a new phase of Fleetwood Mac. And Lindsey’s production work has allowed him more freedom.”

Fleetwood has been in the rock business long enough to know that the new phase and the old phase(s) must merge onstage.

The live show set was chosen “with some difficulty,” Fleetwood said with a laugh.

“We had two months of rehearsal,” he said. “What we did was not necessarily the most efficient way but we over-rehearsed as if we were going in the studio so we didn’t make any mistakes. We were so gung ho about presenting new songs that, in 21/2 hours of music, we found we weren’t being fair because we put in too much material people didn’t know. People like Fleetwood Mac but we want them to have a great time so we cut back but still pushed the envelope on the new songs. We hope the concert is a good representation. It seems to be from the fan reaction.”

In today’s music business/playlist climate, a band that stays together for almost four decades and scores smash hits along the way ends up competing with its old hits when a new disc is released.

“It’s just the nature of the beast and I don’t think it’s a happy story,” Fleetwood said. “The days are past for deejays to express themselves through what they choose to play. That’s suffocating new talent and doing the music a disservice.

“We’re blessed that a certain amount of our fan base knows we have a new album out. But it’s really farcical in a way. You can do some TV advertising, and that helps. But gone are the days when a deejay had the (nerve) to play five new songs off an Eric Clapton album. It’s hurting the music business and it’s coming back to bite the business in its rear end. The business might recover. It might not. But what can you do?”

What Fleetwood Mac did was make as good a record as it could.

“We made an album that’s worth a damn,” Fleetwood said. “Don’t think for one moment we’ve run out of gas. We’re prepared to work very, very hard on the road. We’ll be on the road for the better part of two years with this album.”

By Dan Nailen
Salt Lake Tribune
Friday, August 1, 2003

You would think a band with so much history — three decades of breakups, makeups, triumphs and tragedies — would be too familiar to still inspire each other.

Not so with Fleetwood Mac, the 1998 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees who evolved from a British blues band into the consummate California rock band, producing one of the best-selling records of all time with 1977’s “Rumours.”

Joining forces to record together for the first time since 1987, Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood holed up in California in the summer of 2001 — minus longtime keyboardist Christine McVie — to follow up the group’s successful 1997 comeback tour with an album of new material. While the boys worked through a slew of Buckingham songs and a CD of demos Nicks wrote on her own in Phoenix, she hit the road in support of her solo “Trouble in Shangri-la” album.

Nicks’ tour was in New York City on 9-11 and she was stuck for three days until catching a bus to Atlantic City. But she stayed on the road because friends like Don Henley and Tom Petty told her, “people need music right now, and if they’re willing to leave the house and get in their car and come see you, don’t you dare come home.” When she finished that emotional tour in December of 2001, she called her bandmates and asked for 30 days to write some new songs reflecting the experiences she had across America post-9-11. When the month was up, she got on a plane, met her fellow Fleetwood Macs in California and presented the results.

“I was a little terrified,” Nicks said in an interview about giving those raw tracks to the band. “I walked in the house, gave Lindsay the cassette, and we played ‘Destiny Rules’ first, ‘Silver Girl’ second, ‘Illumé’ third, then ‘Say You Will,’ and of course, I burst into tears when we were playing the demo. And Lindsay, his eyes welled up with tears and he put his hand on my knee and said, ‘How do you do that?’ And I knew that I was OK. I knew I was in the ballgame at that point.”

Nicks was more than “in the ballgame.” “Say You Will” became the title of Fleetwood Mac’s new album, a strong 18-song collection split evenly between Buckingham and Nicks compositions. “Say You Will” has all the trademarks that made Fleetwood Mac explode into one of rock’s biggest acts: a rock-solid rhythm section with McVie and Fleetwood, Buckingham’s tasty guitar work and the dueling vocals of Buckingham and Nicks. Christine McVie’s voice is missed, but the album stands up with the band’s stronger work from the 1970s and ’80s.

Considering Buckingham left the Fleetwood Mac fold after 1987’s “Tango in the Night,” “Say You Will” is remarkably cohesive, and once the four remaining members decided to work on new music together again, the songs came quickly. Buckingham had about 15 songs already written, and Nicks brought 17 songs, some written as far back as 1976. New songs came as they worked, notably Nicks’ post-9-11 tunes, and the band was close to releasing a double-album. Buckingham was pushing for it, but the others fought and eventually prevailed.

“We finally, as a group, decided that with the music market as it is, and the fact that we would, as Fleetwood Mac, be put up against Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake and on and on, that maybe the double-album wasn’t such a good idea,” Nicks said.

“It’s still a lot of music. It’s a lot of commitment to sit down and listen to this record. What I felt was that hopefully . . . there would be a universal message for everybody somewhere in this record.”

Nicks’ post-9-11 songs are among the best on the album, with the most subtle of nods to the tragic events of that day captured in her lyrics, except for “Illumé,” the most-direct of the songs.

“As a writer, it was really important to me to say something about what I’d been through in the past year,” Nicks said. “Because [Buckingham, McVie and Fleetwood] hadn’t been through it. They were safe and sound in the house in Bel Air, and I was all over the country, walking out onstage with audiences bursting into tears. I needed, as a writer, to talk about it, even though it’s really subtle in those four songs.”

Describing the band’s current tour, the 55-year-old Nicks sounds virtually giddy. She said it’s the kind of show to make someone feel young again, and it certainly seems to be working for her. So far, the band has played about 35 shows, after rehearsing for three months, and things are clicking.

“You guys in Salt Lake are going to get this at the very best time, because we are so rehearsed now, and we know the show so well, that when we walk onstage, we are free to just perform,” Nicks said. “I’m not worried about forgetting the words. I’m not worried about walking backwards into John’s amp. I’m not worried about anything. When I walk onstage, I’m actually free to sing and dance and just have a great time.”

The Salt Lake show Saturday has an added benefit for Nicks, who lived in Holladay when she was in junior high. She still has friends here, not to mention fond memories of the “only place I ever lived that has snow.”

“When my dad came home and said, ‘Pack up, we’re moving to Los Angeles,’ I was horrified,” Nicks said. “So I’m always happy to come back to Salt Lake.” Fleetwood Mac plays Salt Lake City’s Delta Center on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $29.50 to $125, and are available at all Ticketmaster outlets.

* Fleetwood Mac plays Salt Lake City’s Delta Center on Saturday at 8 p.m.

* Tickets range from $29.50 to $125, and are available at all Ticketmaster outlets.

Fleetwood Mac is mostly back for ‘Say You Will‘ tour

By Chris Macias
The Sacramento Bee
July 4, 2003

Change is one of the few constants for Fleetwood Mac. The band was founded in Great Britain by drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie in the late 1960s as a blues-rock outfit. The two have remained in the band ever since, but Fleetwood Mac’s story is filled with constantly rotating lineups and a few switch-ups in sound.

The band ditched its blues-rock repertoire and relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. With its new pop-rock leanings, Fleetwood Mac settled on a roster that featured singer-pianist Christine Perfect (who became Christine McVie after marrying the band’s bassist), singer Stevie Nicks and singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.

This is the Fleetwood Mac that most folks know, the group that sold a gazillion copies of 1977’s “Rumours,” and typified rock’s balmy “California sound” with such hits as “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.” This is also the lineup that performs on Sunday at Arco Arena.

Well, not quite. Christine McVie left Fleetwood Mac in 1997 following the group’s “The Dance” tour, an outing that reunited the band’s most popular configuration. (Buckingham left the group in 1987; while Nicks and McVie would also split and go their own way in 1990.)

But for all intents and purposes, Fleetwood Mac is back.

“(‘The Dance’) was a signpost that this could all work again without being so emotionally taxing,” said Fleetwood, in a phone interview from Chicago. “It was a very happy tour and very successful. The only sad bit after the fact was that Christine just doesn’t enjoy traveling anymore. But that tour gave us comfort, and from that moment on, there was always a Fleetwood Mac. It just took awhile to get to where we are now.”

Nicks, Fleetwood, John McVie and Buckingham are touring behind “Say You Will,” the band’s first studio album since 1990’s “Behind the Mask,” and Buckingham’s first recordings with the band since 1987’s “Tango in the Night.” The record, full of Buckingham’s guitar workouts and grandiose production, recalls the eclectic spirit of 1979’s “Tusk,” but is smoothed out with Nicks’ ballads and sunny harmonies.

“You’ve really got the stylings of John and myself and Lindsey, which we jokingly call the power trio,” said Fleetwood. “It’s a bit more rocking and rolling, probably. Basically, we made a double album like we did in the old days. We had 27 songs, which we cut down to 18 songs. That’s a lot of information, and in some ways is a risk, but you hope you hold people’s attention. I found that people are growing into the album. They’re thrown for a loop here and there.”

But what’s Fleetwood Mac without a little topsy-turvyness? The group is astute in turning turmoil into triumph, channelling its collective woes from inter-band divorce (the McVies) and crumbling relationships (Nicks and Buckingham) into selling 18 million “Rumours” albums.

“Say You Will” wasn’t without its own conflicts. Establishing the final cut of songs provided some tense moments. Yet overall, Fleetwood Mac circa 2003 is much mellower than during its high-strung days in the 1970s.

“(During the making of ‘Say You Will’) I remember Lindsey one day turned around to Stevie and said, ‘I’ve been looking at some of the words on this song, and if you cut some of these words out, I think the melody would work better,’ ” Fleetwood recalled. “And vroom! Stevie said, ‘I’m not changing my words!’ because she’s a poet, and that’s that.

“We’re not without hitting a couple of little brick walls here and there, saying, ‘I don’t agree,’ ” Fleetwood continued. “In this day and age, it’s just handled differently. In those days we were in altered states usually, and these days we’re not. Now, the next day you come back in studio and say, ‘What are we going to do about this?’ I think that’s what makes this band alive. Those sparks are all still there. Otherwise, we’d be flatlined.”

The pieces just seem to fall in place for Fleetwood Mac. “Say You Will” grew from recordings that were intended for a solo effort by Buckingham. McVie and Fleetwood were recruited as sidemen. Nicks, meanwhile, was off touring in support of her own solo album, “Trouble in Shangri-La.”

Still, an invitation was extended to Nicks to join in, and after she submitted some of her own songs, everyone decided to simply join forces as Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood Mac’s rekindled energy churns through “Say You Will,” especially in such tunes as “Come” and “Running Through the Garden.” There’s a temptation for the band to showcase plenty of new songs in concert to prove Fleetwood Mac’s staying power. Still, the current tour is primarily a greatest-hits show.

“We rehearsed 10 new songs, and it’s way too much,” said Fleetwood. “The people just don’t know them. An excursion into the album was just not appropriate, but we hope as the tour progresses that we’ll drop in a couple (of new songs). We’ve come up with a really good balance for us, where we’re pushing the envelope here and there, but also really respecting the fact that you’re there to entertain the audience.

“From memory, one would never do more than two or three new songs,” Fleetwood continued. “Years ago when we’d made ‘Rumours,’ we had come off of ‘Fleetwod Mac,’ which was a pretty big success. We pretty much played (‘Rumours’) from head to toe at a big festival, and we died a death. They didn’t know one of the songs, and we didn’t do that again.”

With Fleetwood Mac intact, there may even be another new album down the road. It might not even take 12 years to release it, either. After all, there are plenty of songs left over from the “Say You Will” sessions. But as most things go with Fleetwood Mac, we’ll just have to wait and see how this saga unfolds.

“Everyone’s up for the possibility of that happening,” said Fleetwood about a new album. “I only preface it by saying that we’re 18 months away (from the end of touring), and one of us might turn around and say, ‘I’m just totally burned out and the thought of starting a new album might be too much for me.’ But right now, it’s definitely being spoken about.”

By Richard Cromelin (Los Angeles Times)
The Mercury News
Friday, July 4, 2003

Fleetwood Mac’s array of instruments, mike stands and amplifiers stretches across a Culver City stage like a miniature city, a gleaming monument to a distant era when rock was big and grand and this band turned its personal soap opera into arena-filling anthems.

Lindsey Buckingham, the key architect of that sound, walks past the silent stage, where the band has been rehearsing for the tour that will bring it to HP Pavilion on Tuesday and Oakland Coliseum Arena on July 23.

“I’m jazzed,” singer-songwriter-guitarist Buckingham says by way of introduction — not about playing with Fleetwood Mac for the first time since 1997, not about its first album of new songs in 16 years but about being interviewed.

Revival and liberation

The musician’s inordinate enthusiasm for this duty is a product of the April release of that new album, “Say You Will.” For Buckingham, it was not just a revival of his most prominent affiliation; it marked the liberation of his imprisoned music.

“I spent about seven years trying to get my material that’s on this album placed and heard,” he says. “I felt an extreme need to have it have a home and get it out so someone could hear it.”

It was Buckingham’s departure in 1987 that effectively ended Fleetwood Mac’s reign. The dynasty had begun in 1975, when a young folk-pop duo, Buckingham and his then-girlfriend, singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, joined the veteran British-born group, which had recently moved to Los Angeles and lost Californian singer-songwriter-guitarist Bob Welch.

With Buckingham emerging as a distinctive arranger with a feel for the mainstream and the experimental, their first album together, “Fleetwood Mac,” reached No. 1.

The next one, “Rumours,” went down like honey and bristled with a rare emotional charge. Many of the songs, including “Dreams,” “Chains,” “Songbird,” and “Go Your Own Way,” commented on the in-progress breakups of Buckingham and Nicks and the group’s other couple, John and Christine McVie, and the demise of drummer Mick Fleetwood’s marriage. It became a decade-defining blockbuster that put the band at the top of the pop-music hierarchy.

Minus Christine McVie

After Buckingham’s exit — he calls it a “survival move” out of the tension-filled atmosphere — Fleetwood Mac kept breathing with other players — including Dave Mason, Rick Vito and Billy Burnette — but it wasn’t until the “Rumours” unit reunited in 1997 for a tour and a mostly retrospective live album, “The Dance,” that the path toward renewed bandhood began.

The “Dance” tour ended sooner than anticipated when singer-keyboardist Christine McVie retired. Buckingham, eager to add another entry to his three-album solo discography, was happy to go back to the recordings he had set aside during that project.

Drummer Fleetwood and bassist John McVie had been playing on some of those sessions, which eased the songs’ transmutation into Fleetwood Mac material. Nicks entered the picture with 17 songs, ranging from “Rumours”-era compositions to works written for her 2001 solo album “Trouble in Shangri-La.” Buckingham, Fleetwood and John McVie worked five of them into finished tracks, and Nicks wrote four new tunes for what would be a new album by Fleetwood Mac, a quartet for the first time since Welch was on board.

`Aggressive’ playing

“For the musicians, just having that much more room to maneuver made for a more aggressive level of playing, I would say,” says Buckingham, noting the absence of McVie’s voice and piano. “I don’t know how you place it in terms of where it falls without other albums. But for me in many ways, it feels like a completion of something that wasn’t just from the last six or seven years but really more like something that has been subconsciously worked on for 30 years or more.”

“Say You Will” (Reprise) ranges widely, from Buckingham’s edgy sonic adventures to Nicks’ more straightforward, easy-rolling works. His caustic commentaries on the media’s power to desensitize joins with the post-Sept. 11 melancholy of Nicks’ new songs to give the album a contemporary feel.

Sense of balance

The album’s even split between Buckingham and Nicks songs suggests an effort to maintain some equilibrium.

“It’s a tenuous thing, certainly,” says Buckingham, tossing a note of caution into what’s being generally portrayed as an upbeat situation. “There are large egos flying around all over the place.”

“Lindsey and I are dramatic,” Nicks says in a separate interview. “We argue a lot; we don’t agree on a lot of things; but what we do agree on is that we love to sing together. . . . We are really trying to appreciate this opportunity that we have and not get stuck in stupid, dumb arguments that mean nothing to anybody. I’ve always been open to Fleetwood Mac whenever it is serious, whenever it wants to do something.”

Nicks is hoping the tour, which includes 36 arena dates, will continue for a year and a half, with another album to follow.

Buckingham calculates that some of the mid-’70s fans are now literally that — in their mid-70s. But he’s ready to keep this rolling.

“I hope it goes on,” he says, “because it’s been a long time getting to this, and I feel that we really got to some things on a musical level that are fresh. . . . I would be completely happy to continue with this, never to pursue anything solo again, because it’s a hell of a lot easier.”

Fleetwood Mac

When, where: 8 p.m. Tuesday, HP Pavilion at San Jose, 525 W. Santa Clara St.; 8 p.m. July 23, Oakland Coliseum Arena, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakland

Tickets: $49.50-$125

Call: (408) 998-8497, (415) 421-8497; (510) 762-2277