Lindsey Buckingham nearly blocked last night’s onstage reunion, reveals Stevie Nicks in MOJO scoop.
Stevie Nicks has talked to MOJO about Christine McVie’s on-stage return to Fleetwood Mac last night at London’s O2 Arena.
Speaking in an interview to be published in MOJO 241 (UK shelf date October 29) the diminutive Mac singer confirmed that while McVie, who left the group in 1998, has “just returned to do one song” it could have been “a few songs” if it hadn’t been for one particular stumbling block.
“I think Lindsey’s words were ‘She can’t just come and go’.”
“Lindsey [Buckingham] is very funny about that,” Nicks told MOJO’s James McNair. “I think his words were ‘She can’t just come and go’. That’s important to him, but it’s not quite so important to me. Much as Lindsey adores her; and he does – she’s the only one in Fleetwood Mac he was ever willing to listen to – he doesn’t want the first night reviews to be all about Christine’s one song, rather than the set we rehearsed for two months.”
McVie was met with rapturous applause last night when she joined her old band to play keyboards and sing Don’t Stop, and she will be appearing with the group again at their final O2 show tomorrow. But, while the route to the stage hasn’t necessarily been a smooth one, Nicks also added that “it will be wonderful to have her back up there with us. And from there who knows.”
In a candid, funny and emotional interview, Nicks goes on to discuss her childhood, her solo career (“Fleetwood Mac weren’t that impressed”) the “unresolved” aspects of her and Buckingham’s relationship, and the bizarre night she slept on the floor of Prince’s purple kitchen.
Adrian Thrills gives his review as band tour Britain.
(Brian Rasic / Rex)
Rock’s greatest soap opera rolled into London this week as Fleetwood Mac began their UK tour with a marathon concert dominated by the hits of the Seventies. Emotional punch was added by the presence of two ex-members who were major players in the Anglo-American group’s chequered history.
For a rollicking encore of “Don’t Stop,” the band were joined at the O2 Arena by keyboardist Christine McVie — onstage with them for the first time in 15 years.
Earlier, singer Stevie Nicks dedicated a poignant “Landslide” to original Sixties guitarist Peter Green, who was watching from the wings.
As a generation-spanning audience demonstrated, our love for Fleetwood Mac shows little sign of abating, partly because their biggest hits are still so intertwined with their love lives.
The classic 1977 album Rumours was made amid drug-fuelled excess and personal turmoil, with drummer Mick Fleetwood in the throes of a divorce, the marriage of bassist John and keyboardist Christine McVie on the rocks, and the romance between singer Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham in meltdown. To complicate matters, Nicks and Fleetwood later had their own two-year affair.
As the return, albeit for just one song, of Christine McVie confirmed, everyone is the best of friends these days, although the sexual tensions of old lingered in songs like “Don’t Stop” (Christine’s kiss-off to John) and “Go Your Own Way” (Lindsey’s bitter adios to Stevie).
The Buckingham-Nicks relationship was also played out for theatrical effect onstage. The former couple, a formidable creative double-act, hugged each other and slow danced during “Sara,” and walked on holding hands before the encores. At one point, Lindsey — to loud cheers — gave Stevie a gentlemanly kiss on the hand.
Having played 47 American shows in 2013, the band were perfectly cooked. With McVie and Fleetwood providing a fluent rhythmic backbone, Buckingham drove the show musically, setting the tempo with some impressive soloing in the Rumours-era opening salvo of “Second Hand News,” “The Chain” and “Dreams.”
But it is Nicks who gives the group their charisma. Teetering around in black stiletto boots, her microphone stand draped in hippy beads and scarves, she was mesmerising on “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” the latter an acoustic duet with Buckingham.
Alongside the enduring excellence of their songs, it is also the presence of Nicks that connects the band — now all in their 60s — with a younger crowd. Most of the junior members of this audience were female, and it is no coincidence that the new acts most obviously influenced by the group’s classic hooks and harmonies are girl bands like The Pierces and Haim.
Fleetwood Mac’s ongoing appeal also says a lot about the value of experience. From the Stones at Glastonbury to Rod Stewart and Springsteen, many of this year’s best gigs have been played by the veterans, and there was certainly an impressive level of artistry on display here.
As Mick Fleetwood bellowed from his drumkit as the 11 o’clock curfew beckoned: ‘The Mac are back!’ Indeed they are.
The Fleetwood Mac tour continues tonight at the O2 Arena (ticketmaster.co.uk)
Adrian Thrills / Daily Mail / Friday, September 27, 2013
They were back — and talking to each other as well. But despite the hits, fine musicianship and Stevie Nicks’s array of shawls, there was still one thing missing
O2, London
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
*** 3 out of 5 stars
You’re looking at your watch, consulting the set list from a recent Fleetwood Mac gig in Dublin and thinking: it has to happen soon. We’re running out of songs.
But we’re 20-odd tunes into the first of the band’s three-night London run and the icing on the cake made of soap has not materialised. We’ve endured Mick Fleetwood’s mammoth drum solo on World Turning, one that has lasted eight minutes at previous stops on this world tour. Tonight it clocks in at four. We’ve had Don’t Stop, one of this outlandishly successful band’s most galumphing hits, the song where you assumed It Would Happen. But no. The Mac have gone off, and come back, and Stevie Nicks is trilling Silver Springs, and there is no sign of the return of the second of Fleetwood Mac’s two Macs. That Mac is not back.
One of the major draws of these gigs — their first in the UK since 2009 — has been the rumour that Christine McVie might appear as a special guest. The Birmingham melodicist retired from the band in 1998, technically for the second time, citing a fear of flying. Touring with her ex-husband, bassist John McVie, and weariness of the long-running dramas of her band might well have been contributing factors.
But the USP of this umpteenth Fleetwood Mac reunion is that everyone is getting along quite swimmingly. Indeed this Gordian sexual knot of a group have long since put their libidos and coke habits behind them, and tonight are even mining the residues of the chemistry for laughs (and sniffles). Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the California duo who joined the blues-rock outfit in 1974 and turned it into gold dust, are holding hands, hugging at the end of Sara, and singing at one another. Mick Fleetwood — an increasingly jester-like figure, sitting worryingly near a gong — affectionately clasps hands with Nicks at the end of one song. Their affair in 1977 complicated an already star-crossed love polygon that has defined this band as much as their mellifluous soft rock.
Still, despite all the lovely closure, Christine does not show (although she does the following night). Anyone hoping to hear Little Lies, or the barbed You Make Loving Fun (written about Christine McVie’s relationship with the band’s lighting guy), or even Hold Me, the band’s later-period US hit about another McVie conquest, Dennis Wilson, is going home a little disappointed tonight.
Probably not by much though. This nearly three-hour set is nothing if not generous value, packing in significant swaths of Rumours, the band’s most famous album. It has sold something like 40m copies, a figure that, in all likelihood, no one album released in the 21st century will ever match. Its reissue entered the UK charts at No 3 last February. Of its vast riches, Go Your Own Way remains a sulky gem. It ends the band’s first set with Buckingham mock-chasing Nicks around the stage and letting the front rows paw at his guitar.
It’s salutary to be reminded what a fine player Lindsey Buckingham is. He’s lithe and leather-jacketed, full of thoughtful song preambles. Hearing him playing Big Love solo — hollering the words, plucking at his hollow-bodied electric — is one of the unexpected highlights of a set that can sometimes feel like a rewrite of history.
It seems unthinkable now, but there was a time when not everyone thought Fleetwood Mac were cool, or survivors, or ripe for homage by Haim or Florence and the Machine. Indeed, if you were alive in the 1980s, Fleetwood Mac were the grown-ups’ music, and as such as attractive as uncooked liver. Mac songs seemed pat, mid-tempo affairs with needless, false harmonies. (They all hated each other!) It wasn’t just a question of age — the Rolling Stones were old — it was that Fleetwood Mac’s music felt fluffy and smug. At least it did from the vehement hauteur of the spiky, directional 80s.
Now, though, 30 years on, one of their newer songs, Sad Angel, is pacier than you’d imagine. And there is widespread respect for Fleetwood Mac’s awkward, angry Tusk album of 1979. Tonight the title track exudes bitterness, evil laughter and deranged keyboard horns: there is nothing pat about it.
Arguably it was Courtney Love who first rehabilitated Fleetwood Mac — or at least Stevie Nicks — thanking “Rhiannon the Welsh Witch” on the sleeve of Hole’s Pretty on the Inside album (1991), and often declaring Nicks her hero. At the O2 Nicks recalls being Buckingham’s “hippie girlfriend”, accepted into the Mac package when Fleetwood hired Buckingham.
She is the sort of woman who paints angels, and wants to set Welsh epic The Mabinogion on the screen with the help of the Game of Thrones creator, but down to earth with it. Tonight her buddy Christine may not be here, but Nicks’s throaty husk sounds masterful on Gold Dust Woman. And — living up to billing quite spectacularly — she has a different shawl for nearly every song.
Kitty Empire / The Guardian / Saturday, September 28, 2013
The legendary keyboardist, singer-songwriter reunites with Fleetwood Mac for ‘Don’t Stop,’ fans on Twitter break the news to the world.
(Nic Phillips)
On Wednesday, Fleetwood Mac performed in concert for the second consecutive night at London’s O2 Arena. The sold-out, high-profile show featured celebrities in the audience, such as model Kate Moss, and the return to the stage of beloved, former Mac member Christine McVie. The keyboardist and singer-songwriter, who left Fleetwood Mac in 1998, played with the band during the first encore for one song, “Don’t Stop,” the smash hit that McVie wrote for Rumours. When McVie appeared on the stage, the nearly-15,000 attendees cheered with sheer joy and admiration, as if they had been reunited with an estranged loved one. Similarly, Twitter erupted with excitement as fans quickly tweeted about McVie’s surprise appearance.
Christine McVie will perform again with Fleetwood Mac at Friday night’s third and final show at London’s O2 Arena. McVie will perform again with Fleetwood Mac at Friday night’s concert.
The band also welcomed the return of founding Fleetwood Mac member, blues guitarist Peter Green, who was in the audience at tonight’s show. Stevie dedicated “Landslide” to Green, which earned crowd approval.
Videos from the show, additional concert photography, links to media articles, and the live tweeting log appear below.
Watch ‘Don’t Stop’ with Christine McVie
Sideviews (courtesy of antronoid & cdparky1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bmHQ_7x_tg
Frontview (courtesy of Alistair Tant, ribbled, & Michelle van der Heide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P18GvoshmWw
Stage right view (courtesy of steveatgigs & Tim Ricketts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJPhM5oQepw
Second Hand News (courtesy of cdparky1)
The Chain – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
Dreams (courtesy of Michelle van der Heide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeibIwxVNWk
Dreams (courtesy of stegair)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQIBZd4R4ts
Rhiannon (courtesy of Michelle van der Heide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSciaxznVtE
Not That Funny – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
Tusk (courtesy of steveatgigs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTqzsYqXtWU
Sisters of the Moon (courtesy of Michelle van der Heide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GBv4RAjnbk
Big Love (courtesy of stegair)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN0IfrNgw48
Landside (courtesy of steveatgigs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7nJ9O39Vcs
Never Going Back Again (courtesy of steveatgigs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfn-2e1I3yY
Without You – intro (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB1y-1TivLo
Without You – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
Eyes of the World – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
I’m So Afraid – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
Stand Back – partial (courtesy of Tim Ricketts)
Go Your Own Way (courtesy of Michelle van der Heide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEX3CB6O_3I
Silver Springs (courtesy of stegair)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrACXARrW0E
London set list
London set list
Live Tweeting from London
@Ella_McKee
FLEETWOOD mac @The_O2 AMAZINGGGGGGG! SO excited!!!
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@handleyg
Fleetwood Mac! Wow. Been waiting 30 years for this!
@niponravel
They’ve just played Dreams and I have shed tear #Fleetwoodmac
@CouttsUKCIO
#Fleetwood Mac the full “Bill Clinton” line up never bettered in London now !
@Tamara_Beckwith
Electric @ #Fleetwoodmac #stevienicks #O2 – just beyond!!! So spoiling!! Legends xx @ O2
@bettsybabezz
10 years later and Fleetwood Mac are still making good music ❤️ #fav
@Tadders
Just heard Fleetwood Mac do The Chain. AMAZING.
@glenrowe
watching fleetwood mac & track 2 was “the chain”… it cant get any better can it? #blownaway
@Xfm_Lliana
The Chain has killed me! Best break up song ever?? #fleetwoodmac
@CordzNFFW
New material at a Fleetwood Mac concert is a fantastic excuse for a piss #asgoodasitmaybe
@LizzieHowis
I just met Kate Moss at a Fleetwood Mac concert. My life is complete
@ShannonBedford
I have just heard Fleetwood Mac perform one of my favorite songs of all time – Dreams. Thank you so much @emmabarney #mademynight
@marr_simon
#fleetwoodmac launch into ‘Rhiannon’. Men and women gush and sigh, and then yell along with dear old Stevie
@bellaklaine
this is precisely what I hoped for. stevie nicks in a sequinned cloak belting out rhiannon. literally overwhelmed. #fleetwoodmac
@bellaklaine
that and mick looming behind his drums, waistcoated and neckerchiefed. £160 and worth every drop #fleetwoodmac
@TonySlackShot
24 hrs ago I was miserable and not going to see Fleetwood Mac. Now I’m watching them in the O2. Can’t believe it!!!!! = )
@AndrewCastle63
#fleetwoodmac at the #O2. Loving it….I’m the youngest here!
@SiTrill
Tusk just fecking rocked! #FleetwoodMac
@DustPR
Stevie Nicks has still got it #fleetwoodmac
@marr_simon
Lindsey Biuckingham delivers highlight of set so far with solo ‘Lookin out for Love’ #fleetwoodmac #O2
@niponravel
Acoustic version of Big Love by Lindsey Buckingham. Guitar genius! Love Lindsey #Fleetwoodmac #lindseybuckingham
@lynseyshev
Stevie just dedicated landslide to Peter Green. He’s in the audience. I almost cried #fleetwoodmac
@julieetchitv
Stevie Nicks sublime #FleetwoodMac
@fatsanj
Beautiful dedication by Stevie Nicks of Landslide to Peter Green who is watching tonight’s @fleetwoodmac show.
@platinumbl0ndie
Ah Peter Green is at the Fleetwood Mac concert tonight and Stevie dedicated Landslide to him. So cool.
@matteveritt
Lindsey and Stevie just had a little hug. Nearly lost it @fleetwoodmac
@hamiltonsean
At Fleetwood Mac. Nicks and Buckingham must have a bet on to tell most boring anecdote. It’s 1-1.
@DinaHenry001
Fabulous night watching Fleetwood Mac at the O2
@GouldThomas
Fabulous #fleetwoodmac at 02 reminding us all of the power of the tambourine #class
@AlsoKevinKelly
The thought that Christine McVie could be back on stage with @fleetwoodmac tonight makes me so, so happy.
@simon_AEGlive
Lindsey Buckingham – probably one of the best guitarists I have ever seen live. #fleetwoodmac #theo2…
Heroic drug abuse, physical violence, epic strops… Forget Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s craziest album was Tango in the Night.
In December 2012, three members of Fleetwood Mac cried together. in public, at the memory of something that had happened all of 25 years previously. Singer Stevie Nicks, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and drummer Mick Fleetwood were doing a round of media interviews to announce the band’s 2013 tour when they were asked about the events of 1987, when Buckingham quit the band following the release of the album Tango in the Night. Buckingham did not respond directly to the interviewer. Instead he turned to Nicks and Fleetwood and reiterated his reasons for leaving the group at a critical stage of their career: foremost among them, his sense that Nicks and Fleetwood had lost their minds and souls to drugs.
“What Lindsey said in that interview was very moving, ” Fleetwood says. “He told us: ‘I just couldn’t stand to see you doing what you were doing to yourselves. Did you ever realise that? You were so out of control that it made me incredibly sad, and I couldn’t take it any more.’ It was really powerful stuff. This was someone saying: ‘I love you.’ It hit Stevie and me like a ton of bricks. And we all cried, right there in the interview.”
It was a moment that Mick Fleetwood describes as “profound.” But even after all these years, his memories of that time in 1987 are still raw. For when Lindsey Buckingham walked out on Fleetwood Mac, he did not go quietly. When Buckingham told the band he was leaving, it led to a blazing argument that rapidly escalated into a physical altercation between him and former lover Nicks, in which she claimed she feared for her life.
“It is,” Fleetwood says, “a pretty wild story. It was a dangerous period, and not a happy time.”
And yet, for all the drama that came with it, Tango in the Night was a hugely important album for Fleetwood Mac. It became the second biggest-selling album of their career, after 1977′s 45-million-selling Rumours. Just as Rumours had done in the ’70s, so Tango in the Night defined soft rock in the ’80s. Perhaps most significant of all, it marked the third coming of the Mac, following the successes of the Peter Green-led blues rock Mac of the late 60s and the Buckingham/Nicks-fronted AOR Mac of the 70s. And for Mick Fleetwood, it represented a personal triumph. While he freely admits that his own drug-fuelled insanity was instrumental in Lindsey Buckingham’s exit, it was Fleetwood who kept the band together once Buckingham had gone. And this was key to the success of Tango in the Night.
“My motto” Fleetwood says, “was ‘the show must go on’. It was almost an obsessive-compulsive desire to not give up. And it worked.”
There is an irony about Tango in the Night that it began not as a Fleetwood Mac album but as a solo project by the man who would leave the band once it was completed. In 1985, Lindsey Buckingham was writing and recording songs for what was planned as his third solo album. Fleetwood Mac had been on indefinite hiatus since 1982, following a world [North America] tour in support of their album Mirage. In that time there had been solo albums from the three singers: Nicks’ The Wild Heart sold a million copies; Christine McVie’s eponymous album yielded a US Top 10 hit with Got A Hold On Me; but, to Buckingham’s chagrin, his album Go Insane didn’t make the Top 40.
There had also been problems for them over these years. Nicks had been treated for drug addiction. More surprisingly, Mick Fleetwood had been declared bankrupt following a string of disastrous property investments. It was rumoured that Fleetwood Mac had split up. “At that time,” Buckingham later admitted, “the group was a bit fragmented.” By the end of ’85, Buckingham — working alone at his home studio in Los Angeles had three songs finished: Big Love, Family Man and Caroline. But while he was busy making music, Mick Fleetwood was busy making plans to get the band back on track. The wheels had been set in motion when Christine McVie recorded a version of the Elvis Presley hit Can’t Help Falling In Love for the film A Fine Mess— backed by Mick Fleetwood and the band’s other remaining founding member, her ex-husband John McVie. She invited Buckingham to produce, alongside engineer Richard Dashut. “It was the first time for nearly five years that we’d all been in a working environment together,” Christine said. “We had such a good time in the studio and realised that we still had something to give each other in musical terms after all.”
Mick Fleetwood was more forthright. “The reality,” he says, “is that Fleetwood Mac were intending to make an album. And Lindsey was in many ways pressured into it. ‘Hey, we’re making an album — let’s go!” Buckingham relented, partly out of a sense of duty, had a choice,” he said, “of either continuing on to make the solo record, or to sort of surrender to the situation and try and make it more of a family thing. I chose the latter.” That Fleetwood didn’t know is that Buckingham’s agreement was conditional. “I had the idea,” Buckingham said, “that that was going to be the last work with the group.”
For all that, Buckingham threw himself into the album. He either wrote or co-wrote seven of the twelve tracks on the album. He also acted as co-producer with Richard Dashut. And it was at his home studio that most of the recording was done. What was unusual about the recording of Tango in the Night was the absence of Stevie Nicks for much of the process. Nicks contributed three songs to the album, but was in the studio for only two to three weeks. “She was not hugely present,” Fleetwood says. ”I don’t remember why. And I don’t think we would remember — Stevie and me were nuts!”
Fleetwood says that he and Nicks were doing more cocaine during the making of Tango than when they were recording Rumours — an album on which they seriously considered thanking their drug dealer in the credits. “Actually” he admits, “it was way worse on Tango in the Night. For sure.”
“Certainly , I smoked a lot of pot. But I was never a big user of coke,” Buckingham notes. And by the mid-80s, he’d had enough. ” The subculture was pretty much at the point of burning itself out,” he recalled. “The ‘anything goes’ attitude that existed in the 60s had become something entirely different. But still, everyone thought you had to do certain things to play, and I don’t know that I ever thought about it that way.”
While Tango was being recorded at his home, he found a way of keeping the two cokeheads — plus assorted hangers-on — at a safe distance. “Lindsey had a Winnebago put in his driveway,” Fleetwood says. “And that’s where Stevie and I would go with our wrecking crew. With me, the party never stopped. I was like Keith Moon. And for Lindsey having that around his own house was a fucking nightmare. So he gave us our own house outside in the garden. It wasn’t until years later that I asked him: ‘What was all that about?’ And he said ‘I couldn’t stand having you punks in the house. You’d turn up at the studio with people that you’d met from the night before, and you’d start gooning around. You were too fucking crazy.’ Lindsey was never a drama queen, enjoying the ’80s drug culture like Stevie and me. It wasn’t his scene. He wasn’t comfortable being around that much craziness. And we were blissfully unaware — completely oblivious to things that needed to be addressed.” The drug taking was only one part of the problem. There were other things eating away at Buckingham.
For all the money and fame that Fleetwood Mac’s success had brought him, Buckingham felt compromised on an artistic level — pressured by what Mick Fleetwood calls a “this monolithic thing known as Fleetwood Mac.” There is, Fleetwood says, a “tortured side” to Lindsey Buckingham.
Lindsey Buckingham didn’t enjoy the ’80s drug culture, according to Mick Fleetwood. He wasn’t comfortable being around that much craziness.
“Staying honest and staying creatively alive is very tricky in a commercial business,” Buckingham said. “You’re trying to hold on to a certain idealism, and not succumb to becoming a parody of oneself. Are you trying to flex your muscles creatively, or are you trying to sell records? In my mind it was pretty much clear-cut. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground.” Buckingham felt he had won this battle with Tusk. The easy option for Fleetwood Mac would have been to make another Rumours. Instead, Buckingham spiked the Tusk album with weird, left-field songs such as the new wave influenced Not That Funny and the bizarre title track. “A precedent was set by Tusk,” Fleetwood explains. “Lindsey could say: ‘I want to do this within the framework of Fleetwood Mac,’ without pissing everyone off.” Buckingham loved the dichotomy in Tusk: the contrast between his songs and Stevie’s and Christine’ s . “You got that sweetness and me as the complete nutcase,” he said. ”That ‘s what makes us Fleetwood Mac.” But he felt that the band’s next album. Mirage, was too lightweight, lacking the experimental edge of Tusk. And that nagging feeling returned to him as Tango in the Night was being completed.
Buckingham had written many oldie songs for the album. In addition, the songs he had recorded solo remained mostly untouched. “Those songs,” Fleetwood says, “were already very sculpted. All we did was rip some drum machines off and put drums on.” One trick of Buckingham’s, in Big Love, was especially brilliant. For the song’s climax, he used variable speed oscillators on his voice to create the effect of a male and female in a state of sexual excitement — the “love grunts,” as he called them. “It was odd that so many people wondered if it was Stevie on there with me,” he said, a little disingenuously.
Although there were other great songs on the album—slick pop rock tunes in the classic Fleetwood Mac style, such as Christine’s Little Lies and Everywere, and Stevie’s Seven Wonders — Fleetwood calls Tango in the Night “Lindsey’s album.” But for Buckingham himself, there was a sense that in the transition from solo album to band album, something had been lost. A perfectionist, intensely analytical, he felt that Tango in the Night was too predictable, too safe.
“For political reasons, I was pretty much treading water,” Buckingham admitted. “We sort of lost the moment, going back to try to find that Rumours territory. I couldn’t do that as a producer and as a player. I was demoralised. Maybe I wasn’t even motivated to go back. I did the best I could.” Fleetwood also believes that Buckingham felt undervalued in his roles of producer and arranger of others’ songs. “He was going, ‘Shit, does anyone ever realise what I do?’ Insecurities, we all have them, and that was part of Lindsey’s personality. I have insecurity even about walking on stage and thinking I can’t play drums. I don’t blame Lindsey for thinking: ‘It would be nice if someone thanked me for all the fucking work I’ve done!”
But the biggest problem for Lindsey Buckingham was, of course, Stevie Nicks . “I’ve known Stevie since I was 16 years old,” he said. “I was completely devastated when she took off. And yet I had to make hits for her, I had to do a lot of things for her that I really didn’t want to do. And yet I did them. So on one level I was a complete professional in rising above that, but there was a lot of pent-up frustration and anger towards Stevie in me for many years.” That frustration had first become evident on Rumours. Nicks wrote about Buckingham in the song Dreams, in which she sang the line: ‘Players only love you when they’re playing.’ Buckingham responded with Co Your Own Way, in which he claimed uncharitably, ‘Shacking up’s all you want to do.’ And over the years, things had only got worse.
“He got very angry with me,” Nicks said. “He tossed a Les Paul across the stage at me once and I ducked and it missed me. A lot of things happened because he was so angry at me.”
During one Fleetwood Mac show, Buckingham kicked out at Nicks. “it was just a little something coming through the veneer,” he said later. “There has been a lot of darkness. There was a time when I felt completely unappreciated by her.” Buckingham’s frame of mind was not helped by the not inconsiderable success that Nicks enjoyed in her solo career. In 1981, her solo debut, Bella Donna, went to No.1 in US. Other hit albums and singles followed. Buckingham’s solo records sold next to nothing. “Jealousy is the wrong word,” Fleetwood says. “But it was hard for Lindsey. The reality is, she’s Stevie Nicks! And Lindsey I think felt left out. That was his cross to bear.”
“We didn’t realise how unhappy Lindsey was,” Mick Fleetwood says.
Despite the hostility. Nicks tried to retain sympathy for Buckingham.” Lindsey and I were really breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac. We’d lived together for five years. It’s one thing when you break up for that person to go their way and you to go your way, quite another to break up and have to sit together in the breakfast room of the hotel the next morning. Not easy.”
But neither Nicks nor Fleetwood saw what was coming. “We just didn’t realise quite how unhappy Lindsey was,” Fleetwood says. “He had to get out. And of course he did.
Tango in the Night was released on April 13, 1987. The first single from the album, Big Love, was already a Top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and a tour was scheduled to begin in Kansas City on September 30. But when the band gathered at Christine McVie’s L.A home to discuss plans for the tour, Buckingham told them he was out. And at that moment, it turned nasty.
It was Nicks who landed the first blow. “I flew off of the couch and across the room to seriously attack him,” she recalled. “And I did. I’m not real scary but I grabbed him which almost got me killed.” Nicks ran out of the room with Buckingham in pursuit. “He ended up chasing me all the way out of Christine’s maze-like house,” she said. ‘Then down the street and back up the street. And then he threw me against a car and I screamed horrible obscenities at him. I thought he was going to kill me, and I think he thought he was probably going to kill me too. And I said: ‘If the rest of the people in the band don’t get you, my family will – my dad and my brother will kill you.”
Buckingham walked away. “We were all in shock,” Fleetwood says. “It was very upsetting for all of us, Stevie most of all.”
But in this crisis, Fleetwood acted quickly. “Most people would go: ‘You’ve just made an album and one of your lead components is not there? You’d better retreat rapidly, lick your wounds and reassess what the hell you’re gonna do.’ Well, that was not what my mind told me to do. I went: ‘We’re not stopping.’ And literally within a week, I convinced everyone that we should not stop and have this be a catastrophic non-event and have no promotion for the album.” Fleetwood was able to remain calm and pragmatic because he, and also John McVie, had been in this situation before – firstly, and most traumatically, when Peter Green, the original Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist, quit the band and the music business in 1970 after one too many bad acid trips. “When we lost our mentor, Peter Green, we felt completely adrift,” Fleetwood recalls. “We went: ’What the fuck are we going to do now?’ Seriously, I thought we’d never get over losing Peter. But we got through it. And then it became: there’s no such phrase as ‘the band’s going to break up’. And that became habit-forming. So when Lindsey left, we already had a blueprint.”
Guitarists Billy Burnette (left) and Rick Vito (Corbis)
For the tour, Fleetwood brought in not one but two guitarists to replace Buckingham, a measure of Buckingham’s high calibre. Billy Burnette, the son of rockabilly singer Dorsey Burnette, was a country artist of minor repute. Rick Vito had worked with John Mayall, Jackson Browne and even David Soul. Fleetwood knew he was taking a risk. “On paper,” he says, “it was sort of insane. But it worked.”
It had to. “We still did that tour,” Nicks said, “because we we’d signed the contracts. We couldn’t call in and say: ‘Oh, we can’t do the tour.’ We had to do it. Or Fleetwood Mac would have been sued forever.”
The tour was a huge success. It wasn’t the same without Buckingham. Fleetwood accepts that. But the numbers including eight sold-out shows at London’s Wembley Arena – spoke for themselves. And with the new-look Fleetwood Mac out on the road, sales of Tango in the Night went above and beyond Fleetwood’s expectations. In the UK the album went to Number One on three separate occasions, and three singles went Top 10: Big Love, Little Lies and Everywhere. In the US those three tracks reached the Top 20, along with Seven Wonders , and the album sold three million copies in a year.
“The album was well received,” Fleetwood says. “Somewhat sadly, the kudos of that was never really fully attributed to Lindsey because he wasn’t present. But on the other hand, there’s a comedic sense to it — that we were promoting an album that was mainly his body of work. It was like Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: ‘I’ve made the album, but now I’m staying at home.’
“But also, when I look back, I see another example of how desperate Lindsey was to be heard. Basically, he was coerced and persuaded to do that album – mainly by me. And to his credit, he put aside everything that he’d dreamt of doing, including making his own album, for Fleetwood Mac. But then realised that he’d made a mistake and went: ‘Oh my God – I’ve got to get Out.’ Lindsey was not being heard. We just didn’t get it. And really, I think that excuses him for letting the side down.”
Mick Fleetwood is not sure it is simple coincidence that Fleetwood’ s two biggest-selling albums, Rumours and Tango in the Night, were made when the band was at its most dysfunctional. “Also,” he says, “I’m not sure I should be so proud of it.”
Equally, Fleetwood has reservations about Tango in the Night. “It’s an interesting album,” he says. “But it’s not my favourite Fleetwood Mac album sonically. We got a little too involved in electronic-y ways of doing things.” But that album is undoubtedly a classic of its time. With it, Fleetwood Mac were reinvented for a new era. One of the biggest bands of the 70s became one of the biggest bands of the 80s. And from an album created amid chaos came some of the best songs of the band’s entire career. Even Lindsey Buckingham conceded this much. “On the whole, that album is lacking in direction,” he said. ”But there’s good stuff on there.”
In the 90s, Buckingham rejoined Fleetwood Mac, and, more importantly’, made his peace with Stevie Nicks. They have both come a long way since that dark day in 1987: Buckingham now married and a father of three, Nicks happily drug-free. And every night that Buckingham and Nicks go on stage with Fleetwood Mac, all that remains between them is what Mick Fleetwood calls “the good stuff”.
“Stevie and Lindsey are not ‘in love’ but they love each other,” Fleetwood says. “And that’s why they’ve been able to get through some awful situations. There’s something I was asked recently: ‘What’s the most misconstrued thing about Fleetwood Mac?’ I said ‘I don’t want to sound over-sentimental, but I think that people don’t actually understand that we really do love each other — a lot.’ And you know, sometimes that’s been lost amid all the fear and loathing. But, to say the least, it’s been an interesting journey.
Special thanks to FleetwoodMac-UK for making this article available.
A blissful opening hour of punchy self-confidence is undermined by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s strange stage intimacy – they need Christine McVie to make it all gel.
(Angela Lubrano / Livepix)
O2 Arena, London * * * * (4 out of 5 stars)
Those who have watched just a small selection of the many documentaries about Fleetwood Mac will know their two singer-songwriters, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, don’t have a lot to do with each other. In one, Nicks said she’d never even been to her ex’s house. But the narrative of the group insists they must forever be remembered as the tragic, star-crossed lovers, and so they are last on stage at the O2, strolling on hand in hand; during Sara they coo choruses to each other, then embrace and slow dance as the song comes to an end.
What makes this forced intimacy even odder is that without the third songwriter, Christine McVie – who seems likely to make a cameo appearance at their next two O2 shows – the dichotomy between the pair’s writing is so stark. Buckingham’s songs, for all their melodic beauty, are often harsh and angry, and his between-songs banter could have been scripted by a therapist; Nicks’s are soft and pillowy, a Laurel Canyon prefiguring of goth, and her chat is rambling and charming.
Nevertheless, for the opening hour, it’s blissful – an opening of trio of “Second Hand News,” “The Chain” and “Dreams” is jaw-dropping in its self-confidence. Nicks may no longer be able to reach the high notes of “Rhiannon,” but the song’s construction is sturdy enough to survive the removal of its ornaments. And a one-two punch from the extraordinary 1979 album Tusk is simply jaw-dropping: “Not That Funny” echoes around the vast room like an invitation to step outside, and Tusk itself is eerie and uneasy and wonderful.
But there’s a distinct and rather long sag as the main set winds down – looking down from the top tier, one can see mobile phones being checked on the floor as “I’m So Afraid” meanders on – and the relief that greets “Don’t Stop” is palpable. It’s a victory in the end, but it’s a set that would be so much stronger at half an hour shorter.
• Did you catch this show – or any other recently? Tell us about it using #gdnreview
Michael Hann / The Guardian (UK) / Wednesday, September 25, 2013
The four ongoing members of Fleetwood Mac performed for the first time since 2009, with an epic set list drawn from the late Seventies. While Stevie Nicks still possessed a voice that bewitched, Lindsey Buckingham was a fiery leader, thumping his chest to celebrate every new solo accomplished
(Brian Rasic)
Critic Rating * * * * (4 out of 5 stars) Reader Rating * * * * (4 out of 5 stars)
Though a rumoured reunion with the long-absent Christine McVie did not materialise last night, the four ongoing members of one of rock’s most turbulent bands looked like firm friends as Fleetwood Mac played in London for the first time since 2009.
It was all gushing introductions, a long hug for Lindsey Buckingham from Stevie Nicks, much hand-kissing and warm saluting. Given that most of their finest songs come from a period when their various couples were splintering painfully, time really is the great healer.
Most of an epic set list was drawn from that peerless period of the late Seventies when the Americans Nicks and Buckingham arrived to turn the bluesy Brits into superstars — The Chain, Tusk and Go Your Own Way all had energy to burn.
Nicks still possessed a voice that bewitched, especially on the acoustic Landslide. While even the engine room of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie had the occasional break, Buckingham was a fiery leader, thumping his chest to celebrate every new solo accomplished.
“There are quite a few chapters left in the book of Fleetwood Mac,” he claimed, airing one likeable new song and a long lost rarity. It’s been a fascinating read so far.
Also tonight and Friday, O2 Arena, SE10 (0844 824 4824, the02.co.uk)
David Smyth / Evening Standard (UK) / Wednesday, September 25, 2013
After all these years, something still gets Lindsey Buckingham’s goat. Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and front man tore into “Second Hand News,” barking the words and spitting out the “bams” of the chorus’s vocalese like repeated slaps in the face. Rumours, the gazillion-selling “soft-rock” album that chronicles the band’s – and their generation’s – relationship traumas was given its 35th anniversary reissue in February. There was little soft about this near three-hour show, the first of three nights of controlled catharsis in London.
Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, his former girlfriend and the fans’ erstwhile hippie siren, held hands as they emerged. Their harmonies were on point for “The Chain,” the sound lent a doomy toll and twang like a gothic Creedence Clearwater Revival. When they turned to each other, you couldn’t tell if their deliveries were taunting or imploring. “You know what you lost,” sang Nicks on “Dreams,” the line hanging rueful and accusatory in the air, her voice deeper than in her prime and approaching a Patti Smith-like gravitas. In waistcoats and flat caps, the rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie looked like upscale Wurzels, somewhat baffled by the continuing psychodrama unfolding before them, but grateful for its endlessly fascinating power.
For all their colossal self-importance, Buckingham was right to insist there were “still things to discover” about Fleetwood Mac. Not least how time does or doesn’t heal and, as Nicks would sing on the sore, regretful “Landslide,” “Can I handle the seasons of my life?” The woozy rites of “Rhiannon” seemed more curse than enchantment now. Four songs from Tusk, their “difficult” follow-up to Rumours, were prefaced by a self-justifying but apt lecture from Buckingham about the incompatibility of art and commerce. They were played with a kick-against-the-pricks intensity and when they were done, Nicks gave Buckingham a brief, battle-weary hug.
The mooted guest spot for Christine McVie didn’t materialise. Perhaps that’s for another night. This really was Buckingham’s gig. He doesn’t so much solo as argue his case with his guitar. And it’s a knotty, consuming one at that. Alone and acoustic, “Big Love” was haunted, almost hysterical, as spooked as a wild horse. This was the most extraordinary, and impassioned, part of an evening that was sometimes as arduous as it was enjoyable, if mostly riveting nonetheless. Many people took a comfort break during “Without You,” built up by Nicks as a “lost” classic but rather soppy in the event.
The finale, “Go Your Own Way,” felt like the first unfettered sing-a-long. Yet even this was driven by a dark rhythmic energy that pushed the melody uneasily ahead. The honky-tonk gallop of “Don’t Stop” in the encore was preceded by a preposterous mugging of a drum solo from Fleetwood. When, at the last, someone made a request, he was chastised for “vibe corruption” by Nicks and Buckingham, who wanted to finish on the gentle “Say Goodbye.” In this soap opera, the principals write the script.
Thirty-six years after Rumours became the soundtrack to the age of divorce, four of the five people that made it are reliving their personal dramas once more. With their soft rock masterpiece from 1977, Fleetwood Mac articulated the new rules of relationships, capturing the reality of affairs, tensions, betrayals and break-ups and selling over 40 million copies in the process.
They also documented their own reality. Singer Stevie Nicks was splitting up from guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, songwriter Christine and bassist John McVie were getting divorced, drummer Mick Fleetwood was stuck in the middle, and they dealt with it all in the best way Seventies rock stars in Los Angeles could: by taking huge amounts of cocaine. Now all but Christine McVie have come back for more. Without the cocaine.
Buckingham said that Rumours “brought out the voyeur in everyone”. It also spoke to millions: the emotional truth of the music jumped out of the grooves. Judging by the hordes filling a packed O2 arena, it still does. Floaty scarves hung from Nicks’ microphone, but beyond that the stage was bare: fitting for a concert dedicated to an album defined by its simplicity.
Nicks channelled her inner hippy witch in a black sequinned ensemble, emerging from the shadows to launch into Second Hand News, one of the many songs on Rumours expressing the bitterness of being a cast-off lover. Then it was time for The Chain, the most starkly autobiographical song about the love tangle, its irresistibly simple beat sounding as fresh as ever.
After all these years, it was strange to watch Nicks singing Dreams as Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac’s resident tortured artist and the subject of the song’s words, played guitar next to her. Fleetwood, cocooned behind an enormous drum kit, looked, with his flat cap, black tights and lolling tongue, like a cockney jester on day release.
“Every time we come back together it’s different . . . it appears there are still a few chapters left in the story of Fleetwood Mac,” said Buckingham, before giving the audience their cue to rush to the bar: a new number. In the event, Sad Angel was a pretty decent slice of California rock, and Nicks followed it up with Rhiannon, her song about a Welsh witch that put her on the map. Her throaty delivery was perfect for the song’s combination of spooky mystery and Top 40 appeal.
Buckingham gave himself a metaphorical pat on the back when he introduced a few songs from Tusk, the non-commercial follow-up to Rumours and very much his album.
“I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when Warner Brothers first heard Tusk,” he chuckled, before celebrating his uncompromising genius by singing It’s Not That Funny.
“That electric crazy attraction between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks never dies,” Nicks said recently. Whether Buckingham, married with kids, would agree with her is debatable, but the pair did play a touching, tender version of Landslide together. Buckingham managed to silence the arena with a solo acoustic rendition of Never Going Back Again.
As a testament to the power of mainstream rock, it was hard to beat. And after Fleetwood played a drum solo while muttering something unintelligible, the band launched into Don’t Stop, proving there is nothing more powerful than a perfect song.
Expert views on the best of the performing arts, Times2, page 11
Will Hodgkinson / The Times (UK) / Wednesday, September 24, 2013
Fleetwood Mac performed the first of three sold-out shows at London’s O2 Arena. The band had the nearly 15,000 concert attendees on their feet by the end of the show, as they danced and sang along to the chorus of “Go Your Own Way.”
Stevie dedicated “Landslide” to Jenny Boyd, Mick Fleetwood’s first wife.
The next two shows in London are highly anticipated for the return of former member Christine McVie, who is scheduled to perform with the band during “Don’t Stop.” McVie retired from the band in 1998 for simpler life in Kent, an area southeast of London.
London Setlist (Night 1)
Second Hand News
The Chain
Dreams
Sad Angel
Rhiannon
Not That Funny
Tusk
Sisters of the Moon
Sara
Big Love
Landslide
Never Going Back Again
Without You
Gypsy
Eyes of the World
Gold Dust Woman
I’m So Afraid
Stand Back
Go Your Own Way
World Turning
Don’t Stop
Silver Springs
Say Goodbye
Videos
Second Hand News (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49uhQNfMIlM
The Chain (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6CzYVUoAYs
Dreams (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jwlTXhNakA
Sad Angel (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Yma6nVQjE
Rhiannon – partial (courtesy of ticketstublife)
Tusk (courtesy of Steven Lister)
Tusk – partial (courtesy of missloopyloo69)
Sisters of the Moon (courtesy of carolinetillyann)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUt2iBUR-TA
Sara (courtesy of Steven Lister)
Big Love (courtesy of ticketstublife)
Big Love (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bARj88P-hOk
Landslide (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiZmjdQYny8
Gypsy (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiAt8z4b1fM
Eyes of the World (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPHGj9XmvZg
Gold Dust Woman (courtesy of Steven Lister)
Go Your Own Way (courtesy of kristianlw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDEksmGNFSE
Go Your Own Way (courtesy of Flash Productions FM)
Don’t Stop (courtesy of MsMonkeybird)
Live Tweeting
@TonsOfShillings
I’m having a better night than all of you. I’m watching Fleetwood Mac
@OurEventsNI
FLEETWOOD MAC @The02Arena #London INCREDIBLE!!!! #fleetwoodmac
@KarenBiggs4
@ Fleetwood Mac @ O2. Stevia Nicks is an icon of survival and gorgeous with it.
@VictoriaBelfast
FLEETWOOD MAC @The02Arena OMG! #London #fleetwoodmac
@KTGingeLondon
@fleetwoodmac are rocking out @The_O2!!
@cla1re24
@fleetwoodmac are rocking the O2
@laurz_m
Everyone still waiting for Christine’s appearance…#fleetwoodmac
@adamdowling
Fulfilling one of life’s ambitions on Friday – seeing @fleetwoodmac at @The_O2 !!!! #3days #biglove
@KBanbury
Every woman in this arena wishes they were Stevie right now #o2 #fleetwoodmac
@nomio1
Amazing!!! 🙂 #fleetwood mac pic.twitter.com/0cltuGdHu0
@catherinedarby
Loving Mick Fleetwood and John McVie along with Buckingham/Nicks’ narrative. But oh for Christine McVie and Songbird #fleetwoodmac
@MarkSkunkAnansi
Fleetwood Mac words fail me. Utterly stunning.
@Joe_Dromey
I’ve seen entire gigs that have been shorter than a Fleetwood Mac solo
@lekatieox
FLEETWOOD MAC STOP IT U ARE TOO GOOD
@kerrymoyles
It’s always nice to be the youngest at a gig. #fleetwoodmac
@longfellow159
Some gigs you never want to end #FleetwoodMac
@kennyrushygod
You Can Go Your Own Way utterly completely brilliant! #fleetwoodmac #o2arena
@Peyypeyy
Fleetwood Mac is that shit man
@ThunderOTL
Gold Dust Woman blew my mind! Lindsay and Stevie stealing the show at the O2! #fleetwoodmac
@ReesHitchcock
Mick Fleetwood does looks a little bit like Uncle Albert…#fleetwoodmac
@Dorianlynskey
Seeing Fleetwood Mac for the first time. Drives home what an oddly intense band they are without Christine McVie’s leavening influence.
@catherinedarby
Mick Fleetwood IS the living legend on drums #fleetwoodmac
@JHRebecca
Mic Fleetwood interactive DRUM SOLO #waaaaaahhhh #fleetwoodmac BOOM!!!!
@davidrsmyth
it’s a fact that more music journalists die from self-inflicted injuries while watching drum solos than anything else #FleetwoodMac
Heroic drug abuse, physical violence, epic strops… Forget Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s craziest album was Tango in the Night.
“Certainly , I smoked a lot of pot. But I was never a big user of coke,” Buckingham notes. And by the mid-80s, he’d had enough. ” The subculture was pretty much at the point of burning itself out,” he recalled. “The ‘anything goes’ attitude that existed in the 60s had become something entirely different. But still, everyone thought you had to do certain things to play, and I don’t know that I ever thought about it that way.”
