Prodigal band member Christine McVie returned to the fold after 16 years — but it seemed more like seconds once she joined her voice to those of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on Monday on the aptly named tour, ‘On With the Show.’

The members of Fleetwood Mac weren’t kidding when, more than 40 years ago, they wrote the line, “You can never break the chain.”

As with the mafia or prison gangs, allegiance to almighty Mac cannot end by anything as flimsy as choice – even if significant portions of time suggest it can.

Proof arrived Monday at The Garden when prodigal member Christine McVie returned to the fold after a long stab at retirement. Sixteen years have elapsed since the group’s declared songbird departed their ranks. But it seemed more like seconds once McVie joined her voice to those of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on the aptly named tour, “On With the Show.”

Fittingly, the reconstituted Mac opened with “The Chain,” their 1977 ode to the promise and threat of eternal connection.

From there, the set worked in seven classic McVie songs, touchstones like “Say You Love Me” and “Over My Head” that had been banished from the band’s shows for far too long.

“We have our dream girl back,” Nicks said at one point.

Lindsey Buckingham flexed his guitar god muscles in ‘I’m So Afraid,’ and his quicksilver Spanish guitar fingerings in ‘Big Love.’
McVie’s presence restored more than just repertoire and sentimentality. Her nurturing alto added a third strand to the band’s trademark harmonic weave. Together, those voices form a signature as certain as the band’s soap opera dramas and unfailing tunemanship.

At 71, McVie’s vocals exuded the same warmth she first brought to the band 44 years ago, well before Nicks and Buckingham’s presence soared them to their commercial peak. McVie’s particular sense of melody, evident in songs from under-appreciated Mac albums like 1972’s “Bare Trees,” wound up presaging the pop formalism the band would idealize on 1977’s “Rumors.”

At The Garden, McVie lent the live band a more varied dynamic, in both sound and character. In the years of her absence, the live focus fell hard on the frisson between Nicks and Buckingham. Their complex relationship — culled from a vexing mix of their personal and professional lives — became the subtext, and sometimes the text, of the shows.

The addition of McVie’s songs gave the show a lighter layer, a sweet contrast to the darker warnings housed in the Nicks/Buckingham catalogue. That became evident with the set’s second song, “You Make Loving Fun.” It offered a creamy reprieve from the pieces surrounding it — the band’s declarative “The Chain” and Nicks’ wan “Dreams.”

Much of the subsequent selection repeated Mac standards — from “Rhiannon” and “Gypsy,” for Nicks, to “Second Hand News” and “Never Going Back Again,” for Buckingham.

‘We have our dream girl back,’ Stevie Nicks (pictured) said at one point of McVie’s return.
The show also featured reliable showcases, like Nicks’ masterpiece about aging, “Landslide,” and Buckingham’s flexing of his guitar god muscles in “I’m So Afraid,” or his quicksilver Spanish guitar fingerings in “Big Love.” But the night also featured rarities, like Nicks’ “Seven Wonders.”

It would have been nice if they had sifted back into their set “Oh Well,” a piece by former member Peter Green from 1969 that they only retired in the last decade. The gesture would have gone the extra mile in making their essential point about continuity and commitment. They came close, however, by giving McVie the last word.

Her signature piece from 1977, “Songbird,” closed the night with a wholly idealized view of love. Given the nuance and complexity of the music and backstory that preceded it, the band more than deserved a final moment of unguarded love.

email:jf*****@*********ws.com

Fleetwood Mac plays the Garden Tuesday.

SET LIST

1. The Chain
2. You Make Loving Fun
3. Dreams
4. Second Hand News
5. Rhiannon
6. Everywhere
7. I Know I’m Not Wrong
8. Tusk
9. Sisters of the Moon
10. Say You Love Me
11. Seven Wonders
12. Big Love
13. Landslide
14. Never Going Back Again
15. Over My Head
16. Gypsy
17. Little Lies
18. Gold Dust Woman
19. I’m So Afraid
20. Go Your Own Way
Encore 1:
1. World Turning
2. Don’t Stop
3. Silver Springs
Encore 2:
1. Songbird

New York Daily News / Tuesday, October 7, 2014

A band member returns to the fold, and camaraderie and nostalgia ensue

“Welcome back, Chris!” Stevie Nicks proclaimed soon after Fleetwood Mac started its set on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. “Where have you been?”

“Long story, Stevie,” said the laconic Christine McVie from behind her keyboards. In 1998, after 28 years with Fleetwood Mac, Ms. McVie retired from touring with the band.

But in January, as Ms. Nicks told it in a post-encore monologue, Ms. McVie phoned to ask, “How would you feel if I decided to come back to the band?” (She had already made a guest appearance in September 2013 at a Fleetwood Mac concert in London.) Ms. Nicks added that she advised Ms. McVie to get a trainer because Fleetwood Mac’s shows are so “physical”; its concert set runs 2 ½ hours. And while Ms. McVie’s voice, like the others in the band, has roughened over the decades, it’s still hearty.

With Ms. McVie, Fleetwood Mac has returned to the lineup that made it the world’s best-selling band 37 years ago when it released Rumours, an album of sparkling pop-rock songs about, mostly, crumbling relationships. Ms. McVie was the more levelheaded, kindly voice alongside the band’s other two songwriters: Ms. Nicks — sometimes dreamy, sometimes vindictive — and the guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who tucked angry, wounded lyrics into virtuosic guitar parts.

Ms. McVie’s demure alto bound together the group’s vocal harmonies; her songs promised that loyal affection was still possible. The three singers and songwriters were backed by the band’s namesakes and tireless rhythm section, the drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie, Christine’s ex-husband since 1977.

Ms. McVie wrote the determinedly optimistic, forward-looking “Don’t Stop,” which insists “yesterday’s gone.” But to the delight of a nostalgic audience on Monday, the band drew its entire set from the five albums this lineup made together: Fleetwood Mac (1975), Rumours (1977), Tusk (1979), Mirage (1982) and Tango in the Night (1987). There was camaraderie onstage; when Ms. McVie sang “Say You Love Me,” Ms. Nicks was singing along without a microphone, like a fan who knew all the words.

Fleetwood Mac can’t duplicate its youthful sweetness. Ms. McVie’s voice has held its richness, but sometimes falters at high notes. Ms. Nicks’s huskiness has grown harsher, and in her glittery shawls she turns slowly now instead of twirling across the stage. But Fleetwood Mac still has the intricacy, elegance and underlying punch of its songs.

Mr. Buckingham is clearly the band’s leader now. The guitar parts that twinkle through Fleetwood Mac’s albums — patterns of picking and strumming that meld folk styles with classical guitar detail — come into the foreground onstage. He turned Ms. Nicks’s “Gold Dust Woman” into a darker incantation before taking a long, skirling, keening solo in his own “I’m So Afraid”; “Tusk” was a cry of despair, not a novelty.

But Ms. McVie was the band’s quieter center of attention, and she had the last word with her “Songbird.” Even though she played it largely alone on piano, with a modest guitar solo from Mr. Buckingham, it meant that Fleetwood Mac was complete again.

Fleetwood Mac performs at the Prudential Center on Saturday, 165 Mulberry Street, Newark; 800-745-3000, prucenter.com.

Jon Pareles / New York Times / Tuesday, October 7, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) – Their “dream girl” is back.

The members of Fleetwood Mac each took a moment Monday night at New York City’s Madison Square Garden to welcome longtime bandmate Christine McVie back to the stage after a 16-year hiatus, thus restoring the band to its mid-1970s and most successful configuration.

In her trademark gypsy shawl, Stevie Nicks said the dream catchers she casts to the crowd each night finally netted her old friend. Lindsey Buckingham said her return marked “a beautiful, profound and poetic new chapter.” Mick Fleetwood simply looked to the ceiling and shouted “Amen.”

In between, they ripped through all their old hits with a fervor that belied their age.

The band opened with “The Chain,” a song emblematic of Fleetwood Mac’s lasting legacy, despite its many breakups and personal upheavals. The collective power of the three singers’ voices belting out the song’s refrain, “You would never break the chain,” seemed to drown out the quarrels and drug-fueled rancor that tore them apart over the years.

The McVie-penned and long-dormant “You Make Loving Fun” was back on the set list, and upon hearing her sing the opening line, “Sweet, wonderful you,” the crowd erupted in an approving roar. McVie, 71, looked comfortable and happy to be back. Her voice was strong and a welcome presence.

During the band’s concert in New York City last year, guitarist, singer and songwriter Buckingham, singer and songwriter Nicks, drummer Fleetwood, and Christine’s ex-husband and bassist John McVie powered through their catalog of classics. But despite a purposeful performance, it was hard to not feel shortchanged by the exclusion of Christine McVie’s songs.

With her return to the fold this time around, however, the band was free to explore its entire repertoire, including McVie’s songs “Over My Head,” ”Little Lies” and “Everywhere.”

One of the highlights of the night was “Second Hand News,” which the band played with the energy of young musicians playing for their first big break. The 65-year-old Buckingham, especially, attacked the guitar with such intensity and enthusiasm, you’d think it was his first time playing in front of a large audience.

Dressed in skin-tight jeans, he stomped in slow-motion across the stage during a hair-raising guitar solo for “I’m So Afraid,” as the large screen behind the performers zoomed in on his dexterous fingers plucking away at the guitar strings.

While age has not diminished his agility, it has taken a slight toll on Nicks’ voice. “Dreams,” took on a different feel to accommodate her on some of the song’s higher notes. A couple of backup singers helped out with the harder to reach registers and harmonies. But on her other signature songs, like “Silver Springs” and “Landslide,” Nicks’ voice was intact and cut through like a sharpened knife.

The New York show, the first of a two-night stint, is part of a 33-city “On With the Show” tour that started Sept. 30 in Minneapolis and is scheduled to wrap up Dec. 20 in Tampa, Florida.

Buckingham recently told The Associated Press that he, Christine McVie and Fleetwood have tracked some songs for a new album, but their concerted effort to finish it won’t begin until after the tour. For now, the band is content focusing on being back on the road, playing their classic hits with their long lost friend.

“You have to look at the five (of us) as a study in chemistry,” Buckingham told the AP. “What a lot of the fans really bought into was beyond music … it was this beautiful chemistry that they saw between the five of us.”

But the final encore Monday night belonged to only one: McVie. She performed her signature song, “Songbird,” solo on a baby grand piano, with a bit of help from Buckingham on the guitar solo. Her rendition brought the sold-out audience to a hush.

The significance of her return was not lost on her.

“I’ve been away quite a long time and you don’t often get a chance to do something you love so much twice in your life.”

Jaime Holguin / Associated Press / Washington Times / Tuesday, October 7, 2014

___

Entertainment Writer Mike Cidoni Lennox contributed to this story.

Follow Jaime Holguin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/enstereo

Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Fleetwood Mac’s flexibility has always been its secret weapon, its three distinctive singers giving it a wide variety of sounds that few bands can match.

That becomes even clearer with the focus on singer/keyboardist Christine McVie at Madison Square Garden Monday night, marking her return to Fleetwood Mac after 17 years of retirement from the road.

With McVie back in the Mac, there…

Fleetwood Mac’s flexibility has always been its secret weapon, its three distinctive singers giving it a wide variety of sounds that few bands can match.

That becomes even clearer with the focus on singer/keyboardist Christine McVie at Madison Square Garden Monday night, marking her return to Fleetwood Mac after 17 years of retirement from the road.

With McVie back in the Mac, there is more of a balance of blues and rock. Her rich voice on “You Make Loving Fun” and “Everywhere” is a nice counterpoint to the more aggressive, rocking vocals of Lindsey Buckingham and the more ethereal singing of Stevie Nicks.

And when they all sing together, in the gorgeous “Rhiannon” or “Say That You Love Me,” it’s still magical.

“I’ve been away for a long time,” McVie told the cheering crowd. “You don’t often get a chance to do what you love twice in your life.”

It’s still early in the tour, which launched last week, and they are still working out some pieces. (Fleetwood Mac returns to The Garden Tuesday night and plays Prudential Center on Saturday.) Nicks mistakenly tried to introduce “Over My Head,” which was written by McVie, before laughing and yielding the stage, saying, “I don’t know the story of this song.”

However, the nervousness of such veteran performers just added to the charm of the night, which got stronger the deeper they got into the 2 1/2-hour set. Between Buckingham’s epic guitar solos, Mick Fleetwood’s massive drumming, John McVie’s strong bass work, Nicks’ patented spins to punctuate the lovely “Gypsy” and Christine McVie’s lush vocals, Fleetwood Mac looked ready to take on what Buckingham has called “their next chapter.”

Glenn Gamboa / New York News / Monday, October 6, 2014

Rocktober Day 3: Fleetwood Mac at the United Center – a concert for the (middle) ages

I can’t hold the the rope much longer in my epic tug-of-war with Denial, and the concerts I’ve attended recently are doing nothing to firm up my grip: Alanis Morissette at Caesar’s. A Go-Go’s romp at Ravinia. And last night: Fleetwood Mac. One look at my fellow concert-goers, and it is clear that it won’t be long, now, before I am pulled over the line, and must finally surrender to the truth: I am a middle-aged adult.

With tickets for last night’s show starting at over $100 for seats BEHIND THE STAGE, the crowd was certainly more yoga’d and designer eyeglasses’d than the plastic beer cup crowd at Alanis’ show at Caesar’s, last weekend. (You Live, You Learn, I guess) This was no low-dough show.

And nor should it be. Fleetwood Mac is a legendary rock band. This is their 35th year as a band, and they sold out the United Center. Twice. As a person whose last piece of writing was seen by 67 people, I have only mad respect for what this band has accomplished. (Stevie Nicks told a story about how, in 1969, she and Lindsay were in a band that opened for Janis….. Jimi…. So, yeah.)

For most concert-goers, the evening fell into one of two categories: either a fancy date night, or “GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT! WOOOOO!” The combined 401K wealth in the arena had to have been in the low billions. I would be willing to bet that Weight Watchers had made money off of at least 85% of the women in the room at some point in their lives: a meeting, or at the very, very least, a one month on-line susbscription. This was a crowd of women who knew their way around a point slide, myself included. That’s not a judgement call. It’s just a rite of passage.

For Fleetwood Mac, the night was about Christine McVie’s return after a sixteen year absence. It was something the band had long ago written off as a possibility. Stevie Nicks once said about Christine’s departure: She went to England and she has never been back since 1998, so it’s not really feasible, as much as we would all like to think that she’ll just change her mind one day. I don’t think it’ll happen. We love her, so we had to let her go. (Digital Spy, 12/6/12) And last night, she was back.

I noticed that in both the flashing LED band photo that covered the entire side of the United Center, then again on the stage, Christine McVie looked less like a rock star, and more like a nice breakfast waitress from Denny’s. She moved to the beat like a wallflower aunt at a wedding: step left, feet together. Step right, feet together. She delivered the best one-liner of the night. When introduced at the beginning of the night to a thunderous ovation, Stevie Nicks jokingly asked her, “So where’ve ya been?” And Christine said: “Long story.” She thanked the crowd and the band for having her back with a sincerity that filled the arena.

So what really happened last night? What did I see? Because I don’t believe that what happened up there was really, well, rock and roll. There was fine musicianship, sure. A string of hits that will forever be in rotation on Classic Rock stations, absolutely. But rock and roll? Mick Fleetwood’s drum set sounded like it was run through a Garage Band “arena drum kit” filter on an iMac. Lindsay Buckinham still wears skinny jeans like a rock star boss, I’ll give him that. But where once Stevie Nicks was a mad whirling dervish on stage, we now atta-girl clapped when she did four slowwww motion turns without falling. Watching a rock show in a venue as monstrous as the United Center is akin to watching, say, a foosball match in an operating room theater. If your car stereo sounded like what was coming out of the speakers, you would turn your radio off, take it to the shop, and ask them to fix your crappy speakers.

Nope. No new stories were built atop Fleetwood Mac’s legendary structure, Thursday night. That concert was about looking at the band, and at each other, and saying,

“We are all still here. And that’s awesome.”

The oeuvre of Fleetwood Mac emerged during our formative milestones: our first slow dances. The great heartbreak. Our first weddings. Some first divorces. Some second weddings. Many funerals.

But we are all still here, and that’s awesome. This idea seems especially poignant in the wake of the iconic losses of recents months. It’s getting serious, guys. We have reached the age when, frankly, life is no longer to be taken for granted. These are the days of second winds and now-or-nevers. Because we are still here. And that’s awesome.

Rock stars are the royal family of fantasy: what is more mystical, more mythical than a rock star? They are our collective projections of our greatest desires, set to music. So who better than the bonafide rock legends of Fleetwood Mac to play out one of the greatest fantasies of all time: that someone we love will someday come back to us.

(Now if I was a craptastic writer, then here at the bottom, I would write, “So Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow!” But I won’t. You’re welcome.)

***

That’s my piece and that’s my peace. Thank you for taking the time to read my silly words. It means the world. Carry on…

JA / Chicago Now / Friday, October 3, 2014

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JA has called Chicago "home" since June 1, 1995. She relocated from Orlando after receiving a "message" to do so during the Winona Ryder/Susan Sarandon version of the film "Little Women." (She is fully aware it could have been the booze fumes talking, but those fumes were on to something if that's the case...) She sometimes works on her novel tentatively titled "The Branson Novel," but so what, right? Everyone is working on something. She wants you to know that she digs you. Like, kinda hard. if you have something to say, let it be heard at ol**********@***il.com She Twitts, sometimes, too: @oldsinglemom

Suddenly, Fleetwood Mac seems like it might be thinking about tomorrow again.

After touring since 1998 in various incomplete incarnations and with varying levels of comfort with each other, the onetime supergroup is now back to the full lineup of its late 1970s heyday, minus the bad habits and the romantic entanglements of that era.

And don’t think the crowd at United Center Thursday didn’t know and appreciate it. When prodigal keyboardist Christine McVie sang “sweet, wonderful you,” her first solo notes of the night, on “You Make Loving Fun,” exultant cheers came from the crowd.

“Our dream girl is back,” Stevie Nicks would say later, just after McVie had sat at a grand piano and delivered her simple, soulful “Songbird” to end the almost 2-1/2-hour show.

McVie, with the help of a therapist, has conquered a fear of flying and given up a life in the English countryside to rejoin the band, making the second stop on its reunion tour in Chicago (where it plays again Friday).

Except for a quick reference to her long-ago marriage to bassist John McVie — part of this band’s charm is its complicated past, often mythologized in song — she mostly left the talking to her bandmates. But with her songs back in the set and her calm, angular presence back on the stage, there was an undeniable feeling of rejuvenation.

“Making all of us complete,” drummer Mick Fleetwood said of McVie, “our songbird has returned.”

We’ve heard, in the tour buildup, that Fleetwood Mac is even writing and recording new material, news that holds no small promise considering how many enduring songs they’ve already made.

And now we’ve seen, in Chicago, that they’re playing like a group with an eye on the horizon, one that’s sharing the spotlight and taking every occasion to say kind things about one another. The show ended, not with a song, but with curious little speeches about unity and togetherness from Nicks and Fleetwood. (This is not recommended for groups with a lesser track record.)

So a tour showcasing new material may not be that far off. But what Mac delivered Thursday was 24 tunes from the heart of its catalog, classic rock live.

Christine McVie’s presence took some of the focus off of the Californians, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, whose 1974 addition to an existing British blues outfit kicked the band into the album-sales stratosphere, particularly with 1977’s “Rumours.”

Fleetwood and John McVie, on bass, reminded concert goers why the band is named for them. They still put a layer of muscle behind everything the band did, even the unapologetic soft rock of Christine’s “Little Lies.” Fleetwood pounded and then barked his way through a four-minute drum solo in “World Turning.”

But this band is about its songwriters. Christine McVie was almost regal, taking in more than she gave out, letting her silky love songs speak for her.

Buckingham, though, snarled his lyrics, jumped with the high notes on his guitar solos and generally belied what people might think they know about him from “Saturday Night Live’s” running parody. He may look like Art Garfunkel’s younger brother stuffed into skinny jeans, but this man is a vital musical presence, the soul of the band.

Ditto for the vitality of Nicks, its cauldron-stirring spirit. She didn’t twirl as fast or as often as she used to; a few spins, executed gingerly, were enough to draw fervent applause. The tempo on “Rhiannon,” one of her signature tunes, doesn’t blister as it once did.

But her voice quickly warmed up to put power and depth, if not range, behind her trademark rasp. Her showcase songs, “Landslide,” “Gold Dust Woman” and, especially, “Silver Springs,” were the night’s highlights.

As for stagecraft, give credit to Fleetwood Mac for keeping the microphones pointed in the right direction. The crowd was happily singing along most of the night, but never — never! — as lead vocalists. That is a rare thing in 2014, especially from a band who wouldn’t need to show any of the words on screen.

Less praiseworthy was the video screen behind the stage. It started promisingly, with just color, light, some nature scenes. But the video got more and more aggressive until on one tune it showed us footage of eyes, noses and facial pores. Somebody must have dragged that director away from the controls, because the final bits backed off, simply showing the band.

A couple of musicians backed the core group on guitar and keyboards, but Buckingham was ferocious and tireless as lead guitarist. (His “Big Love” beatdown of an acoustic guitar recalled Richard Thompson.) There were two backup singers, too, also in shadow, ready to fill in on the high notes, but, really, the trio of Buckingham-Nicks-C. McVie had nothing to apologize for as lead vocalists.

That trio is now hovering around 70 years of age. But even as young pups they were writing songs that contemplated the march of time. Now, with McVie’s unexpected return and the potential for new material, those lyrics about yesterday being gone and time making you bolder seemed to hold a special resonance.

United Center, Chicago, 10/2/14 set list

1. The Chain
2. You Make Loving Fun
3. Dreams
4. Second Hand News
5. Rhiannon
6. Everywhere
7. I Know I’m Not Wrong
8. Tusk
9. Sisters of the Moon
10. Say You Love Me
11. Seven Wonders
12. Big Love
13. Landslide
14. Never Going Back Again
15. Over My Head
16. Gypsy
17. Little Lies
18. Gold Dust Woman
19. I’m So Afraid
20. Go Your Own Way
21. World Turning (First encore)
22. Don’t Stop
23. Silver Springs
24. Songbird (Second Encore)

Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune

Steve Johnson / Chicago Tribune / Friday, October 3, 2014

Steve Johnson 

COLUMNIST | TRIBUNE REPORTER 

Steve Johnson covers arts and entertainment for the Chicago Tribune. In more than 25 years at the paper, he has written columns, reviews, news stories and features on topics from politics to television. He lives in Oak Park with his wife and two teenage sons. 

sajohnson​@tribune.com

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