Five things we learned at the classic lineup’s first gig together since 1997

Sixteen years of domestic life in the English countryside, playing with her dogs and baking cookies – that was apparently quite enough for Christine McVie. The singer and keyboardist rejoined Fleetwood Mac earlier this year, and, at 71, she’s touring with her old band – singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, singer Stevie Nicks, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – for the first time since 1997.

Fleetwood Mac have been on the road plenty in the past few years. But fans have craved a reunion of the lineup that first cohered in 1974 and went on to record that best-selling classic of tuneful romantic turmoil, Rumours. McVie’s bandmates, apparently, felt the same way: Nicks in particular had lobbied for McVie’s return, making onstage pleas and sending emails.

Last night, those wishes came true, as the band opened a 33-city North American tour at the Target Center in Minneapolis. Over the course of a generous two-and-a-half-hour set, the band ripped through 24 songs from the past four decades of their career. Here are five things we learned.

Fleetwood Mac don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow.
If the evening had an overarching theme – and trust us, it did – it was that Fleetwood Mac remain creatively active. “This is a band that continues to evolve through good times and adversity,” Buckingham announced at one point, as though delivering a mission statement. His long introduction to “Big Love” highlighted “the power and importance of change.” And when the time came for Mick Fleetwood to introduce the members of the group, the drummer commended Buckingham’s “vision for the future of the band.” That may not just be empty talk – the group has reportedly been writing and recording new material since McVie’s return.

Lindsey Buckingham is still a talented weirdo.
Buckingham certainly did command the stage with the authority of a band leader. His wiry intensity makes him both charismatic and uncool – a winning combination – and with his shock of gray hair and his T-shirt and sports jacket outfit, his look is “chic English Lit professor.” After bringing home a performance of “Tusk,” he stomped on the stage as though he’d just completed a successful touch football play. His playing, meanwhile, remains fluid and effortless: Of course he nailed the tricky guitar parts you recognize from the records, but he also cut loose on an extended freak-out during “I’m So Afraid,” climaxing in a flurry of intricate hammer-ons and crowd-pleasing heroics.

Stevie Nicks is the earnest and effusive heart of the band.
Look, a 66-year-old just can’t whirl about the stage in a transported frenzy, no matter how close a contact she maintains with the spirits of the netherworld – it’s an inner-ear thing. So Stevie’s witchy gesticulations are subtler now, maybe a little hesitant, definitely more deliberate, yet still plenty captivating once she donned an appropriately-colored shawl for “Gold Dust Woman.” Most importantly, she’s not ashamed to gush, praising both the crowd and Christine: “We are all the dreamcatchers, and we got our dream girl back!”

There’s a reason they’re named for the rhythm section.
From the kick on “The Chain” to the cowbell on “Gold Dust Woman,” so many of these hits are instant recognizable because of their drum parts, and Fleetwood and McVie remain the engine that keeps Fleetwood Mac on track. John McVie is as quietly spotlight-avoidant as ever, the kind of guy who stays in the living room reading the paper when company comes over. But age has only heightened Mick Fleetwood’s air of good-humored Dickensian menace – “For sure,” he shouted to the crowd, “the Mac is back!” For the encore, he even hauled off on a good old-fashioned drum solo, just like you used to hear on side three of double-live LP back in the Seventies.

Christine McVie is so necessary.
Without her, of course, there’s no “You Make Loving Fun,” no “Say You Love Me,” no “Over My Head.” But those aren’t just great songs – they’re expressions of a homey yet sexy sensibility that balances off Nicks’ supernatural romanticism and Buckingham’s passionate exasperation. McVie struck a confident presence behind her keyboards, reminiscing about the “fugly little flat in Malibu” she and John once shared and expressing her happiness to be back with the band. “Our songbird has returned,” Fleetwood announced grandly when introducing her – and, appropriately, McVie closed the night with the simple, lovely “Songbird.”

Keith Harris / Rolling Stone / Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Mick Fleetwood talks to correspondent John Blackstone for CBS Sunday Morning segment “For the Record.” The feature also includes new interviews from Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie.

“Don’t Stop” is the tune that rock band Fleetwood Mac serenaded Bill and Hillary Clinton with at the Inauguration Gala back in 1993. And “Don’t Stop” is the band’s guiding principle today , as its leader tells our John Blackstone . . . For The Record:

At his mountainside estate in Hawaii, Mick Fleetwood could be mistaken for an eccentric country gentleman, spending quality time with his pet pig, Tilly. “Sit! Sit!”
But Fleetwood is better known as the drummer of the group that shares his name: Fleetwood Mac.

In a rehearsal hall in Los Angeles, the five members responsible for the group’s biggest hits are preparing for their first tour together in 17 years.

Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood have been rejoined by Christine McVie, who left the band in 1998, swearing she would never come back.

“She called me and said, ‘How would you feel if I came back to the band?’” said Nicks. “And I’m like, ‘Are you serious?’”

McVie said, “God, I’m really actually on this black carpet with these fantastic musical friends of mine and all just having, really enjoying it, you know, really enjoying it.”

For Mick Fleetwood, having the band complete again has come at the right time.

“I think it’s about getting your house in order, without being overly heavy,” he told Blackstone. “The reality is, I’m sitting here, I’m 67 years old, I’m certainly not planning on leaving anytime that I know of, but you do see the picture in a different way just because you’re older.”

As part of “getting his house in order,” Fleetwood has just finished his autobiography, “Play On,” out next month. Why a book now? “I don’t write songs,” he said. “So this is a version of me writing a song.”

He writes about his divorces from three wives, and his failures as a father to his four daughters.

“I would imagine that someone reading this document would say that he’s sort of sold his soul to his band,” said Fleetwood.

“I don’t think he’s sold his soul,” said McVie. “I think he did it out of love.”

Fleetwood fell in love with the drums as a boy. Self-trained, he moved to London at just 15, determined to make a living as a drummer

Asked to describe his drumming style, Fleetwood said, “I’m not being overly humble — the easiest way, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I do, but if I start thinking about it, I don’t really do it horribly consciously, and I’m not super slick.”

But he is a slick dresser. That started when he was a a struggling musician, and his friend Rod Stewart told him to spend whatever he had on one good suit.

“And then you’re styling,” Fleetwood said. “To this day I love, I love clothes. And I’m a shoe freak.”

“You’re certainly known for being colorful, interesting,” said Blackstone.

“That makes me feel good, working so hard at it,” he replied.

By the time he was 20 the English blues band he was in took the name Fleetwood Mac, combining his name with that of bass player John McVie. Over the next few years, other band members came and went.

Then in 1975, a new Fleetwood Mac emerged with a lineup that (along with Fleetwood) included two couples: fellow Brits John McVie and his wife Christine; and the Americans Stevie Nicks and her boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham.

Their first album together, called simply Fleetwood Mac, included Nicks’ “Rhiannon,” and Christine McVie’s “Say You Love Me.” The album sold five million copies. Suddenly they were rock stars.

Fleetwood was the band’s manager as well as the drummer.

“It was very hard,” he said, ” ’cause I wasn’t the classic dude, the manager, the penny pincher. I just wanted to see everyone happy, including myself. So all our assistants had limos, so we’d arrive at an airport, there’d be, like, 20 limos — for the lighting director, you know?”

They were making it big, but coming apart. Nicks and Buckingham were breaking up, the McVies heading for divorce, and Fleetwood’s marriage was ending as well, just as they began working on their second album, Rumours.

“Were there lots of problems? Yes,” said Fleetwood. “But it was never like, ‘Oh my God, you’re not gonna get a band.’

“A lot of people around us, our record company, people around us were going, like, ‘Okay, Mick, when are you gonna break up, ’cause I don’t get how you’re pulling this off.’ All of us! It was the music. And we weren’t about to turn away from it.”

The fractured relationships showed up in the songs. “Go Your Own Way” was a message from Lindsey Buckingham to Stevie Nicks; “Dreams” was Stevie’s message to him.

And Christine McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” was written about her lover, not her husband.

“Falling in love, falling out of love, being betrayed in love, that’s what Fleetwood Mac songs are about,” said John McVie, “and that’s what Fleetwood Mac is about.”

“A lot, yes,” added Fleetwood. “As John McVie would say, a living soap opera, ’cause we’re all ex-lovers and have shared houses together, and it’s a scene.”

Among those ex-lovers are Fleetwood and Nicks, who began an affair while touring for Rumours.

“I was certainly in love with Stevie,” he said, “and I think it’s fair to say that she was likewise.”

Blackstone asked who called it off.

Nicks said, “Mick did. Because we both knew that Fleetwood Mac was gonna go on probably longer than anybody’s marriage, and that it was important that we be friends, so Mick and I just put our friendship back together.”

Nicks and Fleetwood shared a huge appetite for cocaine that grew to legendary proportions when they were recording Rumours.

“Drugs. The drugs and rock ‘n’ roll syndrome was alive and well during the making of that album,” said Fleetwood. “Me and Stevie became the wicked partners, I think, in that. I think we spoke about it way too much. Certainly I had to address the stories. I still get, especially in England, ‘Oh God, apparently you did enough cocaine to put a straight white line to the moon and back!’”

The drugs, along with the emotional crises, did not get in the way of the music. Rumours has sold 50 million copies.

Fleetwood managed the band for a decade, but eventually the excesses piled up. His bandmates fired him as a manager.

“You talk in the book about how you went through too much money, lots of money coming in and you went through too much,” Blackstone said.

“Yeah, I love spending money,’ Fleetwood replied.

“And you spent too much of it?”

“Me, personally?”

“Yeah, you spent more than you had?”

“Yeah.”

In 1984 Fleetwood was forced to declare bankruptcy. Other members of the band would go their own way. Buckingham quit the group for a decade in 1987; Nicks left for long stretches to pursue her solo career. Christine McVie retired.

But Mick Fleetwood played on wherever he could.

These days he plays with a couple of island bands he’s put together back home in Maui — even covering the occasional Fleetwood Mac song.

The stage is all his — on the rooftop of the restaurant he opened two years ago.

“Why a restaurant?” asked Blackstone, of Fleetwood’s on Front Street?

“I love talking, as you’ve gathered,” answered Fleetwood. “And I love meeting people. And a lot of the components of a restaurant are actually very similar to running a rock and roll band, believe it or not. There’s always drama. You have to put on a show every night. It’s show time!”

And now, it’s show time for Fleetwood Mac again. Rehearsals are wrapping up. The tour begins this week.

This time the band that epitomized “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” will be focusing on the rock ‘n’ roll.

John Blackstone / CBS Sunday Morning / Sunday, September 28, 2014

Christine McVie’s return sets the stage for fall’s hottest tour

“I feel like a lemming going over the cliff with the parachute not quite open,” Christine McVie says about her surprise return to Fleetwood Mac after a 15-year absence.

With the fan-favorite singer and keyboardist back on board, the storied band’s classic lineup is together once more and will be able to unpack its full range of hits when the On With The Show tour kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis. It’s the first tour by this stellar cast since 1997.

Despite her initial trepidation, “it was the right decision,” says McVie, 71. “The feedback from the public is thrilling. I’m looking forward to the camaraderie, the audience, the noise. I’m not looking forward to the packing and unpacking.”

Although McVie and singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham have written and recorded new songs, Fleetwood Mac is taking to the road without a new album.

“The validity of the tour comes from the fact that Christine is back and we’re revisiting the full body of work from the three writers (McVie, Buckingham, Stevie Nicks) in a way we haven’t done for many years,” says Buckingham, 64. “The only song of hers we did without her (on past tours) was Don’t Stop, as an encore. For this tour, 90% of the set list is a no-brainer.

In August, the band — including bassist John McVie, Christine’s ex-husband, who had been battling cancer — convened in Los Angeles to rehearse and cherry-pick its fat catalog for a career-spanning set list. Fans can expect a few rarities and surprises atop a bedrock of 10 or 11 landmarks, including Rhiannon, The Chain, Go Your Own Way, Big Love, Stand Back and McVie’s Say You Love Me, Little Lies and Hold Me.

Fleetwood Mac certainly didn’t suffer without McVie: The band ranked 10th in Billboard’s tally of music moneymakers last year with earnings of $19.1 million. “We spent 15 years making Fleetwood Mac relevant without her,” Nicks says. “But with her, we were a force of nature.”

Nicks recalls her reaction last year when she heard from Christine McVie while vacationing at a monastery on Italy’s Amalfi coast: “I get a call from Chris, saying, ‘How would you feel if I decided to come back to the band?’ I’m like, ‘Seriously? Have you just downed a bottle of wine?’

“When she left in 1998, she said, ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want to fly anymore. I’m having panic attacks. I’m too old. I’m too tired. I am done.’ I knew there was no way we could change her mind. As the years went by, when people asked me about her, I said the world would fly off its orbit before Chris would rejoin the band.”

“It’s been quite profound and painless,” McVie says of her return to the fold. “I left to go chill in the English countryside. I realized it was not what I wanted in the end. It was boring. This is where I belong. I’m starting to live again.”

Edna Gundersen / USA Today / Friday, September 26, 2014

On October 9, Fleetwood Mac will be performing in Rockefeller Plaza for  NBC TODAY’s Toyota Fall Concert Series. The TV appearance coincides with the band’s October 6 and 7 concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Fleetwood Mac‘s ‘On with the Show’ tour kicks off in Minneapolis on September 30.