For one fan, the lyrics from the classic Stevie Nicks-penned song “Gypsy” couldn’t haven’t been more meaningful and appropriate than it was when she met her idol after Fleetwood Mac’s June 16 concert in Glasgow, Scotland.
UK fan Robyn Sneddon literally had her wish of meeting Stevie Nicks granted by Rays of Sunshine, a UK registered charity that grants wishes to children, aged 3 to 18 years old, living with serious or life-limiting illnesses. “I couldn’t believe just how close I actually was to her — my heart was absolutely pounding!” Robyn wrote on her blog about being in the same room as Stevie (a feeling that all fans who have met Stevie in person would attest to!).
You can read more about Robyn’s incredible experience of meeting Stevie on Robyn’s blog. Go Robyn!
Saturday nights show may be Fleetwood Mac’s 92nd performance of a 12-month tour but they’re adamant that it means something special.
It was at this venue, back in 2013, that singer and keyboardist Christine McVie secretly rehearsed with the band before rejoining after a 16-year absence.
The restoration of Fleetwood Mac’s classic line-up, along with the presence of signature McVie songs such as “Everywhere” and “Little Lies,” has clearly been a source of rejuvenation.
As soon as they launched into set-opener “The Chain,” the band waste no time in delivering the epitome of stadium pop-rock: a polished heritage act powering through one fan favourite after another.
Almost 40 years have passed since songs such as “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way” documented the group’s inner turmoil, but their ability to connect with listeners remains undiminished.
The sound is clear and the pace feels well-measured, despite a two-song lull between the triumphant swagger of “Tusk” and a rousing solo performance of “Big Love” by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.
Founding members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, both dressed in waistcoats and flat-caps, combine to pound out a muscular rhythm section.
Stevie Nicks, eyes closed as she leans into the microphone, exudes unflappable charisma.
A sweat-soaked Buckingham, having expended more time and energy on stage than anyone else, pounds his chest and blows kisses to the crowd.
By the time a two-and-a-half hour set comes to a close with “Silver Springs,” the band look spent.
Little has been held back. For a second encore, Christine McVie performs an understated “Songbird” alone at the piano before beaming with gratitude towards the crowd.
Just as that appears to be that, Stevie Nicks returns to the stage to tell the full story of McVie rejoining Fleetwood Mac – a reminder that this represents a circular moment for the band, a new chapter in their history.
That, in turn, feels like the end… until Mick Fleetwood re-emerges to offer his own farewell, urging the audience to take care of themselves and to be kind to each other.
“And remember” he shouts, donning a top hat as he turns to leave “The Mac is most definitely back!”.
Fleetwood Mac crossed the Irish Sea and performed at 3Arena in the coastal city of Dublin on Saturday night.
At the end of the show, Stevie saw it fitting to share her story about the Dublin events (during the 2013 tour) that led up to Christine McVie returning to the band (see video below).
Thanks to bossaddict, Rebecca Bourke, chobbesrules, padraig fahey, Aine Flynn, Chris Mcgrinder, Paul Moran, more savage, Daniel O’Carroll, pchambersmusic, rachelo1982, and Zarah Jane for sharing these videos!
COMPILATION: The Chain / Dreams / Rhiannon / Everywhere / Tusk / Say You Love Me / Landslide / Go Your Own Way (Aine Flynn)
The Chain (Paul Moran)
Dreams – partial (Zarah Jane)
Second Hand News (Paul Moran)
Rhiannon (Jay Keogh)
Everywhere (pchambersmusic)
Everywhere (bossaddict)
Big Love (Rebecca Bourke)
Landslide (padraig fahey)
Gypsy (Paul Moran)
Little Lies (rachel01982)
I’m So Afraid (more savage)
Go Your Own Way (Rebecca Bourke)
World Turning – drum solo (Chris Mcgrinder)
Band Introductions / Don’t Stop (Chris Mcgrinder)
Silver Springs (bossaddict)
Songbird (chobbesrules)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR3uoyuhcqs
Stevie: ‘This is Dublin. Of course, you have magical powers.” (bossaddict)
“It really was the beginning of the dream…” says the band’s Stevie Nicks.
The arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks to Fleetwood Mac in 1974 kicked the band’s commercial fortunes into serious high gear. Although the group was founded in 1967 and had already released nine studio albums, they had never visited the top 20 of the Billboard 200 chart. In contrast, the Mac’s first album with Buckingham and Nicks, the 1975 self-titled set, shot to No. 1 and sold five million in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
But even bigger success was on the horizon with 1977’s blockbuster Rumours, which spent 31 weeks atop the list and has shifted 20 million.
Its second single, the Nicks-penned “Dreams,” became the band’s first (and so far only) No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (on the list dated June 18, 1977) and was their first gold-certified single by the RIAA.
“My small pink 45 gold record of ‘Dreams’ hangs in my ocean apartment [in Santa Monica, Calif.] as we speak,” Nicks recalls to Billboard. “It has hung in every house I have lived in since the day I first received it. When I pass by it, I reach out and touch it. It really was the beginning of the dream …”
“Dreams” is one of 25 entries on the Hot 100 for the band, who also visited the top 10 eight other times with such hits as “Little Lies” and “Don’t Stop.”
The dreamy Rumours-era lineup of the band (Buckingham, Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie and John McVie) released three more top 10 studio albums before fracturing in 1987 after the departure of Buckingham. The quintet reconvened in 1997 for that year’s No. 1 live album The Dance and once more in 2014 for the On With the Show world tour. That trek continues through Europe, Australia and New Zealand this year. A new studio album is also in the works – and would be the first from the Mac’s fab five since 1987’s Tango in the Night.
Keith Caulfield / Billboard / Thursday, June 18, 2015
Fleetwood Mac performed at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow on Tuesday night, continuing their tour through the UK.
Stevie didn’t know anyone in Glasgow, so she dedicated “Landslide” to the Scottish crowd.
SHOW NUMBER
DATE
LOCATION
VENUE
90
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Glasgow, Scotland
SSE Hydro
Videos
Thanks to Black Out, BSMphotography Fife, Emma-Louise Cowan, Roy Halley, manic bunny, Ryan SK, and Stevie Wilson for sharing these videos!
The Chain (Stevie Wilson)
Dreams (BSMphotography Fife)
Rhiannon (Roy Halley)
Second Hand News (Sarah Leitch)
Everywhere (BSMphotography Fife)
I Know I’m Not Wrong – partial (BSMphotography Fife)
Sisters of the Moon (Roy Halley)
Sisters of the Moon (manic bunny)
Sisters of the Moon – partial (BSMphotography Fife)
Say You Love Me – partial (BSMphotography Fife)
Landslide (Emma-Louise Cowan)
Never Going Back Again (BSMphotography Fife)
Over My Head (BSMphotography Fife)
Big Love (BSMphotography Fife)
Little Lies (Black Out)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-aRv11WvNU
Little Lies (BSMphotography Fife)
I’m So Afraid (Roy Halley)
Go Your Own Way (Stevie Wilson)
World Turning (Ryan SK)
Don’t Stop (Stevie Wilson)
Silver Springs (BSMphotography Fife)
COMPILATION: The Chain / Everywhere / Sisters of the Moon / Landslide / Little Lies / Gold Dust Woman / Gypsy / Silver Springs (Ryan SK) / Go Your Own Way
ACCORDING to the traditional concert closing remarks of Fleetwood Mac’s resident ringmaster Mick Fleetwood, “the Mac is most definitely back” – and now these MOR giants come with added Christine McVie.
Rating: * * * *
The singer/pianist has rejoined the line-up after a sixteen-year absence and immediately made her leavening presence felt on the close harmony of opening number The Chain.
Her simply stated love songs, such as the sweet, girlish Everywhere and mellifluous Little Lies, made a welcome comeback to the setlist, providing a charming contrast to Stevie Nicks’ more melodramatic, impressionistic numbers – though the absence of Songbird from this show’s setlist was a great shame.
The eternal hippie chick Nicks was in her theatrical element, donning a black feathery shawl for extra gothic ambience on Rhiannon – though it hardly needed an atmospheric boost with Lindsey Buckingham’s burnished guitar and the ethereal harmonies as embellishing features.
Buckingham, meanwhile, was energised throughout, limbering up those fleet fingers to deliver an athletic, acoustic Big Love which climaxed with a primal yelp.
The eccentric tribal Tusk was another cathartic highlight.
The former couple cleverly traded on their volatile chemistry with a joint rendition of Landslide but were given too much hammy latitude on Gold Dust Woman and I’m So Afraid.
The band pulled back from the brink of indulgence with Go Your Own Way and heeded their own advice on Don’t Stop.
Both hits were the product of inter-band break-ups, yet here they are forty years on, still singing that universal rock soap opera.
Fiona Shepherd / The Scotsman / Wednesday, 17th June 2015
Thanks to Bagpuss009, cokeco12, cronas2, mark1111jd, matt douglas, Lewis Simpson, steven davis, SuperTurboPixel StreamersHD, and Wally Willis for sharing these videos!
Fleetwood Mac managed to do the impossible at Isle of Wight: top Blur’s performance from the previous night, says Patrick Smith.
If any act were to top Blur’s glorious Saturday-night set, it would surely be folk-rock behemoths Fleetwood Mac. And so it proved, as the sun went down on what’s been the best Isle of Wight festival in years, overflowing with nostalgia thanks to its affectionate nod to the 45th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s famous performance here.
Weary bodies, battered by rain on the Friday night, hauled themselves to the Main Stage to witness the American-English quintet, who seemed to have shrugged off the illness that forced them to cancel their Birmingham and Manchester gigs earlier in the week.
Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac (Rex)
It was marvellous to behold. Making their first ever appearance at Isle of Wight, this volatile soap opera of a group are now restored to their original configuration, with singer-pianist Christine McVie returning after a 16-year hiatus. That they were here to close proceedings represented a major coup for the festival – especially when you consider Michael Eavis has been trying to sign them up for Glastonbury for ages.
The Mac, now in their 48th year and in the middle of a 130-leg reunion tour, opened with the familiar driving riff of The Chain, which saw thunderous drums, coruscating guitar lines and sweeping melodies collide to devastating effect, while its chorus of, “we will never break the chain,” felt rather apt.
From there the hits kept coming. Vocalists Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and McVie, each dressed in black, all shared the limelight willingly, with the former’s voice, admittedly less honey-toned than it once was, anchoring the beautiful Dreams, taken from their 1977 break-up album Rumours. “Welcome back Mrs Christine McVie,” said a Nicks in one of many heartening showings of camaraderie. Everywhere, their gorgeous, twinkling ode to all-encompassing love, soon followed, with McVie taking centre stage and providing one of the high points of the festival.
Fleetwood Mac performing on the Main Stage(Rex)
Later, Buckingham stressed the importance of change, before a virtuosic performance of 1987’s Big Love. How pleasing that the brilliance of Fleetwood Mac’s music hasn’t changed.
Earlier, in a packed-out Big Top tent, The Lightning Seeds, fresh from their appearance on TFI Friday on Friday night, were by turns wistful and energetic. Spearheaded by their charismatic frontman Ian Broudie, the Liverpudlian alt-rockers, who formed in 1989, began their 50-minute set with Sense. But it wasn’t until a polished rendition of The Life of Riley, a song synonymous with Match of the Day’s Goal of the Month segment in the Nineties, that the audience began to embrace them fully.
Because of the phenomenal success of Three Lions, the football anthem made with comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel for Euro ’96 and rejigged for the 1998 World Cup, it’s easy to forget that, in their pomp, Lightning Seeds were actually pretty inventive, purveyors of catchy, fey pop songs such as their 1990 track Pure which closed their set to grateful applause. Demands for Three Lions, meanwhile, were kept to a minimum – a good thing really, given that it didn’t make the cut.
“It’s an absolute pleasure to be here you know,” said the sunglasses-wearing Broudie before breaking into the jaunty, keyboard-led Lucky You, one of their highlights.
The band are due to release a new album this year, their first since 2009’s Four Winds. I have high hopes for it.
Over on the Main Stage afterwards, 28-year-old Scot Paolo Nutini serenaded a swelling crowd with his brand of Motown-inflected soft rock. Wearing a red-and-black check shirt unbuttoned to his chest, the doe-eye singer-songwriter has a lovely voice: raspy and full of emotion. At times he sounded reminiscent of Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill; at others of the late Joe Cocker.
Though he can be gratingly earnest and bland, tracks such as Pencil Full of Lead (from his 2009 LP Sunny Side Up) were warmly received. Finishing with a soothing, acoustic version of 2006’s Last Request, Nutini urged the crowd to “enjoy the legends” that are Fleetwood Mac. It was impossible not to.
Top that, Glastonbury.
Patrick Smith / The Telegraph / Sunday, 14th June, 2015
The band’s secret, only recently returned weapon, Christine McVie dominates the early, Anglo-Californian harmonies.
Fleetwood Mac can actually remember the idealism which spawned 1969’s original Isle of Wight festival. But the catastrophic marriage collapses and cocaine mountains which catalysed the classic Rumours, an album which they no longer try to live down, meant they embodied the Seventies far more.
So while their Sunday headline set taps into this festival’s founding traditions, they play the smoother, harder rock of later, and far more cynical times.
Dr Showbiz has cured the unnamed ailment which cancelled two UK shows in the nervous run-up, letting them at least make it on stage, as they were always somehow going to. A bounding Mick Fleetwood is first, arms aloft in premature triumph. He is the pounding, insistent motor, musically and personally, without which the band he co-founded in 1967 would sputter and die.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, by contrast, show steely determination. Buckingham, the band’s Brian Wilson-like songwriting mastermind since 1974, looks faintly above a band he has tried to put behind him many times, as if he’s too old for this foolishness.
But he gruffly leads the charge with “The Chain”, the charge of hearing its great, bass-heavy riff electrifying the huge crowd. Few have headed for the ferries with Fleetwood Mac in town.
The band’s secret, only recently returned weapon, Christine McVie dominates the early, Anglo-Californian harmonies; the English purity of her voice raises the band above the soured innocence which spawned Rumours.
Blur headline Isle of Wight festival 2015
When all their voices join in hippie harmony on that album’s “Dreams”, for a moment the AOR sluggishness and personal battles which have dogged them fade away.
If you want a festival to mean something, though, book Saturday’s headliner Blur. Even more than Fleetwood Mac, Damon Albarn has faith in the human potential of thousands listening to music in a field.
Blur’s Saturday headline show on the island can’t match their 2009 Glastonbury reunion gig for raw communal emotion. But in its questing spirit, grand musical thrills and huge desire to drag people together, it’s close enough.
Ice cream van tunes and pink and white neon cones set the stage with reminders of Blur’s new album The Magic Whip, whose tunes bloom in what follows. “Ong Ong” is a summer miracle of a pop song, while “Thought I Was A Spaceman” offers Albarn the lone, tragic crooner, desolately nostalgic then brutally letting rip as the music explodes.
Albarn had lost his voice the day before, hoarse from chanting at a Glasgow warm-up gig. The careful seriousness which can afflict him outside of Blur falls away when he’s with them, letting him do stupid things. Wearing a Fred Perry shirt and skinhead’s green jacket, he capers across the stage with Phil Daniels during the crowd-bonding “Parklife” and, even on the darkly adult heroin ballad “Beetlebum”, refinds Britpop’s youthful fun.
Pharrell on stage
During a set which digs into deep corners of a quarter-century career many in the crowd barely remember, “Trimm Trabb” leave him lost in the moment, eyes wide. His childhood friend and right-hand man Graham Coxon wrings new, exploratory sounds with his guitar from the most familiar tunes. The Britpop-catalysing orgy of “Girls and Boys” is massively great, “The Universal” a blissful finale.
Friday’s headliner The Prodigy offer equally welcome unruliness. When the brittle snare-drum cracks of “Breathe” announce their arrival, fans run towards the stage, faces lit with the expectation of chaos. Sleaford Mods’ singer Jason Williamson guests on the thuggish “Ibiza”, where the guitars feel like close in, relentless Manny Pacquiao punches.
Friday headliners The Prodigy (credit: Sarah Lincoln Photography)
James are another highlight, singer Tim Booth acting as if they should be headlining. The lyrics of this floppy-limbed, carelessly manic dancer with an actor’s sense of drama are an uptight Northerner’s songs of freedom. Dozens are on the stage dancing by the end, as James insist on a sense of occasion. Pharrell Williams brings dancers too, including a middle-aged woman with strip-club technique. It’s a glorified club personal appearance, with much charisma and itchy beats, but no musical spontaneity.
James Bay, the latest in a generation of British singer-songwriters who sound like they’ve been anaesthetised, could do with the charisma. When such mainstream dullness intrudes, it’s time for the intimate Kharma Cafe’s often local bands, or the blessed, art-punk weirdness of Chicks On Speed.
As Sunday’s sun bakes the last of the mud from Friday night’s sodden downpour, Suzanne Vega gently pierces the just-waking crowd with her cool, pure voice, preparation for Fleetwood Mac’s finale to a strong, diverse weekend.
