SACRAMENTO, CA – Fleetwood Mac brought their A-game Saturday night as they played to a sold-out crowd at Sacramento’s Sleep Train Arena, (Arco Arena, Power Balance Pavilion).

Bringing a roar from the crowd, 65-year-old Stevie Nicks and 63-year-old Lindsey Buckingham came out onstage hand-in-hand, as they kicked off their final performance of their US tour, in support of their first ever EP Extended Play.

Joining the duo was, 66-year-old Mick Fleetwood and 67-year-old John McVie, as they started the show off with hits from their famous Rumours album including “Second Hand News” and “The Chain.” The album was originally released in 1977. Christine McVie was not present, she retired from music after their album The Dance.

The group performed for close to three hours, including two encores, with the mostly standing crowd of hungry fans cheering them on.

Yes, this was a Fleetwood Mac concert, but at times it felt more like the Lindsey Buckingham show, with special guest Stevie Nicks. Buckingham remained onstage throughout the performance, giving other members a break. There were some songs where Buckingham was lacking vocally, but his guitar skills more than made up for it.

Mick Fleetwood, drummer and founding member of the group, did a great job on drums, including a wonderful solo routine. Our seats were off to the right side of the stage and from our angle we could just glimpse another drummer that was hidden from view. It appeared the hidden drummer was mimicking the same sound as Mick on some songs, and adding to the mix on others. Towards the end of the show when backup singers and other band members were introduced, the lone drummer was left out. Could this be lip-syncing for drummers? Regardless, Mick was in top form with his mannerisms and facial expressions as he entertained the crowd.

Buckingham stole the show with his blazing fingerstyle guitar as he plucked melody lines over bass notes with blinding speed. You would have thought there were three guitar players onstage with the two drummers.

Stevie Nicks dusted off an old song “Without You,” that she wrote years ago and recorded as a demo. According to Nicks, the demo was taken from her and returned years later. After getting it back she lost it, so between her and Buckingham they have pieced it back together and were able to stay true to the demo version.

For their final encore of the night Buckingham responded to Nicks’ “Without You” with one he wrote a decade ago about the couple, “Say Goodbye.”

For those of you who may not know the history of the band, Buckingham and Nicks were lovers back in the day and just as the band broke up, so did the they. Their relationship led to a number of songs, both as Fleetwood Mac and in their solo careers.

There were a lot of rumors that band mates were having affairs with other band mates. That was back in the mid-seventies when they were working on, what was to become, their most popular album. Because of all the rumors flying around they decided to call their album – Rumours. Go figure.

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Ruth Perryman / Randy’s Fine Art (Photos) / Celebrity Examiner / Monday, July 8, 2013

 

On tour for the first time in three years, Fleetwood Mac played Sleep Train Arena Saturday night, and it is now safe to say they made up for their cancelled show four years ago. Sacramento was the last stop in the U.S., so the group was ready for a much-needed break, and this fueled them to play a great show.

Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham played for almost three hours, even after starting the show a little late. At the end of the show and after two encores, Nicks and Fleetwood remained onstage and spoke, both loquaciously grateful to their lifetime fans. Those in the crowd were just as appreciative to have another chance to hear such a classic group from their past.

To start the show, Buckingham and Nicks walked out onto the stage hand-in-hand, much to the delight of the audience. Everyone looked happy to be on stage performing again, and Buckingham even went as far as to vocalize it.

“…It appears that there are still quite a few chapters left in the book of Fleetwood Mac!”

Since “Fleetwood Mac Live 2013” marks the 35th anniversary of Rumours, the group made sure to play from the album right off the bat. They didn’t stop there, but also included songs from their many albums, Tusk, The Dance and their new EP, Extended Play, among them.

Everyone in the audience had a favorite song, and what was amazing was that it was never the same as the person next to them. Drummers loved Fleetwood’s enthusiastic drum breaks, and those who had a hankering to play guitar — either now or in earlier years — loved Buckingham going solo in “Big Love.”

Buckingham gave it his all and the audience just ate it up. He rarely left the stage, and when he did, it was for just seconds and a guitar switch. Overall it was really Buckingham that ran the show. Whether alongside Fleetwood Mac or touring on his own, he is clearly still at the top of his game.

One after another the hits came, and during “Landslide” everybody took a moment to remember. All around it was still, and people were somewhere else, in another time and possibly with another person. There was a sway to the audience and dreams, past or present, floating about in the air. We are getting older, yes, but that voice hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, it’s getting richer.

The moment was only somewhat repeated during “Silver Springs.” Audience members were so riled up by that point that the cheering didn’t fully cease. The ballad was sung during the second encore and at the end of a memorable night, everyone was appreciating what Fleetwood Mac, and in particular what Nicks’ voice, could do.

This was my moment to think back, although admitting exactly how is certainly going to date me — and not in the way you’d expect. “Silver Springs” was the one that made me a convert. I remember thinking, “Who is this?”

Like so many others in the crowd around me, I was taken back to the moment when I first fell in love with the voice of Stevie Nicks. I was back shooting hoops in the barn in middle school, the smell of dust on my fingers — half soil, half WD-40.

“Gypsy” was another great moment. It was then that Nicks really let go. Instead of a drum break, there was a lovely dance break, enchanting witchcraft gypsy style.

An acoustic Nicks and Buckingham duet, “Say Goodbye,” sent everyone home. Throughout the show, Nicks was affectionate towards Buckingham in a sweet and intriguing way that made you wonder if their relationship was really over. It was during this last song that it really hit a chord. Perhaps this is just how rumors start, but there seemed to be a sad tune of unrequited love in the air. Let’s hope they make one more album about it.

Their current world tour began in April and will continue to Europe, after which the group will carry on to Australia for the end of the year. Continue to follow the tour on Twitter with the hashtag, #FleetwoodMac2013. Their new EP, released in April, can be purchased on iTunes. The release of “Extended Play” is in addition to the re-release of Rumours in the form of a deluxe edition that includes live tracks. Watch their website for more updates because they’ll be back, Fleetwood said so.

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Patricia Willers / Sacramento Press / Monday, July 8, 2013

Here’s a sobering fact: Stevie Nicks is 65.

Everyone’s favorite witchy woman has ushered her crystal visions, white-winged doves and fringed tambourines into early senior citizenhood.

But she has not slowed down, or rather, further slowed down while spinning at a deliberate speed to better display her shawl.

Nicks looks like she’s in her mid-50s, tops, and she still tours with Fleetwood Mac (minus Christine McVie, for purists), performing Saturday at Sacramento’s Sleep Train Arena.

In 2011, Nicks released the finely crafted In Your Dreams, her first solo album in 10 years. A documentary, Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams, released on video on demand this week, charts the album’s making. The film was directed by Nicks and Dave Stewart, the ex-Eurythmics member and Nicks’ collaborator on the album.

They recorded much of the album and shot most of the film in Nicks’ huge Southern California house, which appears to have been built in the 1920s. Though the house is accented by the occasional dream-catcher or goddess painting, it is unexpectedly airy and bright, without a scarf-covered lamp in sight.

Nicks comes off as decisive but good-humored. She’s clearly fond of Stewart, and vice versa, and she’s also fiercely loyal to her friends and longtime musical collaborators, including Mick Fleetwood, who played drums on “In Your Dreams.”

Nicks tells the stories behind her songs, inspired by such diverse yet Goth-friendly sources as Edgar Allan Poe and the Twilight movies, and by past romances, of course.

Nicks always has happily spilled about her love life dovetailing with her art, as those of us who sat rapt during the Nicks and Fleetwood Mac episodes of VH1’s Behind the Music can attest. She’s a bit too coy about names in the documentary, but with age comes discretion, alas.

Here are 10 things to know about Stephanie Lynn Nicks’ life, career and impact on the world. The list is based on the documentary, other Nicks interviews and observation:

1. Nicks hails from the mystic provinces of Phoenix and Palo Alto. She also attended Arcadia High School, near Pasadena. Her family moved often to accommodate her corporate-executive father’s career. Jess Nicks became president of Greyhound. As a young woman, Nicks carried a bus pass that took her to any Greyhound destination for free.
2. Though Nicks’ success did not popularize “Stevie” as a diminutive for Stephanie, as one might expect, a Nicks-written 1975 Fleetwood Mac hit became a baby-name inspiration. Try entering any college-town coffee house or vegetarian restaurant without smacking into a Rhiannon.
3. Nicks sported the best rock-woman hairdo of all time during Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 Tusk tour: Curly short bangs fronting a giant bun. That single hairstyle embodied late 1970s America, from disco to the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment – it was party in front, suffragist in back.
4. The Nicks-Stewart composition “Everybody Loves You” from In Your Dreams is based on their shared experience of becoming famous in groups with former romantic partners. Stewart and Annie Lennox broke up before hitting it big in Eurythmics, just as Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up before the mega-selling 1977 Fleetwood Mac album “Rumours.”
5. Nicks sings Christine McVie’s parts on “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” on Fleetwood Mac’s current tour. No, it’s not the same.
6. Nicks once stole a song from Tom Petty. Petty’s guitarist, Mike Campbell, writes songs for Petty and Nicks. Nicks tells a story in the documentary about accidentally leaving Petty’s house with a demo tape of Campbell instrumentals. She loved one track so much she wrote lyrics for it and recorded the song with Fleetwood Mac. Petty called her, and she proudly played him the new song over the phone. Petty flipped out, telling her the song was for his band. Fleetwood Mac killed their track, and the song became “Runaway Trains” from the 1987 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)”.
7. Nicks’ backup singers Sharon Celani and Lori Perry Nicks have been with her since 1979. Perry married Nicks’ brother, Chris, in the ’80s. Celani and Lori Nicks also tour with Fleetwood Mac.
8. Her romances with Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood are more famous, but Nicks also dated Jimmy Iovine, who later co-founded Interscope Records. Iovine produced Nicks’ first solo album, 1981’s “Bella Donna.” Many people believe that album’s “Edge of Seventeen” details her relationship with Buckingham, whom Nicks met in high school. But Nicks has said it’s inspired by Iovine, well past age 16 when they met.
9. In the documentary, shot three years ago, Reese Witherspoon visits Nicks in the recording studio. Nicks says Witherspoon should play her in a film biopic of Nicks’ life. But Nicks told a reporter earlier this year that Witherspoon, 37, is now “almost too old” to play Nicks, who rose to fame in her late 20s, and that Witherspoon agreed. A good candidate: Brittany Snow, 27, from “Pitch Perfect.” She can sing and shows plenty of sass.
10. Nicks is a Twihard. In the documentary, Nicks recalls seeing “Twilight: New Moon” while on tour with Fleetwood Mac. When the vampire Edward leaves human Bella, Nicks could relate to her pain, she said, because she’s been left like that. “I became forever entrenched in the ‘Twilight’ story,” Nicks said.

FLEETWOOD MAC

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Sleep Train Arena, One Sports Parkway, Sacramento

Cost: $47-$147

Information: www.ticketmaster.com, (800) 745-3000, or visit Sleep Train Arena’s official website

Carla Meyer / Sacramento Bee / Friday, July 5, 2013

Call The Bee’s Carla Meyer, (916) 321-1118.. Follow her on Twitter @CarlaMeyerSB.