British Tango

[michelej1]

[After Yahoo searching to see that they weren't elsewhere online, I am uploading some UK articles]

Sunday Times (UK), May 15, 1988

Arts (Music): A no-frills harvest of soft rock - Fleetwood Mac (585)
By ROBERT SANDALL

WHEN the veteran soft-rockers Fleetwood Mac released their 18th album, Tango in the Night, more than a year ago, pundits and industry alike conspired to treat it as a complete non-event. Here, surely, was another band that was dead but wouldn't lie down.

Since the glory days of their 1977 classic collection, Rumours, a 20m-selling global smash, the Fleetwood Mac story had gradually degenerated into a Californian morality tale of squandered wealth, tangled relationships, and visits to drug clinics. Sales of their previous album, Mirage, had been disappointing, and that was way back in 1982. The consensus prior to last April was that Fleetwood Mac had probably broken up and just not told anyone.

Tango in the Night, a competent unambitious reworking of their old sun-drenched harmonies formula, has since become the major surprise of the past year. Never out of the British Top 30 albums chart, currently back at number one and with sales now galloping up to the 1.5m mark, it has seen off a great deal of highly rated, younger and more stylish opposition.

The scale of the group's success stands principally as a testimony to the fact that pop is really not the musical jamboree for fashion-conscious under-30s that it is so often taken to be. There are many record-buyers out there who know what they like: a nice sentimental tune, a toe-tapping beat, the odd instrumental solo perhaps, for variety's sake really, and nothing too tricky or ironical in the way of presentation. And, to the despair of most critics, Fleetwood Mac amply fulfils all these modest requirements.

Their first British concert tour for eight years arrived at Birmingham's NEC on Thursday night. For the uncommitted observer, the main point of interest centred on how a band which has never been able to hang on to any of its guitarists would deal with the recent departure of Lindsay Buckingham, who wrote most and sang a lot of Tango in the Night.

For the rest of the audience there was nothing to prove. This was a victory parade, unhindered by the fact that one of Buckingham's two replacements, Billy Burnette, has a snarl of a voice which quite ruined their best song, the finale number Go Your Own Way.

Perhaps most interesting was the way that Fleetwood Mac - an Anglo-American pop operation for most of their 21 years - paid such respect to their long-obscured roots as pioneers of the British blues revival of the late 1960s. Their two bleached-blonde female vocalists actually left the stage at one point so that there of the boys could boogie through Stop Messin's Around.

More generally surprising was the band's awkwardness with the audience: Christine McVie would keep calling us 'Birmingham' from behind her keyboards as if she couldn't quite believe we and they were really there; and she thanked the adoring crowed so often and so incredulously at the end that you wondered whether she had seen any of her British chart placings recently.

[michelej1]

Times (UK), July 19, 1988

Macintosh helps the rock to roll;Computers and music;Technology
By Geof Wheelwright

Computers and rock music have enjoyed a close relationship over the last few years, but their liaisons have usually been limited to the recording studio.

The recent European tour of the US pop band Fleetwood Mac , however, is enjoying the benefits of a love affair between the tour manager, Leo Rossi and his personal computers.

Mr Rossi is a Los Angeles-based freelance tour manager whose clients include Chaka Kahn, Bette Midler, Huey Jones, Al Jarreau and Fleetwood Mac all of whose recent tours have been planned from behind the screen of an Apple Macintosh.

``A tour manager is like captain of the ship I get a list of dates from the promoter, put together all the trucks, technical people, travel arrangements, sound and lighting specialists and see if the numbers make sense,'' says Mr Rossi, explaining the job which has has now transferred almost entirely to the control of his computer.

``I plan everything including press interviews it is all time-critical.''

Mr Rossia started using personal computers to plan his tours back in 1984. He explained: ``I started using one during a Bette Midler tour and it was originally for doing manifests for equipment to take on the tours. But it developed more into management, using spreadsheets.

``The latest thing was the Apple Hypercard a software system for the Apple Macintosh that allows you to control the machine via an on-screen card box and that has helped a great deal.

``We put everybody on a Hypercard each, then link them all together with their travel and financial arrangements and produce schedules with a laser printer.''

Mr Rossi also makes us of communications technology to make changes to the tour plans while he is on the road.

``I can book hotels, flights and the whole tour from my house with the modem,'' he said.

When, for example tour dates are cancelled in the night, he can access a local phoneline with the computer and reroute the whole tour from his room.
The computers also play a part in actually producing the music on the tour. By making full use of his personal computer, he actually needs less electronic music equipment for the tour.

The fact that hundreds of sounds can be stored and controlled by the Macintosh computers also allows the band to cut down on the number of specialist music keyboards that haveto be taken on tour.

Instead, they need only bring one or two ``generic'' keyboards which can be used to access the library of sounds stored on the computer.

``The computer is sometimes even used to illustrate how huge, complicated sets and backgrounds are to be struck when they arrive at a concert site,'' he said.

[Gailh]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Lindsay Buckingham, who wrote most and sang a lot of Tango in the Night.

Did he really? I must have missed that. Perhaps when I was listening to Christine and Stevie's songs.

Prat - can't even spell his name right

Gail

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Gailh

Did he really? I must have missed that. Perhaps when I was listening to Christine and Stevie's songs.

Prat - can't even spell his name right

Gail

Well, CM's songs were NOTHING without La Nicks' harmonies. Moreover, the album would have flooped without La Nicks and they were lucky to get her!

[michelej1]

Sunday Mail, February 14, 1988

FLEETWOOD Mac is a rock phenomenon; a band that has survived heartbreak and tragedy, drugs and disillusionment. Not even success has managed to destroy it.

Key members come and go. Internal battles rage, and are resolved.

But still it delivers rich, beautifully crafted rock music which is uncannily in tune with prevailing musical tastes.

It has left its musical stamp on three decades of popular music, and looks set to hit a fourth. It has triumphed over disaster and disarray so often that it has become the band that has forgotten how to die.

On March 31, Fleetwood Mac hits Brisbane as part of the world tour on which it has embarked in support of its recent Tango In The Night album. The band will play one concert at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

As usual, there have been changes in the line-up. Two new faces _ the rather younger ones of guitarists Rick Vito and Billy Burnett, both of whom also sing _ will fill the yawning gap left by the departure of Lindsey Buckingham.

But the action will still revolve around the old team: The powerful Fleetwood ladies, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, and the rock-solid rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass player John McVie.

None of them will see 40 again, which makes them pretty ancient in pop terms. Fleetwood and McVie both look older than that, thanks to the . . . ahh . . . strains of the rock business.

Stevie is still pretty, and Christine, oddly, is more attractive now than she was when, as Christine Perfect, she fronted a British rythm and blues band called Chickenshack in the 60s.

Fleetwood Mac has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. To put that in perspective, think in terms of a modest buck an album, double it for tour revenue, and you can calculate just how much of an achievement it was for Mick Fleetwood to declare bankruptcy some years ago.

And spare a thought for the former Fleetwoods. Peter Green, the original guitarist and the man responsible for the magical Green Manalishi cut, was committed to an asylum in Britain some years after failing to handle the fatal combination of commercial success and LSD at the beginning of the 70s. But his music lives.

Jeremy Spencer was the clown who, one night in London's historic Marquee Club, managed to outrage an audience by stuffing a piece of fruit down his trousers and doing a rude Cliff Richard impersonation.

Ironically, he was recruited by a cult outfit called Children of God on the streets of Hollywood, and was last seen struggling to sell books of dingbat religious philosophy on London's Oxford Street.

Bob Welch flirted with solo success after his years with Fleetwood Mac, but never quite made the grade. He was last seen struggling for recognition with a modest solo deal on a Hollywood record label.

And now Lindsey Buckingham, the man who replaced Welch who replaced Green, has gone. It speaks volumes of his contribution that the band has recruited two top players to replace him, and to prowl the stage in his place.

Christine McVie said recently: ""Had Lindsey stayed in the band and toured, there was talk of adding another guitarist, so to replace him with two makes good sense. Billy and Rick have two completely different styles of playing, and they complement each other very well."

So far, things seem to be working. Perhaps maturity has taken a hand at last, and the stability that has never been a part of either this band or the rock business in general is finding a foothold along with the onset of comfortable middle-age.

John McVie said of the musical relationships within the band recently: ""We try to be honest and unpretentious. We don't try to be what we're not. First and foremost, we are friends.

""Obviously there are disagreements from time to time, but in the end it is our friendship and our respect for each other that gets us through."

In the five years between the release of the Mirage album and Tango In The Night, most of the band members pursued individual projects.

Stevie, in particular, enjoyed spectacular success.

But now it is business as usual. The band's awesome momentum comes from a legendary past, but the life in their music derives from their grasp on the present and hopes for the future.

It was Stevie Nicks who said recently: ""I don't think that we have even touched the surface of what we could really do yet. The possibilities for change in this band are incredible."

True, Stevie. We've seen a bunch. But how many more names and dates will we armchair rock historians have to memorise before Fleetwood Mac has run its incredible course?