Winnipeg 5/12/13

[redtulip]

Fleetwood Mac fans never stop believing
By: Randal King
Posted: 11:00 PM | Comments: 0

JASON HALSTEAD / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/art...207148891.html

"You would think after all this time, there would be nothing left to discover ... "

So said singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham to the 11,500 people who constituted a nearly sold-out crowd at the Fleetwood Mac concert Sunday night at the MTS Centre.

Buckingham suggested more discovery was imminent, with some justification. Fleetwood Mac is a band that evolved more than most, starting in 1967 as a raw blues entity, and morphing into a sophisticated pop sound in the early ’70s.

All that was before the Fleetwood Mac everyone knows — the incarnation of their monumental 1977 hit album Rumours. Of that lineup at the MTS Centre: original drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, singer/guitarist Buckingham, and ephemeral singer Stevie Nicks. (No Christine McVie on this tour, which means most McVie-penned tunes were also absent.) The band was rounded out by two backup vocalists

The question of their continuing evolution was not a big concern for the baby boomer majority at the MTS Centre Sunday evening who would have been cheerfully resigned to be stuck in the ’70s, if it meant all Rumours all the time on Mac’s impressive two hour plus set list, without intermission.

At 8:20 p.m., the band seemed to deliver on that promise, starting off with Second Hand News, the first track on that venerable 45 million-seller. Next song: The Chain (first song on Side Two), a song that demonstrates Fleetwood’s driving drum style.

The song Dreams saw Nicks take her place, dressed dramatically in black with her de rigueur scarf. These days, Nicks avoids the higher notes so easily scaled in her youth, though it retains its inimitable single-malt texture. (No robotic Cher-esque auto-tuning for 64-year old Nicks. Respect.)

Preventing the song Second Hand News from being prophetic, Buckingham introduced a new song, Sad Angel, from their newly-released four-song EP Extended Play, which elicited cheers (to Buckingham’s evident delight), largely on the power of the virtuoso guitarist’s close-enough-to-classic riffs.

They quickly returned to one familiar hit — Rhiannon — before the leather jacket-clad Buckingham returned to offer his own kind of guided tour to the band’s history recalling their effort to deviate from the expected. This of course was by way of introduction to songs from their experimental 1979 concept album, Tusk, including the punk-flavoured Not That Funny and the epic Tusk (alas, the only marching band was on the video screen, unlike past performances of that song). Nicks unleashed her pagan self with Sisters of the Moon, and followed with her comparatively plaintive ballad Sara.

Buckingham went solo and acoustic for Big Love from the 1987 Tango in the Night, demonstrating his astonishing fretwork. Nicks drolly dedicated Landslide (from the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac) to the Winnipeg audience, courtesy of the line "snow-covered hills," but scored a curiously timed cheer for the lyric "I’m getting older too."

Call it an acknowledgement of the inevitable, but the band demonstrated a potent case for not going quietly, with energetic and fully engaged performances of Gold Dust Woman and Stand Back, climaxing with (back to Rumours) Go Your Own Way.

The crowd wasn’t taking the hint, cheering the band back for an encore including World Turning (featuring a Mick Fleetwood drum solo that didn’t seem gratuitous) and a climactic performance of Don’t Stop, which had the audience on its feet and singing along.

A second encore included a song with a history: Silver Springs was a Nicks tune intended for Rumours that ended up as a B-side for Go Your Own Way. After the last song of the evening, the downbeat confessional Say Goodbye, the audience took the hint, but left inspired.

We are, after all, getting older too.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

[WildHearted]

Hope all the ledgies who were there had a good time! I saw on twitter that Stevie seemed to be having a little trouble getting around the stage, hope she's alright.

[michelej1]

[Sweet description of Lindsey and a hobbled Stevie, holding hands as she limped]

May 14, 2013

Age is just a number, so don't count love out

By: Gordon Sinclair Jr.


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opi...207330611.html


On Sunday night, my wife finally delivered the 65th birthday present I'd been waiting three months for.

As it turned out, it came with a big bonus for a bow.

The present was a couple of choice fourth-row-centre tickets to the Fleetwood Mac concert at the MTS Centre.

One for Athina and one for me

The bonus was what the band's performance -- and their collective lives -- said about them and, by extension, about the thousands of baby boomers in the adoring audience.

I'm not sure if those in the back of the house could see the silhouettes of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham entering the dimly lit stage.

Her limping, him holding her hand, as if guiding the ever-mystical diva through the dark, lest she fall.

Two former young lovers, she about to turn 65 on May 26, he still only 63.

I don't know why Stevie was limping, other than some unsourced answer I read while searching online. What I do know, judging by past concert reviews, is that it's been happening for years. In a way, Stevie was showing her older fans, and perhaps her young ones, too, what aging can do to the body.

If not the soul.

Behind Nicks and Buckingham were the two older namesakes of the band, the unassuming John McVie, 67, on bass guitar, and that towering extrovert, the soon-to-be-66 Mick Fleetwood, the big drummer boy with the Marty Feldman eyes and Hulk Hogan presence.

Behind all of them are all the years. The affairs between band members -- most notably Stevie with the married Mick -- and the breakups and ballads that alluded to it all.

Of course, Fleetwood Mac are far from the only old-time rock 'n' rollers still doing one-night stands in arenas and stadiums all over the globe.

But for me, there was something hopeful about watching Buckingham's almost two-and-a-half hours of virtually uninterrupted energy and closeness with the crowd. Particularly with the group of 20-something women who briefly chatted him up during the show and danced non-stop within his reach, all the while seemingly oblivious to the societal standard that the young aren't supposed to respect their elders. That was part of the ageless magic and the bonus birthday gift.

There was something else magical that gave the night a depth that went beyond the lyrics. It was the apparent forgiveness that can come from time and age. And how these former lovers appeared to still love each other, but in a different, perhaps deeper way.

As Stevie said in a Rolling Stone Q & A last December after she hung out for a few days with Buckingham prior to the tour starting:

"It was great spending time with Linds. We're old enough now that we've laid down our weapons. We started this whole thing in 1968 and we're proud of what we've done. We look at each other in a slightly different light now. It's a good light."

But then the interviewer, sounding like me, posed this question to Stevie:

"I could be wrong, but I'm sort of sensing that lots of the drama from the band's past is gone. Things seem pretty functional right now."

"Well, don't seriously fall for that," she answered. "We're a dramatic bunch, but a lot of the anger is at least tempered now.

"There was a lot of anger and resentment and crazy things that went on for a long time. It's always going to show up here and there, but we're not focusing on it right now. We're going to try and never focus on it again. But that does not mean we aren't full of drama."

OK, so I'm a romantic.

Still, Buckingham has said he wrote his latest song, Sad Angel, in part as a way of reaching out to Stevie.

What I saw on stage was an act the band does over and over and over again.

I get that.

But what I felt was the warmth that's still there despite the history.

Monday's headline on Randall King's Free Press concert review -- "Landslide of love for Fleetwood Mac" -- got it right. But, again, it wasn't just the music and the big-screen theatrics that the crowd loved. It was the band members, who they appeared to be, and the limps, both physical and mental, they have overcome.

Much like the rest of us.

In the process, they continue to write new songs and defy what society says is the normal shelf life of youthfulness.

And usefulness.

Hey, Mac, there's gotta be another song in there somewhere.