Isle Of Wight 2015 on Sky Arts

[michelej1]

Fleetwood Mac storm Isle of Wight Festival stage with incredible performance: See the excited reaction

22:46, 14 June 2015 By Rebecca Pocklington , Ben Mitchell Mirror Co. UK

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrit...-wight-5883909

Fleetwood Mac closed the Isle of Wight Festival with an incredible performance tonight.

More than 50,000 people have been enjoying acts across a dozen stages during the past four days at the Isle of Wight Festival with The Black Keys, The Prodigy, Pharrell Williams and Blur all playing the main stage which was being headlined tonight by the blues and 80s legends in the latest stop on their reunion tour.

Doubt had lingered over whether the performance would go ahead after they cancelled gigs in Birmingham and Manchester earlier this week due to illness.

Blur also battled illness to perform at the festival, with frontman Damon Albarn confessing he had been worried he would not make it to the show after losing his voice.

He struggled with a weak voice during the band's headline set which included a range of songs from their early Britpop tunes to tracks from their new album Magic Whip.

He told the crowd: "I truly didn't think I would make it here tonight but thank you."

Fleetwood Mac began their greatest hits show with The Chain, known by many as the Formula 1 theme, to the delight of the crowds who reportedly included F1 driver David Coulthard as well as Halliwell's newly-wed husband Christian Horner who is the boss of the Red Bull racing team.

The couple flew by helicopter to the festival site at Seaclose Park, Newport, following on from other former Spice Girls Mel C and Emma Bunton who were seen at the festival yesterday.

As well as a photograph of the couple next to the helicopter, Halliwell posted on Twitter: "On way to Isle of Wight festival. Can't wait to see Fleetwood Mac. The Chain."

And fans loved the performance, as one wrote: "OMG!! FLEETWOOD MAC are OWNING @IsleOfWightFest."

Another added: "I wanna be with you everywhere yes Fleetwood Mac #isleofwight #IOW2015 #wightlive #island."

And one wrote: "Fleetwood Mac sound brilliant!"

And despite reports they were 20 minutes late on stage, another added: "AMAZING long live Fleetwood Mac #iow #fleetwoodmac."

Geri chimed in too, adding: "Had amazing time watching Fleetwood Mac -inspirational ,at Isle of Wight."

Keating with girlfriend Storm Uechtritz also arrived on site and were shown around by festival promoter John Giddings.

Other acts who have taken to the stages today included Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit, Paolo Nutini, The Courteeners, Ash and Imelda May.

The festival is in its 14th year since it relaunched the legendary events of the late 1960s which saw acts such as Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and famously Jimi Hendrix, who gave his last UK performance on the island.

Thousands of people wore Hendrix masks yesterday afternoon to create a new world record on the main stage, renamed the Electric Church, to mark the 45th anniversary year of his performance and to raise money for the WellChild charity.

[michelej1]

June 15, 2015 **** (4 out of 5 stars)

Independent by Nick Hasted

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-10319191.html

Isle of Wight Festival 2015 review: Reunited Fleetwood Mac prove Dreams can come true

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.

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.

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.

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.

[michelej1]

***** (5 stars) By Patrick Smith 11:23PM BST 14 Jun 2015 The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...ac-review.html


Isle of Wight Festival 2015: Fleetwood Mac, Paolo Nutini, review: 'the best Isle of Wight in years'

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.


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.

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.

[michelej1]

They're a very annoying lot, but they're ours and I'm quite proud of them today, reading all of these festival reviews.

Michele

[mottabam]

some video. repeats itself a bit but I'm unable to find any full recordings yet.

https://youtu.be/VvpeqPrQYzg

oops, didn't realize this was posted in the video thread. Anyways, they sounded and looked great.

[reebokandlace]

Mick said in the Isle of Wight interview that the tour goes until December 15th ???? I only see dates until Nov 22nd....

What shows are they doing in December?


.

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by michelej1

They're a very annoying lot, but they're ours and I'm quite proud of them today, reading all of these festival reviews.

Yes, we really seem to enjoy their "hippie harmonies."

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by reebokandlace

Mick said in the Isle of Wight interview that the tour goes until December 15th ???? I only see dates until Nov 22nd....


.

Actually, he said this same thing back in December 2014 at my VIP gig in California.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by michelej1

These people choose which shows to miss, for sure. Like in the past, it's no coincidence that someone has gotten sick when a show they were scheduled to play didn't sell out. Whether they did that this time or not, no one can say, but it's certainly not as if they have too much honor to do that.

Michele

spot on........

[secondhandchain]

The band does not want live streaming because they want complete control of how they sound. Let's face it they are getting up their and the voices can be very hit and miss.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by michelej1

These people choose which shows to miss, for sure. Like in the past, it's no coincidence that someone has gotten sick when a show they were scheduled to play didn't sell out. Whether they did that this time or not, no one can say, but it's certainly not as if they have too much honor to do that.

Canceling a show that didn't sell out might suck for fans, but it often benefits a promoter who might otherwise lose his/her shirt on the band's guarantee, as well as the band who gets more rest and possibly saves money on travel. It's not something either party especially welcomes or does lightly.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by secondhandchain

The band does not want live streaming because they want complete control of how they sound. Let's face it they are getting up their and the voices can be very hit and miss.

Okay, but what was their excuse 35 years ago?

[secondhandchain]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

Okay, but what was their excuse 35 years ago?

Well we do know that EVERY live album they have ever done has parts re recorded or added in the studio so...

[PenguinHead]

Originally Posted by BlueDenimLamp

I'm guessing Fleetwood Mac have just arrived, judging by the big loud chopper flying low and slow over my house. Twice. #isleofwightfestival

— Jennifer (@JenniflowerC) June 14, 2015

Fleetwood Mac and entourage arrive at #IsleofWightFestival 😜 pic.twitter.com/zFZGK3X0Zc

— Rob Velocé (@predaking79) June 14, 2015

Very funny!

[johnnystorms]

Sounds like Christine was still a bit under the weather. In "The Chain" clip on YT, she was barely audible... I hope she's on the mend.