Last BTM Concert Review

[michelej1]

[Since we were talking about this in another thread, I thought I'd post the Daily News review here. I think we've all seen the Los Angeles Times review online, but this one is not as common]

Daily News (Los Angeles, CA),December 10, 1990
Section: L.A. LIFE

FLEETWOOD MAC SAGA ENDS ON A FLAT NOTE


Bruce Britt Daily News Music Critic

Friday night marked yet another turning point in the never-ending Fleetwood Mac saga, as singers-songwriters Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie performed their last live stints with the celebrated pop-rock band.

Seeing as this would be the singers' final performances with the group, one nursed high hopes for an inspired, emotion-packed show. Yet drama was in short supply during the three-hour set. The concert had more peaks and valleys than all of Southern California, and was marked by an almost icy precision.

The show's lack of intensity was curious. Fleetwood Mac performed at the Forum almost three years ago, just after the recruitment of guitarists Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, and the surprising departure of resident genius Lindsey Buckingham. That 1987 show was a spirited celebration of the band's past and auspicious future.

But the Burnette/Vito tandem has yet to gel. Vito is a superb guitarist, but he and Burnette proved to be ineffective frontmen Friday. Their songwriting contributions were similarly nondescript.

But the dawdling show cannot be totally attributed to Burnette and Vito. Nicks' last performance with the band was also disappointing. The singer delivered favorites like ''Rhiannon'' and ''Gold Dust Woman'' in a drawling, nasal monotone.

But Nicks seemed to come to life when former Mac guitarist and ex-boyfriend Buckingham joined her for an intimate interpretation of ''Landslide.'' The guitarist's presence inspired the singer to give her best performance of the evening. Nicks dedicated the song to herself and Buckingham, saying ''I hope he might find it in his heart to maybe spend some time with me again.''

Nicks wasn't alone in making surprising statements. After a ground-shaking solo, drummer Mick Fleetwood petitioned applause for African percussionist Isaac Asante, commenting ''those boys can play the skins.''

A rollicking encore salvaged the generally mediocre set. After a hard-rocking interpretation of the rockabilly classic ''Tear It Up,'' Buckingham joined the band in a rousing rendition of ''Go Your Own Way.'' The performance boasted everything the rest of the show lacked - edginess, musical tension and adventurousness.

Christine McVie ended it all with a rapturous finale performance of the prayerful ''Songbird.'' The singer couldn't have ended her affiliation with the band on a warmer, or more auspicious note.

[michelej1]

[Did Lindsey really say it was great it came full circle in 1990? The man scares me]

Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1990
Section: CA-Calendar


Pop Music
Fleetwood Mac Ends an Era and Sheds No Tears
VE HOCHMAN

The last Fleetwood Mac concert for Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks?

It was hard to tell Friday at the Forum, with the pair making what was billed as their last appearances as full-time members of the band after respective tenures of 20 and 15 years. No tears, no retirement speeches and few indications that this was more than just the end of a grueling, nine-month tour, that this was the end of an era.

But there were dramatic moments. Midway through the 2 1/2-hour show, the band left the stage eerily empty. After a brief pause, Nicks returned, escorting Lindsey Buckingham, her former musical and romantic partner who left the band two years ago and had not appeared with them on stage in eight. Nicks emotionally introduced their pre-Mac duet "Landslide," expressing the "hope that someday he'll find it in his heart to spend some time with me and maybe make some music."

Buckingham later rejoined the group--and stole the show--leading an encore of the appropriate "Go Your Own Way." After McVie closed the show with her "Songbird," the whole group came on stage and thanked each other and the audience, but made no specific references to the occasion until Nicks seemed to start to say "Good night" only to hesitate and say a final "Goodby."

And that was that. Even backstage after the show, there was little acknowledgement of the end. McVie and Buckingham spoke of having to put their feelings on hold to get through the event, though Buckingham, more removed from the situation, described the emotions as "complex." Wistfully he noted that "it was great the way it came full circle, and I was glad I could be a part of it."

And the future of the Mac? At points during the show, original members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie and newest kids Billy Burnette and Rick Vito ventured back beyond the McVie/Nicks years to the bluesy style the band started with when Peter Green formed it in 1967. It won't be the same for most Mac fans, but it could well be worthy of the venerable band's name. And don't bet against a reunion.

[michelej1]

San Francisco Chronicle (CA), December 8, 1990

Section: DAILY DATEBOOK

FLEETWOOD SEES OFF NICKS AND MCVIE

Joel Selvin, Chronicle Staff Critic

Although last night's concert in Los Angeles was the final performance by Fleetwood Mac before singers Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie leave the band, Thursday's penultimate performance featuring the trademark Fleetwood vocal sound, at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, hardly qualified as a sentimental event.

Former Fleetwood guitarist Lindsey Buckingham joined the band briefly and sang "Go Your Own Way." Guitarist Rick Vito also dedicated a song to Nicks and Christine McVie but without mentioning the reason for the sudden display of affection.

For all appearances, it looked as if nobody could put this stumbling, bloated, dying horse out of its misery soon enough. Nicks dashed offstage as soon as her vocal parts were done at the end of virtually every song, without waiting for the song to end or even to hear the applause. She couldn't wait, apparently, to change into yet another colored shawl to wrap around her shoulders.

MAY RETURN TO GROUP

Of course, she never sang two songs consecutively and may have been short of breath, given that she has developed a weight problem that makes her a candidate to become rock's answer to Shelley Winters. She has been quoted in the press as saying she would be willing to return to Fleetwood Mac, as soon as she finishes her next solo album and solo tour, which means she might be available as early as 1994.

The 2-hour show was greatly similar to the program presented this past summer to capacity crowds at Shoreline and Concord -- not to mention, as a matter of fact, Fleetwood Mac shows for virtually the past decade -- although nothing like a capacity crowd attended on Thursday. Perhaps words got around how boring the show was.

The band carefully interspersed more recent material among the songs from the 1975 album, "Fleetwood Mac," and the 1977 follow-up, "Rumours," which were the only numbers that got the audience on its feet. The recent songs were treated to all the production touches and the old songs were the only ones that drew a reaction.

LUSH SOUND

The band's sound has grown soft and swollen, what with two additional female background vocalists, an extra percussionist and offstage keyboardist added to the six official band members. There was little focus or unified direction, and even the signature harmony vocals sounded diffuse amid the lush, overflowing torrent of sound. No longer a lean, clean machine, the Mac trundled through the songbook like an aging, corpulent version of itself.

The whole thing is getting too tired for words. Nicks, no longer a young lady with a misty, mournful voice, is having a hard time singing her innocent songs poignant with the irony of youth. "I'm getting older, too," she sang in "Landslide," reaching out and briefly clasping fingers with Christine McVie. Somehow the wrenching realization of years past was all too evident. Shelley Winters would have known better than to try an ingenue role.

Of course, drummer Mick Fleetwood -- along with bassist John McVie, the only original members remaining from the Fleetwood Mac of Peter Green and 1967 -- pledges to continue the tradition, without the two ladies whose vocals made the group one of the most popular bands of the '70s. Just don't be surprised if the next time he comes to town, the band plays Slim's.

[michelej1]

San Jose Mercury News (CA), December 8, 1990
Section: Living

FLEETWOOD MAC GOES THEIR OWN WAY

HARRY SUMRALL, Mercury News Pop Music Writer

FLEETWOOD Mac came back to the Bay Area one last time for a show at the Oakland Coliseum, Thursday. With the recent announcement that Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are leaving the fold after this tour, the group's future seems suspect, at least in its (al)most familiar form.

That should have made for an emotional night on the part of the group and its fans. But it didn't.

Instead, this show was, for the most part, business as usual, with the Mac playing its hits and striking its poses before a crowd that barely filled two-thirds of the arena. No mention was ever made of the impending split. There were no tearful moments. Nothing.

Except for the surprise guest.

An hour and a half into the three hour performance, after a series of stale rehashings of hits such as Nicks' warhorse "Rhiannon" and songs from the group's newest album, "Behind The Mask," the group left the stage and Nicks came back out with Lindsey Buckingham.

"This is where we started," Nicks said of the days back in the '70s when the two toiled by the Bay before changing the course of the Mac and much of pop. With that, he plucked at his acoustic guitar and she sang, this time with feeling, a spare and delicate rendition of "Landslide."

But then, it was back to business.

Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, the two who joined the group when Buckingham left a few years back, did their best to span the assorted styles that have been a part of the group's 23-year history. They performed a version of "Oh Well" with record-perfect elan, but Vito had none of the blues feel of Mac's founder, guitarist Peter Green.

And even Christine McVie -- who was the one shining standout of the group's show at Shoreline Amphitheater earlier this year --seemed to be playing on auto pilot. Her vocals and keyboards on hits such as "Say You Love Me," were dull and listless, as if she only wanted to get the performance -- and the group? -- over with.

Mick Fleetwood did raise the energy level with his usual drum solo, particularly the part where he steps to center stage and plays his body -- all wired up to a synthesizer. Let's see, his ribs were timpani and his hip was a bass drum and his crotch was a horn section. There were a lot of horns to the solo. It wasn't a great moment, but it was a riot nonetheless.

And as the night wore on -- and on -- he and his old mate, bassist John McVie, got friskier and friskier, toying with the beats and the songs, mugging the whole time. It didn't do much for the sound; but they seemed to be having fun.

It was a brief reminder of what a rollicking group the Mac once was, before it became too successful for such silliness.

And, at the end, the Mac did up the intensity a bare notch on "Don't Stop."

And the phrase, "thinking about tomorrow" did have its intended irony. And, when the group ended the night with Buckingham back to slam out his trademark "Go Your Own Way," there was a moment when the group and its fans seemed to come into sync, all perhaps realizing that this moment might never come again.

Or it might. Nicks has already been quoted as saying that she would welcome an invitation to record and tour again with her old mates -- and this before she's left! And, in its long history, the Mac has, at various points, seemed down but it, somehow, has never been out. Oh well. Here we go again.

[michelej1]

Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1990

Section: CA-Calendar

The Final Stop With Fleetwood

Pop Music: Fleetwood Mac will mark the end of an era Friday at the Forum when Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie make their last full-time appearance.
VE HOCHMANSPECIAL TO THE TIMES
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Stevie Nicks had hoped to make it to Friday night at the Forum before the tears started falling.

That's when she and Christine McVie apparently will be making their last appearance as full-time members of Fleetwood Mac . Though the two are slated to contribute to the next Mac album, the Inglewood Forum concert will mark the end of an era for a group that ruled the pop charts in the late '70s, with the two women as the public focal points.

Nicks figured that it would be Friday, during her introduction of her song "Landslide," in which she always makes a dedication to someone at the show, before the emotions of change would really hit her.

But she didn't even make it through a recent interview.

"In my heart I don't believe it is the last show," Nicks said through sobs while talking on the phone from Saskatoon, Canada, where the group was performing.

"I know that's not what everybody else has said to you," Nicks said. "We are all individuals and have our opinions, and until three years go by and I see the whole thing with no chance of getting back together, I'll never believe it's over. I really believe everything is destined, and if we're supposed to be together, we will be."

But for now, if not forever, this version of Fleetwood Mac is over. McVie, who initiated the end last summer after her father's death made her long for more time with her family, left little doubt about that.

"In the last few years it's been more of a band than it's ever been," McVie said in a separate phone interview from Saskatoon. "I think we spent more time laughing in the last few years than in prior years. That's one thing that's held us together.

"But when the time comes for change, you know it, you feel it," she said placidly. "Things can't go on the same as always. You go around in circles."

The emotions are weighing heavily on her too.

"I'm trying not to think about it," she said, noting that Lindsey Buckingham, who joined the group with Nicks in 1975 and left two years ago, may join in for a song or two at the Forum. "(Friday's concert) is going to be such a heavy gig. Practically everyone we've ever known from time immemorial will be there. It's going to be nerve-wracking and emotional. It would be silly to spoil the show just for that."

The women's contrasting attitudes serve as perfect illustrations of just what Fleetwood Mac will be losing after the show: For 20 years McVie has been its self-described "Mother Earth"; for 15 years Nicks has been its angel, Gypsy or space-cadet, depending on one's perspective.

One or the other has written and sung virtually all of the group's most popular songs: McVie's "Don't Stop" and "Say You Love Me," Nicks' "Rhiannon," "Dreams" and "Gypsy." In terms of the group's image, their loss may be the greatest ever for a band in which personnel change has been the order, even more so than the losses of founder Peter Green in 1970 and creative linchpin Buckingham two years ago.

"I would have to say this is our biggest challenge, in no uncertain terms," said drummer Mick Fleetwood, 43. He and bassist John McVie are the lone survivors of the original Mac, which began in London in 1967.

"But without sounding at all blase about the subject, it's a decision that's come in a pleasant way, and it's understandable," Fleetwood said, also speaking from Saskatoon. "Each, for their own reasons, basically wants more time to herself. And, God knows, both of them have given so much to Fleetwood Mac through the years."

What each plans to do with her time is as different as their personas. McVie, 47, has her eye on six months of rest with her husband and songwriting partner, Eddie Quintela.

"I can't really think more than six months ahead now," she said. "But I imagine we'll go into the studio in August to do the new Fleetwood Mac album. And we bought a 400-year-old house in Kent, England, that needs a lot of restoration. And then maybe I'll take a year and start a solo project and write intermittently."

In contrast, Nicks, 42, has a workaholic schedule, concentrating on her already successful solo career.

"I'm booked into the studio Feb. 1 to do two new songs for a greatest-hits package," she said. "And then I'd like to take a month and do about 15 solo concert dates. Then after that I'll come back and do a new solo album and tour. I figure I've got about a year and a half of solid work."

Meanwhile, Fleetwood Mac will go on.

"There will always be a Fleetwood Mac as long as Mick and John are around," said Christine McVie.

With singer-guitarists Rick Vito and Billy Burnette having joined when Buckingham left, and no hard feelings regarding the exits of McVie and Nicks, this may be the smoothest transition yet for the Mac.

But Fleetwood is aware that without its two women, the group may never have the same impact and drawing power it had. He acknowledged that Friday's show may be the last time the band ever plays a venue as big as the Forum.

"One has to face the obvious that it may not be as successful," he said.

But Fleetwood is also relishing the idea of the reduced band's returning to its bluesy roots and being able to just go out and play without making much of a fuss, rather than mounting the huge, grueling tours that have been the norm since the 1977 album "Rumours" became the all-time top-selling album at that time.

Still, he won't rule out McVie's and/or Nicks' guesting at future shows. And there's even the possibility of a 25th-anniversary show in 1992, with all the past and present members--including Buckingham, Green, Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan--invited to play.

One thing that Fleetwood seems to have ruled out, though, is replacing Nicks and McVie. And he promises that the new Mac will not be a nostalgia band with Burnette and Vito singing the hits associated with the two departing singers.

"This is going to be a new Fleetwood Mac," he said. "I don't think there's any other way of approaching it. It would be like ending up in a Holiday Inn: 'Hi. I'm Mick Fleetwood, and this is "Dreams." ' "

[David]

I'm always amazed when I read the old concert reviews from the newspaper critics. Their opinions so closely match my own judgments. Critics are my brothers & sisters under the skin.

P.S. Michele, are you absolutely sure Maureen didn't mislabel your video or audio of the last two shows? I thought she did. Do you have the photo that ran in Rolling Stone with the Steve Pond review of the last night? Stevie has her gold puffy-shouldered gown on, yet in the video she is wearing a darker thing.

[michelej1]

Philadelphia Inquirer (PA), November 2, 1990

Section: FEATURES DAILY MAGAZINE


SEX, DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL FLEETWOOD MAC HAS BEEN MAKING MUSIC FOR 23 YEARS. NEVER MIND THE COCAINE ABUSE, THE INFIDELITIES, THE MADNESS. THE MUSIC STILL GOES ON - AT THE SPECTRUM TONIGHT.


Ann Kolson, Inquirer Staff Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. If ever a band should have crashed and burned it was Fleetwood Mac.

More than two decades of alcohol and drugs. Intramural sex, extramural sex, divorce. Members lost to a religious cult, to insanity, to the streets. Raging prima donna-ism. Glorious self-indulgence. Wild overspending.

Not that this behavior was exactly a secret, but it is now officially on the record with the recent publication of Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac (William Morrow & Co.) by the group's co-founder, Mick Fleetwood. At 43, the 6-foot-6 British drummer is the centripetal force of this strange, often wonderful, ever-mutating group. "Without Mick," says co-founder and bassist John McVie, "this band wouldn't have lasted any length of time."

Now in its 11th incarnation, Big Mac, as it has been called ("More than 40 million sold"), brings its traveling roadshow/soap opera to the Spectrum tonight to help push its latest album, Behind the Mask.

With the recently announced departure of Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie (John's ex) at tour's end to pursue their own interests, the group is moving toward another transfiguration, its shape as yet unknown.

Just how the band has survived - and why - is a mystery even to those who sustain it.

"This thing called Fleetwood Mac, for better or worse, is greater than all of us," says John McVie, 44, backstage before a concert at the Charlotte Coliseum. Gray-haired, bearded, with a penguin tattooed on his forearm, he is quiet, vague, a little lost. His drink is a big cup of cranberry juice and brandy.

"And it's like a thing, a nebulous entity that flies around. You're committed. And you should be committed. And, in the future, we will be committed," he continues, amused at his own wordplay.

For all that it reveals - a clandestine affair between Mick and the band's blond princess, Stevie Nicks; the huge quantities of cocaine sniffed Fleetwood's book is remarkable in its restraint. Says McVie, "Mick's book comes out and there's a lot of apprehension: 'Will he say this? Will he say that?' There's so much stuff that he didn't say."

Says Fleetwood, a properly brought-up Englishman, whose late father was a wing commander in the Royal Air Force, "I just knew I wasn't going to be vindictive and cheap about it, and I feel that I haven't been."

The drummer is a thin stalk of a man, with piercing blue eyes, his iron-gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. Backstage, before the concert, he is dressed all in black, except for his turquoise suede shoes. Around his neck hangs a silver ball - a totem for this man.

He allowed no one to see the book before it was published last month - much to Nicks' dismay. This summer she lambasted him in US magazine: "I told him, 'Mick, if you slander me, babe, I'll bury you. I will write down everything that you have ever done and put it out.' "

Now, Fleetwood insists, Stevie wishes he had written more about her.

Fleetwood felt it was important to disclose their romance. "I don't fall in love every other day," he says now, "and she still is a soul mate of mine." What he writes is hardly salacious. As he tells it, their on-and-off affair began in New Zealand in 1977 during, believe it or not, his second marriage to his first wife.

We were driven back to our hotel in a ferocious downpour, clinging to each other in the back of the car. Up in her suite, I said, "I think I'd like to stay here tonight."

Later, Fleetwood flew to Hawaii to see her. Tripping on LSD, Nicks went to the wrong airport to meet him.

When the book, which took 2 1/2 years to write (with Stephen Davis, author of the Led Zeppelin book Hammer of the Gods), finally came out, everyone on the Fleetwood Mac jet pored over his or her copy. For the most part, it was well-received. Says John Courage, the band's longtime road manager, and, as the book recounts, its former cocaine procurer, "It all happened, it is what it is."

The group's lead guitarist, Rick Vito, who grew up in Glenolden, first saw the band play in 1968 at Philadelphia's Electric Factory. He and guitarist Billy Burnette joined Fleetwood Mac in 1987, a particularly tumultuous time. On the eve of the Tango in the Night tour, songwriter-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham (Nicks' ex-lover) had abruptly departed.

As Vito read Fleetwood's book he was struck with a realization: "All these passages of turmoil, or this drama or that drama . . . this is exactly the same as it is now."

He adds, "It's always been the kind of group that walks that fine line, that walks the edge. Danger!"

And the nuttiest member? "Mick," Vito replies without hesitation.

John McVie, for one, is not amused by the book. Mick Fleetwood is his oldest and best friend. They are charter members of the group, which was named for them both when it began in 1967 as a London blues outfit. A year later McVie married Christine Perfect, a singer for the British group Chicken Shack. They divorced in 1975, during a particularly dark period when he was awash in alcohol.

Seated in a small dressing room lit by blinding fluorescents, McVie says bitterly, "I think the ladies came off with halos, like they never made smells in the bathroom. I came off like a piece of -" He stops to check himself, then bursts, "Oh, an awful person. Do you see me as that, Mick? I guess he did. An awful, awful person."

Christine, 47, a striking blonde whose dusky alto is a signature of the band, is portrayed as nearly superhuman. As Fleetwood tells it, men are always proposing to this fabulous female. He writes:

Christine could write music, play piano, sing like an angel, rehearse all day with the men, and cook a big dinner without batting an eye.

Nicks, a Californian who joined the band with her lover Buckingham in 1975, is described as delicate, moody. A Star. ("I'm about as fragile as a bull," she once told the Los Angeles Times.) Now 42, the Betty Ford Center grad (in 1987) still wears her blond hair to the middle of her back.

But the "sensuous gypsy girl," as Fleetwood calls her in the book, has lost some of her glow. Two hours of makeup go into creating the illusion; the flowing capes she wears on stage can't camouflage her new corpulence. (And those platform boots, where does she find them?)

"Stevie," says Fleetwood backstage. "Out of everyone in the band, she definitely has a double image. She appears to be, and is, a very different person than when she is off stage. Always has been. She is a performer, a true theatrical performer."

The Fleetwood Mac sound is baroque, swirling. The songs tell tales of love, of love gone wrong, of love gone. Fleetwood describes the music as: "mystic, timelessly triste."

Often, the band members' soaring harmonies on stage existed in striking counterpoint to the disharmony that existed off stage: Never was this more true than in 1976, during the making of their highly autobiographical album Rumours, which turned out to be one of the biggest hits of all time, selling 20 million copies.

This emotionally charged period represented the height of soap opera, even for Fleetwood Mac. The McVies, recently divorced, were barely speaking. Nicks had just walked out on Buckingham. And Fleetwood was in the midst of a stormy divorce from his wife, Jenny, mother of his two daughters. (Jenny is now a therapist. Fleetwood married Sara Recor, a former model, in 1988.)

Fleetwood writes: We went four or five weeks without sleep, doing a lot of drugs . . . cocaine in such quantities that at one point I thought I was really going insane. The whole atmosphere was really tense, with arguments all the time and people storming in and out. . . . We'd look for sexual release, but even that didn't help much.

The success of Rumours - which earned Fleetwood alone $3 million - led to excess: They became superstars of the highest order. Coke intake increased. (Each performer received a pre-concert allotment in a Heineken bottlecap.)

Band members flew on private planes with six limousines awaiting them at the airport. They required that hotels paint Chris and Stevie's rooms in pastel colors.

By 1984, seven years after the release of Rumours, Fleetwood was broke. The band hadn't played together in two years. His houses had been sold. He was sleeping at friends'. Eight million dollars, gone. Word was he'd put it all up his nose. If that were true, he writes, "I'd have been dead long ago."

"Basically," Fleetwood says, "I don't worry about money. I'm not a penny pincher. So when I went bankrupt it really didn't affect me that much. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it didn't affect my personality."

He continues, "I've seen people who have gone broke and they're completely lost. Completely and utterly lost. And that is sad. People half expected me to be looking for the nearest bridge to jump off, or a chair of suitable height to kick away. But that never happened, and I'm glad."

But then Fleetwood has always been a survivor. Early on, the band lost three guitarists. Jeremy Spencer joined the Children of God. Danny Kirwan now lives on the streets, says Fleetwood. And the legendary Peter Green is a disheveled "Howard Hughes type." "John and I sometimes wonder - not really laughing - what have we been doing to these people to cause this to happen?" Fleetwood says.

He goes on. "I feel thankful that I have never ever bottomed out. That's not to say I wasn't lucky that I didn't bottom out, where I actually became ill or found myself ODing in a corner somewhere, thank God. That never, ever, ever happened.

"But I'm well aware of the fact that it just might well have happened. That is a sobering thought."

"Isn't it amazing how we got here," asks John McVie, "considering the people that fell by the wayside? Here we sit. All I've ingested. And those people are there, we're here. It's a bloody miracle."

With Nicks and Christine McVie leaving the group after Dec. 7 (although both say they will record the next album), the band is turning another page in its history. Fleetwood believes it will continue nevertheless. It has to.

"It's very plain and simple: We are musicians and we don't know how to do anything else," says McVie. "We're not going to send away for a computer-programming course from the back of a matchbook. It's too late. So we'll just keep doing it."

[David]

That's interesting. I didn't know John McVie felt that strongly about the book. He really thought it was cruddy of Mick to have it published.

[Betsy]

What did Mick say about John? It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't remember anything horrible...the only thing that sticks in my mind is the infamous night in August 1987. It suprised me to see so many comments made by John....I mean, John's so Chatty Cathy.

[michelej1]

Mick didn't have anything negative to say about John or Christine. I mean, nothing about John that John hasn't talked about himself and by the end of the book he painted John as a family man who had put the booze behind him.

Michele

[Villavic]

Mick didn't have anything negative to say about John or Christine. I mean, nothing about John that John hasn't talked about himself and by the end of the book he painted John as a family man who had put the booze behind him.

Michele

I agree.. actually he wrote about everybody with special love, that's what I feel when I read the book. The only dark, polemic moment I remember is when he worte about the day Lindsey left the band, at Chris house.

But anyway, good words or not, or good intemption or not, I guess sometimes people does not want to share private episodes, and I think John is very very discret.

[michelej1]

I agree.. actually he wrote about everybody with special love, that's what I feel when I read the book.

I can see how the whole band might consider the book an invasion of privacy. I don't think Mick wrote about everyone with "special love," but certainly he applied that to Christine and John, neither of whom he was angry with at the time.

Not everything he said about John was good, but none of it was anything John hasn't admitted himself. Michele

[Betsy]

Was that the time in his (Mick's) life when he was strapped for cash? (bankruptcy)

On another topic....is he the most approachable of the group? I watched a bootleg video where people are outside the RitzCarlton in Cleveland (SYW Tour, I presume). I think DavidMN is there....and he gets his photo taken with Mick. It looks like he (David) has a Boston RedSocks jacket on --- and I think it is the same jacket/photo he posts on the Ledge.

Anyhow... Mick comes up and signs autographs anbd allows pics to be taken, John takes a picture of the fans and then gets in his waiting car, Lindsey jumps straight for the backseat of the limo, Brett & Neal wave hi but no one asks them to come over, and Stevie and her friends never miss a beat...head straight for the car and are deaf to the shouts of "Stevie...Say You Will...".

Mick seemed the friendliest...but maybe he isn't always that way.

[macfan 57]

I am guessing that John wasn't happy with what Mick wrote on page 105. The August 1987 Lindsey showdown at Christine's house was nothing compared to the McVies' scary confrontation described on page 105.

[aleuzzi]

I am guessing that John wasn't happy with what Mick wrote on page 105. The August 1987 Lindsey showdown at Christine's house was nothing compared to the McVies' scary confrontation described on page 105.

Is that "Trees so Bare and Beautiful" section? at one point during the Future Games tour, in NYC, John got into a bad argument with Christine in the hallway of their hotel. According to Mick, John was pretty drunk and in a dark mood. He even through some heavy object at Christine's head.

[aleuzzi]

S

Joel Selvin, Chronicle Staff Critic

LUSH SOUND

The band's sound has grown soft and swollen, what with two additional female background vocalists, an extra percussionist and offstage keyboardist added to the six official band members. There was little focus or unified direction, and even the signature harmony vocals sounded diffuse amid the lush, overflowing torrent of sound. No longer a lean, clean machine, the Mac trundled through the songbook like an aging, corpulent version of itself.

The whole thing is getting too tired for words. Nicks, no longer a young lady with a misty, mournful voice, is having a hard time singing her innocent songs poignant with the irony of youth. "I'm getting older, too," she sang in "Landslide," reaching out and briefly clasping fingers with Christine McVie. Somehow the wrenching realization of years past was all too evident. Shelley Winters would have known better than to try an ingenue role.

Of course, drummer Mick Fleetwood -- along with bassist John McVie, the only original members remaining from the Fleetwood Mac of Peter Green and 1967 -- pledges to continue the tradition, without the two ladies whose vocals made the group one of the most popular bands of the '70s. Just don't be surprised if the next time he comes to town, the band plays Slim's.

Wow, this is pretty bitchy! But I must agree with him about the band's sound being a bit "soft and swollen" at this point in its evolution.

[David]

Wow, this is pretty bitchy! But I must agree with him about the band's sound being a bit "soft and swollen" at this point in its evolution.
Selvin was never a fan of Fleetwood Mac. During his lengthy tenure at the Chronicle, he wrote largely negative concert reviews of the band (I remember his comment about Christine's "tinkly," "music-box" piano twittering through the 1982 concert at Oakland Stadium) & of Stevie herself (his review of her Wild Heart gig at the same venue). I used to get pretty frustrated in those days with him, but in later years I appreciated his scornful eye & ear. Time has proved him largely accurate.

Of course, by 1990, even the band's old-school advocates in the rock press (guys like Steve Pond & Robert Hilburn) were calling the band washed up. Only the inane fans were crowing about "the greatest performance ever" & "singing better than ever" & all that hogwash.

[David]

I can see how the whole band might consider the book an invasion of privacy. I don't think Mick wrote about everyone with "special love," but certainly he applied that to Christine and John, neither of whom he was angry with at the time.I think the issue some of the band had with the book went beyond whether it was "good" or "bad" about particular people or incidents. Lindsey, for example, considered the work shoddy craftsmanship -- which it was -- & saw it on that level for what it was: rambling plagiarism & near-plagiarism interspersed with ghost-writing that was hamfisted & dime-store tawdry.

I've always loved the book! Silly fans squawk about its being "untrue" or "unreliable," but they seem not to realize that large chunks of it were stolen from Rolling Stone, Hit Parader, Music Connection, Record, & dozens of big American newspapers -- making it VERY reliable (insofar as that goes).

[jbrownsjr]

If you read Carol Ann's book, you get the vibe that the inner circle led by Mick, functioned by keeping all things within the circle.. so I'm sure it pissed all the members off when he was the one that broke the code....

:mad:

[michelej1]

I've always loved the book! Silly fans squawk about its being "untrue" or "unreliable," but they seem not to realize that large chunks of it were stolen from Rolling Stone, Hit Parader, Music Connection, Record, & dozens of big American newspapers -- making it VERY reliable (insofar as that goes).

Yes, I remember the whole section about Stevie and Lindsey's history, Fritz etc. was taken directly from Rolling Stone. Unattributed. That makes me think I should look at Rolling Stone's review of the book and see if they pointed that out.

As for John, that reminds me of Bob Welch claiming John chased Christine around the motel with a butcher knife. Thinking about that, it kind of surprised me in 1997 where Stevie seemed to be talking about John's drinking in the present tense. She was asking what could they do? They couldn't throw him up against a wall. By the Dance, I didn't think anyone needed to be thrown against a wall any longer. Michele

[macfan 57]

Is that "Trees so Bare and Beautiful" section? at one point during the Future Games tour, in NYC, John got into a bad argument with Christine in the hallway of their hotel. According to Mick, John was pretty drunk and in a dark mood. He even through some heavy object at Christine's head.

Yes, that's exactly what I was referring to.

[Betsy]

Quoting macfan 57:

I am guessing that John wasn't happy with what Mick wrote on page 105. The August 1987 Lindsey showdown at Christine's house was nothing compared to the McVies' scary confrontation described on page 105.

Quoting Aleuzzi:

Is that "Trees so Bare and Beautiful" section? at one point during the Future Games tour, in NYC, John got into a bad argument with Christine in the hallway of their hotel. According to Mick, John was pretty drunk and in a dark mood. He even through some heavy object at Christine's head.

I guess I had forgotten those parts, but now that you mention them, I do remember those dark parts. I need to re-read that book again. I bought a cheap paperback from Ebay and it disintegrated as I read it, the pages were old and yellow.

In some interview (and I can't remember where) John says about Christine -- something like, "She saw me at my worst one too many times" or something like that. John seems so quiet and in the background, not flamboyant at all. For him to be violent, seems out of character, but when alcohol is involved, rational behavior goes by the wayside.

I enjoyed reading Lisa's biography about the McVies and I wish she would continue writing.

[JbbyStew86]

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Okay this is from that show. I love the crowd reaction to Lindsey coming onto stage. It's like a universal "Thank God! We're saved!" shout. It seems that Stevie's little bit before the song is a veiled apology to Lindsey. Watching Lindsey's body language he really loves being on that stage. I just wish there was a copy of the "Go Your Own Way" performance from that show.

[chiliD]

Okay this is from that show. I love the crowd reaction to Lindsey coming onto stage. It's like a universal "Thank God! We're saved!" shout.

I was there...I think the feeling was less "Thank God. We're saved" and more of a "you people still get along? I thought you hated each other".

[michelej1]

I was at the Los Angeles show, having missed Cow Palace and not having any hope that Lindsey would also appear the second night.

My reaction to his presence was . . . yes I felt "saved," sad, embarassed, thrilled, deeply wistful. Such a tumult of emotion. The next day, my voice was gone and my eyelids swollen from tears.

Michele

[michelej1]

[Danny and Peter returning? Wouldn't that have been something]

Boston Globe (MA), November 14, 1990

Section: LIVING


FLEETWOOD'S NICKS AND MCVIE SING THEIR FAREWELLS IN STYLE

Steve Morse, Globe Staff

And so an era ends.

Stevie Nicks, who has toured with Fleetwood Mac for nearly 15 years, and Christine McVie, who has been with them two decades, said their touring goodbyes with the Mac last night before a passionate crowd of 11,000 fans.

"Boston has always been a very special place for me to play," said Nicks, before an acoustic version of the ballad "Landslide," with its poignant verse, "Children get older, I get older too." McVie, in less emotional fashion, later added, "Thanks, Boston, for making me feel so welcome."

Both women will continue to record with Fleetwood Mac, but won't travel with them after this tour. The latest speculation is that former members Peter Green and Danny Kirwan, according to a source last night, may now come back into the fold and return the Mac to its raw, blues-powered origins.


Either way, the band appears ready to embrace more of its late '60s blues. Just as they did at Great Woods this summer (the song list was very similar), they revived three tunes from the founding Peter Green days -- the guitar-boogie of "Oh Well," the back-alley blues of "Stop Messin' Around" and the mournfully repentant "Another Woman," in which singer/guitarist Rick Vito had his best moment.

Reviving the blues seems a logical future step, since the remaining members, unless they make serious changes, won't be able to cover the female-led greatest hits from the late '70s that filled last night's set. Neither Vito, nor remaining singer Billy Burnette, is a first-rate vocalist, so the Mac might have to pursue a more guitar-based instrumental sound. And what this does vis-a-vis the studio records, which will still include the pop-oriented Nicks and McVie, is an open question.

Regardless, the women went out in style last night. A fairly dismal, bass-heavy sound mix didn't help matters, but Nicks and McVie clearly gave an extra effort to make their goodbyes memorable. Nicks' survivalist love song "Gold Dust Woman," hit the deepest mark, while she also soared through lead vocals on "Chain" and "Rhiannon," plus added her inimitably dusky backup harmonies elsewhere.

The classy McVie, who has been an anchor in the group during its soap opera history, shone on the more middle-of-the-road pop tunes, but also stepped up to play some boogie-woogie with the boys on the blues tracks. And speaking of the boys, they again got their adrenalin from the charter rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, whose presence makes you confident that the Mac will land on its feet wherever it goes in the future.

Drummer Fleetwood even managed to improve upon his crazed, fiendish drum solo in which he roved the stage with his Hotz MIDI Translator (touch-sensitive drum pads in his vest) to pound out organic rhythms counterpointed by African accents from percussionist Asante. Fleetwood added manic facial expressions that, along with the flashing strobe lights, put the crowd in an awe-struck trance.

This was not a great show (the newer songs sagged a bit), but it was a step up from the pronounced schizoid tone of the band's Great Woods engagements. There's a looser feel to the group now that the women have made their decisions official --and one sensed a greater cooperative spirit last night.

Above all, Nicks and McVie are definitely not sailing through this farewell tour on their reputations. Rather than take polite, sentimental bows, they came to play last night -- and left on a high note befitting their many contributions through the years.

[aleuzzi]

^^^^

wow, a surprisingly sober, even-handed assessment of the music...