Mick Still Says 2009
 

http://www.thetelegraph.com/articles...twood_mac.html

Vintage Mick
World-premier wine event and concert sees Fleetwood return to his blues roots

By COREY STULCE
January 30, 2008 - 12:08PM
Mick Fleetwood is a red man.

But the lofty namesake to legendary band Fleetwood Mac is bringing a white and a red wine from his Private Cellar for a world-premier event in St. Louis on Feb. 8.

Calling the pony tailed gent a legend, though, elicited a chuckle followed by a humble, “steady,” as Fleetwood shared with The Telegraph his thoughts on the wine business, the decision to return to his blues roots and on the past of Mac — “Rumours” is celebrating 30 years of release — as well as the future. He says Mac will tour next year for certain.

In the meantime, the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band will make its debut at the Sheldon Concert Hall, with guitarist Rick Vito and bass player Lenny Castellanos rounding out the trio, for an evening of pre-Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham Mac sounds.

Preceding the intimate concert, Fleetwood will debut to the St. Louis area two of his Private Cellar selections from the vineyards of California: the 2005 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc, with grapes pressed without their skins and having a feel of the tropics with a hint of lemongrass; and the 2004 Petite Sirah, a dark red with blackberry, oak and a hint of vanilla.

The latter is Mick’s favorite and he said he would be calming his nerves with a glass after this reporter caused him to ponder the possibility of a final Fleetwood Mac performance.

A Blanc canvas

His Private Cellar brand is little more than five years old, but it has picked up quite a few honors in a short time, such as two bronze medals at the 2007 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and a silver medal at the California State Fair for the Petite Sirah.

The Private Cellar brand is also being offered at Hyatt Regency hotels as well as Costco stores, Jonathan Todd, who handles marketing and branding for Fleetwood’s wines said. Todd, of Sabre Entertainment, also manages the current blues band for the drummer.

“Mick applies the blending of wine identically to the way he approaches the blending of music,” Todd said.

Mick said he’s only recently become comfortable talking about the idea that his instincts — though finely tuned — rule his approach to wine and song. “It is very simple, but watch out how you describe what simple is, because simple is actually making very effective, very emotive decisions in a comfortable, objective way,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Maui, Hawaii.

Years ago, when beer and spirits were Mick’s beverages of choice for obtaining that light-headed feeling, he likely would have pooh-poohed the idea that he would become a wine connoisseur, once seen as elitist and stuffy. But he now enjoys being around people who get dreamy when describing a choice vintage, he said, and is pleased — yet surprised — by the young people he meets who are constructing their own wine cellars.

“Don’t you dare let someone intimidate you,” he said, mentioning that there was a time when he would politely sip on a glass of something he didn’t particularly like. “Don’t feel (intimidated) because you don’t know this or that or the other or the way the sun was shining for three months on a piece of soil. ... The reality is, it’s all about what you like.”

Though he hasn’t spent decades obsessing over the minute details of the grapes, barrels and creation of flavors, Mick is a perfectionist when it comes to choosing which wines to release and is able to discern minute changes in blends, Todd said. The “wine guys” have even tried to trick him by getting Mick’s opinion on two glasses of the same wine, but he wouldn’t take the bait.

Mick recalled the age-old music biz joke played on tampering producers in the recording studio, one Fleetwood helped play. “Sure enough this guy was sitting there and twiddling a knob that wasn’t plugged in, going, ‘Yeah, that’s much better,’” Mick laughed.

Coming home to the blues

In the late ’60s, Fleetwood formed his namesake band with fellow blues enthusiast Peter Green, and with the hopes that his friend and former band mate John McVie would join up. Fleetwood Mac had several different line-ups during a short period of time, but the sound — influenced by the likes of Elmore James and other past rhythm and blues masters — remained solidly planted in the style born out of black spirituals and work songs.

It was Fleetwood Mac that first released the Green-penned “Black Magic Woman,” and success for the band came quickly in Europe and then the United States, where Mick and Co. arrived in 1969 to play with the likes of Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon.

A young man named Rick Vito became very impressed with Green’s vocal and guitar stylings, Fleetwood said.

“My god, when he plays this vintage Fleetwood Mac stuff, this is a man who knows not only tone, but delivery with his own slant on it. He has a complete command of what he’s studied and lived and breathed,” Mick said.

The Feb. 8 performance will be a retrospective look of where Fleetwood came from, drenched in the blues sound, he added. The show will be an intimate opportunity to hear those early songs like “Albatross” and “Need Your Love So Bad” in arguably one of the finest rooms for live music in the metro area.

“I’m truly hoping the people there are gonna have a really fantastic reconnection, sort of anointed by the fact that the music we’re playing is so dear to the people on that stage,” Fleetwood said, adding that the concert will also be videotaped.

“I’m sort of hoping there’s not 500 ladies dressed up as Stevie in the front row,” he laughed.

Ruminating on ‘Rumours’

Mick said he wouldn’t mind at all seeing a sea of top hats ala Stevie Nicks at the concert, as long as attendees aren’t expecting to hear “Rhiannon” and other Nicks-penned Mac songs.
He and Stevie remain very close, he said. Mick described the ’70s and beyond line-up of Mac, consisting of he, Nicks, John McVie, Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham as an odd hodgepodge of folks. While John is content in a T-shirt he’s worn for “the last 40 years,” it’s Fleetwood and Nicks who wear costumes on stage, he added.

“Having two drama queens on the front of ‘Rumours’ is sort of powerful as it turned out,” he said.

That album, now amazingly three decades old, features songs constantly heard on classic rock radio such as “Don’t Stop,” “You Make Loving Fun,” and “Dreams,” and has its own sordid back story of drugs, break ups and so on.

But its cover is still very striking, with Mick looking like a pirate king, hair pulled back, spheres dangling from his loins and clutching a crystal ball, while Nicks, adorned in sheer black, offers a ballerina pose, their bodies entwined.

Herbie Worthington shot the cover photo, as well as the one for the 1975 self-titled “Fleetwood Mac.” Mick said he helped come up with the concept, which sort of connected the old Mac with the new.

“It was very indicative of what turned out to be something later on,” Mick said. “That picture was somewhat prophetic of us being together, doing that, sort of intertwined as we were. We, me and Stevie, fell in love many years later; not huge amounts of people realize that.”

Mick prays Worthington still has copies of rare images from that session with the two wearing all white. Perhaps the 60th-anniversary release of “Rumours” could offer that alternate look.

Mac to the future

Mick said as he gets a little longer in the tooth — he turned 60 in 2007 — a year feels like four months. It may not seem so to him, but it’s been five years — an eternity for Mac fans — since the band has performed together, after the release of their last studio album “Say You Will,” in 2003.

He said he would prefer the band tour every couple of years, and there’s no negative reason as to why it’s been half a decade since they went out on the road. Stevie still does tours on her own and Buckingham released an album, “Under the Skin,” in 2006 and has plans to release another and tour later this year, Mick said.

Mick said the sadness of Christine McVie not returning to the road with the band was put to bed with the release of “Say You Will,” which closed with the songs “Say Goodbye” and “Goodbye Baby.”

The band is not ready to say goodbye, he claims, and will reunite in 2009.

Has he ever pondered the idea of a farewell performance?

“Oh my god, I don’t think we’ll ever know. I don’t think we’ll ever know it’s the last show. I think it will be highly unlikely. Maybe, though.

“If I did know? Wow. I’d be taking stock in Kleenex, that’s for sure. I would be proud. I would be incredibly sad. But if it needed to stop, and that was it, and we knew it was the last gig, I could probably walk away for sure in my own world thinking, ‘job well done.’

“And I would be sad. I wouldn’t want to know. You totally freaked me out by saying that, by the way. My whole demeanor; I’ve got goose bumps. Aw, s***, that’s gonna happen one day.”

But not any time soon. Chuck Berry still performs regularly in Alton and St. Louis, and he’s 81.

“Wow. Chuck-meister, he is the king of rock and roll,” Mick said. “I hope I’m like B.B. King; I’ll be bopping until whatever.”

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band will perform at 8 p.m. at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis. Tickets are $75. Limited VIP tickets for $200 include a pre-show reception with Mick, with food and wine from his Private Cellar collection and an autographed bottle to take home, as well as a post-show party at Monarch Restaurant, 7401 Manchester Road. The VIP tickets are only available at Monarch. General admission tickets can be purchased at metrotix.com or by calling (314) 534-1111.

On the Web: mickswine.com

Mick's reaction to the question about the last show got me a little misty. It's not the first time I've thought about it of course.

I think he's right and that we won't know. They probably won't announce a "farewell tour." They'll end a tour and then someone will die and all the reunion talk will stop, so you won't know you were seeing them for the last time when you do. But at their age, I'm always aware that it might be the last time these days. I learned my lesson 10 years ago.

That, you know, is my problem with The Dance tour. I didn't know Christine was leaving. If I had, I would have done things differently. I thought it was the beginning of a reformation, not the end. I had no chance to say goodbye mentally.

Michele

Yeah, don't we all.

Love ya, John. :wavey:

Many years? Try, ehm, I don't know... one?

Yes, we realize it. It's not that hard.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Uh huh.

Can I get in on the Kleenex stock?

Well, it's not hard to realize, but it's rather difficult to think about!

What does he mean that not many people realize it anyway? Is he suggesting it's a little known fact? Um, ever since his book was published, doesn't the whole world realize it? Doesn't he get asked about him and Stevie intertwining in every single interview he does?? Any time any one ever talks about incestuous relationships, don't they throw in FM as an example, because of Stevie and Mick? Is he insane?

Michele

^Exactly my point.

He's especially popular with the fans, I hear.

Not to worry, Mick. :rolleyes:

I haven't seen that freshman boner since I was a freshman! Someone at the Telegraph is asleep at the switch.

Mick Swine dot com?? :laugh:

That is hilarious :laugh:

^ ****, how did I miss that? Perfect!

i am so freaking excited u guys...you don't even know, in 2009 Imy life will be complete cuz i am determined to meet the whol band, and I will see Fleetwood Mac for the very first time in my life!!!!

:lol::lol::lol: David, how hillarious that Mick Swine remark is. You're so sharp!

Well, a 2009 FM doesn't seem realistic. Mick needs to talk to his two frontpeople.

At least there's a sound about LB's new record, first one since what? Ten months? A year?

BTW:

IF FM is going to tour in 2009, Chris has to be there according to Stevie. In that case, they should perform an integral liverendition of Tusk. Dreams, Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way as encores and that's it.

"2009- Tusk-30 years of indie-pop avant-la-lettre"



I'd buy a bottle of Mick Swine If he had the guts to do that.

Yeah. :rolleyes:

Oh, well....let the drama continue...

yeah...well...the Mac could be back! Christine might be up for it. Stevie is gonna have to do some convincing...

I would love for that to happen but I cannot conceive of the circumstances under which Christine would agree. In 2009 she will be 66 years old and wouldn't have toured for at least 12 years. she didn't tour for own solo album so I can't see her wanting to tour for FM.

Personally I can't think she would agree to even record with them again.

Gail

But I imagine that Mick has talked to Stevie and Lindsey. In fact, he probably talks to Stevie several times a month. So, I don't think his comment means she has agreed to tour in 2009, but I do think he must think he can make it happen. Michele

These guys plan tours farther ahead than most people plan their weddings! However, it's probably easier to call off a wedding than a tour (unless you're a monarch of some sort).

By the time this band tours, approximately thirty-two years will have passed since its commercial ascendency (did I spell that right?). To put it into perspective, imagine a couple of kids jitterbugging down at the canteen in the final year of the 2nd World War, thinking about the music that predated America's entry into the 1st World War!

I think it's time for Fleetwood Mac to pack up their amps, & just let the message boards carry on Clio's sacred work.

http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/w...%20history.gif

Wow, and I was born in 1970. So this would be like someone from that year rocking out to some tunes from 1938! Like, 'A Tisket, A Tasket', 'Jeepers Creepers', 'Whistle While You Work' and others from the hit parade that year.

I feel old.

May be by blackmail. You don't think he's threatening to leak their long-lost sex tape, I hope.:shocked:

- Jake

I'm all for another tour IF it's behind new music. Otherwise, yeah, pack'em up for a decade.

- Jake

But the thing is, if there are still enough original people around who did the Flying Lindy or the Charleston, then you don't have to worry about staying relative for the younger audience. Your old (and I mean "old" in every sense) audience is still capable of selling out concert sites. Until they die, taking all of their disposable income with them, you should keep touring.

Michele

As somebody who knows a REAL indie rocker, I gotta say that Fleetwood Mac is the antithesis of indie. Indie isn't just banging on shoe boxes on a few songs, and spending a million plus in the top studios in L.A. REAL indie is walking away from Warners because they want to f**k with the album you made in your basement on a 4-track cassette recorder and Radio Shack mics because it "sounds s**tty." I think "Tusk" is a great album, but "Sara" is still getting periodic plays on Lite/Mix stations, so let's not get too carried away.

Listen to the Mick Interview from St. Louis... that profjohn posted. It gets good at the 1:45 mark.

http://www.ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/sh...ad.php?t=35171

So, it isn't just idle gossip...the Mac is gonna tour again?

It gets played quite a lot on Q1043 NYC Classic Rock.