Five Tips For Saving FM (Chicago Sun Times)
 

[I liked this because the writer sounded like one of us complaining when they say there are songs that they "have" to do]

Fleetwood Mac Revamp — Five ways the iconic band could reignite the flame

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainmen...the-flame.html
By THOMAS CONNER [email protected] April 10, 2013 1:54PM, chicago sun times

The classic rock institution that is Fleetwood Mac has embarked on its umpteenth reunion tour this spring. The band isn’t supporting a new album.

Nevertheless, despite saying never many times, they’re going back again — and again and again, with 66 arena concerts scheduled around the world this year.

It’s hard to get excited about this go-round — even for me, a lifelong Mac addict undeterred even by the “Time” album. The biggest news out of the tour so far is that the band plans to perform “Sisters of the Moon,” a 33-year-old “Tusk” track.

Yawn.

The last time Fleetwood Mac toured the tambourines and scarves, in 2009, singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham told me that, even after all these years, it felt like “a proving ground.” But this time, even the band doesn’t seem exactly juiced about their jaunt.

“We know we’re going to do certain songs,” namesake drummer Mick Fleetwood said in a recent online interview, “and if we don’t do them, the audience will shoot us.”

“We always have to play ‘Dreams,’ ‘Rhiannon,’ ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘Tusk,’ ‘Big Love,’ ‘Landslide’ and all our most famous songs,” Lindsey Buckingham told Rolling Stone. “For now, I have no particular vision of what this tour is going to be.”

Actually, guys, you don’t have to.

In fact, I call upon all Fleetwood Mac fans to join me in declaring: Lindsey, Stevie, John, Mick — we release you! Whatever social-setlist contract you think exists between us is officially now and forever nullified, voided, torn asunder. You are pardoned.

Please: Play whatever you want. Forgo the hits, play the misses. Play jazz, play bluegrass. Throw out the setlist altogether. Try improvising. Try failing.

Anything but this put-upon resignation to the slavish “demands” of your fans — because, frankly, it makes us all sound like jerks.

“2013 is going to be the year of Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks told Rolling Stone.

Here are five ways the Fleetwood Mac crew could announce a tour that would actually make a dent in the absurdity of that statement and once again activate my salivary glands:

1. Record a real Fleetwood
Mac album

“Say You Will,” the most recent Mac album, already is a decade old. The last new record the band actually wrote and recorded while generally in the same room with each other was “Mirage” in 1982. Since then, it’s been hijacked Buckingham solo projects (“Tango in the Night,” “Say You Will”), misfired lineups (“Behind the Mask,” “Time”) and greatest hits. The recently announced EP (due any day now) smacks of merch, not creativity.

Y’all need to hole up and jam. Not just the requisite two new songs (such as “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy”), not another dredged-up B-side turned into a new A-side (“Silver Springs”), not a 37th anniversary repackage of “Rumours” — but a full studio set. If the members of this corporate board have the time for 66 unasked-for shows, you can stare at each other over a sound board again.



2. Scale it down

We get it, you’re huge. Every tour is an arena tour. The music has echoed around so much steel and concrete it’s stopped being songs and just devolved into mere momentary memory cues. Why not bring it down, focus the attention — play theaters?

Sure, you’ll boost the ticket price, but you can also loosen things up to make it worthwhile. Setlists could change up. (The play-an-entire-album trope might work here.) Unscripted banter could break out. (Maybe even a long-simmering argument.) Most of your fans could see you in the flesh, rather than on a video screen. (You’re not computer projections yet, are you?)



3. Bribe Christine

Christine McVie packed it in after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and though she’s attended a few Mac concerts since then she hasn’t joined the band on stage. Given the tone of comments from her mates — Nicks said the chances of Christine returning to the band were equal to an asteroid collision — we understand she’s probably a write-off. Retirement from rock should be respected and, in so many cases, encouraged.

But there’s hope. First, an asteroid did nearly plow into the planet a few weeks ago. Second, McVie actually joined Fleetwood and former Mac guitarist Rick Vito (and, for some reason, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler) on stage in Maui just last February for a sporting run through “Don’t Stop,” playing keys and singing.

She’s this band’s leavening agent. Privately, you guys need her. Musically, so do we. To get just one more ridiculously great song out of her (even a “Temporary One”!), give her the moon to get her back.



4. Reboot Buckingham Nicks

The musical and certainly the personal dynamic between Buckingham and Nicks first clarified on the 1973 pre-Mac album as a duo; the “Buckingham Nicks” LP is now an industry legend, having never been reissued digitally. (Still no straight answer about why that is.) But for at least a decade now, both have been hinting at the desire to record again and tour just as the pair.

“We had already started our second Buckingham Nicks record,” Nicks reiterated in an interview last month at SXSW, describing the project that was dropped when Fleetwood Mac discovered her and then-boyfriend Buckingham and brought them into the band. Buckingham recently and repeatedly has voiced his interest in rebooting that aborted sophomore album — even saying late last year that some sessions had begun with producer Mitchell Froom.

So . . . do it already. Go even more intimate with the resulting tour (clubs!) to highlight your own unique bond. Two people, two guitars, no fuss.



5. An ‘us’ festival

Dave Grohl’s Sound City Players concert in March at SXSW was an enjoyable enough rock and roll revue, spanning generations. Nicks’ performance — dueting with Grohl and backed by the Foo Fighters — was surprisingly great. The Mac songs didn’t sound stale in a modern setting, and Nicks was more than capable of leading the bashing hard rock band with witchy panache.

So go the Ringo all-stars route — but with a larger scope and fewer track suits. Keep Grohl on board, call it Fleetwood Fighters & the Rolling Thunder Always Happens Revue! A half dozen shows across the country, on the Sound City Players model. It could be part reunion (guest turns from Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Billy Burnette, Rick Vito, Bekka Bramlett, Dave Mason), part intergenerational parade of pals (Tom Petty, Don Henley, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Matthew Sweet), part torch-passing (Buckingham can show off his new song with Delta Rae, Best Coast can roar through their magnificent cover of “Rhiannon”), part vaudeville (I’m seeing Chevy Chase on drums for “Holiday Road”). That’s almost enough all for everyone.

ENOUGH SAID !!! I couldn't agree more. Until some of these things get done, the artistic and spiritual death of this band in imminent. :distress:

Fess up...which one of you writes for the Chicago Sun Times?

Bang on Mr Conner, you have captured what most of us have been feeling and talking about for a very long time. It is so, so hard to stay interested but I'm hanging in there after these 36 sometimes very frustrating years being a hardcore fan of this band. While I've been impressed with some of the clips of the tour, I made the very hard decision when it was announced, not to go and still have no regrets. I am excited about the "EP" but the Mac will never fully redeem this fan until they put a stop to the "big machine", ie the never ending ATM that is that old and worn out set list going around to the big sheds. I get the classicness of Rumours but 35 or so years on, 3, maybe 4 selections max, not 3/4 of a concert to the detriment of their vast and stellar catalogue and the new music they've kept from we fans for far too long. Would be great to get excited about Rumours and not bored with it, pull out I Don't Want to Know for instance and drop a staple like Go Your Own Way, I'm sure the applause would be just as loud. Listened to "That's Enough for Me" a few times over and what a great set list opener that little nugget would be. Sigh....

On Ice.....you are singing to the choir !!! Amen to that! If The Mac is not that excited about putting out new music, they could at least dig a little deeper into that "stellar catalog" for those of us who having been driving down the road for 35+ years to relish their live shows. "That's Enough For Me" is an AMAZING song that has seldom seen the light of day. Dust off that gem and jump start some new life into the show. For years, I camped out to stand in line for front row tickets to FM concerts (even during the lean/lame BEHIND THE MASK years)......Well, tickets went on sale weeks ago and I have yet to buy them. Guess I'm sitting in the balcony for the first time in my life.........Oh well, at least I have "SISTERS OF THE MOON" to look forward to.

The reason they keep pushing Rumours re-releases, and packing the setlist with its tracks, is because they have little else to show for this lineup's nearly three decades as a band. Let's do the math: 26 years with Lindsey and Stevie in the band, and six studio albums. I can't think of any other band with such a meager output.

So of course they have to keep harping on Rumours. Take Rumours out of the equation, and what do you have? A very decent 1975 album that may or may not have catapulted them into stardom, and a brilliant 1979 album that would have never happened without Rumours because it was created as a reaction to Rumours. And if it had happened, the public would have rejected it, anyway.

In light of the meager catalog, FM knows they have two things going for them: Rumours and the soap opera. Without these two elements, they have close to nothing. On the other hand, to build a humongous musical empire on those two elements is nothing short of masterful.

God I hope someone who works for the band reads them that article.

I can think of one. Boston (who I happen to be listening to as I type this) has had 5 albums since 1976 and are still active, having toured as recently as last year with an album in the works. Though who knows when it'll be released. Their last album came out in 2002.

Wow Mr Conner must be reading the Ledge boards.

Now the word is out in print.

MTE :laugh:

THANK YOU. If I had the money I'd be bribing Christine McVie so fast.....I wish one of Stevie's "computer friends" would relay the message: "by the way, your fans want new songs!"

And I'm just hoping and praying they play Angel live before they bite the dust. pretty please? and Crystal? Blue Letter? and Frozen Love? PLEASE FROZEN LOVE.

Preach it.

Although I agree with much of what he's sayin', he does contradict himself a lot. He says "don't play the hits" then says "do a whole album". Since he doesn't seem to care much about the non BN albums, I'm guessing he wants one of '75/Rumours/Tusk played, which include hits, and many of them. Having said this, I guess this is as close to preaching to the choir as we've ever heard from a member of the press so at least it's a step in the right direction for sure. :)

John

This guy looks like he's been reading our complaints!

I think the band is dying a slow death without Christine and I'm a chiffonhead so this is not easy to say but it's true. Where Stevie & Lindsey were all dramatic and dark, Chris had those happy songs like Don't Stop, Love in Store, Everywhere etc. She was the balance, she evened things out. Not to mention the harmonies of the 3 voices. When I saw them in '03 I didn't miss her probably because I was all excited about seeing them again (I didn't get to see them in '09). But watching the clips of '09 and the present, they sound kinda empty without her. They used to be such a great band, just the 5 of them would blow my mind. But now they sound like 4 different people who came together and just happen to play the same song. It's probably different when you're actually there but what I've seen on youtube so far from Unleashed and this tour, I'm not impressed. When they first announced the tour I was all excited and willing to travel, spend money which I don't have but I miss the cohesiveness, the unity. The only ones that seem to be really into it are Mick & Lindsey. John hardly moves and well, the same goes for Stevie and after being a fan for 36 years I'm kind of tired of defending them. We all know they can do it, they could be that great band that blows your mind no matter how many times you go and see them on a tour. Unfortunately there's one link in the chain missing and that's Christine. She left 15(!!!) years ago and people are still talking about her and asking if she's coming back. Goes to show you what an important part she played in the band. Of course this merely my humble opinion.