This was just one amazing...amazing...AMAZING.....concert. Christy, Neil and I had 3rd row tickets, and about 15 mins before the band came out the stewards told the first 3 rows that they can stand in front of the stage. So there we were, the 3 of us standing right underneath Lindsey's mic., about 3 feet from the man himself. Pip's already written such a great review (thanks Pip!
Good to see you again btw!) so I won't bother, instead here are some personal comments:
- During the second chorus of The Chain, Christy got the classic "smile-nod-and-point" from Lindsey. That was the first of literally about 20 or 30 he did to her throughout the show. Needless to say, she was a very, VERY happy girl! (I'll leave it to her to post at some point...we still have 4 shows and 3 front rows ahead of us so God knows what's to come!)
- I was trying my hardest to get LB's attention at the beginning of the show (he seems to warm up to girls a lot quicker! That suited Christy just fine but made things difficult for me and Neil!) and then finally he noticed me singing "Second Hand News" word for word looking straight at him, then gave me the smile-and-nod, and then he sang the entire "bam-bam-bam-bam....etc" part fixated on me, and to say that it was surreal having Lindsey shout "do it, do it, do it!!!!" at me, and shouting it simultaneously back at him, would be the understatement of the century. Again, the first of many, many, surreal moments throughout the night.
- Christy and I were determined to make sure Lindsey heard us during the gaps in the songs (e.g. the breaks in between the verses and chorus of The Chain) so we filled them with "wooooo!!!!"s...etc..lol. I think the best of these moments for me was that gap between the intro. to I'm So Afraid and the point were the main song starts....that 1 or 2 seconds were it goes completely silent (just before Mick hits the drums) I shouted out as loud as I could "C'MON LINDSEY!!!!"...my voice echoed right through the arena.....lol....I'm sure those of you who were by Stevie's mic heard it!
- Lindsey did the longest and most intense "Come" solo I've ever heard...He got to that point where he starts hacking away at the guitar and it sounded like he was going to finish it off, but then he just carried on playing, faster and faster....the man just wouldn't slow down, I thought his fingers and the guitar were going to burst into flames at any moment.....The whole solo must have gone on for about 5 or 6 minutes.
- Beautiful Child was the only song I didn't enjoy out of the whole show. Nothing to do with the band - they were singing and playing it 101% as usual, and Stevie's voice was incredible. About 30 seconds before the end of WTWCT an elderly man who was standing next to Christy turned around and started walking away with some apparent difficulty. About 30 seconds into Beautiful Child, a woman right behind us suddenly shouted "Oh my God! Security!! SECURITY!!!!". I looked behind me and saw the same man sitting in a front row seat, motionless with his head hanging down and his eyes closed. People around the area took a step back and a man next to him started trying to find a pulse on his neck and didn't seem to be able to find one. It took about 20 seconds of yelling "security" and "help" before two stewards arrived. At this point Lindsey noticed that something serious was happening down there and he carried on playing but was also continuously looking to see what was going on (I'm sure he had memories of Reno flashing through his head). Stevie was too far away to notice and she carried on singing, totally unaware. When the doctor arrived, the man regained consciousness but still had his eyes shut and seemed to be breathing with great difficulty. They put him into a wheelchair and took him away. The song finished about 30 seconds later and at the end of it when the lights went out LB didn't wait for Ray Lindsey to come and switch his guitars...he went over to Ray and pointed towards the area and they spoke. I guess he was asking him "what just happened??".
- Lots of eye contact and pointing interaction happened for us throughout the next few songs, but then the ultimate moment happened during the first solo of GYOW: he stepped down and almost kneeled in the gap between his monitors and pointed to us to play his guitar. The two girls in front of us started playing it, then Christy and Neil started strumming it, and then I started playing it, then he pulled it away for a second to change the chord and brought it forward again, (ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS OF MY LIFE WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN) looked me straight in the eye and screamed "Go on!!! DO IT!!!!!!!"....I must have had the largest grin in the world on my face at that moment as I started strumming the guitar again; then he pulled it away, changed the chord, and then brought it forward one last time and this time I uncontrollably just looked straight back at him as I was playing it and shouted "Yeaaaa!!!!" and as he pulled the guitar away for the last time he carried on looking at me and screamed "YEAAAAAA" with this demonic psycho look on his face!!! lol!!! (I must say it is just *impossible* to put into words what I was feeling as he looked straight at me, pushed his guitar towards me and yelled "Go on....DO IT!!!". I know many Ledgies have experienced this amazing feeling and only those who have, know just how amazing a moment it is!)
- Singing "Happy Birthday" to John was awesome. Lindsey played the chords to Happy Birthday lightly on his Model One while the whole arena sang the words. John is so shy..!! He went red and put his hands across his face (Neil got an excellent pic. of this!!). A whole army of penguins was thrown up onto the stage by the Fireflies...it was such an excellent moment for Fleetwood Mac.
- At the end of the show, the walking toy dog that was put on the stage by the Fireflies was the funniest moment of the evening. The look on Stevie's face was priceless. It fell on its side at first, but then Mick or Lindsey put it on its four legs and for just a few precious moments it looked like Stevie was walking the dog....lol!!! I REALLY hope somebody got some good photos of this...a video recording of it would be even better. Then the red heart balloon became unattached and floated up to the ceiling and everyone laughed.
- One final, ridiculous moment: Lindsey signed a few autographs on Stevie's side of the stage, then looked like he wanted to walk away so he just waved at our side but I screamed "LINDSEY!! LINDSEY!!" and held out my vinyl of the Go Insane/Play In The Rain single...he looked at it and gave me this shocked look like "Damn! I wasn't expecting to see that!". He came forward, took it off me, I handed him my pen. The pen was one of these silver pens which run very easily (I thought it would be a good idea as a black pen wouldn't really show up that well on the dark blue cover of the vinyl). He took the pen, signed it, and then as he came to give it back to me he said what I heard initially as ".....ef....huhhht!!"....I looked at him and said "what??" and then he said "Be careful! It's wet, it's wet!!!", at which point I was holding the vinyl almost vertically, and saw the ink running all over the cover. Once it dried it looked like one big mess.
Stupid idiot me didn't realise that 2 and a half hours of jumping up and down against body heat would of course make a silver ink pen act like a paint brush. (Anyway, it's not the end of the world because today I went to a second hand vinyl shop and bought BOTH their copies of the Go Insane album, but unfortunately they didn't have any copies of the single. Oh well.) Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, Neil told me he spotted Lindsey looking strangely at his hands as he was walking off to backstage - so not only did I ruin the cover of my single and the autograph, but I also got silver ink all over Lindsey's hands.
Wow...wrote way more than I was expecting to there! Time for bed. Bring on Saturday!!!
p.s. I was standing right next to one of the giant monitor speakers on the stage (it was on my right). After the show I had really heavy ringing in both my ears, and the ringing in my left ear eventually died down after a couple of hours, but my right ear was really bad last night. And today I can still hear that "imaginary hissing/whistling" associated with loud experiences and it's still hurting a bit. Anybody else have a similar experience.....?? How long did it take to go away.....? It's kinda freakin' me out....
(And btw...before anyone says, I KNOW I should've been wearing ear plugs but I didn't think I'd be standing that close to the stage so i didn't bring them!)