LA Forum Show April 14, 2015

[michelej1]

http://www.examiner.com/review/fleet...-last-l-a-show

The Examiner

Fleetwood Mac Returns to the Forum For One Last L.A Show, April 16, 2015

***** 5 stars

Fleetwood Mac returned to the Forum last night for the 5th and final show in Los Angeles of their On With The Show Tour which started September 30th 2014. The tour included 3 dates at the Forum between November and December and 1 in Anaheim. By popular demand another 2 shows were added for April 11 and 14. With the exception of two makeup dates this was the final U.S. show. The band will continue to tour throughout 2015 in Europe.

The setlist seemed to be the same throughout the tour with “The Chain” being the opener, which was perfect because of how it starts out slow and calm and then as lights hit the stage, the show becomes full production. Fleetwood Mac played an entire 23 songs covering all the hits from rock songs to ballads. As Stevie Nicks stated she had said at the beginning of the tour “And welcome back Christine McVie.” Now after months and months of touring all of the U.S. it feels as though McVie had never left the band.

After “The Chain,” the band went into a Christine McVie song “You Make Loving Fun,” followed by a Stevie Nicks song “Dreams.”Lindsey Buckingham took lead on the next song “Second Hand News.” For an entire 23 songs, there were very few the crowd wasn’t familiar with if any at all. If there’s one band to sell out 5 shows at the Forum, it’s Fleetwood Mac. More hits continued with “Rhiannon,” “Everywhere,” “Tusk.” Tusk was one of the big highlights with John McVie’s walking bass line, Mick Fleetwood’s drumming, and the combined vocals of Nicks, McVie, and Buckingham. When it was time for“Big Love” the band left the stage leaving Buckingham solo , and all by himself Buckingham took over and blew everyone away especially with his incredible guitar skills.

Stevie Nicks returned for “Landslide” which was performed as a duet of her and Buckingham on acoustic guitar. As always they performed in such a beautiful way. Some of the more softer songs came towards the end with “Gypsy,” “Little Lies,”and “Gold Dust Woman,” but brought out the energetic “Go Your Own Way,” to end their set before a double encore.

The first encore started with “World Turning,” which let Mick Fleetwood take over the stage for one of his famous solos where he does call and repeat with the audience and sampled parts of Buckingham’s vocals with his electronic drums. The band walked back out to end the song, and followed with another song that had everyone moving “Don’t Stop.” The band ended the first encore with a much more mellow song “Silver Springs.” The band walked off the stage once again, but didn’t leave without one final song “Songbird.” A grand piano came up from the stage for Christine McVie to play just for the one song, and it was a great song to end with. For the final time the band walked off the stage , but Mick Fleetwood stuck around to thank the audience and was so gracious for all who attended. For the near 2.5 hours of the show, the band was 100% beginning to end.