Fleetwood Mac Opens Tour!

[joe68]

5/8/03, 12 p.m. ET) -- Fleetwood Mac offered plenty of old and a generous taste of new as the veteran group opened its first North American tour since 1997 Wednesday (May 7) at the Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

Fleetwood Mac filled the two-hour 25-minute, 24 song show with plenty of hits, including the traditional opener "The Chain," "Dreams," "Rhiannon," "Landslide," "Gold Dust Woman" and "Go Your Own Way." The quartet--aided by seven additional musicians--also offered eight songs from its new album, Say You Will, including the single "Peacekeeper." And even though singer/keyboardist Christine McVie is no longer with the band, Fleetwood Mac touched lightly on her contributions, with Stevie Nicks covering McVie's vocal parts on "World Turning" and "Don't Stop."

Highlights of the show included Lindsay Buckingham's displays of guitar acumen on the new song "Come" and "I'm So Afraid"; Nick's first live performance of "Beautiful Child"; and a revved up rendition of "Eyes Of The World." Mick Fleetwood's drum and body percussion solo during "World Turning" was a hit with the near capacity crowd. Lindsay Buckingham meanwhile drew cheers during "Big Love," when he resumed the song after his chord disconnected from his guitar.

Prior to taking the stage, Buckingham explained the concept of the show. "We've got the show broken down to, like, three parts, where we come on and we're just mixing it up,” Buckingham said. “We're doing some new and some old, and you know, maybe a couple of obscures. And then we sort of built on what was the acoustic part of the show where we were doing 'Big Love' and 'Landslide.' You know, that becomes the whole middle part of the show. And then we come back and just burn at the end."

Fleetwood Mac next performs Friday (May 9) at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C.