Showing posts sorted by relevance for query behind the mask. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query behind the mask. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, April 04, 2010

FLEETWOOD MAC.... IT ALL HAPPENED IN APRIL

Some Notable April Dates in Mac Chart History
There's likely more that happened in April through the years in various countries, this is from going through the information I've collected through the years.

ALBUMS:
4.01.1977 - Rumours certified gold (50,000 units) and platinum (100,000 units) in Canada
4.02.1977 - Rumours reached #1 on Billboards Top 200 Albums Chart for the first time
4.05.2009 - Stevie Nicks Live in Chicago DVD debuts at #5 on the UK Music Video Charts
4.06.1998 - Rumours certified 18x Platinum in the US
4.07.1999 - Stevie Nicks Enchanted Boxed Set certified gold in the US
4.08.1987 - Tango In The Night certified gold and silver in the UK
4.09.1990 - Behind The Mask released in the UK
4.11.1977 - Rumours reaches #1 on the Australian Albums Chart
4.13.1987 - Tango In The Night released in the UK
4.14.2007 - Stevie Nicks Crystal Visions debuts at #21 on Billboards Top 200
4.14.2007 - Stevie Nicks Crystal Visions debuts at #2 on Billboards Top Music Videos Chart
4.18.2009 - Stevie Nicks Live in Chicago DVD debuts at #1 on Billboard Top Video Charts
4.18.2009 - Stevie Nicks The Soundstage Sessions debuts at #47 on Billboards Top 200
4.15.2003 - Say You Will is released in North America
4.21.1990 - Behind The Mask debuts on the UK Charts at #1
4.22.1972 - Bare Trees debuts on the Top 200 Albums Chart 
4.22.1988 - Tango In The Night certified 4x platinum in the UK
4.22.1990 - Behind The Mask peaks at #9 on the Austalian Albums Chart
4.23.2003 - Say You Will debuts on the Canadian Albums Chart at #8 selling 8,600 copies
4.25.1987 - Tango In The Night debuted on the UK Charts at #7
4.28.1973 - Penguin debuts on the Top 200 Albums Chart peaking at #49
4.28.1990 - Behind The Mask debuted on the Top 200 Albums Chart peaking at #18
4.28.1998 - Stevie Nicks Enchanted Boxed Set released
4.28.2003 - Say You Will released in the UK


OFFICIAL SINGLES / RADIO SINGLES:
4.01.1974 - Albatross (single) certified Silver in the UK (200,000 units sold)
4.02.1988 - Family Man debuts on Billboards Hot 100 & peaks at #90
4.02.1987 - Everywhere debuts on the UK Charts at #29 & peaks at #4
4.03.1988 - Everywhere debuts on the Ireland Singles Chart at #29 & peaks at #2
4.04.1987 - Big Love debuts on the UK Charts at #70 & peaks at #9
4.04.2009 - The Chain debuts on the UK Charts at #94 spending one week on the chart
4.05.1980 - Think About Me debuts on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaks at #28
4.07.1990 - Save Me debuts on Billboards Hot 100 & peaks at #33
4.07.1990 - Save Me debut on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaks at #6
4.07.1990 - Save Me debuts on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart & peaks at #3
4.09.1983 - Oh Diane debuts on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaks at #35
4.09.1988 - Family Man debuts on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaks at #23
4.11.1981 - Fire Flies debuts on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart & peaks at #59
4.12.1987 - Big Love debuts on Ireland Singles Chart at #27 & peaks at #8
4.13.1987 - Big Love peaks at #16 on Australian Singles Chart
4.13.1968 - Black Magic Woman debuts on the UK Singles Chart at #50 & peaks at #37
4.16.1973 - Albatross (single) released in the UK
4.16.1977 - Dreams debuts on Billboard Hot 100 & peaks at #1
4.16.1986 - Stevie Nicks' "I Can't Wait" peaks at #16 on Billboard Hot 100 
4.17.1982 - Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen peaks at #11 on Billboard Hot 100
4.17.1982 - Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen peaks at #5 on the Canadian Singles Chart
4.19.1968 - Man of the World debuts on the UK Charts at #21 & peaks at #2
4.20.2006 - Deep Dish "Dreams" w/Stevie Nicks debuts at #22 on Irelands Top 50 
4.21.1989 - Stevie Nicks' "Rooms on Fire" single Released
4.23.1983 - Can't Go Back debuts on UK Charts at #83 spending 1 week on the chart
4.24.2006 - Deep Dish "Dreams" w/Stevie Nicks debuts at #6 on Finlands Top 20 
4.24.2006 - Deep Dish "Dreams" w/Stevie Nicks debuts at #14 on the UK Top 75
4.25.1987 - Big Love debuts on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaks at #23
4.25.1987 - Seven Wonders debuts on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart & peaks at #2
4.28.1990 - Love is Dangerous debuts on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart peaks at #7
4.30.1977 - Dreams debuts on Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart & peaking at #11
4.30.1977 - Don't Stop debuts on the UK Singles Chart at #42 & peaks at #32
4.30.1982 - Stevie Nicks' "After The Glitter Fades" single released

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac's biggest hitmaker dies, she was 79

Christine McVie, Hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, Is Dead at 79
As a singer, songwriter and keyboardist, she was a prolific force behind one of the most popular rock bands of the last 50 years.




By Jim Farber
Nov. 30, 2022

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday, November 30th. She was 79.

Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.

Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)

The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Loving Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).

All those songs had cleanly defined, easily sung melodies, with hints of soul and blues at the core. Her compositions had a simplicity that mirrored their construction. “I don’t struggle over my songs,” Ms. McVie (pronounced mc-VEE) told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I write them quickly.”

In just half an hour, she wrote one of the band’s most beloved songs, “Songbird,” a sensitive ballad that for years served as the band’s closing encore in concert. In 2019, the band’s leader, Mick Fleetwood, told New Musical Express that “Songbird” is the piece he wanted played at his funeral, “to send me off fluttering.”

Ms. McVie’s lyrics often captured the more intoxicating aspects of romance. “I’m definitely not a pessimist,” she told Bob Brunning, the author of the 2004 book “The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumours and Lies.” “I’m basically a love song writer.”

At the same time, her words accounted for the yearning and disappointments that can lurk below an exciting surface. “I’m good at pathos,” she told Mojo magazine in 2017. “I write about romantic despair a lot, but with a positive spin.”



‘That Chemistry’
Ms. McVie’s vocals communicated just as nuanced a range of feeling. Her soulful contralto could sound by turns maternally wise and sexually alive. Her tawny tone had the heady effect of a bourbon with a rich bouquet and a smooth finish. It found a graceful place in harmony with the voices of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, together forming a signature Fleetwood Mac sound.

“It was that chemistry,” she told Mojo. “The two of them just chirped into the perfect three-way harmony. I just remember thinking, ‘This is it!’”

A sturdy instrumentalist, Ms. McVie played a range of keyboards, often leaning toward the soulful sound of a Hammond B3 organ and the formality of a Yamaha grand piano.

With Fleetwood Mac, she earned five gold, one platinum and seven multiplatinum albums. The band’s biggest success, “Rumours,” released in 1977, was one of the mightiest movers in pop history: It was certified double diamond, representing sales of over 20 million copies.

In 1998, Ms. McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with various lineups of Fleetwood Mac, reflecting the frequent (and dramatic) personnel shifts the band experienced throughout its labyrinthine history. Ms. McVie served in incarnations that dated to 1971, but she also had uncredited roles playing keyboards and singing backup as far back as the band’s second album, released in 1968. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, she scored a No. 14 British hit with the blues band Chicken Shack on a cover of Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she sang lead.

Christine Anne Perfect was born on July 12, 1943, in the Lake District of England to Cyril Perfect, a classical violinist and college music professor and Beatrice (Reece) Perfect, a psychic.

Her father encouraged her to start taking classical piano lessons when she was 11. Her focus changed radically four years later when she came across some sheet music for Fats Domino songs. At that moment, she told Rolling Stone in 1984, “It was goodbye Chopin.”

“I started playing the boogie bass,” she told Mojo. “I got hooked on the blues. Even today, the songs I write use that left hand. It’s rooted in the blues.”

Ms. McVie studied sculpture at Birmingham Art College and for a while considered becoming an art teacher. At the same time, she briefly played in a duo with Spencer Davis, who, along with a teenage Steve Winwood, would later find fame in the Spencer Davis Group. She helped form a band named Shades of Blue with several future members of Chicken Shack.

After graduating from college in 1966, Ms. McVie moved to London and became a window dresser for a department store. One year later, she was asked to join the already formed Chicken Shack as keyboardist and sometime singer. She wrote two songs for the band’s debut album, “40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve.”

She was twice voted best female vocalist in a Melody Maker readers’ poll, but she left the band in 1969 after marrying John McVie, the bassist in Fleetwood Mac, which had been formed in 1967 and had already recorded three albums. That same year, she recorded a solo album, “The Legendary Christine Perfect Album,” which she later described to Rolling Stone as “so wimpy.”

“I just hate to listen to it,” she said.



Joining the Band
Her disappointment in that record, combined with her reluctance to perform, caused Ms. McVie to put music aside for a time. But, in 1970, when Fleetwood Mac’s main draw, the guitarist Peter Green, suddenly quit the band after a ruinous acid trip, Mick Fleetwood invited her to fill out their ranks.

Initially, she found the invitation to join her favorite band “a nerve-racking experience,” she told Rolling Stone. But she rose to the occasion by writing two of the catchiest songs on her first official release with the band, “Future Games” (1971). That release found the band leaning away from British blues and toward progressive Southern Californian folk-rock, aided by the addition of an American player, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Bob Welch.

The band fine-tuned that sound on its 1972 set “Bare Trees,” which sold better and featured one of Ms. McVie’s most soulful songs, “Spare Me a Little of Your Love.” The band’s 1973 release, “Penguin,” went gold. The next collection, “Heroes Are Hard to Find,” was the band’s first to crack the U.S. Top 40. But it was only after the departure of Mr. Welch and the hiring of the romantically involved team of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, for the 1975 album simply called “Fleetwood Mac,” that the band began to show its full commercial brio.

Ms. McVie‘s song “Over My Head” began the groundswell by entering Billboard’s Top 20; her “Say You Love Me,” reached No. 11. After a slow buildup, the “Fleetwood Mac” album eventually hit Billboard’s summit.

Just over a year and a half later, the group released “Rumours,” which generated outsize interest not only for its four Top 10 hits (two of them written by Ms. McVie) but also for several highly dramatic behind-the-scenes events within the band’s ranks, which they aired out in the lyrics and openly discussed in the press.

During the creation of the album, the two couples in the band — Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham and the married McVies — broke up. Ms. McVie’s song “You Make Loving Fun” celebrated an affair she was then having with the band’s lighting director. (At first, she told Mr. McVie that the song was about her dog.) The optimistic-sounding “Don’t Stop” was intended to point her ex-husband toward a new life without her.

“We wrote those songs despite ourselves,” Ms. McVie told Mojo. “It was a therapeutic move. The only way we could get this stuff out was to say it, and it came out in a way that was difficult. Imagine trying to sing those songs onstage with the people you’re singing them about.”

It helped dull the pain, she told Mojo, that “we were all very high,” adding, “I don’t think there was a sober day.” And the album’s megasuccess gave the members a different high. “The buzz of realizing you’ve written one of the best albums ever written; it was such a phenomenal time,” Ms. McVie told Attitude magazine in 2019.

But the group yearned to stretch creatively. The result was the less commercial sound of the double-album follow-up, “Tusk,” released in 1979. Though not a success on anything near the scale of “Rumours,” it sold more than two million copies and produced three hits, including Ms. McVie’s “Think About Me.”



Into the ’80s
The group moved smoothly into the new decade with the 1982 release “Mirage,” which hit No. 1 aided by Ms. McVie’s “Hold Me,” a Top Five hit that was inspired by her tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. Two years later, Ms. McVie issued a solo album that made the Top 30, while its strongest single, “Got a Hold on Me,” broke the Top 10.

In 1987, the reconvened Fleetwood Mac issued “Tango in the Night,” which featured two hits written by Ms. McVie, “Everywhere” and “Little Lies.” (“Little Lies” was written with the Portuguese musician and songwriter Eddie Quintela, whom she had wed the year before. They would divorce in 2003.) Mr. Buckingham left the group shortly afterward, shaking the dynamic that had made their recordings stellar. The 1990 album “Behind the Mask” barely went gold, producing just one Top 40 single (“Save Me,” written by Ms. McVie), while “Time,” issued five years later, was the band’s first unsuccessful album in two decades.

Ms. McVie didn’t tour with the band to support “Time.” But the early 1990s brought broad new attention to her hit “Don’t Stop” when it became the theme song for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. In 1993, Mr. Clinton persuaded the five musicians who played on that hit to reunite to perform it at an Inaugural ball.

They came together again in 1997 for a tour, which produced the live album “The Dance,” one of the top-selling concert recordings of all time. Yet by the next year a growing fear of flying, and a desire to return to England from the band’s adopted home of Los Angeles, inspired Ms. McVie to retire to the English countryside.

Five years later, she agreed to add some keyboard parts and backing vocals to a largely ignored Fleetwood Mac album, “Say You Will,” and in 2006 she produced a little-heard solo album, “In the Meantime,” which she recorded and wrote with her guitarist nephew Dan Perfect.

Finally, in 2014, driven by boredom and a growing sense of isolation, she reunited with the prime Mac lineup for the massive “On With The Show” tour. In its wake, Ms. McVie began to write lots of new material, as did Mr. Buckingham, resulting in an album under both their names in 2017, as well as a joint tour. The full band also played shows that year; even though Mr. Buckingham was fired in 2018, Ms. McVie continued to tour with the group in a lineup that included Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 2021, Ms. McVie sold publishing rights to her entire 115-song catalog for an undisclosed sum.

Information on her survivors was not immediately available.

Throughout her career, Ms. McVie took pride in never being categorized by her gender. “I kind of became one of the guys,” she told the British newspaper The Independent in 2019. “I was always treated with great respect.”

While she always acknowledged the special chemistry of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup, she believed her role transcended it.

“Band members leave and other people take their place,” she told Rolling Stone, “but there was always that space where the piano should be.”



Sunday, June 17, 2012

Chart Updates: Fleetwood Mac's 25 Years The Chain Hits UK Top 10

Missed a week of updates for the US (June 3rd, chart date June 16th) so that's first. Then the most current chart standings for various albums of Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks around the globe.

USA
Week Ending June 3, 2012 - Chart date: June 16, 2012

Top 200 Catalogue Albums Chart
Fleetwood Mac's The Very Best Of lands on the charts at #51 on a sales increase of 135%.  Units sold during the week May 28th to June 3rd were 2,420 vs 1,028 the previous week. Total album sales in the US = 1,479,982.

# 51 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

Top 200 Catalogue Physical Albums 
Fleetwood Mac's The Very Best Of leaps up from #157 to #17 and Stevie's Bella Donna moves down to #162 from #136 the previous week selling 1,105 units vs 1,115 in the previous sales period. Total sales in the US since November, 1991 861,599.

#  17 (157) Fleetwood Mac The Very Best Of
# 162 (136) Stevie Nicks - Bella Donna

Top 200 Catalogue Digital Albums 
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album moves up slightly on a 2% increase in downloads to #85 vs #94 last week and in sales sold 828 units vs 810 units in the previous sales period. Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits album moves up the chart to #116 vs #123 last week but sells less digital copies in this sales period, 681 units, vs 709 the previous week.

# 85  ( 94) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 116 (123) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

USA
Week Ending June 10, 2012 - Chart date: June 23, 2012

The Billboard 200
Fleetwood Mac's The Very Best Of re-enters the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart this week at #163. This marks its 46 week spent on the chart since its release in 2002.  The album also moves up to #26 this week on the Top 200 Catalogue chart from #51 the previous week.

# 163 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

Top 200 Catalogue Albums Chart
# 26 (51) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

UK
Week ending June 23, 2012

Top 100 Albums Chart

Fleetwood Mac's 4 disc Box Set "25 Years - The Chain" after hitting #12 on the midweek charts in the UK moves up and officially enters the UK Top 100 Albums Chart at #9 marking the sets first appearance on the official UK Charts giving Fleetwood Mac it's 12th Top 10!  The original release in 1992 didn't chart in the UK.  This repackaged version has been heavily discounted at retail across the UK which contributed to it's high placement on the chart.


# 9 (NEW) Fleetwood Mac - 25 YEARS - The Chain

Fleetwood Mac's Top 10 albums in the UK:
#  4  Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (1968)
# 10 Fleetwood Mac - Mr. Wonderful (1968)
#  6  Fleetwood Mac - Then Play On (1969)
#  1  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1977)
#  1  Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (1979)
#  5  Fleetwood Mac - Mirage (1982)
#  1  Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night (1987)
#  3  Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits (1988)
#  1  Fleetwood Mac - Behind The Mask (1990)
#  6  Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of (2002)
#  6  Fleetwood Mac - Say You Will (2003)
#  9  Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years - The Chain (1992/2012)

IRELAND
Week Ending June 14, 2012

Top 100 Albums Chart

Fleetwood Mac's 4 disc Box Set "25 Years - The Chain" enters Irelands Top 100 Albums Chart at #43.  Re-entering the chart this week is Fleetwood Mac's 2 disc "The Very Best Of" and "Greatest Hits" at #83.


# 43 (NEW) Fleetwood Mac - 25 Years - The Chain
# 64 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
# 83 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

AUSTRALIA 
June 18, 2012

Top 100 Albums Chart
# 30 (29) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

Top 50 Catalogue Albums chart 
#  6 (5)   Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
# 42 (49) Stevie Nicks - Crystal Visions... The Very Best Of

THE NETHERLANDS 
June 9, 2012

Top 50 Catalogue Albums Chart
# 31 (31) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

Friday, October 16, 2020

Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down.

Stevie Nicks: “In Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie and I were a force of nature”

On the eve of her new concert film, the Fleetwood Mac singer talks new solo material, Trump's response to COVID-19 and the chances of a 'Rumours'-era reunion

By Greg Wetherall 15th October 2020 - NME

Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down. When Fleetwood Mac concluded their year-long world tour at the end of 2019, the 72-year-old singer songwriter decamped to her Santa Monica home with the intention of taking the year off from touring. Like the rest of us, she didn’t expect to be holed-up for quite so long. “I’ve been quarantined solid since March,” Nicks tells NME. “I figured that I’d probably do about ten gigs and then I was just going to work on a miniseries for Rhiannon but then the door slams and we have a pandemic.”

Out of these dark days, Nicks has kept a busy schedule. ‘Show Them The Way’, worked upon remotely with the help of Dave Grohl, is her first single in six years. She has also helped produce 24 Karat Gold The Concert, a spellbinding concert film from the 2016/7 tour of the same name, which in cinemas for two nights later this month featuring staples such as ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ alongside unreleased gems and deep cuts.

Whilst a viral TikTok video may have drawn headlines and pushed her song ‘Dreams’ back into the charts recently, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had other things on her mind when we caught up with her, including her issues with Trump, the lost ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album and why she is fatalistic if ‘Rumours’–era Fleetwood Mac are to never play together again.

Your first single for six years and the 24 Karat Gold The Concert film – this is turning into a very busy time for you…

“In a million years, I never thought I’d have two projects coming out within two weeks of each other. It’s been a lot of work over the last two months, let me tell you. I’m pretty excited and really proud of everything. I think the film is the closest anyone is going to get to a real, serious concert until the pandemic is over. And I think the song is ‘right now’ with what’s going on in our country. Our country is so divisive. We have gone back so far. It is very sad and very scary.”

You have been openly critical of the US administration’s response to COVID-19. You tweeted that ‘Nobody is leading us. Nobody has a plan.’ You called it ‘a tragedy’ and ‘a real American Horror Story’.  

“You know that our President and his wife contracted the virus? It’s like, ‘wear your mask’, you know? It’s a simple thing to ask. Just wear your mask. Especially if you’re the President of the United States. It’s pretty simple. We’ve been told again and again and again that it’s incredibly contagious. I don’t take any chances. Nobody in my world does. For me, as a singer, if I get it and I get that terrible cough that never goes away; if it attacks my lungs and I don’t have my lung power anymore it would kill me. It would destroy my career.”

Do you feel that Trump been irresponsible?

“I think if you don’t wear a mask you’re irresponsible. I’m very sorry that he got it – I’m not saying anything like that – but he never wears a mask. Nobody in his circle does. And now they’ve all got it. It really proves something to the people in the US who view it as some political thing. Well, guess what? It’s not political. It’s dangerous and it’s contagious. But he [Trump] had to get it to know that? He couldn’t listen to the science? He couldn’t listen to all the doctors who probably said in private, ‘you need to take care of yourself and wear your mask’?” 

Why do you think he hasn’t listened to the scientists?

“I think he just thinks he knows better. But what is he going to say now? This is like telling your children to be careful when they go out and then they don’t come home one night. All you can do is tell people and whether they listen or not is up to them. But that’s not my problem. I’m very sorry that they got it. But they knew better.”

You have a reputation for being forthcoming and open in interviews. I presume this is what you’re like in all aspects of your life?

“It’s the only way I can really be. I know that comes from my mum. I just am who I am. I know that sometimes my honesty is a lot for people and that it pushes some away, but if you can’t hear the truth then I can’t really hang out with you!”

In 24 Karat Gold The Concert, you detail difficulties you had making 1983’s ‘The Wild Heart’. You say you were ‘arrogant’ and ‘less of a team player’ than you were on your solo debut, ‘Bella Donna’. Why so?

“‘Bella Donna’ took three months to make. It was the first record in a solo career and I was not stupid enough to waste time and spend too much money. No self-indulgence. Then, after ‘Bella Donna’, I made ‘Mirage’ with Fleetwood Mac. That took a year and we went on tour for about another year. ‘Mirage’ was a big record and had a tonne of singles on it and so, when I came back, I was different. I could not consider myself a cleaning lady and a waitress anymore.”

How did this affect the recording of ‘The Wild Heart’?

“When I walked into the studio I was much more confident. I can call it arrogance or I can call it confidence. It was somewhere in between the two. I was much stronger in my ideas. For example, I wanted to produce. I just wanted to be more involved than I was during the first album. When I look back on that now, that was just me growing as an artist. I didn’t want it all done for me. ‘The Wild Heart’ was different. It needed to be different. Much like how, after ‘Rumours’, we [Fleetwood Mac] made ‘Tusk’ because we didn’t want to do ‘Rumours’ over. Even though the record company said we needed to, we just said, ‘We can’t do it.’”

Was your second album a personal turning point?

“‘Bella Donna’ kicked off my solo career but as I walked away from ‘The Wild Heart’ everybody knew that I had arrived as a solo artist. I was not going to just say, ‘That was fun’ and go back to Fleetwood Mac. I was going to be able to handle being in both bands. When Fleetwood Mac took vacations, I could go and make a solo album and tour. And then go back again. It worked out great for a Gemini: I had two worlds. Never a boring moment.”

Were you ever conflicted about offering songs to Fleetwood Mac rather than keeping them for yourself?

“No, I was never selfish with the songs. If I had ten songs that I had written, I would sit at the piano and play all ten for Fleetwood Mac. I would let them choose because if they chose the songs then they were going to be good. If I tried to shove songs down their throat, they weren’t going to be good. Who they go to is fine by me. It’s never been a problem. It kinda works itself out. The songs that are supposed to be on the record that you’re doing at the time jump out. And the ones that aren’t right for that particular time don’t.”

Thinking of the revelations springing from the #MeToo movement, did you ever experience any difficulties of that kind over the years?

“Honestly… in Fleetwood Mac, Christine [McVie] and I were a force of nature. In the first two months I was in the band, Chris and I made a pact that we would never be in a room full of famous English or American guitar players and be treated like second class citizens. If we weren’t respected, we would say, ‘this party’s over.’ We have stayed true to that our entire career.

In my own career, I didn’t have Christine but I had Lori Nicks and Sharon Celani. My [backing] singers and my best friends. We wanted to be Crosby, Stills and Nash! Sometime we would try not to make my voice louder than theirs, so that we could have that three-part [harmony] going on. I had my girls: the three of us. They were my sound. Together, we were also very much like, ‘don’t mess with us, because we’re really good, we’re talented and we’re really nice women. If you don’t treat us the way we feel that we should be treated we won’t work with you.’”

Was the need for a pact, or strength in numbers, necessary because you witnessed mistreatment, or worse, directly? 

“Sometimes I saw women treated in a way that I didn’t think was great. At 72 years old, I am totally behind MeToo. I support all those women, totally. I joined a famous band in 1975. I didn’t have to move to Los Angeles by myself and try to find a job in a band or try to find something to do with music all alone. I didn’t have to do what women who move to LA to be an actress have to do. I had a team behind me immediately. When I was with Lindsey [Buckingham], I had him. I was never out there alone having to talk to producers or men who were going to try and take advantage of me. I’m really lucky. It’s really unfortunate that most women in showbusiness do experience that, but I seem to have skated through it.”

The film features ‘Cryin’ in the Night’ from 1973’s ‘Buckingham Nicks’. This album has never been released in the CD era and beyond. Due to your fall-out are we further away than ever from a release?

“I don’t know. I think it should be released. It should just be polished up a little bit. I don’t think it should be remixed. I think it should just go out the way it was mixed when we released it. I hope it happens. Owning ‘Buckingham Nicks’ between me and Lindsey is like owning an old Mercedes. One person says, ‘let’s release it!’ and the other person goes, ‘I don’t wanna let it go.’ And then three years later it’s the other way around. That’s what’s been happening with ‘Buckingham Nicks’ since 1975!”

Have you heard back from Lindsey since you sent him a note following his heart attack last year?

“The heart attack was serious. All of us in Fleetwood Mac wrote to him and told him that he’d better get well. Being an ex-girlfriend, I wrote more than that. I said, ‘you’d better stay well and you’d take care of yourself’. The same old thing, right? But we haven’t had any communication. It’s OK. If it’s ever meant to happen, it will. If we’re meant to communicate ever again, we will. It’s not happening right now.”

Did he acknowledge the letter though?

“He’s acknowledged it, yeah. He wrote a kind of group letter to us all. None of us have had any communication with him since. You know, it lasted 43 years, so we had a really, really good run.”

Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert will be in cinemas on 21 Oct. Find your screening at stevienicksfilm.com. The 2CD & digital/streaming releases will be available on 30 Oct.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Fleetwood Mac: May 13, Rexall Place - Edmonton

By: SSPEROUNES
01-14-2009
Edmonton Journal

YES! It’s not a rumour or a sweet little lie — pop-rock veterans Fleetwood Mac are about to make their first Edmonton stop in almost two decades. Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood will perform May 13 at Rexall Place.

It’s part of their Unleashed: Hits tour — featuring classics such as Little Lies, Don’t Stop, Rhiannon, Go Your Own Way, Gypsy, and Big Love. Tickets will go on sale Monday, Jan. 26, according to Ticketmaster.ca, but prices have yet to be announced.

Their last local show was in 1990, when singer/keyboardist Christine McVie was still touring with the group. She stopped in 1994, rejoined two years later, then retired from the road in 1998. There were rumours that Sheryl Crow would stand in for McVie on this upcoming trek, but those have since been quashed by Fleetwood.

____________________________________________________________________

Here is Helen Metella's review of Fleetwood Mac's Dec. 2, 1990 gig at Northlands Coliseum:

So this is Christine McVie's last tour with Fleetwood Mac? What a shame, what a drag. Stevie Nicks' too? Good riddance.

In a consistently irksome and sub-standard performance, the fey, once vocally stunning and visually bewitching lead singer for the British-American supergroup walked through Sunday night's concert in an apathetic, disconnected daze.

Swaddled in what resembled adult-sized christening coats, the admittedly shy, 42-year-old Nicks repeatedly lifted the sides of her skirts so that her silhouette showed and swayed slightly, back to the crowd.

Quite a disappointing departure from the halcyon shows eight and ten years ago when she was crowned the most mesmerizing woman in rock for her dervish-like dances.

More distressing still, she offered dreary, sometimes flat renditions of such shimmering melodies as Rhiannon in a deep register designed to fudge the high notes.

Plagued by throat nodes in the past, perhaps Nicks' careful, unexciting singing form is due to the rigors of a long tour.

But what explains her deliberately and wordlessly padding off-stage through a side curtain after almost every tune only to slowly re-enter a few moments later, like some addled prima donna?

Luckily, Nicks' ridiculously outdated wood-nymph routine and her mystical vocals have never been the sum total of Fleetwood Mac's appeal.

Even with the gifted writer and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham gone - these past three years - from the band's best-known and most successful lineup, the group has meat on every one of its bones.

Keyboardist Christine McVie, an admirably fit and effervescent 46 year old shone on such signature tunes as Say You Love Me with her strong and shapely lead vocals. She also supplied the physical gusto so lacking from Nicks. When the spotlight found her on the front line, the mood of the over 14,000 fans immediately brightened, just as it grew audibly nervous when Nicks took a shaky solo with acoustic guitarist Billy Burnette on the fragile masterpiece Landslide.

Founding members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie formed a bruising duo and a solid foundation for the groove which new members Rick Vito and Burnette laid out from the opening medley.

For World Turning Fleetwood reinvented the obligatory drum solo as Ghana's Isaac Asante, playing congas and hardwood tree branches, duelled with the electronic screeches emanating from the drum pads strapped under Fleetwood's clothes.

As the rhythms grew progressively more tense, wilder, louder and closer together, the band's overwrought lighting system strafed the audience with strobe lights. It added up to nothing in the end, but it was adventurous and different while it lasted.

Ex-Bob Seeger band member Vito lit up his instrument with electrifying lead lines and dove easily into jazzy blues jams from the original Fleetwood Mac's repertoire. Both he and Burnette were also tremendous assets vocally, especially on such comparatively weak tunes as Love is Dangerous, from the current LP Behind The Mask.

But no matter how fine and versatile the band, it was hard to feel fulfilled by this event with the lead singer so wanting.

Sunday, February 03, 2013

Fleetwood Mac Rumours Re-Enters UK Top 100 at #3 | Irelands Top 100 at #12 | Netherlands Top 100 at #7

UK Top 100 Albums Chart - Feb 9, 2013
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours debuts at #3 in the UK.  The reissue is their highest UK chart peak in more than 20 years after 1990's Behind The Mask reached No. 1 in 1990.

# 3 (NEW)  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 35th Anniversary Edition

Ireland Top 100 Albums Chart - Week ending January 31, 2013
Rumours is new on the chart this week in Ireland as well re-entering at #12.  Greatest hits has been back on the chart a few weeks and moves into the Top 20 at #19.

# 12 (NEW)  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 35th Anniversary Edition
# 19 (33)   Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

The Netherlands Top 100 Albums Chart - February 2, 2013
Rumours is new on the charts in The Netherlands on the Dutch Charts entering in the Top 10 at #7.

# 7 (NEW) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Box

Belgium Top 100 Albums Chart - February 2, 2013
Rumours is new on the Top 100 Album Charts in Belgium at #72.

# 72 (NEW) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Box

Australia Top 50 Catalogue Charts - February 4, 2013
The Rumours reissue was just released on February 1st in Australia, so will likely appear on next weeks charts.  In the meantime "Greatest Hits" and "The Very Best Of" have been enjoying some renewed interest linguring around the Catalogue Charts for the last few weeks.  Also, new on the Top 40 DVD Chart is the re-entery of Fleetwood Mac's "The Dance".

# 14 (12) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of
# 21 (30) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

Top 40 Music DVD Chart

# 31 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Dance

USA Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart - Feb 2, 2013

# 156 (195) Greatest Hits, Fleetwood Mac

Second week for Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits back on Billboard's Top 200 Album Chart. Sales for the week ending January 20th = 2,754 up 12% from 2,465 units sold in the US the previous week in which the disc re-entered the chart at #195 on a 66% sales boost. Sales for the week prior to its re-entery were 1,482 units.  Sales for the last 3 weeks for this album alone were: 6,700.  Total US sales to day (Since Nov, 1991) = 4,614,926.

Sales and Rank:
2,754 - #156 Billboard Chart
2,465 - #195 Billboard Chart
1,482 - Not charting

Billboard Top 200 Catalog Albums Chart - Feb 2, 2013

# 31 (44) - Greatest Hits, Fleetwood Mac - 473 weeks on chart accumulated

On the Top 200 Catalogue Chart, Greatest Hits moves up 13 spots to #31 from #44 the previous week.

Greatest Hits has subsequently dropped out of the Top 200 Albums Chart on billboard for the February 9th issue... Fully expect the re-issue of "Rumours" to enter next weeks chart... Where it will re-enter is anyones guess.



Monday, October 26, 2020

STEVIE NICKS PLANS SOLO TOUR WHEN THE WORLD GETS BACK TO NORMAL


Stevie Nicks on Her New Concert Film, the ‘Crazy’ Resurgence of ‘Dreams’ and Staying in Touch With the Spirits of Prince and Tom Petty

In a wide-ranging Q&A, the singer discusses everything from a life-changing moment seeing the "Woodstock" movie at a drive-in to having her own new "24 Karat Gold: The Concert" film play at outdoor and indoor theaters.

By Chris Willman - Variety

Not that it ever was far from rock fans’ consciousness, but Stevie Nicks’ voice is suddenly a ubiquitous part of popular culture again, thanks to a viral video of a skateboarding man singing along to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” that has become the feel-good hit of a feel-bad fall season. Naturally, the snippet of it has made a hungry world ready again to consume more of “Dreams” than can fit in a TikTok video, which is why “Dreams” and the “Rumours” album have both returned to the top 10, 43 years later.

But if the resurgence has led you to want to hear not just “Dreams” but two hours and 10 minutes of unexpurgated Stevie, the universe has conspired to accommodate that. Sunday night, Nicks’ film, “24 Karat Gold: The Movie,” will be playing at theaters and drive-ins across the country. It’ll be followed Friday by the release of a full soundtrack on CD (as a Target exclusive), on vinyl (at Barnes & Noble) and for download, further capturing a 2017 show in Pittsburgh that found Nicks at what she considers her well-oiled performing peak. Its rendering of something that seems impossible now — an arena gig — really does feel like a dream.

Nicks got on the phone with Variety earlier this month, just as the “Dreams” phenomenon was starting to take off, to discuss the making of the new concert movie, a new studio single (“Show Them the Way”), her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year, feeling like she’s still in touch with Tom Petty and Prince, how the “Woodstock” film changed her life, hopes and fears about the coronavirus crisis, and the importance of suede boots on the ground.

VARIETY: One of the songs in this concert film is “Dreams.” As you know, there’s this whole TikTok video tie-in, and suddenly “Dreams” is on the chart again.

NICKS: From the skateboarder? I know. How crazy is that? My assistant showed it to me — he’s drinking his juice and just skateboarding along and just filming himself and singing “Dreams.” It’s so funny, and so great, because “Dreams” is a fun song to sing. I’m thrilled that people still love it, and that it does still make people happy. And who knows even why? But it does. But “Dreams” came out how many years ago? Like in 1975, right? [Editor’s note: early 1977.] My assistant just told me there’s a lot of young kids who don’t even know the song, but they like it, and its streaming is massive. It’s fantastic.

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Christine McVie believed in true love, but she also believed in Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie brought romantic optimism to Fleetwood Mac




Annie Zaleski - NPR
December 5, 2022

The song "Everywhere," a frothy pop hit found on Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night that's been covered by Vampire Weekend and Paramore, might be Christine McVie's most optimistic moment. As spine-tingling synths and undulating rhythms swirl around like glittery fairy dust, McVie, who died Nov. 30 at the age of 79 after a short illness, raves about a partner, alternating between wanting to shout about her new love and being left speechless by their beauty. "I want to be with you everywhere," she coos atop a slick of glacial harmonies. It's that extra word that makes a difference. She doesn't just want to be with someone, in general — she wants to be with them everywhere. The first points to making a connection; the second implies deeper pride and commitment and being all-in with your heart.

As a keyboardist, sometimes lead vocalist, and frequent principal songwriter for Fleetwood Mac from 1971's Future Games onward, McVie consistently embraced this type of deep, romantic optimism, comparing love to sunshine (1972's "Spare Me a Little of Your Love"), documenting flashes of unabashed flirting (1982's "Hold Me") and extolling the virtues of true love (1995's "I Do").

Such precision was a hallmark of this West Midlands-raised musician, whose father taught violin and grandfather played the organ at Westminster Abbey. Long before "Everywhere," McVie had been fond of stretching out words and syllables to emphasize poignant themes — as heard on 1975's slinky "Warm Ways," which amplifies "dream," "morning" and "light" to illuminate the coziness of sleeping by a beloved. McVie's busy, bluesy keyboard style, informed by piano lessons but also Fats Domino, Otis Spann and Freddie King, paired well with a soulful alto.

McVie's talent coalesced perhaps most strikingly on the tender piano ballad "Songbird," a highlight of Rumours. Heartfelt and gentle, the song describes the solace of being with someone whose love just feels right. "Songbird" was a piece dusted with magic: Written during a middle-of-the-night session, it was more like she channeled it from another dimension, as she once described to The Guardian. "I sang it from beginning to end: everything. I can't tell you quite how I felt; it was as if I'd been visited – it was a very spiritual thing."

It's a notable reminder that Fleetwood Mac's catalog isn't all bitter and beautiful breakup songs, though romantic tension will always be central to the band's appeal (and something of an albatross, too). On one hand, the band's complicated entanglements and tenuous relations led to creative genius, as with Rumours. More than 35 years after its release, the album remains an astonishing sales juggernaut, in no small part because of its nuanced depictions of stormy relationships. The songs function like conversations in a crowded room; Lindsey Buckingham tells one-time partner, Stevie Nicks, she can "go your own way" and "call it another lonely day," while Nicks in turn volleys back, "Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness."

On the other hand, Fleetwood Mac's narrative is still dominated by the push-and-pull between Buckingham and Nicks, even though the couple broke up in the mid-'70s. Despite the passage of time, their up-and-down relationship remains a subject of fascination, most recently when personal disagreements played out in the press after Buckingham was reportedly fired from the group in 2018.

Not that McVie was immune to the intra-band romantic tumult: Then named Christine Perfect, she married bassist John McVie in 1968 and joined Fleetwood Mac a few years later. The couple divorced in 1976, and their post-breakup years dovetailed with the band's rise to superstardom, which McVie acknowledged could be difficult. "Both Stevie and I, we were married to Fleetwood Mac," she told Guitar World in 1997, as quoted in the 2016 book Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters. "That was what we did and it was a harsh marriage." McVie did remarry for real — to Eddy Quintela, her co-writer on multiple songs from 1987 onward — but that marriage also eventually ended.

Despite the real-life romantic disappointments, McVie's music wasn't diaristic. Speaking to The Guardian earlier this year, she was ambiguous about her inspirations: "Most of my songs are based on truth and real people, but a lot of them are just fantasies, really." That perhaps explains why McVie's songs maintain so much optimism despite lyrics that often express uncertainty.

Her narrators often aren't sure where they stand in a relationship or put up with challenging behaviors: indifference, moodiness, and emotional distance. On Tusk's brooding "Brown Eyes," the protagonist reveals her desire for someone right away, in the first verse. Only later do doubts creep in about their long-term chances: "And are you just another liar?"

The main characters of two other Tusk highlights — the languid, twangy album-opener "Over & Over" and the rocker "Think About Me" — ask for clarity point-blank. The latter's narrator justifies the ask by pointing out how much leeway she gives the other person: "I don't hold you down / And maybe that's why you're around."

But McVie's songs saw that admitting vulnerability could also be a strength. Even if a relationship wasn't perfect, better days might still be around the corner. Her protagonists might be insecure, but they didn't come across as meek — as in 1975's "Over My Head," in which things aren't necessarily going well with a moody partner: "Sometimes I can't help but feel / That I'm wasting all of my time" — and they weren't afraid to assert themselves. On the piano-driven "Prove Your Love," she explicitly says: "If you want to please me, baby / Then don't act like a child." There's pragmatism at the heart of her quest for silver linings.

In interviews, McVie frequently downplayed or understated her approach to songwriting. "I'm a pretty basic love-song writer," she told Guitar World. "Pretty basic relationship writer. I'd be the last one to say it for myself, but I've been told that I have a way of saying the obvious in a non-obvious way." McVie knew her strengths and stuck to them. "I stayed with songs that are simple and unpretentious," she told the Los Angeles Times while promoting her second solo album, a 1984 self-titled affair. "That's what I do best."

That consistency grounded Fleetwood Mac as the band's music evolved from snaky blues jams to polished pop-rock and into more experimental territory, before settling into an adult contemporary groove. McVie's melodies stood out like polished gems sifted out of an archaeological dig; early compositions like the pastoral folk of "Show Me a Smile" or the barnstorming boogie "Just Crazy Love" gave way to sleeker, polished fare on the Buckingham-less 1990 LP Behind the Mask and Nicks-free 1995 album Time. The former's title track, written by McVie, is especially haunting in the way it calls someone out for their two-facedness and says in no uncertain terms there are no second chances.

"We all just complement each other, because we're such different writers," McVie told me in 2017, in reference to Fleetwood Mac. "My contribution is the romance and the warmth. The love songs."

McVie only released three solo albums in her career (though earlier this year she released a compilation, Songbird, which featured two unreleased solo songs) and ended up taking a 16-year break from Fleetwood Mac, between 1998 and 2014. The time away rekindled McVie's enthusiasm for music. Decades after joining Fleetwood Mac, she never lost the romantic notion of being in a band. "Carnival Begin," recorded for her joint 2017 album with Lindsey Buckingham, details her feelings about jumping back into the chaos of touring and the Fleetwood Mac machine: "I want it all / All the sparkling things / A new merry go round."

McVie believed in true love, but she also believed in Fleetwood Mac. Talking to Rolling Stone in 1997, she shared one potential inspiration she thought of while conjuring "Songbird": "I think I just was thinking of all the band members – 'God, wouldn't it be nice just to be happy?' " That insight brings new meaning to one of the most touching lines on "Songbird": "I wish you all the love in the world / But most of all, I wish it from myself."

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Returning to her 2017 live shows proved to be a godsend for Stevie Nicks


Stevie Nicks Can’t Wait for the Magic to Come Back

Nicks discusses her ’24 Karat Gold Concert Film’ and returning to live shows in new interview


By Brittany Spanos - Rollingstone
Photo: Randee St Nicholas

In another life, Stevie Nicks would have been a music-film editor. “I think I’m really good at it,” she says one Friday evening, calling from her home in Los Angeles. Her canine companion Lily is begging for her attention with a toy as Nicks reflects on her second life. “I can only say this about a few things.”

She’s had plenty of experience, working closely with director Joe Thomas on concert films for Fleetwood Mac (2004’s Live in Boston), her late friend Tom Petty (2006’s Live From Gainesville), and most recently, Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold Concert Film. Recorded during her 2017 tour stops in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, the film is getting a special release this month and being screened at select drive-ins, theaters, and exhibition spaces on October 21st through 25th. The set lists featured classic solo and Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac songs along with tracks off her 2014 album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault. For the music fans desperately missing live shows in the time of Covid-19, the film perfectly encapsulates the tambourine-banging, shawl-twirling, story-spinning magic that only Nicks can deliver.

Putting the project together with Thomas became one of two pandemic projects for the rock goddess (the other being her new song “Show Them the Way”). She flew out to Chicago in May with her assistant on a “full-on, fogged-out, Covid-free private plane” and lived in a house on a golf course that no one had been in since before lockdown had begun. Nicks would go to Thomas’ studio, masked up alongside everyone else (“I felt imprisoned by the mask, but I love the mask — I felt safe”), and got to work, diligently assessing the footage captured by all 12 cameras from shows in the two cities.

“I’m really the second editor,” she says of her uncredited job. “The fact is that if I don’t like a shot, it’s not going in.” She learned, as she had in past editing-room experiences, that men see women differently.



Tuesday, May 11, 2010

STEVIE NICKS BOOKS TAHOE GIG IN AUGUST

Lake Tahoe News

Stevie Nicks, the legendary American singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and an extensive solo career, which collectively have produced more than 40 Top 50 hits and has sold nearly 120 million albums, is set to hit the stage for the first time ever at Harveys Outdoor Arena in Lake Tahoe on Aug. 6 at 8pm.

Tickets for the Stateline show go on sale May 22 at 10am.

The voice and songwriting talent of Nicks, as a solo artist and as a member of Fleetwood Mac, is truly the stuff of legend. Indisputably, one of the most successful female artists in rock history, she is noteworthy for an extraordinary career that includes multiple Grammy awards, numerous Gold and Platinum awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

After joining Fleetwood Mac in 1975, Nicks and her band released an eponymous collection of recordings that went straight to No. 1. The follow-up album, Rumours (1977), became a record-setting hit. It spent more than 31 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200; and earned the group a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. Nicks’ song “Dreams,” inspired by the group’s dissolving relationships, was the band’s first No. 1 single.

 In between releasing albums with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks recorded her first solo album in 1981, Bella Donna, which went on to sell over 5 million copies. Stevie continued on at a prodigious rate, recording 1982’s Mirage with Fleetwood Mac and her second solo effort, The Wild Heart, in 1983. Throughout the next decade, she continued to tour and turn out independent records as well as albums with Fleetwood Mac, including the solo effort, The Other Side of the Mirror (1989), Behind the Mask with Fleetwood Mac (1990), and a solo compilation, Timespace (1991).


In 1997, Fleetwood Mac reunited and released The Dance. The related tour earned them $36 million. Nicks also put out a boxed set dubbed Enchanted, and added two songs to the soundtrack for Practical Magic (1998). That same year, Fleetwood Mac was given one of the greatest honors in the world of rock: induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 


 Her last solo album of original material, Trouble in Shangri-La, earned her a Grammy nomination and she just performed over 80 dates in 2009 with Fleetwood Mac. Last year she also released an amazing live DVD & CD compilation entitled, Live In Chicago.

Tickets are $49.50, $89.50, $159.50 plus applicable service charges.

Tickets available at all Ticketmaster locations and online at www.apeconcerts.com and www.ticketmaster.com.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Fleetwood Mac "Man of the World" Live in Perth, Australia August 11, 2019

Watch Fleetwood Mac Play ‘Man of the World’ for First Time in 50 Years
Band also brings out 1975 deep cut “Blue Letter,” which they hadn’t played since 1990

By ANDY GREENE
Rollingstone

Fleetwood Mac brought their world tour down to Australia for a month-long run of shows late last week, and during the second concert at the RAC Arena in Perth Sunday they expanded the setlist by playing the Peter Green-era classic “Man of the World” for the first time since 1969. Check out fan-shot video of the song right here. “We’re going to debut this song now which was one of [Green’s] great songs,” Neil Finn told the crowd before they did it. “It’s an honor and a privilege for me to play it for you.”


The show also featured the Split Enz song “I Got You,” which was in the setlist when the tour began in October but vanished after just eleven shows. Neil Finn is native to New Zealand and the 1979 song hit Number One there in addition to Australia, so bringing it back into the set was a no-brainer. More surprising was the return of “Blue Letter” from the 1975 Fleetwood Mac LP, which the band hadn’t played since the Behind The Mask tour in 1990.

Before the tour began, Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone that she wanted to play songs they hadn’t touched in a long time, including ones from the Peter Green period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. “There are 10 hits we have to do,” she said. “That leaves another 13 songs if you want to do a three-hour show. Then you crochet them all together and you make a great sequence and you have something that nobody has seen before except all the things they want to see are there. At rehearsal, we’re going to put up a board of 60 songs. Then we start with number one and we go through and we play everything. Slowly you start taking songs off and you start to see your set come together.”

Fleetwood Mac’s Australia/New Zealand leg ends September 21st with a show at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin. They then return to North America in late October to make up for seven shows they postponed earlier this year when Stevie Nicks came down with the flu.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

FLEETWOOD MAC PRODUCER PASSES AWAY

Greg Ladanyi, producer/engineer of Fleetwood Mac's 1988 Greatest Hits collection and 1990's Behind The Mask has passed away at the age of 57.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Maple Jam Music Group President, Greg Ladanyi, today, at the age of 57. Ladanyi sustained severe head trauma following an on-stage accident last Friday in the Greek Republic of Cyprus. Ladanyi was immediately rushed to a local hospital where he remained in critical condition over the weekend. He was in Cyprus touring with Maple Jam Music artist, Anna Vissi.


(Pictured with Mick Fleetwood and Billy Burnette during the recording of Behind The Mask)

Saturday, August 29, 2009

(INTERVIEW) LIZA JANE Former Background Singer for Stevie and Fleetwood Mac

LIZA JANE Interview by

Liza Jane was one of the background singers on Stevie's "Whole Lotta Trouble" tour, the "Street Angel" tour along with the Fleetwood Mac's "Behind The Mask" tour. Liza Jane also appeared with Stevie on Jay Leno and David Letterman when Stevie performed "Blue Denim". She can also be seen in the "Blue Denim" video on Stevie's "Crystal Visions" DVD.

This is an excerpt taken from a much longer interview that you can find on the Country Stars Central website.

(CSC) 11. What was it like working with Clint Black on his nationwide tour, and being able to perform in the show?

(Liza Jane)
The first thing I enjoyed from working with Clint was I could sing as loud as I wanted and I could sing as twangy as I wanted. The louder and twangier I got the more he liked it. (Laughs) I could just let go and completely be the country girl that I am. I loved it! It was so much fun.

I remember every night in that show it would start out and the stage would be dark. There’d be like a thunderstorm with lightning. The sound effects would start and I’d stand in my position and it was like big boulder rocks set the stage. I’d stand there as all the rumbling and thunder was going on before the lights came up and we started singing. I’d think “Dear God thank you so much for this awesome musical experience.” It was so much fun.

Every night when we’d do “Killin’ Time” there was a part in the song where it’s just singing with the audience, there are no instruments. I got to sing the lead vocal on that part. I would just blow it out. It was so satisfying. He let me be who I am musically.

Now when I sang with Stevie she thought I made her show sound like Wynonna Judd! (Laughs) She didn’t really like it that I sang like that. I had to kind of tone myself down and be more homogenous to blend in with her background singers but with Clint I could just be out there.

Actually, I had just done a Stevie tour and then I went back and did a Clint Black tour. Then I went back and did another Stevie tour and after that Stevie came off the stage and said, “Well that just sounds like the Stevie Nicks/Wynonna Judd show.” So I had to go to a different place musically. Clint was really fun to sing with. I don’t know if a lot of people know this about Clint but he’s funny. He’s really, really funny. He likes practical jokes. He likes to imitate you. He likes to study people and imitate them. He’s just really fun to tour with.


(CSC) 12. Tell us about the job that you held at a famous clothing retailer which later introduced you to Stevie Nicks!

(Liza Jane)
When I first came to Los Angeles I had a recording contract on DOT records. The band stayed in college because they didn’t want to get drafted. So I came out here by myself. We had a couple of songs that were in the top ten back in Ohio but nothing really happened. Like I said, a girl’s got to eat so I found a job at this clothing store that I had never heard of before; didn’t know anything about it. Just saw the ad in the paper and went and got this job. It was where all the stars shop. Everyday in that store, there was two or three celebs. It’s called Maxfields.

One day you may be helping Olivia Newton John or Chicago, and then you’re helping Don Henley, Glenn Frey, or Elton John and the day after that it’s Rod Stewart and Barbara Streisand. It was really a good experience for me. It taught me how to be calm in front of all those people for one thing. That’s how I met Linda Ronstadt and got to sing all those years with her.

That’s also how I met Stevie because one day we got a call in the store that Stevie Nicks was doing a photo session and she needed some clothes. Well everybody was busy and I said “I’ll do it; I’ll go take her some clothes.” So I loaded up my car that night and brought several thousands dollars worth of clothes to her. I got there and that was back in the day when Stevie was notoriously late for everything. I think I sat there for about two hours before she finally got there by myself with the photographer. I set up all the clothes. She walked in and we looked at each other and just started talking like we’d known each other all our lives. We never looked at the clothes. She had had some kind of upset with her makeup artist and she didn’t have a one any longer so I said “I can do your makeup. I went to beauty school.” I ended up doing her makeup and it was for her “Bella Donna” album cover. We just became best pals ever since. I think that was back in maybe 1980 or so.


(CSC) 13. You’ve worked with Stevie professionally for many years on solo tours and with the band (Fleetwood Mac). What’s that experience been like for you? Any highlights?

(Liza Jane)
Oh my, I don’t even know where to begin with that. There’s nothing like standing on stage in Texas in the summer and singing “Edge of Seventeen.” I remember doing that and having all the sweat sloshing around in the bottom of my stage boots. It’s pretty amazing. It’s an amazing thing to get to sing with somebody like that, that’s a Rock and Roll icon, and of course she’s my best pal. We sit around in our UGG boots and jammies just watching old movies and crying and stuff like that. It’s one of the blessed experiences in my life. It’s really fun to sing “Edge of Seventeen” and “Gold Dust Woman.” That’s my favorite Stevie song.

The times that I’ve been on tour with her, singing with her, I’m the one that plays the vibraslap on “Gold Dust Woman.” There are a couple of songs that build up to frenzy and you’re on stage for a very long time doing one song and we background singers have our own little choreography. I always felt like I was going to keel over and die, if the song didn’t end then because it would go on forever and ever!

Of course in Stevie’s live solo show it really went on forever because that’s when Stevie walked back and forth across the stage and picked up gifts, teddy bears, and flowers from her fans. It just goes on forever and there would end up being a big huge road case back in the hallway. For all the stuffed animals that people give her, she puts them in a road case and two or three times a year she goes to the Walter Reed Children’s Hospital to give them to all the little kids there. I think that is really sweet and admirable of Stevie to do that!


(CSC) 14. With each of your crazy schedules, are you able to keep in touch with each other?

(Liza Jane)
We do keep in touch. We always make it a point of spending New Years Eve together. We’ve done that for a long, long time. We know if we’re not going to see each other all year that we’re at least going to see each other for New Years Eve. We try to take vacations together too. Stevie does a lot of girl vacations where she’ll take four or five of her girlfriends somewhere wonderful. I’m blessed that she always invites me to do that. We have a great time because it’s downtime. No work, just having fun. Hanging out, talking girl talk. We went to Cabo San Lucas in July. So when Stevie and I went to Cabo I took my Tony Furtado CD’s and my Sheila Chandra CD’s and put them on my iPod. Sheila is this Hindu/pop singer from India. Then I took a whole season of “The Flight of the Concord” on DVD. Stevie was not familiar with Tony or Sheila or “Flight of the Concord” and every day at the pool I’d play Tony Furtado and Sheila Chandra. We’d sing along and chant and Tony kind of sounds like Lindsey Buckingham. (Laughs) We’d always make jokes that he could be the new Lindsey. You’d love him. He’s fantastic! Then every night we would watch two or three episodes of “Flight of the Concord” and laugh ourselves silly.

Full interview can be found on the Country Stars Central Website