Sunday, September 29, 2013

Live Review - Fleetwood Mac, London O2 Arena (25th Sept 2013)



Amongst the barrage of glowing tweets about the show, I noticed a tweet from Jeremy Clarkson, who was also there that night, complaining something along the lines of “Since when did Fleetwood Mac become a Lindsey Buckingham tribute band?”. You have to wonder what he was expecting. Christine McVie leaving the band in the late 90's has, in effect, reduced their repertoire rather considerably. It knocks out, “Songbird”, “Little Lies”, and “Everywhere”, to name a handful; a lot of their softer AOR moments actually. Stevie Nicks, although a vital component to their on-stage presentation, a crucial foil for Lindsey, and responsible for some key moments in their back catalogue, doesn't play an instrument (tambourine excepted) on-stage. This leaves Lindsey Buckingham, like it or not, as the key musical driving force for the show. In fact, he's the only member of the Mac who's on-stage for every song of their almost three hour show, and boy, is he driven. I saw another reviewer describe him as essentially battling with his guitar on-stage. This is an apt description. At one point, he appeared to be physically beating the strings, both arms flailing.

Opening with “Second Hand News” set the tone for the night, as if to say, “we're going to play a lot of songs for the casual fans, but don't expect expect some sanitised, compromised version of the Mac”. The way Buckingham spat out the repeated refrain of “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” in between the chorus lines made it clear he meant business. The show opened with a Rumours trio in fact, with “The Chain” and “Dreams” following on. Not many bands can unleash a trio like that to open a show.

The bulk of the show seemed to be split into sections. After the opening Rumours section and a crowd-pleasing “Rhiannon”, came four in a row from Tusk, the uncompromising, schizophrenic follow up to Rumours; the title track, in particular, having an incredible ferocity that made you take notice. Later on, there's an acoustic section, a couple in a row from Mirage; you get the idea.

The band seem quite keen on providing context to their work. Before the Tusk section, Lindsey gives a speech about their decision not to keep repeating the same formula, and expressing confidence that the passage of time has proved them right; I would certainly agree with that. Before “Landslide”, one of the most beautiful moments in their catalogue, Stevie Nicks takes time to acknowledge the presence of founder-member Peter Green in the audience that night, and the considerable debt she owes to him.

They seem keenly aware of their chequered, complex history, and seem intent on playing up to it. I'd read that Stevie Nicks said to Lindsey Buckingham that they needed to walk on-stage hand-in-hand, and they had to mean it. At one moment in the set, they even embrace. It's obviously slightly contrived and reinforces the soap-opera image of the band; it's essentially playing out before your eyes, but you have to wonder how a now happily married Buckingham feels as, the obviously pretty bonkers, Nicks starts talking about their previous “relationship” in front of thousands of people every night.

Still, the band are on incendiary form. It's worth restating that it really was Buckingham's show. He is just “on it” all night. One of the highlights comes when he plays a solo acoustic “Big Love”, again taking time to contextualise what the song means to him; the intensity builds and builds, and he growls and grunts like a madman towards the end of the track. He brings such a raw edge that keeps them firmly on the right side of credible. Nicks appears to have lost a bit of her vocal range, but none of her charisma. It's an incredible sight to see her kick the air, and pose around the stage in that inscrutable way she does. She's a little hard to take seriously sometimes, especially when she starts talking about how the audience are like dream-catchers, and the like, but who needs boring rock stars? Mick Fleetwood himself appears to have lost none of his drive and love for the band, also taking the time to give a speech at the very end of the show. “The Chain” aside, right-hand man John McVie gets very few “moments”, but a solid force on-stage and, of course, is literally the Mac in Fleetwood Mac.

I'm particularly impressed at the balance they've struck between pleasing the casual Rumours crowd and keeping the show edgy and interesting. The final encore is particularly brave, pulling out the stunning b-side “Silver Springs”, and the beautifully appropriate “Say Goodbye” from their underrated last album Say You Will.

Mac play the same set every night, a concept which I'm not that keen on; on the pros side though it means that if you can only make it to one show, you get the same as everyone else, and also, they're incredibly tight. The downside is that it can seem like the band are going through the motions a little; a feeling I had when I saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (incidentally a band Stevie Nicks was desperate to join at one point!) last year. Still, I didn't get that feeling with the Mac. They played like they meant it. However, we did get a genuinely special moment in the set, when Christine McVie joined them on-stage for the first time since the late-90's. It was all too brief really; they simply played “Don't Stop” together, but you couldn't help but feel privileged to witness the Rumours line-up together again, even if just for a few minutes. She was due to appear a couple of nights later, but that was going to be it. We'll see if she changes her mind, but I was rather glad I was there. I wonder if it even melted Clarkson's heart...

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