Gig Review: Fleetwood Mac, Mt Smart, Auckland, 21 November 2015

The wind swirled and the rain fell relentlessly at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland last Saturday night. But it didn't really matter too much, as the age-defying Fleetwood Mac thrilled the near 40,000 in attendance with the band's 119th show of 2015.

Even one or two serious production issues along the way – intermittent big screen failures being an obvious one – couldn't dampen the spirits as the band reeled off one big hit after another over the course of nearly two and a half hours.

 

The bulk of those hits came from the band’s trilogy of late Seventies albums, with Rumours dominating the set-list throughout; after opening with 'The Chain', the concert was four songs old before we strayed from the Rumours path (with 'Rhiannon' off the eponymous 1975 effort). The "regular" set peaked and closed with 'Go Your Own Way', while the four-song encore included 'Don't Stop', before the gig closed with Christine McVie's 'Songbird' … and to think I was fretting a little beforehand that Rumours might perhaps be overlooked.

In between, we got the best of the rest, including 'Everywhere', 'Tusk', 'Sara', 'Little Lies', and a terrific take on 'Big Love', which was testimony to the genius of Lindsey Buckingham, and one of the night’s highlights.

Each member of the group took a moment to shine individually, Stevie Nicks in particular lapping up the adulation with ‘Landslide’ (gratuitously dedicated to the All Blacks), and the pure magic that is ‘Gold Dust Woman’, which was none the worse, and quite probably all the more dramatic, for arriving amid one of the night’s heaviest downpours.

Mick Fleetwood surpassed himself during the encore, with the long-time live favourite ‘World Turning’ including his obligatory lengthy drum solo, and before we knew it, after the ‘Songbird’ torch moment, the band was gone, having covered some 20-plus favourites.

 

Early Doors: Calm before the Storm

Grump time: Some of the production (big screen/sound) was poor, and I’m not sure how much of that can be attributed to the quickly deteriorating weather conditions. The support set of (Australian brother/sister duo/band) Angus and Julia Stone was also not without issues, in much calmer conditions.

Grump time 2: Don’t sing loudly in my ear. No matter how much you believe you’re Stevie Nicks “drowning in the sea of love”, you’re actually not. You’re annoying and you have a poor grasp of the words. I paid money to listen to Stevie, not your lame fog-horn attempts to replicate her. She’s a boho-goddess with velvet tones, and you’re the exact opposite of that. Okay. Got that? Ta.

Otherwise, all things considered, Fleetwood Mac at Mt Smart was pretty special, and I’m pleased I made the effort – which was, just quietly, considerable.

Classic Album Review: Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1977)

So much has been written about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours over the years, it feels almost redundant adding my own two cents worth here. But I’m revisiting the album at present, because in a couple of days I’ll be amongst a heaving throng of thousands at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium, watching Fleetwood Mac perform the second of three (2015) concerts in New Zealand … the band’s ‘On With The Show’ tour. I’m quite excited about that, and right now, Rumours seems like the most natural thing in the world to be listening to.

Unlike most of the rest of the world’s music obsessives, I’ve never seen Fleetwood Mac live before. And I’m breaking some rules to get there. I usually get pretty hung up on the idea of seeing bands well after their prime. Hung up, as in precious and anal. I’ve blogged about that before. About my refusal to attend gigs based purely on a sense of nostalgia.

With Fleetwood Mac though, it feels different. It feels like I’ve got nothing to lose by seeing them at this stage of their career, well after their peak years. I guess that’s mainly because my relationship with Fleetwood Mac has always been based on a large helping of nostalgia. And because Rumours itself represents a comforting feeling of warmth and familiarity, carried forward from my childhood. You see, my Mum had this album when I was growing up. And Fleetwood Mac represent her generation, not mine. I’m going not because the band is precious to me, but because I’ll probably never get another chance to honour that formative (very early) period of my life in quite the same way.



My older sister and I thrashed Rumours while both in our early teens. She was probably a much bigger Fleetwood Mac fan than I was at the time, but I’m quite sure I adored Stevie Nicks every bit as much as she did … even if it was for a different reason.

 

Teenage Kicks/Stevie Nicks

More than that, as much as I’ve always loved Rumours, I’ve never been a massive fan of Fleetwood Mac in a widescreen sense. It was Rumours or bust, Rumours or nothing. If you can appreciate the difference. I’m a Rumours fan, Fleetwood Mac is merely the vehicle to deliver it. Mac albums like Tusk (1979), or Mirage (1982), say, I couldn’t care less about … but Rumours is special.

Fleetwood Mac and Rumours always felt like a guilty pleasure for me. Not a love I’d share openly with too many people. It wasn’t punk, “new wave”, alternative, or fresh enough to be considered a band I’d admit to liking. The band was a commercial radio staple. They were everywhere. It was mainstream, and beyond saturation point. So I kept it close, and it took years for me to be honest with anyone about just how much I love the huge-selling Rumours.

Rumours is an album with a little bit of everything.

The back story; two sets of couples, one British, one American, one recently divorced, and the other going through a process of breaking up while the album was being made. And the odd man out, a drummer trying desperately to hold it all together. You’ve heard it all before, or at the very least, you’ve read about it all before. And there was an undeniable chemistry there. Like some sort of demented unwashed Transatlantic rock version of Abba (plus one) gone badly wrong.

And what about those songs?

Beautiful songs about fading and failed relationships. Songs about intimacy and infidelity. Songs about hope. Songs about despair. Songs about trying to hold it all together. Even the odd song about nothing very much at all really.

Musically the album is a hybrid of styles; from straight-up pop, to ballads, to hippy folkie stuff, to hard driving rock. It had singles that charted, and album tracks that became iconic simply because they were epic album tracks off Rumours.

Fleetwood Mac had a few different incarnations over the years, and as such the band will mean different things to different people (see the Peter Green or Bob Welch years), but the five individuals who made Rumours represent the ultimate in Fleetwood Mac line-ups … the perfect core. And it’s the line-up I’ll see in Auckland.

I do hope they remember to play something from Rumours.