In 1997, during a visit to London, I saw The Dance, a VH1 concert that Fleetwood Mac had been persuaded into reforming for; Lindsey Buckingham had been out of the band for a decade by then, with the exception of an appearance at, erm, Bill Clinton’s inaugural ball in 1993 (he’d used Don’t Stop as his campaign song). I was instantly smitten by such perfectly formed songs – I also developed quite the crush on Lindsey, I freely admit. More than that, I was utterly entranced by Stevie’s voice and that whole lace-clad ethereal gypsy persona (much copied, stand up Florence, Courtney Love (love this cover), and many more). She threw him some serious shade, as they sang to each other:

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain.

I’d never seen anything like it, that charged connection between two singers, and his incredible, intuitive guitar playing, without a pick, which was another first for my eyes. I knew very little about them, but learned fast, via the BBC’s brilliant Rock Family Trees documentary series. I may have a tendency toward sonic oddities, but I love, just absolutely love, impeccably sophisticated pop music, which no doubt comes from being raised on Motown and the Beatles/Stones. I never bought into the idea that Fleetwood Mac were bland soft rock. They are not The Eagles. I think that attitude toward them came from post-Peter Green snobbery, based around the opinion that a blues band is more authentic and should be more respected than a band who ditches that style entirely and brings the hippy Californians in so they can become huge-selling. The Fleetwood Mac of the late 60s and early 70s is dramatically different in tone from the Buckingham/Nicks version and I think English blues fans, my parents included, felt they had lost something. To me, they had moved forward, with only the band name remaining the same. Peter Green’s FM are great, but the mid-70s output is what I fell for. I also only recently discovered the album that got the Yanks into the band, the superb Buckingham Nicks, which has never been reissued or remastered on any format since it came out in 1973.

Everyone knows the tales – addiction, rehab, affairs, divorces, rancour, break-ups; they embodied that 70s private jet, separate limos, bowls of coke excess – and to an extent that lived experience is part of the attraction if you see them live. You’re paying to see Stevie and Lindsay, who met in high school and were together for almost a decade, a lifetime ago, give each other the side-eye and bicker. You’re there to witness that attraction between them that will never end. You get the feeling neither is still entirely comfortable with having to spend their professional lives together, playing out songs from their break-up every night on stage, like a lifelong version of The Mousetrap, but they accept they are destined to stand on stage together, holding hands, until someone drops. Neither seems to be easy to get on with either. Lest we forget, in 1987, with a tour for their hugely well received comeback album Tango In The Night already booked, Lindsey airily announced at a band meeting that he had had enough and was leaving. Stevie chased him out of his own house, pinned him to a car bonnet and tried to strangle him. These rock tales are part of the attraction, but there is also clearly genuine affection between them, if a little sadness on her part. By virtue of biology, men get to move on in ways women can’t, inhibited by time. In his 50s Lindsey (now 65) met a blonde woman just over half his age and got married, then had a family; Stevie has said she knew it was finally over when his first child was born. A woman is not afforded that same luxury. Stevie married her best friend’s husband in the early 80s, a few months after losing her (cancer grief makes people do odd things), annulling the marriage a few months later, but she seems not to have had a significant relationship since, aside from one in the 90s with a younger non-famous man. It fell apart because, she said, they couldn’t go anywhere because of her fame. I get the sense she never got over Lindsey, that he is her great lost love. Incidentally, how weird must it be for his wife to see him holding his ex’s hand, singing to her every night? He’s worked through it all – it might be easier when love is found again – and you can tell he’s spent a long time in therapy just from the way he talks about full circles and patterns, that slightly loopy Esalen-style psychobabble. That story, that dynamic, is how you get drawn in, true enough, but if the music was average your attention couldn’t possibly justify the investment. It’s those songs; they are for the ages. I’d walk a million miles to hear their masterpiece Landslide, which has taken on such a poignant ache now the duo are approaching 70….

I took my love and took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too

There is also one, very new, X factor in this soapy drama: the return of Christine McVie (the oldest, at 71). If Lindsey’s tenure out of the band had ground them to a halt between 1987 and 1997 (they toured without him after his Tango tantrum but it was half-hearted), Christine’s departure in 1998 didn’t change the band’s plans. They toured without her because they had the momentum, even though it wasn’t the same and led to the loss of many great songs from the setlist (Say You Love Me, Everywhere, Little Lies, Songbird, You Make Loving Fun). She was happy and had retired to the Kent countryside; nobody expected her to return to the band, who, remember, have weathered the departures of Spinal Tap levels of members. Peter Green took too much acid, went mad and left. Jeremy Spencer got plucked off the street in LA by a religious cult and went off down his own path (still touring and making music at least). Danny Kirwan’s alcoholism got him fired. Bob Weston was fired for having an affair with Mick’s wife. And so on. So they are used to moving forward when a member has had their day. But it felt different with Christine. She’s always been the heart of the band, a hugely gifted songwriter and keyboardist, with a flawless voice, and her returned presence alone seems to just knit everything together. Stevie is visibly happier since she returned, following a one-off 2012 appearance at the O2 that last year turned into full un-retirement (she’s older than Bowie. It’s never too late. I’m just saying). Everyone seems thrilled she is back; they’re genuinely having a grand old time doing what they were born to do. The vibe on stage is warm and filled with energy. Mick and John in particularly are quite a pair of old boys, travelling musicians, on the road for nearly 50 years together. It’s what they do, it’s who they are. It’s life, living in hotels, always on the move, the adrenalin ups and managed downs (not with mountains of coke, these days, fortunately).

I’d never seen them live before; I’d been tempted on many occasions in the last decade but somehow never got round to it, perhaps it never felt right. I’m glad now that I didn’t see them without Christine – those five people are special, you can’t replicate that chemistry with just the four. For a while there I thought I might not see them ever, what with John McVie’s cancer diagnosis last year. He was looking a little grey around the gills (he’s 69) and only a few weeks ago talked about how he’s not got much more touring left in him, which is understandable. His musical partner and best friend Mick Fleetwood (68 and behaves like a teenager) is going to tour until he drops dead on stage, of that I am quite certain. His energy levels put us all to shame; he’s a funny, eccentric man who would have fitted in quite nicely to a Bonzo Dog Doo Dah line-up. He once played a fish in Star Trek: TNG you know. Anyway, my excitement level for this gig was sky high, as I’d loved this band for nearly two decades. I think perhaps the moment I realised they were for me back in 1997 was this crazy brilliant solo version of Big Love, where Lindsey plays both rhythm and lead parts at the same time; it’s a remarkable piece of work, I still have no idea how he does it. People don’t play guitar like him anymore, the way he does it, with all the solos and O-faces (seeing Santana next month, mind you, am expecting a two-hour-long solo). I wasn’t certain if they played it live, and given that the version from The Dance is nearly two decades old, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d chosen to play it a bit safer (with full band, like the original). So, I was utterly thrilled to hear the acoustic version exactly like I remembered it, now that was a serious highlight.

The big tunes kept coming, breathlessly, with the three singles from Tango In The Night – Big Love, Everywhere, Little Lies – getting huge responses. As many fans present were in their 40s and grew up hearing those late 80s singles as remember Rumours from the 70s. The only lengthy interludes, aside from a ridiculous drum solo (is there any other kind?), were a pair of songs back-to-back that saw them play around beautifully outside of their comfort zones as four-minute pop song purveyors. I’m So Afraid had such prog majesty it bordered on Pink Floyd-esque. But my highlight was a dramatic, lengthy, epic version of Gold Dust Woman, with Stevie doing her twirling mystical thing and the band getting a real head of steam on.

Oh, Stevie Nicks (the youngest of the five at 67). As 70s icons go – Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell – she is in their exalted company, easily. Her voice has no high range these days but she’s developed this gorgeous, deep, gravelly, powerful tone that has no trouble at all delivering these songs. She’s just so likeable, too; she exudes a kind of maternal kindness. And to have her girl Chris back in the band, it’s just added so much to the dynamic, musically and personally (interesting section in there about how they both felt unable to have families, like the men did). Stevie, incredibly, was only accepted into the band in the first place because Mick wanted her boyfriend in to play guitar and they were a package deal. They had no idea what they had; what a singer/songwriter she is, well able to write beyond the band too – her 1981 solo album Belladonna is superb (there’s no beating Edge Of Seventeen, a classic, or Leather and Lace, a Don Henley duet). She told a long, entertaining story before Gypsy – she probably tells the same one every night but I don’t care – about how she and Lindsey supported some of the big bands in San Francisco in the late 60s (Hendrix, Santana, Janis, who she is not a million miles away from, a pop version if you like). Her day job, as a waitress, supported them both while they toiled away, waiting to be discovered. There was a clothing store in the Bay Area, called The Velvet Underground (said without irony; how many minds but mine in the O2 wandered to think of the band?), which sold hippy clothes to the local rock stars, like Janis and Grace Slick. Stevie would go in and know she couldn’t afford anything, but dreamed of being able to buy something without looking at the price tag, which she went back and did only a few years later. Like most stories told by people in therapy/recovery she makes it a paean to not giving in, believing in yourself and following your heart/dreams and all that kind of West coast guff. Gypsy’s opening lyric, of course, runs:

So I'm back, to the velvet underground
Back to the floor, that I love
To a room with some lace and paper flowers
Back to the gypsy that I was
To the gypsy... that I was
And it all comes down to you
Well, you know that it does

I enjoyed the story, it was well told, and the song itself has a beautiful simplicity to it, which is not something you could accuse this band of too much. Their Rumours follow-up, the sprawling but not unlistenable double album Tusk, cost over $1m to make and Lindsey was so out of it, and being an unbearable control freak, he thought it sensible to hire a 112-piece marching band for the title track. Fleetwood Mac are why punk had to happen.

Anyway, regardless of their crowded and complex history, and disparate personalities, all given equal front-time, when they are on stage they click into that rhythm that all great bands have, and everything just works like magic. You get exactly what you want, without that predictability ever being a bad thing; this was their 95th gig of the tour and it still felt fresh as gig 1. You sing and do embarrassing white person dancing and everyone is just so happy. What more could anyone ever want from a gig? I hope I get the chance to see them many more times.


The Chain
You Make Loving Fun
Dreams
Second Hand News
Rhiannon
Everywhere
I Know I'm Not Wrong
Tusk
Sisters of the Moon
Say You Love Me

(Acoustic Set)
Big Love (Lindsey solo)
Landslide
Never Going Back Again

Over My Head

Gypsy
Little Lies
Gold Dust Woman
I'm So Afraid
Go Your Own Way

Encore:
World Turning
Don't Stop
Silver Springs

Encore 2:
Songbird (Christine solo at piano)

Tags: Fleetwood Mac, Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks