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Fleetwood Mac, Wembley Stadium, Times UK
WHO goes to Fleetwood Mac concerts nowadays? Coachfuls of ordinary people, it seems. A more pertinent question is: who exactly plays at Fleetwood Mac concerts nowadays? One of those same coaches could be filled with personnel who used to be in the band.
This lone fact makes seeing Fleetwood Mac these days a stimulating experience. The group's current members span no fewer than three musical generations, so when Billy Burnette, one of two recent recruits, announced ''a blast from the past'', he was referring not to his past but to that of the time-worn rhythm section pair Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the band's two surviving founders.
Fleetwood was keen to get himself noticed. The triplicate video screens revealed a head scruffily covered in hair, apart from a space on top and in the middle, out of which stared a pair of zanily unblinking eyeballs. When the moment for his statutory drum solo came round, a moment which lasted a good (or ghastly) 15 minutes, he livened up proceedings by mixing in some crazy vocal rantings, as if preaching to the assembled multitudes from on top of a soapbox in Cardboard City. At the end of the show he left the stage clutching a teddy bear and a tambourine.
In fact both of these came from the props cupboard of Stevie Nicks, whose role as the group's flaky chanteuse was severely underplayed. Resting her voice for more than half the show, she filled her time onstage by modelling the sort of wispily flowing, ethereal garb which makes her look like a wicked witch of the west coast. When she actually began to sing songs such as ''Rhiannon'' and ''Dreams'' (sadly no ''Sara''), they were moments to savour.
They were also moments of relief, because Fleetwood Mac seemed regrettably eager to demonstrate that their repertoire contains a potted history of popular musicfrom blues to folk to rock to the dull MOR mush of their current album. ''Oh Well'', from their distant past, came over as a perfectly executed pastiche of fuddy-duddy psychedelia, not something to listen to in comparison with the delicious voice of Christine McVie.
Most of the highlights coming, needless to say, from Rumours, this was her show. ''You Make Loving Fun'', ''Go Your Own Way'', ''Don't Stop'' and finally a solo, ''Songbird'', belatedly turned a two-and-a-quarter-hour show into something more than the sum of its parts.
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![CELEBRATE THE MUSIC OF PETER GREEN AND THE EARLY YEARS OF FLEETWOOD MAC [4/30] * picture](/vintage/img/g/LGEAAOSwbG1j8hYM/s-l225/CELEBRATE-THE-MUSIC-OF-PETER-GREEN-AND-THE-EARLY-Y.jpg)
