“Seven Wonders”

So it’s been exactly a month since I last had a cigarette or an alcoholic drink. I’ve done it cold turkey, and I feel great (physically) but the not entirely unexpected side effect has been that I’ve become rather short tempered. Basically, I’ve gone from being a chilled out entertainer to feeling homicidal whenever I am around total morons. The only thing that is calming me down whenever I encounter idiots is Fleetwood Max Greatest Hits. I am not kidding.
I carry a tiny iPod shuffle (with Seven Wonders cued up) in my jacket pocket, and whenever I feel myself wanting to punch someone in the face, I stick my headphones in and soak up Stevie Nicks’ faintly ridiculous vibrato and I feel instantly better. I hope if you’re having a stressful Tuesday, it’ll have the same effect on you.

“Seven Wonders”, Fleetwood Mac

So it’s been exactly a month since I last had a cigarette or an alcoholic drink. I’ve done it cold turkey, and I feel great (physically) but the not completely unexpected side effect has been that I’ve become rather short-tempered. Basically, I’ve gone from being a chilled out entertainer to feeling homicidal whenever I am around total morons. The only thing that is calming me down whenever I encounter idiots is Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits. I am not kidding.
I carry a tiny iPod shuffle (with Seven Wonders cued up) in my jacket pocket, and whenever I feel myself wanting to punch someone in the face, I stick my headphones in and soak up Stevie Nicks’ faintly silly vibrato and I feel straight better. I hope if you’re having a stressful Tuesday, it’ll have the same effect on you.

Still going their own way

Lindsey Buckingham is surprisingly laid back about being a spurned lover. It's been more than 30 years since his then girl friend and Fleetwood Mac band mate, Stevie Nicks, got it on with the band's drummer, Mick Fleetwood, while on tour in New Zealand.It's not that time has cured his aching heart. You see, back when the unfaithfulness happened Buckingham didn't give a hoot either it was 1977 and they were promiscuous and drug fuelled times, after all.In a current interview the guitarist and pop genius of the pair recounted how Nicks and Fleetwood made a big deal of coming round to his house to tell him about their affair, to which he replyed, "Yeah? So? That's it?"And he's just as flippant on the phone today from his home in Los Angeles: "Stevie and I were on the road to breaking up before we coupled the band."Considering the two lovers who before Fleetwood Mac were making music as the duo Buckingham Nicks coupled the band in 1975 it must have been a long, rocky break up.No band has mixed a cocktail of melodrama, romantic shenanigans, and hedonistic substance insult quite like Fleetwood Mac and through it all they came up with two cracker albums, the mega-selling Rumours (1977) and kooky double album Tusk (1979).It was Rumours, though, with songs like Buckingham's Go Your Own Way, Nicks' Dreams, and keyboardist/singer Christine McVie's Don't Stop, that went on to sell more than 40 million copies recently the tenth best selling album ever and made Fleetwood Mac the longest band in the world.It's these songs, and many others, that the band will be playing at New Plymouth's Bowl of Brooklands on December 19 when they come back for the first time since 1980's Tusk tour.The Unleashed Tour is a two hour plus show of wonderful hits material and the Downunder dates follow a sold out 55 city North American tour earlier this year, and a European leg which starts in October.The version of the band coming to New Zealand is the classic Rumours line up of Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood and bassist player John McVie, minus his former wife Christine McVie who stop the band in 1998 because of her fear of flying."One of the things that makes the tour fun, and a little bit fundamental for us is that we don't have a new album yet anyway so we're not trying to go out there and do stuff that is unfamiliar," says 59 year old Buckingham. "And oddly enough, for the first time, we've been able to sit back and take parentage of the body of work that we have and appreciate it."When you're in the second of making songs, and particularly for us with the politics and all the drama that went on, it has never been that easy, and the fun of being on stage has always been tempered by all of that."