Fleetwood Mac follows ahead

BEVERLY HILLS, California (The New York Times Syndicate). - If of melodramático rock and roll is spoken, is difficult to surpass Fleetwood Mac.

Throughout its 36 years the group has been a pot in which they cooked, to untimed fire, chimentos and melodramas. The members of the band were and came as replaceable batteries, but not before lying down, having appointments, to marry and to divorce to each other. One of the guitarists was thrown by drug abuse, another one was escaped with a religious sect. They have had bankruptcies and false judgments to prevent that Fleetwood Macs used the name of the band.

Most of the groups one would have dissolved as opposed to smaller tribulations. But that one was never a true option, according to the drummer Mick Fleetwood, who now founded the band on 1967 next to the bear John McVie and to the ex- guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer.

"We are a little hard head, I suppose - it says, or done of another material. John and I always saw this as the best form for us to even make music, so always we have worked to follow much ahead, in the difficult times."

The singer Stevie Nicks, who with his fiancè Lindsey Buckingham was united to the band in 1974 and participated in the most successful period, including the album "Rumours" (1977), gives the credit him to Fleetwood.

"Mick does not stop - the singer says, of 54 years -. Anybody has as much devotion and faith in a band like him. I think that he is he who wishes that Fleetwood Mac continues. And it obtains it."

This year the band sent "to Say You Will" (N. of the R.: the CD finishes publishing aqui '), its first album of study in eight years and first from 1987 in presenting/displaying the singer, guitarist and producer Buckingham, who returned with the band in 1997, for the project of meeting "The Dance". The group also glides to be of tour the rest of the year.

But melodrama follows: of that formation of "Rumours" it lacks Christine McVie, singer, tecladista, ex- wife of McVie and composer of successes like "Say You Love Me" (1975), "Don´t Stop" (1977) and "You Make Loving Fun" (1977). Tired of the tours and the internal fights of the band, McVie finalized his almost 28 years in the group with "The Dance", although it made some contributions in two songs of "Say You Will".

"Christine does not want to follow - Nicks says -. If that is what she wants, that is what will do. It returned to England, it wants to be an English living in his country and podés not to force people to that it does something that it does not want."

"I do not believe that nobody feels that this is negative - adds, on the other hand, Buckingham -. He is the spirit of Fleetwood Mac reinventando itself. Yes, it is a challenge, but also an opportunity to exercise to us of a different way."

The group was in this situation before, of course: Green underwent emotional upheavals and problems of conduct after consuming in excess LSD during a concert of Grateful Dead, in 1969, and left the band in 1970. Spencer disappeared during a 1971 tour and reappeared like member of the sect the Children of God. Dismissed to 1972, the guitarist Danny Kirwan finished in a psychiatric hospital. To their reemplazante, Bob Weston, threw it to kicks when they discovered it in an affair with Jenny, wife of Fleetwood.

Buckingham and Nicks separated shortly after being united to the band, and both have entered the group and left him since then. Buckingham, the main producer of Fleetwood Mac from mid the seventy, was one decade moved away after "Tango in the Night" (1987). He returned for "The Dance", that began as a concert for MTV and became an album and a tour.

"" The Dance "was thought to make money - the musician recognizes, of 55 years -. Was a good album and probably a catalyst at emotional level, but basically it was to restore to us. But it was not my ideal."

When the project of a solista album failed, Buckingham called to Fleetwood and she suggested a new album to him of study of the band. Nicks was added immediately, and although it was concentrated in his solista project, sent some songs to him to Buckingham, Fleetwood and McVie so that they began to work. As soon as he was available, went to the study to register his voice.

"Say You Will" slightly shows a sound different from the one of the previous discs, that the remaining members of the band attribute to the game of Christine McVie.

"Everything leaned more in the guitar - Nicks says -. Is simple: the main keyboard is eliminated and what it is it is one more a centered band in the guitar. This will cause that Fleetwood Mac returns to be to power trio."

"We could define our musical positions of a completely different way - Buckingham adds -. All we have more space to maneuver, and that takes one more to an atmosphere hard, I create."

First the simple one of the album, "Peacekeeper", acquired unexpected a new sense when it was sent, during waged war by the United States against Iraq. "Several times the radios just emitted it before interrupting the transmission to give bulletins on the war - Buckingham says, that the song more than three years ago wrote -. Will think that it was written like a stimulus for the war, when he is the opposite, a subject on the brutalización of a romance? But it does not bother to me. I believe that all work that aspires to being artistic must have a dose of ambiguity. It cannot have only one interpretation, if it is not possible to be turned which we thought like propaganda."

These times the things are calmer More in Fleetwood Mac. than, according to Buckingham, any other moment of the past. It does not mean that the emotional upheavals have finished, but hopes to maintain to Fleetwood Mac like a prosperous company with a foreseeable future.

"I hope that we pruned to continue seeing it under a positive light - says because still there is much to do."