Fleetwood Mac Tour: High-Octane Nostalgia At Work

Nostalgia’s a powerful thing. The current Fleetwood Mac tour marks the first time in 16 years the “classic five” lineup — Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Stevie Nicks — is performing together. As all the VH1 specials, books, article-length paeans and tributes to the songs they made together between 1975 and 1987, it’s fairly obvious this is the lineup everyone wants to hear, forever and ever.

Nostalgia is also pretty damn lucrative. Even without McVie’s involvement, the 2013 Fleetwood Mac Live Tour grossed more than $94 million, as it stretched across 67 shows in North America and Europe, entertaining more than 850,000 fans. The current tour, which reaches the XL Center in Hartford on Saturday, Nov. 1, should gross in the low seven figures each night, a recent Men’s Journal article suggested.

Fans aren’t paying upward of $179 (ticket prices start at $49) to hear a bunch of new Fleetwood Mac material. (There’s no chance anyway, because they haven’t written or recorded any new songs, though they might soon.) The current setlist includes two-dozen songs, mostly from “Fleetwood Mac” (1975) and “Rumours” (1977) — two of the biggest Big Albums of the 1970s — with a few others from “Tusk” (1979), “Mirage” (1982) and “Tango in the Night” (1987). You’ll know most of the words, and so will your neighbors at the show.

During the recording of “Rumours,” the band’s two couples (the McVies and Buckingham/Nicks) were already famously in the middle of splitting up, which supplied ample material to write about. Mr. Buckingham and Ms. Nicks, who’d joined the group together in 1975, contributed “Go Your Own Way” and “Dreams” respectively, among other hits (and thinly veiled jabs). Ms. McVie submitted “You Make Loving Fun,” about a fling with lighting director Curry Grant; the gorgeous piano ballad “Songbird”; the brooding “Oh Daddy”; and the surprisingly optimistic “Don’t Stop.” Somehow they managed to write “The Chain” together. Mr. McVie drank. Ms. Nicks hooked up with Mr. Fleetwood. Cocaine flowed freely. “Rumours” topped the charts for 31 weeks, but relationships suffered.

So, yeah, there’s high-octane nostalgia at work here, but it’s powered by serious chemistry. What rock fan wouldn’t want to hear the banter between Ms. Nicks and Ms. McVie (“Where you been, Christine?” “Long story, Stevie,” etc.), to see Ms. Nicks peer over at Mr. Buckingham, one of her two ex-boyfriends in the band, during the intimate “Landslide,” to cheer on Mr. McVie, who was diagnosed with cancer exactly a year ago, or to witness a few moments of tenderness between him and Ms. McVie, his ex-wife since 1977?

The glue between them, the Men’s Journal article also points out, has always been the congenial Mr. Fleetwood, who apparently made an extra $1 million on last year’s tour through drum-side chats with fans. Over the years, Fleetwood has soothed frayed nerves, cured jitters and enabled drug habits; he even served as the band’s manager for a stretch. At 67, he’s still a monster of a rock drummer. (On tour, he gets a big drum solo on “World Turning.”) You won’t just be hearing the classic five either; keyboard player Brett Tuggle, rhythm guitarist Neale Heywood and singers Sharon Celani, Lori Nicks and Stevvi Alexander augment the live show. Maybe they’ll bring out a surprise guest, though nobody local springs to mind. (Kid Rock joined them onstage in Detroit).

The XL Center in Hartford is a big place, with concert seating somewhere in the ballpark of 16,000, and as I’m writing this, tickets are still available. The last time Buckingham, Nicks, the McVies and Fleetwood were in Hartford together was on Sept. 17, 1997, when they opened their Dance reunion tour at the Meadows Music Theatre (now the Xfinity Theatre). The setlist was remarkably similar to what it is now, and tickets topped out at $78. “It was Buckingham’s departure that led to the fissure of the group once,” Courant critic Roger Catlin wrote at the time, “so in many ways it was his party … Christine McVie, at 54 [she’s now 72], seemed the consummate professional, bringing her familiar tones to the Mac’s best pop tunes and ballads, such as ‘Songbird,’ which was saved for the encore.”

“Mr. Buckingham is clearly the band’s leader now,” New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote several weeks ago, in his review of Fleetwood Mac’s recent Madison Square Garden concert. “But Ms. McVie was the band’s quieter center of attention, and she had the last word with her ‘Songbird.'” With Fleetwood Mac, not much really changes. Perhaps that’s best.

FLEETWOOD MAC performs on Saturday, Nov. 1, at the XL Center in Hartford. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $49 to $179. Information: xlcenter.com.