“Mac” Is Memorable In Two Super Sellouts

July 1978; reviewed By Dale Anderson

“This is a song about a witch.” Stevie Nicks murmured it into the mike, still saying it a year after “Rhiannon” went Number One, talking over the tawny riff of Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar intro.

She was all in flowing black and she stood absolutely still as the music rose into the first verse. She sang it with her arms folded under a pair of sheer black scarves: “Rhiannon rings like a bell thru the night/And wouldn’t you love to love her …”

The stoplight illuminated half her face and most of the frizzy blond abandon of her hair. This song, more than any other, burned the vamp image of Stevie Nicks into the libidos of all the young men in the 14,000-seat double sell-out in Memorial Auditorium Saturday and Sunday nights.

Nicks and Buckingham, who came aboard Fleetwood Mac about 2 years ago, have stepped right to the front of the band. The nucleus of the group, the former Mr. And Mrs. John and Christine McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, functioned like backup.

And what great backup. You couldn’t ask for better support. There’s Fleetwood’s brilliant, improbable shuffle, John McVie’s bass pinning it down and Christine providing a cushion for Buckingham with fat organ tones and a breather for Nicks by singing her own tunes, like “Oh Daddy” and “Over My Head.”

In the face of such superlative sobriety, Buckingham and Nicks sometimes seemed excessive. One pictured Nicks as the Theda Bara of rock and roll. And Buckingham matched his neatly honed guitar licks with every facial contortion in the book. By the time the firecracker-dotted double encore came, he was overplaying.

The buzzing allure of Nicks’ voice held up through “Rhiannon,” but she had a narrow escape in “Landslide” as her throat cracked on the last note before the instrumental break.

She got extra cheers for her recovery. Saturday she’d done all right, it was reported, but those on the tour acknowledged she could be a lot stronger. After singing in the first encore of “The Chain,” she watched the second one – Buckingham doing “Second Hand News” and Christine’s “Songbird.”

Kenny Loggins, on his first solo tour since separating from longtime partner Jim Messina, recovered from less than perfect sound Saturday night with a sound check and rehearsal Sunday. Good strategy, since this was his third date playing with Fleetwood Mac, and it paid off.

Loggins the bandleader, in gold velvet drawstring pants and a velvet hooded sweatshirt, luxuriated in the fullness in the punch and fullness of his seven-man aggregation.

His Irish tenor was in fine fettle and he jumped about leading handclapping and singalongs whenever he moved from his new numbers to the old ones he did with Messina, like “House at Pooh Corner,” “Love Song” and “Danny’s Song.” His finale was a powerful “Angry Eyes” and the encore a triumphant “Vahevala.”

Loggins, speaking backstage, indicated that the next year will make him or break him as a solo artist. From the looks of Sunday night’s show, he’s going to make it.