Kiss the first big rock act that are coming to Boston to the TD Garden on March 26 2019 are an American Rock band that was formed in New York City in 1973 by guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley, bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. The members of the band were well known to each have their own elaborate face paint on stage, as well as fancy stage outfits. Kiss rose to prominence in the mid 1970s with their elaborate live performances that featured fire breathing, blood-spitting, smoking guitars, shooting rockets, levitating drum kits, and pyrotechnics. The band has gone through several lineup changes over the years, with Stanley and Simmons the only two original members remaining, while former drummer Criss refuses to have any contact with the other two members over unresolved song credit conflicts and royalty disputes.
Frehley had not performed with the band since a 2002 Farewell Tour because of similar disputes, but seemed to somewhat bury the hatchet with the other two members last year in October 2018 when he reunited with Kiss on a Cruise boat and performed four songs together "New York Groove", "2,000 Man", "Hide Your Heart", and "Domino".
On September 19, 2018 following a performance on America's Got Talent, Kiss announced that they will be ending their career with One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour 2019. The tour kicks off on January 21 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and currently features 74 additional dates that run through December 3 in Auckland, New Zealand.
Kiss will be performing at the TD Garden in Boston on their One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour on March 26, 2018. It promises to be a great show, although don't count on it being the final Kiss show ever you will attend if you are a huge Kiss fan... Kiss have already had several Farewell Tours, and this one may just be another cash grab for Stanley and Simmons, known to be more business enthusiasts in the rock n' roll world, then actual rock n' rollers.
Fleetwood Mac have been through a lot in the last year leading up to 2019. The bad is scheduled to perform at the TD Garden on April 12 2019 with new guitarists in the band Neil Finn and also the very creative lead guitarist Mike Cambell, primarily known for his collaborations with Tom Petty in the band Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. In early 2018 guitarist the primary songwriter of the band Lindsey Buckingham was fired by Fleetwood Mac and almost immediately replaced by Finn and Cambell, (although it has since been disclosed that it was mainly Stevie Nicks who had a problem with Buckingham not the rest of the band combined). Buckingham was her former lover in the 1970s and the two joined the band at the same time thanks to Buckingham on New Years Eve 1974. By the end of 1974 Fleetwood Mac was in total disarray having just fired guitarist/vocalist Bob Welch, Buckingham was hired as the group's seventh guitarist in seven years. Buckingham at this point had leverage in negotiations with drummer Mick Fleetwood, and convinced Mick to allow his girlfriend and recording partner Stevie Nicks to join the band as well. The addition of both Buckingham and Nicks meant the classic-era lineup of Fleetwood Mac was finally in place. This lineup would last until the early 1980s and would produce a number of Fleetwood Mac classic albums including Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, Tusk, and Mirage.
After one final album in the 1980s called Tango In The Night, which began as a Buckingham solo project, but the band latched onto as they needed all of Buckingham's creative output to release music as he was the songwriter. With a ten week tour scheduled, Buckingham held back at the last minute saying he felt his creativity was going to be stifled if he toured and did not record more music. A band meeting at Christine McVie's house on August 1987 resulted in turmoil, as tensions came to a head. Mick Fleetwood in his autobiography claimed there was an altercation between Buckingham and Nicks. Buckingham left the band the following day. After Buckingham's first departure Fleetwood Mac replaced him with two new guitarist Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, without even auditioning either guitarist. This lineup of Fleetwood Mac only released one studio album in 1990 titled , Behind The Mask, which only made it to Gold Sales and did not achieve the lofty multi platinum success the band had become used to with Lindsey Buckingham behind the wheel writing most of the band's material. Stevie Nicks grew frustrated with the lack of success without her x and quit the band following Behind The Mask's commercial failure in 1990.
It took until 1997 to get Buckingham back in Fleetwood Mac and by that time a lot had changed in the music industry. Still the band was very popular and many of the old fans were still dying to see the band do reunion tour after reunion tour. Vocalist Christine McVie did not participate in a number of the Tours in the early 2000s but later rejoined in 2014.
Everything seemed fine in the Fleetwood Mac camp until early 2018. Then in the early part of January Stevie Nicks handed the band a he or me ultimatum after she felt slighted by Buckingham at a benefit concert. The band performed together at the 2018 MusiCares Person Of the Year benefit in January. Fleetwood Mac were given an award in recognition for their musical and philanthropic history at the event. As Buckingham told Rolling Stone, "a few days after the show he received a phone call from the band's manager Irving Azoff, who proceeded to list various issues Nicks had with his behavior that night, including his complaints about their intro music being Nicks' "Rhiannon" and that he may have "smirked" while she was giving her acceptance speech.
"The irony is we have this long standing joke, that when Stevie talks, she goes on a long time," Buckingham said. I may or may not have smirked, but I look over and Mick and Christine were doing the waltz behind her as a joke." As for the choice of intro song that night, Buckingham admitted he was against it, but said Nicks took it the wrong way. "It wasn't about it being Rhiannon," he note. "It just undermined the impact of our entrance. Thats me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something."
Regardless of Buckingham's defenses, Azoff gave him a direct message: "Stevie never wants to be onstage with you again." Buckingham took this to mean that Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac, so he emailed Mick Fleetwood to discuss the band's future, but didn't hear back, so he called Azoff for clarification. "This feels funny," he recalled saying, "Is Stevie leaving the band or am I getting kicked out? Azoff told Buckingham he was "getting ousted" because Nicks gave the band "an ultimatum: Either you go or she's gonna go."
Shortly after the news of Buckingham's departure was made public in April of 2018, Fleetwood said, "Buckingham's unwillingness tour this year was the reason for his dismissal. The only other public commentsBuckingham made prior to Rolling Stone's interview were at a May fundraiser where he said the band had "lost their perspective. What that did was to harm, and this is the only thing I'm really sad about-the rest of it becomes an opportunity- it harmed the 43 year legacy that we had worked so hard to build. The legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill ones higher truth and one's higher destiny."
It has yet to be seen how Fleetwood Mac's 2019 Tour will turn out. They are now in the midst of also battling Lindsey Buckingham in a lawsuit over how he was terminated from the band. Will people still have the same lofty expectation of Fleetwood Mac's musical ability minus the creative output of Buckingham? Is this now another greatest hits package tour of people just wanting to see Stevie Nicks belt out the hits such as "Rhiannon", "Landslide" and "The Chain" over and over again? We shall have to wait and see how it all turns out, although it is nice that Mike Cambell from The Heartbreakers now has a new musical opportunity since the death of Tom Petty in October 2017 spelled the end of The Heartbreakers illustrious musical career. Can Cambeell and Finn combined fill Buckingham's shoes for a successful 2019 Tour, or will this be another example of when Buckingham left in 1987 and was replaced by Burnette and Vito, only to have the band's next album tank big time in comparison to their previous sales? 2019 is sure to answer a lot of questions for the current state of Fleetwood Mac and their tour should be worth catching even without Buckingham in the mix.
