Review of Fleetwood Mac, The Mick Fleetwood Story

Introduction

Fleetwood Mac have been around in one form or another since 1967, and their creative talents reached a peak with three stunning albums in the mid-late seventies - "Fleetwood Mac", "Rumours" and "Tusk", still highly regarded today.

Many big groups from the seventies lived off their reputation for years, and Fleetwood Mac are no exception, having failed to match the big three albums despite a mini resurgence in the eighties. A new greatest hits CD has been released, which covers the highlights of their long career, and is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to listen to the band.

The Mick Fleetwood Story is an hour long, very similar to the "Behind The Music" programs on VH1 etc, telling the story of Mick, his family, the band and their lives.

Video

The video comes in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, which is average, with some of the archive footage of particularly dubious quality - camcorder footage which is grainy and dirty. The interview footage shot for the documentary is fine though, a bit soft, but clean and free from grain.

Visually, the documentary is primarily interviews, with archival clips, but unfortunately precious little footage of the band playing.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and does an adequate job of reproducing the interviews and sound bites competently, but offering no excitement.

As I`ve already said there is a disappointing lack of music on the disc, aside from smallish clips, which is a great shame because Fleetwood Mac have a excellent repertoire.

Features

There are no extras and the disc starts up to a simple list of chapters in the main documentary.

The disc is packaged in a clear Amaray case which contains an insert with the lyrics to "Rock Star" (by Mick`s dad) and the chapter breaks.

Conclusion

I like Fleetwood Mac, particularly the Rumours album, which I`ve got on CD along with the Greatest Hits album, the latter having spent a lot of time in my car`s autochanger in the last few weeks.

This story of Mick Fleetwood however contains interviews, archive footage and the occasional clip of a song, and doesn`t offer anything that you can`t read on any number of internet sites, therefore I didn`t find it very interesting to be honest.

Even some bonus videos or concert footage would have made the DVD worthwhile, but as it stands, I`d suggest watching out for something similar in VH1 instead.