Big Love: All-Stars Honor Fleetwood Mac in L.A.

(Sarah Silverman performs at Fleetwood Mac Fest. Photo: Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images)

Fleetwood Mac is clearly a band to be taken seriously, because even comedians treat the big Mac’s catalog with the utmost respect. Case in point: the all-star Fleetwood Mac Fest, held at Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre on Feb. 9, where cut-ups Sarah Silverman and Will Forte shared the stage with superstar musicians like Mark Ronson and Carly Rae Jepsen and sang Mac classics with surprisingly straight faces.

First Forte joined supermodel songstress Karen Elson and Weezer guitarist Brian Bell for a cover of Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s hit 1981 duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” with Elson in the Nicks role and Forte channeling his best, growliest inner Petty. Later, a saucy Silverman (channeling her own inner rock chick in a short-shorts/garters/stockings combo) teamed with Americana troubadour Butch Walker – unexpectedly getting the opportunity to cover one of Fleetwood’s most beloved tunes, “Go Your Own Way,” and actually pulling it off.

But the best performances of the evening of course came courtesy of the legitimate pop and rock stars. The winsome Jepsen charmed the crowd with an effervescent rendition of the Mirage single “Hold Me”; Alison Mosshart of the Kills/Dead Weather intriguingly rasped “Dreams” accompanied by Ronson on guitar; longtime Stevie Nicks fangirl Courtney Love got tender and intimate on a raw and earnest “Silver Springs”; Juliette Lewis rocked out in a yellow Freddie Mercury catsuit to a Stonesy remake of Nicks’s “Stand Back”; and Joanna Newsom gave a gorgeous piano performance of “Beautiful Child.” Other standout performers included KT Tunstall, Phases, Cold War Kids, the Pierces, and Beatles progeny Dhani Harrison.

The lone lowlight, really, was Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, but only because his vocals on “Gold Dust Woman” were unfortunately drowned out by the band’s backup singers and his antics were embarrassingly upstaged by the out-of-place stripper poses, duck faces, and hairography of his vampy dancer wife, Etty Farrell. But when the Farrells were joined by the rest of the all-stars (including Mosshart riding Walker’s shoulders) for a massive group-singalong finale of “The Chain” and “Don’t Stop,” all was forgiven.

Night two of Fleetwood Mac Fest (with the same lineup, but presumably some new surprises) takes place Wednesday, Feb. 10, also at Los Angeles’s Fonda Theatre. Ticket sales for both shows benefit the charities Sweet Relief Musicians Fund and the Sweet Stuff Foundation, which help musicians and their families who are facing illness and age-related disabilities.

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