Henk Penseel on Fleetwood Mac on tour again

Actually it's a bad start to write: I read somewhere that Fleetwood Mac is going to tour again, while I'm supposed to become an academic. I really can't remember where I read it. Way back it was hard to verify information like this, but nowadays you just Google, which I did. So I ran into an article in the Los Angeles Times by Randall Roberts, dated July 12, 2012, 3:15 p.m., stating that Fleetwood Mac announced to do a reunion tour in 2013 with the original members of their hit album Rumours, with the exception of Christine McVie-Perfect.

At the time that album was released, 1977, Fleetwood Mac's line-up consisted of guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, vocalist Stevie Nicks and keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie.

Don't Stop was the first single from the album that came out in The Netherlands and was an immediate hit. Three more hits from Rumours would follow. Therefore the album sold very quickly 25.000 copies, which means a golden record. The band came over from America where they lived to do a promotion tour in Europe.

My task was to arrange media coverage and to entertain the group. So we planned a nice dinner in a restaurant after a day of interviews and photo shoots. One journalist was present to get an exclusive story plus picture, because the director of the Dutch affiliate of Warner Bros, Fleetwood Mac's record label, was going to hand out five golden records, one to each member of the band.

Before I continue I have to tell you that I hired an assistant, just one day earlier. His first assignment was to dress up like a penguin to hand over a huge square cake with on each corner a small penguin from marzipan, at the time the golden records were presented. That was because the name of the production company of Fleetwood Mac was named Penguin Productions. John McVie's favourite animal was a penguin and they donated large amounts of money to the Penguin Conservation Foundations.

The cake was ordered from a famous confectioner in Amsterdam. I fetched it myself in the morning. But when I opened the box I saw that two of the penguins fell with their beak in the whipped cream. My wife helped me out with some sugary stuff. But when the cake was presented after dinner by the dressed up penguin, the two other penguins from marzipan were lying in the whipped cream. Still, it was hilarious and a good example of CRM (customer relation management).

The name of the human penguin was Tjerk Lammers, who became an important press promoter and later journalist; he wrote a book, Dijkdoorbraak (Floodgates), about the Dutch pop music from 1958 until today.

WUP 09/12/12

Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blogs

Henk Penseel

Current Wittenborg student in Msc International Events Management

Henk has been a lecturer at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences since 1997, and before that has worked in the entertainment industry for the likes of Disney / ABC television, Sony Entertainment and the Dutch VARA television company. Since September, Henk has become a Wittenborg student. one of a small group of students who has started the new 1 year MSc International Event Management, uniquely offered in the Netherlands as a joint delivery programme by Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences and the University of Brighton. In the past years Henk Penseel has been a regular blogger at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, mainly writing in Dutch and will now continue his writing, also publishing on WUAS Press (WUP).