SLEEVE NOTES
This album is a surprise. Partly because it arrived out of nowhere and partly because it is a tantalising mixture of what we expect from my sister Christine, laced with some new and powerful elements. I hope you will like it as much as I do.
Christine shot to prominence as a blues singer in the '70s and was voted best British female vocalist in the Melody Maker polls. After a brief skirmish with a solo career she joined Fleetwood Mac, where her rock-solid keyboard work and richly emotive singing did much to propel the band into an exhaustingly successful 25 years of recording and performing for ecstatic audiences around the world. Fleetwood Mac became a benchmark for rock and roll and the band's music has become embedded in popular culture... even today it is unusual to listen to a popular music programme without hearing a Fleetwood Mac song. Very likely, it will be one of Christine's ... "Don't Stop", "Songbird", "You Make Lovin' Fun", "Little Lies",
"Everywhere".
Recording an album was an attenuated and hair-raising process for the Mac. A melting pot of talent and egocentricity that did much to assure the quality and character of the output but took its toll on the band. Add this to a grueling schedule of touring on a grandiose scale and you begin to see why Christine uprooted herself from LA... encouraged by the 1994 earthquake ... and headed for the serenity of the English countryside. She continued working with the Mac until her final tour with the band in late 1997-the last time I had the privilege of seeing her live on stage. The other four core members of the Mac are back on the boards, but despite the ties of history and shared creativity Christine could not be persuaded to join them. Time to hang up the keyboard and rest the larynx. Or was it?
Songwriters don't just shut up shop. Despite a growing distance from the world of music, Christine kept being visited by the odd snatch of lyric and fragment of melody that got written down in a notebook somewhere ready for use when the time came. And it did. Christine has passed through a turmoil of emotions disengaging from the craziness of being a rock goddess (my term, not hers!) and reengaging with the demands, challenges, joys, and frustrations of a new lifestyle. The songs on this album have provided the steppingstones for this process and the passion of her involvement is clear to anyone willing to listen. Of course, she has had help from her friends, but the album is remarkably independent of the musical environment in which she has operated for the last 30 years. Despite the power and warmth of the music, introspection has been a key feature of the project and my son Dan has been an essential provider of technical and musical support. It has taken a while coming, but the result has been an album to be proud of.
- John Perfect, April 2004
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In The Meantime was originally released nearly 20 years ago, in 2004. When my aunt Christine McVie died unexpectedly last year, plans were already afoot for the rerelease of this solo album which is perhaps her most personal and intimate project. Chris and I had been working for some time on remixing the original tracks in Dolby Atmos, and Chris was excited and intrigued by this process that was bringing fresh life and contemporaneity to the songs.
In her many years of recording with Fleetwood Mac, Chris had never been one for getting involved much in the technicalities of the studio process-her description of her experiences in recording studios over many years was characteristically dry: "I spent most of my life looking at lovely men's bums leaning over the console! (Lucky me!)" However, this project was different.
Chris had left both L.A. and Fleetwood Mac and had 'retired' to the English countryside in the late 1990s. However, after separating from her then-husband, Eddie Quintella, she had started to find herself isolated and bored, despite living in a seemingly perfect English country house in Kent. In the early 2000s, at the urging of her friend and manager Martin Wyatt, she started to toy with the idea of making a solo album, but this time on her terms. An Elizabethan barn in the grounds of her house was duly converted into a makeshift studio and hangout den so that she would not have to travel to a formal recording studio. Some musician friends were invited over to the U.K. to see if anything could be ignited from the spark of her enthusiasm; fun was had jamming in the den but nothing of note materialized, and the project drifted a little.
Around this time, Chris met someone special to her and fell deeply in love. Sadly, the love affair did not work out, but true romantic that she was, her feelings became the driving engine she needed to really start writing music again. And so the first song in this suite charting the ups and downs of the relationship was born: the heartfelt and moving "You Are". However, by this time the musicians initially brought over for the project had returned to the U.S. Chris was struck with a burning desire to get the song recorded but had no way of doing this on her own. Which is how I got involved ...
Like Chris, I too had gone to art school as well as written and played music, but unlike her, I had focused on being an artist-a painter-and continued to play and study music on the side. As part of this, I had learnt to use computer recording software in the late 1980s just as the technology was emerging, so I knew my way around recording equipment.
When Chris told me she was frustrated with not being able to get her new song recorded other than in the most rudimentary way, I offered to drive to Kent with a laptop to help her get down a rough version. Chris asked me if I'd put some 12-string guitar parts on the track, to see what it would sound like. I was shy to do so at first-after all, it is quite intimidating when your aunt is a rock star!-but in the end I did, and we were both surprised and excited by how good it sounded.
Encouraged by this, we worked further on this first track, adding some drums and bass guitar. Chris was enthusiastic and amazed at the results we could get from a small laptop in such an informal and relaxed setting; all the stress of the commercial studio was gone, and she loved this way of working. We found we had an immediate and easy chemistry, and from then on it seemed a very natural and organic progression to start writing music and lyrics together. In no time at all, we had an album's worth of songs.
The very talented and charming George Hawkins, sadly no longer with us, flew back over from L.A. to play bass, contributing some great lines and even a bass solo!
We worked for a time with Ken Caillat, the engineer on Rumours, who was tremendously helpful in getting the drum tracks down. The superb Stephen Ferrone played drums at a funky recording studio in Ojai, California; Ken even had the foresight to record the drums using a surround mic, which I have been able to put to good use in the Atmos mixes of these songs 20 years later. Luis Conte and Lenny Castro added brilliant percussion. Chris' wonderful and moving vocals were enhanced by the background singing and harmonies of the talented David Isaacs.
As I said at the beginning, this was an extremely personal project for Chris in all its aspects. The lyrics in the songs explore Chris' feelings about her affair-from joy and love to pain, anger, and acceptance. The close and intimate family atmosphere of the recordings, made for the most part in her barn in Canterbury, reflected Chris' love of home and a relaxed way of life. Chris loved making In The Meantime and was fully involved in all aspects of its creation; she was even involved in the mixing process, where her ears and vast experience were invaluable. However, when it came to promoting the album, Chris had unfortunately become phobic about flying-probably burnt out from years of planes and hotel rooms-so she refused to tour, perform live, or even do much in the way of interviews. I think that she also felt that people might not be ready to see a more in-depth glimpse of her as a human being, exposed by the rawer elements that the songs explored. So the album's release came and went quietly, but I know that she was immensely proud of it and increasingly so in the period just before she died. I too am proud of the album that I made with my darling aunt, and I dearly wish she could have lived to see this rerelease as she would have been delighted. I hope that it delights you too.
- Dan Perfect, 2023
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