By Nick Hasted ( Classic Rock )
January 2017

Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 album Mirage struggled to match up to the era-defining Rumours and the boundary-pushing Tusk. In 2017, late singer and keyboard player Christine McVie looked back on the classic Mac album that has fallen between the cracks

Mirage was their attempt to make another Rumours – but at least one band member’s heart wasn’t in it

Christine McVie has a look of sultry invitation as she puts her hand on Lindsey Buckingham’s shoulder. She’s almost touching his tempestuous ex Stevie Nicks’ left hand, as Nicks puts her other hand in Buckingham’s and leans back in his arms to dance.

Buckingham for his part looks a figure of glowering romance, the Heathcliff of Hollywood, dressed all in black, with black shadows encroaching on them all, as he gives McVie a reproachful look that stops short of rebuffing her.

Mick Fleetwood and John McVie stand forlornly, looking out from the back of this sleeve photo for Mirage, the multimillion-selling Fleetwood Mac album most likely to have slipped your mind. But the message to potential buyers in 1982 was clear: step inside the Mac circus for more Rumours-style entanglements.

“Oh yes, exactly – that’s what it’s meant to do,” says Christine McVie. We’re sitting in a penthouse room in the west London offices of her band’s grateful long-time home, Warner. She’s wearing a grey mesh jacket and leopard-skin ankle boots, lived-in touches of glamour for a 73-year-old, still Brummie-accented rock queen not inclined to fuss. Holding the LP sleeve of Mirage’s new outtake-heavy reissue, she considers her band’s real state back then.

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