Monthly Archives: December 2019

Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac

“Finally, Fleetwood Mac’s unsung hero Christine McVie is getting the spotlight she deserves” | Stylist

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Posted by Christobel Hastings
28 Dec 2019

She’s the longest-serving female member of Fleetwood Mac, and the group’s most successful singer-songwriter, but Christine McVie has always been overshadowed. But in a BBC documentary profile, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird, the unsung hero of one of the world’s biggest bands finally gets to take the spotlight

There is one quiet moment of reflection in the BBC documentary, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird, that perhaps sums up its subject more than anything else in the 90-minute retrospective of rock music history. It comes when Christine McVie, the longest-serving female member of Fleetwood Mac, and the group’s most successful singer-songwriter, speaks affectionately about her longtime friend, Stevie Nicks: “I could no more do twirls in chiffon than Stevie could do blues on the piano.” As she acknowledges her friend’s affinity for the spotlight, she showcases her brilliant talent for saying so much with so few words. It was this gift, we discover, that was intrinsic to the band’s success, and one that has ultimately allowed Fleetwood Mac to connect with people all around the world for over five decades.

Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird: Christine McVie in 1975

How and why the driving force behind one of the world’s best-selling bands was overlooked for so long is a question that is slowly unravelled in this fascinating profile of the legendary singer-songwriter, which traces McVie’s early beginnings in Birmingham, the British blues explosion in 1960s London, and her first foray into music. We learn that McVie was working as a window dresser in the department store Dickins & Jones, until she moved back to Birmingham to join her old friends Andy Silvester and Stan Webb in a blues band called Chicken Shack. Although she was initially tasked with playing keys and singing background vocals, when the band scored a hit with a cover of Etta James’ I’d Rather Go Blind with McVie on lead vocals, it quickly became evident that she was destined for greater things. Continue reading “Finally, Fleetwood Mac’s unsung hero Christine McVie is getting the spotlight she deserves” | Stylist →

Lindsey Buckingham, Tour Info

Lindsey Buckingham Announces First Concert Since Open-Heart Surgery | Rolling Stone

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Rolling Stone
Kory Grow
20 December 2019

Former Fleetwood Mac singer-guitarist will appear at Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis

Former Fleetwood Mac singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham will return to the stage this coming spring for his first concert since he underwent emergency open-heart surgery in early 2019, an operation that reportedly damaged his vocal cords. Doctors fed tubes down his throat so he could breathe.

The performance will take place at the Beale Street Music Festival, in Memphis’ Tom Lee Park; the dates for the festival run May 1st to the 3rd.

Buckingham experienced a heart attack in the early part of 2019, and, at the time, his wife Kristen said she didn’t know if the vocal-cord damage would be permanent or not. In May, Buckingham made an appearance at his daughter’s high school graduation, where he played — but did not sing — “Landslide.” Instead, the students sang the Fleetwood Mac hit.

The last time he played a full concert was in December 2018. It was a solo show, since Fleetwood Mac dismissed him in the spring of 2018, reportedly over tension with Stevie Nicks. Buckingham sued Fleetwood Mac in 2018 and settled out of court.

“The past year has been a very stressful and difficult year for our family to say the least,” Kristen said in her statement at the time of Lindsey’s heart attack — referencing his dismissal from the band. “But despite all of this, our gratitude for life trumps all obstacles we have faced at this moment. … Needless to say, all touring and shows currently scheduled have been put on pause for the moment as he gathers strength to heal completely.”

Although she released numerous tweets attacking Fleetwood Mac — calling them “awful people, void of conscience,” and Mick Fleetwood, in particular, a “dishonest coward” — Kristen hasn’t said anything about her husband’s ability to sing. That said, in May, she tweeted that Buckingham was seeing a vocal specialist, and in September, she wrote that “life, love and Lindsey are all great.”

Since Lindsey’s heart attack, the Buckinghams have placed their Brentwood, Los Angeles, home on the market, with an asking price of $29.5 million; they sold another home there for $19 million last year.