Category Archives: Christine McVie

Article Archive Pages, Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Release Info, Reviews, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving | CREEM Magazine

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Creem Magazine
September 1987
by J. Fordosh

Up in the hills of Bel Air is Lindsey Buckingham’s house, Lindsey Buckingham’s croquet-perfect lawn, Lindsey Buckingham’s pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s radio-controlled toy submarine that’s busted, but could be fun in the pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s home studio, The Slope-where the final work on Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night was done-and, indeed, Lindsey Buckingham himself.

Lindsey, like everyone in Fleetwood Mac, will tell us something of this latest record-and something of this immensely popular band. Their times and their troubles, stuff like that.

Fleetwood Mac’s saga has been a strange one: since Lindsey and Stevie Nicks joined up in 1975, the band’s made five studio albums, including Tango. The first four have sold something like 33 million copies-about 20 million of those courtesy of 1977’s monstrous Rumours.

You can perceive that, despite their relatively sluggish output, this band has a lot of fans. As I write this, Tango is safely ensconced in the Top 10, where it may well remain for eternity or the next Fleetwood Mac album, whichever comes first. But, coming almost five years after Mirage, we can correctly assume that there’s a story behind the story, so let’s start here . . .

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Christine McVie takes off in solo flight…| People Weekly

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People Weekly
April 30, 1984
by Jim Jerome

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine Mcvie takes off in solo flight with a new boyfriend under her wing

Singer-songwriter in Fleetwood Mac has been a pretty good gig for Christine McVie. Plenty of travel; lots of perks; long stretches between albums. Pay hasn’t been too bad, either, what with some 35 million albums sold worldwide. As a result, among other things, she has been able to furnish her four-bedroom Beverly Hills home without ever eyeing a price tag. And yet McVie, 40, has managed to keep it all in perspective. “I mean, anybody can spend all their money if they work hard enough at it,” she says. “It’s not like I’ve got a piano-shaped Jacuzzi or walls full of Picassos and Monets or anything like that. I do put limits on myself: I haven’t bought the Queen Mary.”

Fair enough. Another, more concrete example of McVie’s sensible adjustment to fame and fortune at the top of rock is Christine McVie, a finely executed solo album containing the jaunty hit single Got a Hold on Me, and the follow-up, Love Will Show Us How. McVie’s LP is in the great tradition of solo efforts by members of Fleetwood Mac, following one in 1981 by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, two platinum monsters by Stevie Nicks and two obscure releases by drummer Mick Fleetwood. Only Christine’s ex-husband, bassist John McVie, has yet to try a solo and record sans Mac.

McVie may have thrust Christine from the shadow of her megaband, but it does have guest appearances by fellow L.A.-area residents Fleetwood and Buckingham. And ex-husband McVie, who lives on the island of St. Thomas, devotedly popped into the Montreux, Switzerland studio to check on Chris. “They all said they loved the album, and I have no reason to doubt them,” she says wryly. Only Nicks hasn’t weighed in. In fact, McVie hasn’t spoken to Nicks for a year “because our paths just haven’t crossed.” Like any major act, Mac is constantly rumored to be disintegrating—and Nicks’ solo triumphs have hardly silenced that kind of talk. Still, McVie downplays any intraband melodramas. “Any competitiveness—if that’s the right word—is all quite friendly,” says McVie, who certainly doesn’t want to rock the boat. “The album is a project, not a career for me. My main interest in life is still the band.”  Continue reading Christine McVie takes off in solo flight…| People Weekly →

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Christine McVie Album Review | People Weekly

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People Weekly, March 19, 1984
Christine McVie. (sound recording reviews)

CHRISTINE McVIE by Christine McVie
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There’s a loose, good-time feeling to this album. The tunes, most of them written by McVie and sometime Hall and Oates guitarist Todd Sharp, are snappy and full of rhythmic rock and roll hooks. The production by Russ Titelman is slick. For all that, there’s not much excitement in McVie’s first solo album since 1970 (shortly after she’d left the British group Chicken Shack to join then-husband John McVie in Fleetwood Mac). The subtle harmonic skills that make McVie a peerless ensemble singer and musician with Mac don’t necessarily translate into a solo act.

Her singing seems colorless at times and her keyboard work is overshadowed by her sidemen. Mac mates Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood sat in, as did Eric Clapton, Elton John, drummer Ray Cooper and rock ‘veteran Steve Winwood. McVie, in fact, calls Winwood “my idol,” and their vocal duet on One in a Million is the LP’s most striking track, though the no-frills rock tune Got a Hold on Me has become its hit single.

Maybe McVie’s heart wasn’t totally in this project–“It had reached a point where this record was expected of me,” she has said–but if nothing else, she has it out of her system.

Review Grade: B

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Gypsies, Tramps or Thieves? The World According To Fleetwood Mac | CREEM Magazine

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Creem Magazine
Feb 1983
by John Mendelssohn

One day soon, there will be no more stuffed animals in the world. No stuffed koalas or pandas or ocelots or giraffes will remain for parents to bring their brave little tykes in the pediatric wards of hospitals. Pubescent girls will have no more stuffed leopards or ponies or lynxes to snuggle while they jabber on the telephone. And no stuffed teddy bears will be found in the rooms of Elvis impersonators who are intent on recreating every phase of the King’s life.

One day soon, all the stuffed animals in the world will have been presented to Stevie Nicks while she is on stage with Fleetwood Mac.
Or on stage without Fleetwood Mac. Industry insiders assure us that it won’t be long before Stevie Nicks goes her own way, for she has her own manager, who won’t let her talk to Rolling Stone, and a hit solo album and tour to her credit. Likewise, Lindsey Buckingham, the other half of the duo whose recruitment in 1976 transformed Fleetwood Mac from the blues band that time forgot into mega-platinum ultra superstars, makes no secret of the fact that he much prefers working on own projects these days. And John McVie gives the very distinct impression of not being long for this world, let alone the group. Which means that the time to get to know these five nice people who make nice music for nice people is right now, before they scatter every which way.

An electrician who did some wiring in her home assured CREEM that keyboard- ist Christine McVie, in marked contrast to her boyfriend at the time, Dennis Wilson, is as unaffected and gracious person as one might yearn to do wiring for, her deportment on stage serves to affirm this impression. The only time she gets stuffed animals or bouquets is when somebody who’s about to be throttled by a security gorilla despairs of getting Stevie’s attention. But she neither glowers or sulks about this, nor makes a spectacle of herself in an attempt to pilfer some of Stevie’s thunder. In doing so, she represents the English temperament at its noblest.

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Article Archive Pages, Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Richard Dashut

The Making of Rumours

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The Recording of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours

Memories of the Making of Rumours

Richard Dashut (co-producer)
I’d worked with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks since their debut album, Buckingham-Nicks. After they joined Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey invited me to do their live sound. They started recording Rumours in Sausalito, across the bay from San Fransico, with the Record Plant’s engineer, but they fired him after four days for being too into astrology. I was really just around keeping Lindsey company, then Mick takes me into the parking lot, puts his arm around my shoulder and says, Guess what? You’re producing the album. The funny thing was, I never really wanted to be a producer. I brought in a friend from wally Heider’s studio in Los Angeles, Ken Caillat, to help me, and we started co-producing. Mick gave me and Ken an old Chinese I-Ching coin and said, Good luck.

Cris Morris (recording assistant):
I’d helped build the Record Plant. I knew every nail, because I’d driven most of them in. I’d helped make what became known as Sly Stone’s Pit, a control booth sunk into the floor, so the musicians could sit and play around it. When we recorded Sly there, he had his own personal tank of nitrous oxide installed, and that was still there.

Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac):
It was a bizarre place to work, but we didn’t really use Sly Stone’s pit. It was usually occupied by people we didn’t know, tapping razors on mirrors.

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