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A Time to Dance, Fleetwood Mac is Back | BAM Magazine

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Never Break The Chain

Jeff McDonald talks to Fleetwood Mac singer and pop-culture icon Stevie Nicks about old rumours, the new dance and her life as a “living adjective”

WHEN I FIRST RECEIVED THE ASSIGNMENT TO interview Stevie Nicks — who’s my all-time rock n’ roll idol, not to mention a pop-culture icon of legendary status — I was nervous. But upon my arrival at her West LA home, I found Ms. Nicks not to be the mystical, witchy, other-wordly pop diva I’d expected, but rather a casual, articulate and very down-to-earth person. As she opened the door barefoot wearing a thrift-store-type vintage dress, she invited me into her home and offered me fresh cherries and ice-water. Immediately, I got the feeling that if I had needed a place to stay, Stevie would’ve let crash on her couch. She’s a very cool woman. As you know, Stevie Nicks is Fleetwood Mac’s charismatic lead vocalist, who brought ballet (along with Freddie Mercury, that is) and brilliant pop poetry to the masses. On the 20th anniversary of their mega-platinum-selling album, Rumours, Fleetwood Mac have reformed for the most-anticipated tour of the year. Along with this nationwide string of appearances, the band which includes guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, keyboardist Christine McVie, bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood- have just released a new CD, The Dance, which is a live recording of their already legendary MTV special.

I’m not a rock journalist so I’m a little nervous.
Don’t be nervous.

When I get nervous I get chapped lips.
Want some Chap-Stick?

I think I’ll be OK.
Are you sure? We’ve got a whole house of women here, we’ve got everything.

I had a little problem with Chap-Stick-I got addicted to it so I’ve had to give it up, but thanks anyway. Let’s start with the MTV performance that you taped earlier this spring. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go, but a friend of mine who went told me her hair actually stood up on her arms. And I know that Courtney Love cried three times during the concert. It was so unfair that I had to miss it.
I’m sorry you had to miss it, too.

I did see one song, “The Chain,” on video. It sounded so cool, so vital. Not at all “oldies” music.
From the first day on April 1st, I said to myself, if I go up there and it feels like some kind of retro thing, I’m off the stage, I’m out of the hall, I’m not going to do this. But it never felt like that. It felt like we were getting back into rehearsal, just starting up again. Like maybe we’d been off for a year. That’s how it felt.

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A life with Fleetwood Mac – John McVie | Bass Player

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Bass Player
May/June 1995
By Alexis Sklarevski

John McVie has been an integral part of several revolutions in popular music. Born on November 26, 1945, McVie grew up in England. He started playing in a group called the Krewsaders while still in school – and he’s never stopped. In the 1960s, he laid down the bottom for the seminal blues-rock band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, which paved the way for groups like Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the Jeff Beck Group. Then, in the ’70s, he helped Fleetwood Mac to become one of the biggest and most successful pop acts in the world. McVie’s approach to the bass may not be considered “technical” or “schooled” – but there’s no denying that he can inject more heart and soul into one not than more modern “whiz kids” can summon up on an entire record.

Over the past 30 years, partnered with rock-solid drummer Mick Fleetwood, McVie has provided one stellar bass line after another for an astounding array of Fleetwood Mac hits, such as “Rhiannon”, “Say you love me”, and “Dreams”. I had the opportunity to interview John before the start of a Fleetwood Mac recording session in Hollywood, where the band is preparing to add yet another album to its long and colorful history.

What’s the new Fleetwood Mac lineup?

There are actually two entities right now. There’s the road band, with Dave Mason and Billy Burnette on guitar, Bekka Bramlett (Delaney and Bonnie’s daughter) on vocals, Mick, and myself. Then there’s the recording band, which has (singer/keyboardist) Christine McVie in it. This new band has a little more edge to it, and it’s bluesier than before. Bekka’s playing is very R&B, Billy is rock & roll and rockabilly, and Dave is… Well, Dave! The combination seems to work really well; I’m very happy with it.

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Fleetwood Mac by Mick Fleetwood with Stephen Davis

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Rolling Stone
September 20, 1990

In an excerpt from his upcoming book, Mick Fleetwood tells how ‘Rumours’ got started.

IN 1969, the English blues band Fleetwood Mac was one of the top groups in the world, outselling the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in Europe. But within two years, guitarist and chief songwriter Peter Green would leave the band after an LSD-induced religious conversion; second guitarist Jeremy Spencer would disappear into a California hippie cult; and third guitarist Danny Kirwan would suffer a breakdown while the band was touring.

That left drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and singer-key-boardist Christine McVie to somehow carry on. In 1975, after relocating to Los Angeles, they hired a pair of starving American musicians, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

Defying all expectations, the first album by the new lineup, Fleetwood Mac, became a huge hit, outselling all of the band’s previous albums. In this excerpt from Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac (which was written with Stephen Davis and will be published in October by William Morrow), Mick Fleetwood describes the volatile emotional climate that led to the artistic and commercial breakthrough of the follow-up album, Rumours.

AH, CRUEL FATE! Bitter destiny!

As Fleetwood Mac crawled and clawed our way back to the top, the gods were laughing at us and having sport. As Fleetwood Mac inched its way to the summit of the charts, our lives were snarled by disharmony and pain. In the year it took us to make our second album with the new lineup, the record that would change all our lives forever, we all got divorced.

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Fleetwood Mac: Behind The Mask Review | People Weekly

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People Weekly, May 14, 1990
Behind the Mask. (sound recording reviews)
by Ralph Novak

BEHIND THE MASK by Fleetwood Mac

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The addition of singers-guitarists-composers Billy Burnette and Rick Vito has livened up the at-times institutional-sounding tendencies of Fleetwood Mac. This time around, things rock a bit harder, throb a bit deeper. The changes are not revolutionary, though; it’s as if General Motors or Ford had hired a couple of new designers who came up with a different bumper here, a sexier headlight there. The basic product stays the same: in this case, a stately sort of pop rock that ranges from ponderous to movingly effective.

Burnette and Vito joined the band for its 1987 tour when Lindsey Buckingham struck off on his own. (Buckingham appears on one track on this album, in a slight but appealing concession to loyalty.) That’s a two-guitars-for-one trade, thus the splashier, harder sound on such tracks as “When the Sun Goes Down,” which the newcomers co-wrote. The best Mac songs, though, still belong to Stevie Nicks. “Love Is Dangerous,” which she wrote with Vito, has a dirge-like, ’60s tone. But “Freedom” (written with Mike Campbell) and “Affairs of the Heart” both generate that disquieting sense of frustrated romantic impulses that Nicks conveys so well.

Christine McVie partisans will also enjoy the sweet lilt of “Do You Know,” composed with Burnette. Still moving to the beat of the same drummer — Mick Fleetwood himself — Mac has been nothing if not consistent over its 20-year, 19-album history, and there’s satisfaction, as well as entertainment, in that. “Predictable” is not always an insult. (Warner Bros.)

Ralph Novak
Review Grade: B

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Flashback 1989 – Fleetwood Mac’s leading ladies: Stevie Nicks & Christine McVie

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Music Connection Vol. XIII, No. 1
Jan.9-Jan. 22, 1989

In 1975, when Fleetwood Mac entered the studio to begin recording a new studio album, no one could have predicted the massive success that this veteran English band would soon achieve. Following a ten-year, checkered history of changing personnel, which frequently left the band minus key members and a music direction, founding fathers Mick Fleetwood and John McVie recruited a little-known singer-songwriting duo, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Nick’s bewitching musical persona and Buckingham’s guitar and arrangement talents, coupled with the earlier addition of Christine Perfect (later Mrs. McVie), gave this band all the chemistry and direction it needed. The resulting album, simply titled Fleetwood Mac, spawned the hit singles, “Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” and “Over My Head,” and catapulted a band with a limited sales base into a multi-platinum hit machine.

In the years that followed, the band solidified its superstar status with 1977’s Rumours LP (an incredible twenty million copies sold worldwide); survived the traumatic breakup of two romances within the band – Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and John and Christie McVie; dabbled in experimentation with the ambitious, 1979 two-record set Tusk; and recorded the lackluster 1982 LP Mirage that had critics and fans wondering if the band had finally run out of creative steam.

But rumors of the band’s demise proved premature. In 1987, after a five-year layoff, Fleetwood Mac released the excellent Tango In The Night, an album that re-established the band both commercially and artistically. That was the good news. The bad news was Lindsey Buckingham, whose production and instrumental skills had so greatly contributed to their success, would be leaving the Mac fold. Undaunted, the band recruited two musicians, guitarist/vocalists Rick Vito and Billy Brunette, to fill the Buckingham void.

Now, with the release of their current greatest hits LP, Fleetwood Mac spears to be taking stock of its platinum past and looking forward to its future. The album is a reminder of past glories – “Rhiannon,” “Don’t Stop,” “Dreams,” and “Go Your Own Way” – and a harbinger of things to come, with two new tracks, “As Long As You Follow” (the album’s first single) and “No Questions Asked,” featuring the band’s new guitar lineup. We recently spoke to the two first ladies of Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, about the band’s past, present and future.

MC: Tell me about the new Fleetwood Mac. What’s different and unique about Fleetwood Mac as we’re seeing you now?

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Big Mac – Fleetwood Mac talks to Record Mirror (Apr 1988)

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Well, you can’t get much bigger than Fleetwood Mac, can you?
In the wake of Lindsey Buckingham’s much-publicised departure and their combined chart success.
Dave Zimmer talks to the band that just refuses to lay down and die….

Record Mirror (UK)
April 1988

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Somebody should write a soap opera based on Fleetwood Mac’s career. They’ve been plagued by jealousy, bankruptcy and alcoholism; and when guitarist Lindsey Buckingham left the band last year, it looked like the end of the road.

Buckingham had been with Fleet­wood Mac since 1975 when he and Stevie Nicks helped catapult the rather obscure ‘hippy’ band into the big time with the LP ‘Rumours’. To date, it’s sold over 30 million copies worldwide. But the relationship between Nicks and Buckingham soured, as Stevie explains.

“If Lindsey said the wall in the studio was grey, I’d be absolutely sure it was pink. In order to get one of my. songs on a record I’d have to say ‘Okay, the wall’s grey Lindsey’. Otherwise it was back on the bus.

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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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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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Stevie Nicks Steals the Show – Atlanta Journal Review, 1980

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Atlanta Journal
August 11, 1980
By Andrew Slater

Standing in a backstage room at the Omni, Stevie Nicks stared longingly at a bowl of Cheetos cheese balls. “I love these things,” she said as a small group of anxious post-concert party guests waited their turn to talk with Fleetwood Mac’s lead singer. “These are great to eat when you’re not on a diet.”

“However,” she added with a sardonic whine, “I am on one, so keep me away from them.”

That was not a difficult task for Ted Cohen, the Warner Bros. Press liaison who is travelling with the group and who acted as ringmaster for Fleetwood Mac’s Friday night gathering. At this reception, following the band’s first Atlanta performance in almost two years, Miss Nicks was the centre of attention, after strolling into the room fashionably later than the other band members.

Manager/drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie had been milling about the room, talking with members of local radio stations and Atlanta representatives from Warner Bros. Records. The trio has served as the muscular rhythm section and spinal chord for three incarnations of Fleetwood Mac: the first during the late ’60s, when the group was a British blues band with guitarist Peter Green; the second as early ’70s melody makers with California guitarist Bob Welch; and now with their most successful aggregation, featuring third-generation Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and Miss Nicks.

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Fleetwood Mac – Can’t Go Home Again | Trouser Press

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April 1980
By Chris Salewicz

Of course, Fleetwood Mac is the American Dream. The band’s success story is the stuff of which the mytho-logy of modern day America is made: Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, down on their luck in the Oulde Country, make the decision to move to the Promised Land. Traveling as far west as possible, these humble immigrants settle on the most advanced technological frontier in the world, Los Angeles.

Operating within rock ‘n’ roll’s picaresque tradition, a surprise encounter teams up the three Britishers with two down-and-out American natives, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Within a year, following closely the WASP work ethic, their fortunes change for the better.

Within three years of moving to America they have become part of the aristocracy to which you are granted entry in the United States by virtue of your material rather than your blood. In Washington Fleetwood Mac is invited to the White House for social chit-chat with President Jimmy Carter.

By now they are so rich that Mick Fleetwood tells a friend he knows he need never work again in his life. It’s like a good made-for-TV movie!

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