The loss of longtime Fleetwood Mac keyboardist Christine McVie last year remains deeply felt by fans of the long-running group’s unbeatable pop/rock songs. Today, on what would have been her 80th birthday, Rhino Records is releasing unheard music by (and in tribute to) her, with plans to reissue two of her solo albums this fall.
On November 3, Rhino will reissue a remastered version of 1984’s Christine McVie on CD and vinyl, with a cola-bottle clear color variant of the latter available exclusively at Barnes & Noble. That same day, they will also release her belated 2004 album In the Meantime, not only remastered but newly remixed by her nephew, Todd Perfect, with “Little Darlin'” – an unreleased outtake from the sessions – available as a bonus track. It’ll be pressed on CD and double vinyl with a songbird etching on the fourth side, but it’s available digitally today. Continue reading Got a Hold on Me: Christine McVie’s Solo Works Returning to Print | The Second Disc→
If you’ll forgive the easy reference, there’s no one quite as bewitching as Stevie Nicks. Since she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and helped turn them from British blues-based cult act to blockbuster pop/rock icons, her enrapturing voice and stage presence have influenced generations. In 1981, she began a parallel solo career with hits on her own that helped make her, in 2019, the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice. It’s that solo material that’s the subject of a brand-new box set from Rhino, featuring all eight of her studio albums and a host of rare material.
Complete Studio Albums & Rarities brings together just about all of Nicks’ own output between 1981 and 2014, a period covered by Rhino’s Stand Back compilation from 2019. The set features the chart-topping Bella Donna (1981) and follow-up The Wild Heart (1983) – both presented as remastered for a pair of deluxe editions in 2016 – newly-remastered versions of Rock a Little (1985), The Other Side of the Mirror (1989), Street Angel (1994) and Trouble in Shangri-La (2001), and the late-period successes In Your Dreams (2011) and 24 Karat Gold – Songs from the Vault (2014). The set closes out with a newly-compiled double album of Rarities, featuring 23 B-sides, bonus tracks, compilation songs, material from nine different soundtrack collections and Nicks’ recently-released cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Continue reading Stand Back: Rhino Releases Stevie Nicks’ Complete Discography on CD, LP Box | Second Disc→
Fleetwood Mac’s not-so-secret weapon held the group together through breakups and freakouts, ruptures and reinventions, blizzards of drugs and booze, until even she could take no more. But without her voice, her songs, and her sanity, they were only ever half the band. Mark Blake pays tribute to Christine McVie.
On her way: Christine McVie, AKA Chicken Shack singer Christine Perfect, April 16, 1969.
IN AUGUST 1987, LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM TOLD Fleetwood Mac he wouldn’t be touring their new album, Tango In The Night. The shows were already booked and a furious Stevie Nicks chased him up and down the corridors of Christine McVie’s Beverly Hills mansion, hurling insults. Eventually, the couple ended up outside, physically threatening each other, among the manicured hedgerows and expensive cars.
“I remember saying, ‘Please don’t kill each other on my driveway,’” said McVie, displaying her flair for understatement.
Christine McVie passed away on November 30, 2022 after a short illness. Descriptions such as “the quiet one” and “Fleetwood Mac’s secret weapon” appeared in several obituaries; “referee” could also be added to the list. Really, McVie’s contribution was neither quiet nor secret.
McVie composed or co-wrote eight of the group’s 16 US Top 20 hits, including Don’t Stop, You Make Loving Fun, Everywhere and Little Lies, and was the creative glue binding the original blues band, comprising drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, with the Californian influx of Buckingham and Nicks.
This writer was fortunate to interview her three times. She was always candid and considered, with a highly-tuned bullshit detector. McVie was also a musical giant, steeped in blues, pop and rock’n’roll, and adored and respected by the rest of Fleetwood Mac; even the notoriously single-minded Buckingham deferred “to Chris”. Yet it took her 15-year hiatus from the group and, finally, her death, for McVie’s contribution to be more fully, and broadly, acknowledged.
McVIE WAS BORN CHRISTINE ANNE PERFECT IN Bouth, Cumbria, on July 12, 1943, and never liked her surname: “Teachers would always say, ‘I hope you live up to it.’” Raised in Smethwick, on the grey border between Birmingham and the Black Country, she was the second child of music tutor and concert violinist Cyril and his wife, Beatrice, a medium and faith healer.
Growing up, McVie was wary of her mother’s interest in the occult. Though she recalled Beatrice once placing a finger on a wart under her nose and promising her it would be gone by morning: “And it was. Though I still have a slight scar there.”
A talent for art was spotted early, and McVie was barely in her teens when she was fast-tracked into Moseley Junior Art School. But music was a parallel passion, nurtured by her father and her older brother John. McVie played piano and cello, and discovered the blues aged 15 when John showed her Fats Domino’s piano songbook. Domino’s seesawing left hand on Ain’t That A Shame – “the boogie bass” as McVie called it – would reappear in several of her signature hits.
Classic Rock Magazine, Feb 2023 Words: Bill DeMain
A ground-breaking artist and the calm eye of the decades-spanning storm that was Fleetwood Mac, she brought elegance and soul to the band’s sound through her voice, keyboard playing and some of rock’s most enduring hits.
And the songbirds are singing, like they know the score
Mick Fleetwood once called her “the steadying presence” of Fleetwood Mac. And in the days following her death at age 79, tributes to Christine McVie often reached for similar phrases – the hidden strength, the cornerstone, the heart and soul – to describe the role she played for more than 50 years in rock’s most tempestuous soap opera.
“I don’t like being centre stage, I never have,” she told Uncut in 2022. “I like to be part of a group.” Watching her in concert, whether during the band’s heady late-70s era or what would be their final tour, in 2019, she was all business, more serious musician than rock star. Blue grey eyes peering out from behind blonde fringe, swaying and singing confidently at her keyboards, aligning herself with the rhythm section of Fleetwood and ex-husband John McVie, while Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham basked in the spotlight. But that cool reserve couldn’t alter the fact that Christine was the group’s most dependable and successful songwriter. When you look at their world-conquering statistics – eight multi-platinum albums, more than 130 million copies sold (the perennial Rumours alone responsible for 40 million) – at the centre are her evergreen hits like Over My Head, You Make Loving Fun, Don’t Stop, Little Lies and Everywhere. “I suppose I must be good with hooks,” she once reasoned modestly.
For all her success, it was always art and music that drove McVie. Born Christine Perfect in Bouth, a Lake District village, in 1943, she was the younger of two children. Her father was a violinist and college music professor, her mother a psychic healer. She began classical piano lessons at 11. A few years later she discovered her elder brother’s Fats Domino songbook inside the piano seat. “It was goodbye Chopin,” she said. She got hooked on the New Orleans-style boogie-woogie blues, and at 16 wrote her first song. That rolling-river left-hand feel would stay with her, lending a funky current to many of her best songs in the years ahead. “It always comes back to the blues,” she would often say of her writing style.
On a scholarship, she studied sculpture, needlecraft and dress design in art college. “Perfect for a future career in Fleetwood Mac,” she joked. But her heart wasn’t in it.
Reserved, intelligent singer and songwriter for Fleetwood Mac whose album Rumours was one of the biggest-selling of all time
Christine McVie in 1979: she wrote many of the band’s most famous songs RANDY BACHMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Under normal circumstances, when Christine and John McVie divorced, they would have gone their separate ways. There were no children to consider and nothing to keep them together — except that they were trapped in the same band, forced to see each other each day and share a stage together every night as they toured the world with Fleetwood Mac.
To rub salt into the wounds, after separating from her husband, Christine had started an affair with the group’s lighting director while at the same time two other members of the band, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, were also breaking up and Nicks began an affair with the fifth member of the group, drummer Mick Fleetwood.
If one had been writing a rock’n’roll soap opera, the emotional maelstrom of this torrid plot would surely have been rejected as too preposterous. Yet for the participants it was all too real and they dealt with the fallout in the only way they knew how. They wrote songs to each other about their collective trauma.
The songs became the 1977 album Rumours, which went on to sell more than 40 million copies worldwide and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.
Christine’s compositions for the album included You Make Loving Fun, addressed to her new lover, and Don’t Stop, a message to her husband, which was later famously adopted by President Bill Clinton as his campaign theme tune. On both of them, the jilted ex-husband played bass without missing a beat. Continue reading Christine McVie obituary | The Times (UK)→
Christine McVie, who played with Fleetwood Mac and wrote some of their most famous songs, has died aged 79, her family has said.
GETTY IMAGES
The British singer-songwriter was behind hits including Little Lies, Everywhere, Don’t Stop, Say You Love Me, and Songbird.
She died peacefully at a hospital in the company of her family, a statement said.
McVie left Fleetwood Mac after 28 years in 1998 but returned in 2014.
The family’s statement said “we would like everyone to keep Christine in their hearts and remember the life of an incredible human being, and revered musician who was loved universally”.
Born Christine Perfect, McVie married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie and joined the group in 1971.
Fleetwood Mac was one of the world’s best known rock bands in the 1970s and ’80s.
Their 1977 album Rumours – inspired by the break-ups of the McVies and the band’s other couple, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks – became one of the biggest selling of all time, with more than 40 million copies sold worldwide.
After playing the London Palladium on Saturday night (October 1), Buckingham shared a message on his social media the following day, revealing that the remainder of the dates – including a show set for tonight (October 3) in Glasgow – are now cancelled.
The message said: “Due to ongoing health issues, Lindsey is regrettably having to cancel the remaining shows on his current European tour.
“Refunds will be available from the point of purchase. Lindsey sends his deepest apologies to all of his fans who were planning to attend and hopes to return to Europe in the future.
See the message and the cancelled tour dates below.
OCTOBER 2022 03 – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo 04 – Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall 06 – Dublin, Helix
★★★★☆
Alongside becoming one of the pre-eminent guitarists of his generation, Lindsey Buckingham appears to have been on a lifelong mission to annoy Stevie Nicks as much as possible. Way back on Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 divorce masterpiece Rumours, Buckingham was contributing Second Hand News, Never Going Back Again and Go Your Own Way, self-explanatory break-up anthems all in some way about his former girlfriend. When Nicks finally flipped in 2018 and said either she went or he did, Buckingham put his subsequent sacking from Fleetwood Mac down to her probably still being in love with him. Finally in London after a much-delayed tour, he certainly didn’t shy away from highlighting his undeniable contribution to Fleetwood Mac, playing all the favourites alongside his solo material.
Buckingham was always the one who pushed things musically, embracing post-punk when the others wanted to stick to soft rock. It resulted in following up Rumours with the 1979 album Tusk, the title track of which still sounded as weird as ever here with its marching beat and eerie demand, “Don’t say that you love me.” Elsewhere the concert was a masterclass in guitar playing, from the sweet acoustic finger-picking on Never Going Back Again to the gentle balladry of Time, a cover version of the plaintive Sixties hit by harmony trio the Pozo-Seco Singers, which features on Buckingham’s (very good) 2021 solo album. And when he launched off on an interminable solo he looked as if he was going through every kind of agony and ecstasy before the roar of the crowd brought him some kind of climax when the solo finally ended.
Amid all this Buckingham was a slender, lithe figure who looked good for his age (he’s 73 today) and seemed perfectly content to play with his three backing musicians as if he was filling stadiums, even though he was actually in a mid-sized theatre before a seated audience. By Go Your Own Way everyone was up on their feet, singing along and doing a bit of dancing in the aisles before being removed by overzealous ushers; exactly the kind of rapturous response that proves Buckingham can indeed go his own way, which will annoy Nicks further. Don’t bet on Lindsey Buckingham’s role in the Fleetwood Mac soap opera being over yet, though.
London Palladium With seven albums’ worth of solo material to his name, Buckingham makes the fans wait for classic Rumours tracks – but eventually delivers in style
Lindsey Buckingham is considered rock royalty thanks to the years he spent with Fleetwood Mac, and his role in transforming a one-time great British blues band that had lost its leader and sense of direction into a multi-platinum-selling soft-rock phenomenon. But he clearly wants to be known for even more: as a singer-songwriting soloist who is also a distinctive guitarist. Tonight, those who are desperate for him to get on to his Fleetwood Mac hits are reminded that he has recorded seven albums of his own songs.
Now in his early 70s, he comes on in very tight blue jeans, black vest and jacket, backed by a three-piece band of keyboards, drums, and a second guitarist, Neale Heywood, who has worked with Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham makes no introductions as he heads into a selection of his non-Fleetwood songs, demonstrating his guitar skills from the start. He likes the finger-picking style that is associated more with folk than rock, and the opening Not Too Late shows his slick, rapid-fire technique. He has a powerful vocal range and a catalogue of fine, tuneful songs, such as Soul Drifter, which would benefit from more emotion and variety than his consistently full-tilt approach allows.
A statement at the time read: “This is heartbreaking for Lindsey, he was so excited to come to Europe for the first time as a solo artist this spring.”
Buckingham will now play shows in Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool and London between October 3 and October 6, 2022.
The UK run follows rearranged gigs in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Germany. Original tickets are valid for all the corresponding new dates.
Lindsey Buckingham’s UK and European tour dates 2022:
OCTOBER Saturday 01 – London, London Palladium Monday 03 – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo Tuesday 04 – Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall Thursday 06 – Dublin, Helix
While it’s not known whether Fleetwood Mac will be recording or touring again, the band’s two female members have plans of their own in 2022.
While Stevie Nicks isn’t touring, per se, she has been adding live performance dates to her calendar one by one. As of April 19, the songstress has ten concerts planned this year, many of which are taking place at festivals. They span from May 7, where she’ll be the headliner on the final Saturday of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, through Sept. 30. Though McVie hasn’t announced any concerts, she is releasing a new solo collection, Songbird. The album is produced by Glyn Johns and emphasizes songs from her solo career. It arrives June 24 via Rhino. It first became available for pre-order on Apr. 19.
Fleetwood Mac last toured in 2019, with Mike Campbell and Neil Finn joining Nicks, McVie, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. News of Nicks‘ 2022 appearances began trickling out in January, when the Bonnaroo festival announced its lineup.
Stevie Nicks 2022 Dates (Tickets are available here and here)
May 07 – New Orleans, LA – Jazz Fest
May 11 – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre
May 14 – George, WA – The Gorge Amphitheatre
Jun 19 – Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo
Sep 04 – Snowmass, CO – Jazz Aspen Snowmass
Sep 08 – Highland Park, IL – Ravinia
Sep 10 – Highland Park, IL – Ravinia
Sep 17 – Asbury Park, NJ – Sea Hear Now Festival
Sep 24 – Bridgeport, CT – Sound on Sound Festival
Sep 30 – Dana Point, CA – Ohana Festival
McVie‘s last studio effort was 2017’s collaboration with Lindsey Buckingham. The title track of the 2022 release originally appeared on Mac’s 1977 Rumours album. Other songs are culled from various aspects of her career, including her solo work. McVie says the songs, with a string orchestra, “sound completely different.”
The album includes a selection of songs from two of her solo albums – 1984’s Christine McVie and 2004’s In the Meantime – plus two previously unreleased studio recordings.
The first release, “Slow Down,” was originally written for the 1985 film American Flyers. Of the song, McVie says, “I was asked to write a song for a film about a cycling competition. So, I thought we’d give it a go. So that’s why the lyrics are sort of muddled up with a little bit of a love song, a little bit of cycling. And it turned out really well, but they didn’t end up using it. We thought it was a pity to waste it, so it’s on here.”
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