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Created by Sue Cole in the early nineties
In The Nicks of Time | Record Mirror
Record Mirror
May 20, 1989
Stevie Nicks is one of pop’s most enduring personalities. As she releases her first solo album since 1986, Robin Smith meets the Joan Collins of rock and discovers a born survivor who’s just a romantic at heart
Stevie Nicks’ hotel suite is so large you could land a jumbo jet on the carpet or convert the place into an indoor golf course. But somehow, a smaller room just wouldn’t suit her. After all, Ms Nicks’ vocals have powered Fleetwood Mac to becoming one of the best seling groups of all time and she’s also pursued a very lucrative solo career. Her new single, ‘Rooms On Fire’, is nestling as comfortably in the charts as Stevie reclining on a plush sofa.
Stevie Nicks is the Joan Collins of pop. The struggling musician who scraped together a living as a waitress before she was whisked away to a limousine lifestyle. En route she’s suffered several broken love affairs, extreme loneliness and a drugs problem.
“Sometimes I think that not even the bubbliest, wildest soap opera could compare with being in Fleetwood Mac,” chuckles Stevie. “We’ve done a lot of laughing and a lot of bleeding in the band and I don’t think there are another group of people I could work with. There’s such a chemistry and a feeling of love and respect between us.” Continue reading In The Nicks of Time | Record Mirror
Flashback 1989 – Fleetwood Mac’s leading ladies: Stevie Nicks & Christine McVie
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?
Continue reading Flashback 1989 – Fleetwood Mac’s leading ladies: Stevie Nicks & Christine McVieBig Mac – Fleetwood Mac talks to Record Mirror (Apr 1988)
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
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.
Continue reading Big Mac – Fleetwood Mac talks to Record Mirror (Apr 1988)
Stevie Nicks Live at Red Rocks. (video recording reviews) | People Weekly
STEVIE NICKS LIVE AT RED ROCKS
People Weekly, Feb 15, 1988
Ralph Novak
One reason this is such a splendid concert tape is that director Marty Callner, who has worked with Hall and Oates, Heart and Whitesnake, doesn’t seem compelled to show off his technique. He has a gorgeous setting, the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver. And he has one of pop music’s most physically attractive, musically interesting performers in Nicks. Callner’s cameras record the event faithfully, without distorting it. The second reason the tape is so enjoyable is that Nicks herself, about 10 minutes into what begins as a listless performance (taped in summer 1986), literally puts her foot down. In the middle of Talk to Me, she stomps three or four times, as if to pump herself up, and the effect is galvanizing. Impassivity is part of Nicks’s style, but from that moment her singing seems to take on an undervoiced passion. Her backup musicians also seem to take themselves up another notch, particularly drummer Rick Marotta, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and Robert Martin, who plays saxophone for Talk to Me. The appearances by ”special guests” are overbilled. Anyone who turns away to eat a potato chip could miss the contributions of Peter Frampton and Nicks’s Fleetwood Mac colleague Mick Fleetwood. And Callner lapses during Dreams, patching in a phony sky full of lightning. There’s nearly an hour of solid music, though, with such Nicks hits as Stand Back and an extended Edge of Seventeen, complete with a real dove in honor of the song’s refrain (”Just like the white winged dove sings a song/ Sounds like she’s singing it to you”). When Nicks is shown under the closing credits walking out to the edge of the audience (where she is loaded down with stuffed toys and flowers), the crowd’s affection seems well earned.
Sony, $19.95 — Ralph Novak
Review Grade: A
Mag.Coll.: 44D0668
Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving | CREEM Magazine
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 . . .
Continue reading Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving | CREEM MagazineLindsey Buckingham: Go Insane Review | People Weekly
People Weekly, Oct 1, 1984
Go insane. (sound recording reviews)
GO INSANE by Lindsey Buckingham
Buckingham–along with his former girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie–provided the composing talent that boosted Fleetwood Mac to such overwhelming success in the ’70s.
Go Insane, Lindsey’s second solo album, is a manifesto of his intent to remain a rock ‘n’ roll force, even while the group itself seems to be a tabled proposition. The record is studded with power pop gems such as the title cut and I Want You, as well as Slow Dancing and Loving Cup. All of these continue in the tradition of songs that sold 35 million Fleetwood Mac albums after Buckingham joined the group in 1974. (Kind of makes you wonder why Mick Fleetwood has filed for bankruptcy.)
Lindsey flies off the handle of mainstream appeal with D.W. Suite, a seven-minute eulogy of Dennis Wilson that mixes Beach Boys-influenced harmonies with elements of prayer and traditional Irish music. There is also Play in the Rain, which closes out one side and continues as the opening cut on the other. An off-the-wall composition, it begins with high-tech surrealism before hitting a funk groove tinged with Indian sitar sounds. Those are, however, the only indications that Buckingham is indeed going off his commercial rocker.
Review Grade: A-
Lindsey Buckingham – Reels Himself In!
1984 Article on the recording of Go Insane
Lindsey Buckingham has never exactly set out to make a solo album. A confirmed studio addict, he methodically experiments with sounds and structures until enough of the pieces form the basis for songs that then cry out to be completed and recorded. On his second Elektra album, Go Insane, lyric ideas inspired some of the experiments, and the songs are tied together by a common thread.
*It’s really about going insane in the mildest possible sense, he explains. “It’s about having your sense of reality tested through various circumstances until you’re not really sure where reality lies and you have a choice of letting yourself continue to be insane on some level or of reeling yourself back in.”
Buckingham admits that he particularly “reels himself in on” Side One, which contains the hit single “Go Insane” followed by the tune “Slow Dancing.” “Both of those songs have certain esoteric aspects about them, he says, “although their form is not as challenging as some of the other things on the album. They draw you right in.”
The first side finishes with “Play in the Rain”, a song that continues onto Side Two. “We originally had the version that ends Side One” explains Lindsey, “but it seems like it would be very interesting to continue that particular thing which is probably the most experimental piece on the album.
“That, as the beginning of Side Two, and the next song on that side are rhythm pieces, Then it goes into ‘Bang the Drum’, for which we sent John, the second engineer, into a schoolyard to record kids playing. That song is certainly influenced by the Beach Boys use of vocals, and it is a prelude to ‘D.W. Suite’. It shifts from being non-melodic and purely rhythmic into harmonies in major keys. In fact, the whole second side is pretty much in that frame of mind, going from minor to major keys.
Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham – Reels Himself In!Christine McVie takes off in solo flight…| People Weekly
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
Christine McVie Album Review | People Weekly
People Weekly, March 19, 1984
Christine McVie. (sound recording reviews)
CHRISTINE McVIE by Christine McVie
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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