McVie and Lindsey Buckingham reveal all about their collaboration in our exclusive interview
Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham discuss the future of Fleetwood Mac and their new collaborative album in the new issue of Uncut, on sale in UK shops and available to buy digitally.
The pair’s debut as Buckingham McVie – also featuring Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – is set for release this summer.
“I’ve grown up a lot since the last time I really worked with [Christine],” explains Buckingham. “I realised: ‘Oh, here I am, a completely different person. I’m a father of three children. I’ve been married almost 20 years. I’ve had my journey, and Christine has had her own journey.’”
However, the singer, keyboardist and songwriter also reveals that the future of Fleetwood Mac is far from certain.
“The 2018 tour is supposed to be a farewell tour,” says McVie. “But you take farewell tours one at a time. Somehow we always come together, this unit. We can feel it ourselves.”
Buckingham and McVie are on the cover of the new Uncut, dated May 2017 and on sale March 16.
By Jordan Runtagh
Rolling Stone Online
February 3, 2017
Why “Silver Springs” was left off the LP, how the band’s Rolling Stone cover shoot fueled Steve Nicks and Mick Fleetwood’s affair, and more
“Drama. Dra-ma,” was how Christine McVie described the recording of Rumours to Rolling Stone shortly after its release on February 4th, 1977. And that wasn’t even the half of it. Sessions for Fleetwood Mac‘s masterwork have all the elements of a meticulously scripted theatrical romance – elaborate entanglements, enormous amounts of money and mountains of cocaine.
The Rumours saga is one of rock’s most famous soap operas, but here’s a refresher course on the dramatis personae: Stevie Nicks had just split with her longtime lover and musical partner, Lindsey Buckingham, while Christine was in the midst of divorcing her husband, bassist John McVie. Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood’s extra-band marriage was on the rocks, leading to an affair with Nicks before the year was out. This inner turmoil surfaced in brutally honest lyrics, transforming the album into a tantalizing he-said-she-said romantic confessional. The musicians’ personal lives permanently fused within the grooves, and all who listened to Rumours become a voyeur to the painful, glamorous mess.
Drama aside, Rumours is among the finest work the band ever produced. “We refused to let our feelings derail our commitment to the music, no matter how complicated or intertwined they became,” Fleetwood later wrote in his 2014 memoir. “It was hard to do, but no matter what, we played through the hurt.” Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know | Rolling Stone→
Fleetwood Mac are celebrated as one of the great dysfunctional soap operas of rock and roll, a dynastic saga set to music. They are almost as famous for the bed-hopping, powder sniffing, emotional traumas they have inflicted upon one another over the years as for their era-defining monster hits.
So news that two of its most cherished members are making an album together is a cause for intrigue, a sense that there may still be a twist or two ahead in the long running and increasingly convoluted narrative.
It was revealed this week that guitarist, singer and songwriter Lindsey Buckingham has been working on an album of duets with keyboard player, singer and songwriter Christine McVie. It is tentatively scheduled to be released in May, under the name Buckingham McVie. That in itself represents an inescapable reference to Buckingham Nicks, the pre-Fleetwood duo made up of Lindsey and former lover Stevie Nicks.
To add spice to the rumour mill, the rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist (and Christine’s ex-husband) John McVie appear on the album. So the only one of the famous five missing is the elusive Nicks.
There have been 16 members over Fleetwood Mac’s 50 year career, in a constant shuffling of roles that would leave the scriptwriters for Dallas breathless. Most of the bit part players have been forgotten by now but the five leads who united in the mid-70s to create some of the most glorious pop rock ever heard continue to exert fascination.
Legendary albums such as Rumours and Tusk were created in a whirl of narcotic excess, sexual shenanigans and romantic betrayal that lent an undoubted frisson and emotional subtext to songs of love, longing, loss and reconciliation, in which tough emotions were glossed with glorious melodies and sparkling harmonies.
The Guardian Music
Monday 16 January 2017 11.01 GMT
Former members Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie return with their duet album in May, which will feature John McVie and Mick Fleetwood
Fleetwood Mac in 1977: (From left) Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives
Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie are set to record a duet album together under the name Buckingham McVie. The moniker harks back to the cult duo Buckingham Nicks, which Lindsey and Stevie Nicks formed before joining Fleetwood Mac.
The singers told the LA Times that their new record should be released in May, with Buckingham commenting on the particular chemistry between the two: “All these years we’ve had this rapport, but we’d never really thought about doing a duet album before.” he said.
McVie added: “We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiralled into something really amazing that we’ve done between us.”
The partnership had been hinted at several months previously when drummer Mick Fleetwood told Rolling Stone that the pair “could probably have a mighty strong duet album if they want.”
However the project is slightly more of a group affair than the title suggests – fellow Mac members bassist John McVie and Fleetwood are set to perform on it. This is despite the fact there is still no sign of the first Fleetwood Mac since 2003’s Say You Will. Fans had hoped that when McVie rejoined the band in 2014 following a 16 year break, there would be a new album – but securing time with Stevie Nicks, who has been concentrating on her solo career, has been the stumbling block.
In October last year, McVie told the Guardian that the album was “half-finished … it’s just seven tracks that we’ve got, and they’re only with guide vocals”. Talking of its “fantastic variety of songs” she said she hoped to finish the album before last Christmas
Longtime devotees of the rock band Fleetwood Mac might be forgiven for letting out a gleeful yelp when registering the news that singer-keyboardist Christine McVie shared with The Times in December while sitting next to her band mate — guitarist, singer and producer Lindsey Buckingham.
Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham at the Village Studio in December 2016. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
“I’ve been sending Lindsey demos in their very raw form,” she says, sitting in the Village Studio’s storied Studio D in West Los Angeles, “and he’s been doing his Lindsey magic on them, which I love.”
The product of that magic is tentatively scheduled to come out in May, and the two are at the Village to work on vocals. Working with them are two familiar names: Mick Fleetwood, whose towering drum kit is in the next room, and bassist John McVie.
The album coming out of these sessions, however, won’t bear the Fleetwood Mac imprimatur.
Rather, the release with the working title “Buckingham McVie” will arrive as the first full-length collaboration between the pair.
For hard-core fans, it’s not news that, save band mate Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s members have been holed up at the Village. At various intervals over the past few years, the band has acknowledged working on an unspecified project thought to be a new Fleetwood Mac album.
In fact, during a studio visit in 2014, The Times’ Randy Lewis sat down with Christine McVie and Buckingham to discuss her return to touring after 16 years away from the band.
The singer on the band’s half-finished album, the visitation she had when writing Songbird, and growing up with a psychic mum
Christine McVie: ‘We’re supposed to be talking about – what’s it called? – Mirage.’ Photograph: PR Company Handout
Hi, Christine. What was it like growing up with the surname Perfect (1)? It was difficult. Teachers would say: “I hope you live up to your name, Christine.” So, yes, it was tough. I used to joke that I was perfect until I married John.
Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage is being reissued as a box set for £50 (2). Does that seem like a fair price?
It’s a really nice item! It’s quality, isn’t it? It’s good value for money – you’ve got a lot of outtakes, a lot of previously unheard demo versions of songs, you’ve got the vinyl … a CD, I believe, is in there? I mean it’s a nice package! I haven’t had a good look at it, but the label has given me one to take home. I get a free one!
Have you listened to the demos and outtakes?
No. I’m not a big fan of those things. I know people are interested but for my own personal enjoyment I prefer not to listen to them. My songwriting, when I’m writing, is nothing like it is in its finished form – but you have to start somewhere.
By Richard Bienstock
26th Sept, 2016
Rolling Stone
Singer-songwriter looks back on heady days at Château d’Hérouville, discusses band’s future plans
Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie recalls the “peculiar” making of the band’s hit 1982 album ‘Mirage.’ Tim Mosenfelder/Getty
Christine McVie has a confession to make. The 73-year-old singer, songwriter and keyboardist is on the phone with Rolling Stone to discuss the new deluxe reissue of Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 effort, Mirage; but, she admits, she hasn’t actually listened to it yet. “I just now got my copy of the remastered edition in my hands,” McVie says, calling from her home in the U.K. “But I just moved to a flat where I don’t have my DVD or CD player yet. So I’m unable to play it. And there’s all these outtakes and demos and things in there that I certainly haven’t heard since we made them. So I’m most curious to listen.”
Indeed, the new package is a treasure trove for Mac completists (and, apparently, band members). In addition to presenting the original 12-track album – which spent five weeks at Number One and spawned two of the group’s biggest and enduring hits in McVie’s “Hold Me” and Stevie Nicks’ “Gypsy” – in remastered form, the three-CD and DVD set offers up a disc of B sides, titled “Outtakes and Sessions,” as well as a live collection culled from two nights at the L.A. Forum in October 1982 on the Mirage tour. The whole thing is rounded out by a vinyl copy of the album and a DVD in 5.1 surround sound, as well as a booklet with extensive liner notes and photos from the era. Continue reading Christine McVie on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Peculiar’ ‘Mirage’ Sessions, New LP | Rolling Stone→
Arriving in store today (September 23) are deluxe editions of Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 album Mirage.
The new set comes as a single-disc remastered version of the album along with a two-disc Expanded edition and a Deluxe package that includes three CDs, a DVD and an LP. The latter two include bonus demos, rarities and alternative tracks, while the Deluxe also features a 1982 concert from Los Angeles.
Mirage was the more “traditional” follow-up to 1979’s experimental Tusk and hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, going on to be certified double platinum. Lindsey Buckingham tells us that it was also on album on which he and singer-keyboardist Christine McVie — who wrote the first single “Hold Me” — clicked in a way that was different from the way he worked with Stevie Nicks:
“I would say that it’s…an intangible thing. It’s a very strong thing of what I always thought was, for lack of a better term, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts…and I think in that sense Christine and I as two musicians who are very well-grounded in their craft have a kind of symmetry of respect and love for each other on a creative and a musical and a personal level, and I think that was a big part of what that whole being greater than the sum of the parts was at the time. The fact that what I could do for her, I did it for Stevie too but the fact that she (McVie) could infuse her sensibilities into my stuff and I could tap into what I do as a producer, say, and give back so much to her.”
McVie rejoined the band in 2014 following a nearly 16-year leave of absence. Fleetwood Mac has been working on new material but no release plans have been announced.
Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
Christine McVie quit Fleetwood Mac because she developed a fear of flying.
The 73-year-old singer used to whizz around the globe for the ‘Go Your Own Way’ rockers’ mammoth tours on their own private jets, but she slowly developed a phobia of flying and had to leave the band 18 years ago because she couldn’t bring herself to step foot on a plane.
Speaking on UK station BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday (09.21.16), she said: “It must have been six years ago or seven. It was when I did a little tour of an album but at the time I was so frightened of flying that I couldn’t promote it. That was a big thing, I had a real phobia of flying. I think I did one too many (trips in private planes). I think that’s kind of why I left the band.”
theartsdesk meets Christine McVie on a sunny Friday afternoon in September; the Warner Brothers boardroom (with generous hospitality spread) is suitably palatial. We’re the first media interview of the day, so she’s bright and attentive. McVie was always the member of Fleetwood Mac who you’d want to adopt: the most approachably human member of a band constantly at war with itself. Readily admitting that she’s the “peacekeeper’ in the band, the singer/songwriter behind such Mac classics as “Everywhere” and “You Make Loving Fun” is as sweet and serene as you’d hope she would be.
She’s here to promote the new deluxe remaster of 1982 album Mirage – the follow-up to the somewhat deranged 1979 Tusk, which was recorded and released as Christine and John McVie, the band’s bassist, were divorcing. She quit the band in 1998 after the hugely successful live album The Dance, after which she started a fairly solitary life of her own in the English countryside for the best part of 16 years. The first four of those, she says, were simply spent working on the house. It was only therapy and the canny, persuasive hand of Mick Fleetwood that coaxed her into returning after a trip to Maui, Hawaii, where Mick lives close to John McVie, his lifelong partner-in-crime.
The former Christine Perfect had a severe fear of flying that she’s now completely beaten, and as we speak, it’s clear that she’s fairly perplexed about having left the fray for so long in the first place. So what was she doing in all that time exactly? “A lot of people ask me that question!” With a brand new album (their first since 2001’s Say You Will) and a new world tour in the planning stages, it’s clear that the Fleetwood Mac story still has several enthralling chapters ahead. Somewhere near Fleetwood’s on Front Street – Mick’s fancy restaurant in Maui – the drummer must be feeling pretty smug that the ragged band of brothers and sisters he founded are finally back together.
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