a difficult bugger?
 

new (or at least recent) interview with Christine courtesy of fleetwoodmac-uk.com -

http://fleetwoodmac-uk.com/wp/christ...rock-magazine/

CHRISTINE MCVIE INTERVIEW | CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE

Classic Rock Magazine (Issue 246)
By Gary Graff
4th Feb 2018

The in, out, in songwriting heart of Fleetwood Mac.

Five years ago in September, Christine McVie stepped on stage with Fleetwood Mac for the first time since 1997 and has been touring with them since. More importantly, she went into the studio with the guys in the band for sessions that resulted in last year’s lauded Buckingham McVie duo album with Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham. At 74, the former Christine Perfect is fully in, and it doesn’t sound like she has any plans to go her own way ever again.

Are you still glad that you rejoined Fleetwood Mac almost five years ago?
Oh yes. It’s fantastic. I love it.

In hindsight, do you regret the hiatus?
I quit the band only because I developed this horrendous fear of flying and was run down and tired of touring. I bought a home in England that was being restored. I wanted to move back closer to my family. It was not out of any lack of love for these guys. They’re my musical family.

What brought you back?
I realised that I made a huge mistake, that’s all. I started missing them and playing with them and the interaction, the chemistry of it all. I started to really, tray desire to star/ doing something again, and the only people that I would have any desire to do anything with would be Fleetwood Mac.

Your first step back was writing and recording again with Lindsey. You two clearly have a unique emulation. What is it draw out of each other?
It’s a hard thing to analyse, really. I suppose it’s just a musical rapport Is very easy to work with him_ Although I know people say he can be a difficult bugger, I’ve always found him to be a terrific fellow to work with. I enjoy it.

There are some who would say, with all deference to Stevie Nicks, that it’s the product of your collaboration that is the real sound of Fleetwood Mac.
Lindsey just loves producing other people’s songs. He always has. I think with me he tends to lean slightly towards a romantic side of him musically, I’m speaking – because he describes himself as the brains and me as the heart.

Was there any disappointment that the Buckingham McVie songs didn’t end up leading to a full Fleetwood Mac album?
No, I don’t think there was ever any particular agenda at that point. In the very opening days we didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know where it was going to go. Anything could happen. suppose it would’ve had to cross my mind at some point. It seems bizarre that Stevie [Nicks] is not on it, because the rest of the band are. But we decided that we wanted to pursue a duet project when we listened to everything back. And I’m really happy that we did because I like what it is. It’s dean-cut and defined very much as the two of us. Which I do like.

Fleetwood Mac will be touring in 2018 What are prospects for some new material from the band?
I certainly think it’s a good idea, I think it would be quite nice to cut a couple of new ones. We’ll have to wait and see. We’re planning to start rehearsing sometime in the spring.

Stevie Nicks was also interviewed in this edition of the magazine

The 2018 reissue of the Fleetwood Mac album is also reviewed in this edition of magazine

Products from Amazon.co.uk

Well, he's a perfectionist. When "you" think it's good enough, and are ready to move onto the next thing, he's not. He'll labor and labor on the same thing, until you're ready to break.

Stevie's big machine-small machine interview from the same issue (also courtesy of fleetwoodmac-uk.com) -

http://fleetwoodmac-uk.com/wp/stevie...rock-magazine/

STEVIE NICKS INTERVIEW | CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE

Classic Rock Magazine (Issue 246)
By Gary Graff
4th Feb 2018

After going from small fry to big Mac, now she balances the band and a solo career.

Stevie Nicks may appear to have a complicated and ambivalent relationship with Fleetwood Mac, but you’d be bard-premed to find a greater public proponent for the band. Since 1981 the writer and singer of Rhiannon, Dreams, Sara and many more has juggled a successful solo career alongside being in the group and has sometimes frustrated her bandmates with her priorities. But Nicks still swears allegiance to the Mac and is always ready to add a new chapter to the saga – when it fits.

You maintain an active and successful solo career, as well as membership in Fleetwood Mac. What’s the agar of doing both?
Solo work and Fleetwood Mac is a really great thing to be able to go back and forth to. You can do your own thing until you get bored and then you can go to the other thing and do that until you start to get bored, and then you can go back to the other thing. It helps you stay more excited and uplifted for what you do so you’re not just doing one thing year after year.

It keeps it fresh, in other words.
Basically, what we are is entertainers. When we go on stage we’re performers. That’s what we do. Even if this band had never made it big, we’d be playing all the dubs. So it isn’t a question of keeping it fresh, it’s that were doing what we love and we don’t have anything else, basically, to do.

What’s the most difficult adjustment when you move between the two?
From the very beginning, when I was seventeen, I wanted to be in a band. When you’re in a band you’re a team. When I’m in solo work, I’m the boss. I have gone back and forth about it in my head. I’ve decided I do like being the boss, but I’ve been in Fleetwood Mac for so long I understand how to not be the boss and be part of a team and a team player and it’s okay. Part of it knocks your ego down, makes you humble. So there’s a lot of good things about being in a band.

Your solo commitments often seem to go on longer than they were initially expected to, which frustrates a lot of the band’s fans — and maybe your bandmates?
A big band like Fleetwood Mac needs to get out of the spotlight, so that’s what we done. We should always be off the road for three years, because when we come back it’s an event. I think that’s very important. There’s a lot of famous bands and a lot of important people out, and you’re going to make a choice of which ticket to buy, and if you haven’t seen one of them for three years or more then that’s going to be at the top of the list. It feels more special. And being away from each other for three years is good. It really sets you up for a good time because everything’s new and everybody’s got new stories and everybody’s been doing crazy, different things, so when you walk into rehearsal that first day everyone’s really happy to see each other. If we toured every other year it wouldn’t be like that.

With all the available material, how does the band put together a set-list?Everyone comes in with their big list of songs that they think we should try. We sit around a table with acoustic guitars and a little keyboard and we just start playing all the songs we might not always do, and some of the songs we maybe haven’t done for fifteen years. There’s about ten songs, the hit songs, that we have to do, and that leaves us ten more. So you start going through Tusk, going through Rumours, going through Fleetwood Mac and Mirage and Tango In The Night and you find a few songs everybody’s wanted to do but never actually suggested, and you play them and pretty soon you start to see the right twenty songs somewhere on the horizon.

You’re back to a three-writer collaboration in Fleetwood Mac. How has that process worked historically in the band?
Christine (Movie) wrote most of the singles. She was the pop writer. And then Lindsey would get into the production, which is what he does, and he would try to pull that pop out of her, so what would be left was a great pop song with a real great [sings] ‘Say that you love me…’ Lindsey and I do what we do, and when you put the three together you have Fleetwood Mac.

Christine McVie was also interviewed in this edition of the magazine

The 2018 reissue of the Fleetwood Mac album is also reviewed in this edition of magazine

Lindsey describes himself as the brains and Christine as the heart...hmmm. Okay I'll take that.
Spring rehearsals confirmed...surely very, very late spring???

Then, what's Stevie? lol

Well, technically summer doesn't start until June 21st, so they have until then.

god, you make it so easy!!!!!:lol:

what was she in the heart and soul tour (was that what it was called, the tour when she was opening for Rod Stewart)?

The money and sales!

Glad Stevie is accurately giving Christine her props. If Lindsey were saying this, he'd say, "Christine wanted me to help her..." or "I co-wrote most of those songs and didn't get credit." So annoying--and distorted.

I guess she was the siren who allured people closer and closer before the band slayed them with its sound.

Then she became the diva who (sometimes humorously) kept the band afloat in the public eye because Landslide is about Katrina and Hillary's election.

It's good that Chris can still at least envisage "a couple of new ones". Even if we only get one Christine and one Lindsey Mac tune with some backing vocals from Stevie from this final act of the Mac that would be something. Not much, admittedly, but something...

No it was about the Nashville Floods and Watergate and Queen Elizabeth's marriage to The Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Dianna.. and.....

C'mon Tony.. keep up... :lol:

It is something...

The only songs I liked from the Dance were Sweet Girl and Bleed to Love Her..(Live).. don't really like the SYW version..

I think Lindsey at one time was difficult to work with, but if the Say You Will documentary is anything to go by, he walks on eggshells now around Stevie and I imagine is similarly careful not to upset Christine.

I love Stevie, and honestly there are so many people relentlessly bashing her on the Ledge now that I'm hesitant to criticize her because I feel she's become a punching bag.... but unfortunately I believe that she thinks Lindsey is hard to work with at this point because she's unable to handle constructive criticism, no matter how tactfully given.

Exhibit A: how offended she is by Lindsey's mild suggestion that she keep her "you" and "she" consistent in "Thrown Down" - which is actually good advice, given in a non-confrontational manner. His manner is irrelevant, however. She's outraged that he presumed to criticize her lyrics, and feels personally attacked. She wants to work with a yes-man like Dave Stewart, who tells her lyrics like "What's faster than a fast car" and "What's deeper than a deep well" are brilliant.

Well, she can be touchy with constructive criticism, but I am realizing more and more how insufferable Lindsey must be to work with. Yes, his surface demeanor seems to be more pleasant, but his carefully-crafted (and long-winded) speeches in interviews and at the mic tell another story: he thinks he hasn't had his due within the band; that his producer's credit isn't enough; that he needs co-writing credits---I can see where Stevie thinks this is bunk. Yes, his productions are often creative and essential to bringing the bare skeleton of a song into its fully-fleshed state. But that is as a producer. I could only imagine him trying to wrestle a co-writing from Stevie, whose demos are a usually lot less fleshed out than Christine's. Stevie knows well enough that the bare skeleton of the song IS the song itself. Christine shrugs her shoulders and says, "You want co-writing credit on "That's How I feel"? Fabulous. Have at it. You want to tinker with my lyrics? Sure. What the hell." I admire her openness and her humility, but I don't blame Stevie one bit in insisting that her songs are her own--and that her words, however ungrammatical, are her own. The I-you pronoun shift in "Throw Down" is grammatically questionable but evocative in the way a a consistent first or third pronoun would not be. She ain't no Bob Dylan, but she is her own brand of poet.

But "Landslide" is NOT about Katrina--a disaster decades after the song's composition. And I doubt the spirit of Rhiannon flows through our soldiers. Hey, all five of them are wackadoo sometimes.