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.

It's about Harvey Weinstein's sock drawer.

thank you! that was exact impression i had when watching DR doc - he was walking on eggshells.

where have you been the last 15 or so years?? haven't you heard any of his FM or BM speeches before? :lol: they are always ridiculously over-prepared. to me, that signals insecurity in speaking off the cuff while in front of audiences, and not much else. :shrug:

It's about whatever makes me look GOOD!!

Stevie is only putting Christine as the “band’s top songwriter” because she doesn’t want to give Lindsey any credit and she knows she’s also not the top songwriter. If I’m not the top songwriter, you’re not either. If we fall, we fall together, or something like that.

I clearly remember Stevie saying on Ken’s book how The Chain is really “her song” and she has to share profits with the rest of the band. :lol::lol:

Fortunately, Lindsey finally understood and gave up begging her for a new album. I think this is all in the past now, and I personally can’t wait for a new BuckVie collaboration. :nod::]

I think you’re spot on here.
I think he has given up on a new FMac album.....he went ahead with BuckVie,
and enjoyed the whole thing from studio to Tour.
He’s not too bothered if she’s on board or not.....Her loss.
And as you say roll on new BuckVie ..I would not have said that 12 months ago.

[QUOTE=elle;1220493
where have you been the last 15 or so years?? haven't you heard any of his FM or BM speeches before? :lol: they are always ridiculously over-prepared. to me, that signals insecurity in speaking off the cuff while in front of audiences, and not much else. :shrug:[/QUOTE]

Oh, I've been watching them, but 15 years ago--or even six, no one was saying "Lindsey isn't a difficult bugger anymore." Back then it was just a given, now we have the new (BS) narrative.

The only thing wrong with Lindsey is that he's not Christine.

There I said it. :xoxo:

why get mad at Chris though? if that helps, it's not exactly new, Christine has been saying this basically since she came back - that he used to be very antisocial / socially awkward, completely focused and intense, while he's much more a "normal" complete person now. i guess therapy, yoga, family and having a life outside music does wonders for the man!

the only person who has been consistent in dumping on LB as far as working relationship goes (between of course saying how amazing he is :lol:) is Stevie. and i think in her case, however much he may at times try to walk on eggshells to appease her, he also knows how to pull her strings as does she his. they are that type of exes that can never really be at peace with each other. so i can see that while everyone else might think he's just fantastic to work with (and let's face it, that's a long list, including Tom Petty, John Stewart, Trent Reznor, Richard Dashut, plus all those newer artists - but that's a bit different because those guys are already viewing him as a legend), Stevie may never get to have that experience.

I’m actually not mad at Chris, though I wish she’d be a bit more assertive about her own songs.

Touché! And agreed.

I know what you mean. But, in listening to out takes and especially the White Album Deluxe.. you can hear what a powerhouse she is in the process.

I have a dancer friend, Gabriel, who is exactly like her. He will put on a show or direct a show and take no credit whatsoever. It's like he's making dinner and just goes about his business. Some artists just don't bloviate like Stevie and Lindsey.

They do the moment and move on.

it's funny because all throughout the DR doc Stevie talks repeatedly about walking on eggshells around HIM.... the whole double album thing, and how nobody wants to say anything to him and upset him by saying they don't want the double album, and we want him to have all his dreams come true so everyone is tiptoeing around him.......

And truth be told, we have never been privy in any of the "making of" documentaries to how bad it really was between them in the studio. He was so miserable to her during Rumours but really more during Tusk. If you think they're gonna let you see that footage you're nuts. But it's there. He was often deliberately cruel and nasty and insulting and went out of his way to humiliate her in front of the band and recording crew. Even Richard has sort of acknowledged this in a very very careful vague sort of way, and Ken has talked about it, and even Carol in her book talks about how mocking and nasty he was to Stevie. Did she push his buttons too? Sure. But he really is much better at the nasty stuff than she is. So in DR her reluctance to totally open up to him and trust him with stuff is evident; their history makes her cautious. There's a scene where she's been at the mixing studio before him (Thrown Down I think) and he comes in and she says "I've been here about an hour and now you can just rip into it" and she says it trying to make a sort of joke but clearly expecting him to poop all over the mix she's worked on with Mark Needham. There's little clues all over that doc.

Let's suffice to say they tiptoe around each other.

she does, doesn't she? maybe that's why so many fans came out of watching that doc with the impression that he's being a huge a**hole. :xoxo: reading those fan reviews first, and then seeing the doc, i was stunned and couldn't understand what those people were seeing that i was not - because yes, my impression was exact one Nancy so nicely worded - he was so obviously walking on eggshells trying to appease her.

they are both tiptoeing around each other, at least from what we can glance in that DR doc - which was probably making them completely unhappy with the results of whatever work they did together, because each of them feels like they are trying to please the other and in the end both are unsatisfied with the results. the difference is - he is not actually saying it and you need to watch his reactions to see that he's mostly holding his tongue (dream-catcher scene? soo hilarious!) and trying to make her happy, while she's mostly being loud and passive aggressive about it, making it known to everyone how she's "sacrificing for his happiness" as you described above.

however in the scene with Lord-Algae (not Mark Needham) that you mention, she seems to be genuinely protective of Lindsey - because she knows Lord-Algae is her mixer, not his, and to me the way she said "now you rip into it" sounded like she's making it clear to Lord-Algae that he needs to listen to what LB may contribute.

definitely interesting dynamic, and obviously the one that doesn't work, the same as when they actually both say what they mean. :laugh: :shrug:

It's funny when you watch DR then BuckVie... :lol:

That's why this time he saved Stevie from another sacrifice and chose Christine as his musical partner. No more Bob Dylan, no more dream-catcher, no more Karen, no more asking her to do another album. Lindsey is so relaxed around Christine. The awkardness is gone. And I guess he's tired of dealing with it. :distress:

to me, this is exactly it in everything they do together. :(

We'll have to agree to disagree about the mixing session. I haven't watched it in quite a while so one of these days i'll have to go back and watch it with your take on it in mind.... For now I stick with my interpretation :laugh:

The thing I found curious was that Stevie came to the sessions with fully flushed out demos and was upset by the way Lindsey deviated from them. Stevie, Christine, and Lindsey have all consistently stated over the decades that one of Lindsey’s biggest strengths was taking something completely rudimentary from Stevie (I believe Christine called it “rubbish”) and turning it into something spectacular. That’s always been the way he’s looked at his role in the band. It seems a little bizarre that she went into the sessions that way, especially knowing the core of Lindsey’s material was culled from songs he/they had been working on for at least six years. All three guys, not just Lindsey, seemed a little put off by it.

I find it very entertaining reading these threads. I have seen the same group of people here who continually poke fun at the Stevie groups on Facebook and at other online Stevie groups because of their refusal to accept anything negative about Stevie Nicks. And here you all sit gushing and gushing about Lindsey or Christine and acting like you know what they are thinking on a day to day basis and about the relationships they have with people in their band they have known for over 40 years...but knowing that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Lindsey is tired of Stevie and doesnt care if she records anymore. Christine and Stevie never made a pact to make the same as the boys in the band. Geez...I think we should just start a Lets Bash Stevie Nicks thread and let you guys just go to town constantly. You just cant help yourselves. It is in literally 99% of the threads on this Rumours board. Look at yourselves in the mirror!!

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

When I heard the Dreams' demo compared to the release, I dropped my jaw...

Oh my what an amazing production. I love the studio version of Dreams. The band captures Stevie's song and lifts it to new heights. Keyboards, backing vocals, the guitar work, the bass and drums... All magic.

It's also interesting to note that a lot of complaints about SYW were continuity issues.

Aww sorry to hear that even Facebook FM groups are not places of SN worship you’d like them to be and you can’t find what you want even there. I’m sure there must be at least some closed groups on social media that will satisfy your SN needs.

On another note, happy to read you are entertained and not angry anymore, and I enjoy reading your posts in chit chat forum here! :wavey:

There needs to be another board like Seven Wonders. All Stevie worship, all the time. Say anything negative about her, and get permanently banned. Hitler would've loved owning a board like that.

Stevie began working out her songs with other people right after she and Lindsey broke up. She realized that relying on him for that created a real power imbalance, and made her dependent on someone who for quite a while didn't always have the best intentions towards her music. Once she went solo, she did this even more. People often confuse *songwriting* demos which are just her recording herself during the raw writing process, and then getting a complete start-to-finish performance of what she's written with a demo of how you want the finished song to sound. She used to just do her songwriting demo and hand it off to Lindsey for the most part. For many years now, since going solo, she will work with other musicians to record a more arranged version of the song. She did this because she felt frustrated that often the way her songs came out working with Lindsey wasn't what she wanted. As you could see in her film with Dave Stewart, Stevie evolved into wanting and getting more control over the arrangement of her songs over time and that's been the case even when working on solo albums with Jimmy. That's why they would argue in the studio.

So I wasn't at all surprised that she brought fleshed out demos to the band. She had clear ideas about how she wanted those songs to go. She's not obligated to give him a raw songwriting demo. They're her songs. As a producer he should respect how the writer wants a song to go-- in fact that's exactly the job of a producer, to help an artist get their vision out to the world. Just because in the early days she was lazier, or less inclined to fight with him while they were a couple or didn't have the years and years of experience in the studio that she has now doesn't mean she has to still work that way. Let's not forget how many albums she's done, she's not totally clueless about how different recording techniques work and how to get some of the sound she wants.

Dont put words in my mouth. I didnt say that. I said that you and your friends make fun of them...not me. I have never been angry. This isnt important enough to be angry about. I just find some folks behavior on here a little juvenile.