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Fleetwood Mac bandmates Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham duet at the Mann
Updated: JUNE 28, 2017 — 7:02 AM EDT

Camera icon JOHN RUSSO

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie will perform June 30 at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts.
by A.D. Amorosi, FOR DO THIS!

When Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham announced a jointly recorded self-titled effort and a summer tour presaging their full-band gig in July at the Classic East Festival (NYC’s Citi Field), the first thought was, How odd. After 40-plus years of being a band – and a radically, famously dysfunctional one at that – that these two would play as one? These two never even seemed close.

“Well, we weren’t,” McVie says with a deep laugh. “We never did pal around. Our connection was in the studio. He never was the easiest guy to get to know, and he’d be the first one to say it. He is a nice chap, though, and we have become closer.”



Share with her a quote of Buckingham’s – that it took him “40 years of perspective” to get where he is now – and that it takes a really long time for the Mac crew to get over stuff (e.g. band-member romances, drugs), McVie laughs. “It’s just how we work in this band. We’re all highly dysfunctional. We don’t actually belong in a band, yet, on stage, our alchemy is undeniable.” So, too, is her connection with Buckingham from the sounds of their eponymous album and cunning, copenned songs such as “Feel About You,” “Red Sun,” and “Too Far Gone” – all sung by McVie in her legendarily bluesy voice. “Making this album between us wasn’t in the cards to start, but it’s fantastic that we did.”

All this could have easily been avoided if McVie – who retired from Fleetwood Mac and most music-making in 1998 – had stayed retired. “I bought two dogs, and the dogs were my life, but I did struggle with isolation. I went into a dark place, you know, I was truly bored in the end of it all,” she says of retirement’s downside and a fear of flying that kept her at bay.

“I realized I wanted life, sought out help – a psychiatrist who got me out of the dark – all of which happened before Mick [Fleetwood] phoned, quite fortunately, from Maui.” Not only did McVie make her third solo album — In the Meantime, in 2004, with her nephew, Dan Perfect (an album where “I squeezed all the bad out of me”) — but she also played with Fleetwood’s blues band in Maui for a bit before the inevitable question came up.


“’How would it be for me to rejoin Fleetwood Mac?’ got answered with a resounding ‘yes’ because I got bitten by that bug.”

The Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie album wasn’t made on purpose, or with a purpose, but rather just for Buckingham to record McVie’s more-upbeat, post-analysis tracks — “to see if there was magic there, which we did find quite quickly, and then some.” That the sessions included bassist John McVie and drummer Fleetwood meant that, in essence, Christine McVie/Lindsey Buckingham was Fleetwood Mac without Stevie Nicks (who is currently finishing a solo tour).


“After we demoed those first six songs, it really did sound like a duet record,” she says, mentioning early session songs like “Feel About You” and “Carnival Begin,” which set the stage and standard for their cojoined album. “It was easy, with no melodramas, and just fun,” McVie says with a sense of surprise in her voice as if melodrama were a default setting for anything involving the other members of Fleetwood Mac. “I don’t know what about each particular song drove the rest of the recording, other than these songs gave us goose bumps. That’s always a pretty great, intuitive sign.”

Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham with The Wallflowers play Friday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Mann Center for the Performing Arts, 5201 Parkside Avenue, Philadelphia. $49.50 - $149.50, manncenter.org

Published: June 28, 2017 — 3:01 AM EDT | Updated: June 28, 2017 — 7:02 AM EDT

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The Times Herald
ENTERTAINMENT

MUSIC: Fleetwood Mac’s Buckingham, McVie play a The Mann Center on June 30

Fleetwood Mac members Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie will perform at The Mann on June 30. PHOTO COURTESY OF Olympia Entertainment

By Gary Graff, ggraff@digitalfirstmedia.com,, @GraffonMusic on Twitter
POSTED: 06/29/17, 4:33 PM EDT | UPDATED: 59 SECS AGO 0 COMMENTS
When Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie returned to making music together in 2014, for the first time in 27 years, it was thought to be for Fleetwood Mac.

But, as it turns out, the two decided to go their own way.

On June 9 they released an album simply titled “Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie,” a 10-song set featuring material from those sessions. With Mick Fleetwood playing drums and McVie’s ex-husband John McVie on bass, it certainly has the flavor of Fleetwood Mac’s music of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but without fifth member Stevie Nicks on board it also sounds distinctive.

“We were really only going in to have a bit of fun and cut some of my songs, as I’d just re-entered Fleetwood Mac,” McVie, 73, says of the sessions at Los Angeles’ Village Recorders. She spoke by phone from her home in Malibu.

Fleetwood Mac was, in fact, about to begin rehearsals for a tour — McVie’s first with the group since she “retired” in 1998, and, she recalls, “I’d sent Lindsey these songs and he did his kind of arrangement thing and he played them to me at his house. And then he said, ‘You know, why don’t we go in and have some fun and cut some tracks?’ So that’s what we did.”

Buckingham, 67, adds by phone that, “I don’t think we really knew what it was going to be at that time, and I don’t think we cared. I think the gesture, the impulse, was more to welcome (McVie) back into the band. It was more just giving her a complete reorientation into our world as much as possible. We didn’t say, ‘Oh, we’re making a duet album.’ We weren’t going in and saying it was any particular thing.”

It was more than just new McVie material the troupe worked on. Buckingham had done some recording a year prior with Fleetwood and John McVie, along with producer Mitchell Froom, and he brought those songs into the sessions for McVie to make a contribution. They wound up writing three new songs together including the gritty “Too Far Gone,” which is reminiscent of “World Turning” from 1975’s “Fleetwood Mac” album, Buckingham and then-girlfriend Nicks’ first with the band.

“I think we were just bulldozing our way through the songs that we had,” McVie recalls. “I suppose it would’ve had to cross my mind at some point that it seems bizarre that Stevie’s not on it, because the rest of the band are on it. But we decided that we wanted to pursue a duet project.”

Buckingham and McVie’s creative relationship dates back to that 1975 album, when Buckingham established himself as a creative force as a writer and performer and also as an arranger. Writing “World Turning” began a fruitful relationship entirely different from Buckingham’s with Nicks, and one that extended to intensive contributions even on McVie songs that were not traditional co-writes.

“It’s a chemistry thing that I can’t really analyze,” Buckingham explains. “I remember being in rehearsals with Christine and the rest of the band before we cut that first album ... and it was so clear right away that she and I had this thing. Probably the first thing that hit me about being in Fleetwood Mac was being extremely aware that I had something to contribute to Christine’s songs. She was open to me taking liberties with her songs and has been ever since.”

Fleetwood recalls that process became evident to both him and John McVie while they were recording in 2014.

“I’m really happy for Lindsey because this is what he most likes to do, putting something together,” the drummer explains. “This relationship is a real expression of a musical powerhouse that’s come to the fore, and we’re all happy about that. And (the music) is really cool.”

For her part, McVie is confident the album shows how little has changed in their creative dynamic.

“I think the songs are kind of familiar even though you haven’t heard them before,” she says. “You’ve heard his and my collaborations throughout the history of the band. This is more of it.”

Turning the new batch of songs into a duo project meant navigating a bit of a political minefield, however.

“Probably in the back of Mick’s mind he was hoping that it would be something different than it ended up being,” Buckingham acknowledges, meaning a Fleetwood Mac album. “I suppose there was a point where Mick or someone had to at least do the due diligence with Stevie about what her plans were for a period of time.” As it turned out, Nicks wanted to continue focusing on her solo career and ongoing concert tour, which gave Buckingham and McVie the opportunity to release their album and tour to support it.

The shows are based on the duo’s album, but they’re also “throwing in some Fleetwood Mac and other things as well, and hopefully it adds up to something,” Buckingham says. Meanwhile he and McVie are preparing for Fleetwood Mac’s two July concerts as part of The Classic festival weekends in Los Angeles and New York, which the group is co-headlining with the Eagles. It will be Fleetwood Mac’s first shows together since November 2015, and all concerned hope they’ll make clear that the group is, in Fleetwood’s words, “alive and well,” with designs to reconvene in 2018.

“We’re just going to go in and close our eyes and have fun — that’s all I can say about it,” says Buckingham, who’s also working on a solo album for early 2018 release. “It’s sort of a spectacle. You can’t really worry about the aesthetics or anything. You just have to have fun with it, and hopefully that’s what we’ll do.” Meanwhile, he intends to give the project with McVie its due, maybe adding more shows before the year is out.

“We’ll see if it takes on a life,” Buckingham says. “We certainly could end up doing another leg. There was some talk about going to Europe. Again, in the same way the albums started off as sort of a lark, we don’t have any agenda for any scenario here. I’m just thinking the shows are going to be fun no matter what we do, and we’ll see where it goes.

“We’re just enjoying each other’s company and enjoying revisiting our dynamic. I just think it’s such a surprisingly positive thing, this whole project coming together and the way that it did, and how it turned out. So I’m just happy with whatever happens.”

I'm really looking forward to tonight's show in Philly. My brother scored us great seats in the Orchestra up close right of the stage.

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Great time at the show, christine was very sweet, she showed us the braclet stevie gave her. Took a quick picture with Lindsey before he ran out. As usual, he was very nice. I am very tired, and need to get some sleep.

It was a great show and I'm so glad that I went.The set list really worked well mixing the classics with 8 new songs. I was in the 6th row sitting by people that new all the new songs. I love this new album and would have had no problem if they had done all 10 of the new songs. Lindsey and Christine sounded amazing!

I'm so happy that you got to go! Christine seems so nice. Glad that you got to meet her.
Isn't the show great? I can't wait until we are reunited for our next show. :xoxo:

How'd you get to meet her? Are they doing VIP meet and greets? I've been so drowning in work I've not kept up.:eek:

I went last night. I did enjoy the show, but there were moments where Christine seemed to struggle a bit with vocals. I wonder if there's anything more they can do with rearranging some of the material to suit her current voice?

She has a vocal coach right now.

She has a vocal coach right now.

wow, makes me soooooo happy to see your message!! hope you are doing well!

Sorry I didnt see you last night, I would have said hello. We were rushed backstage after the show as they were in a hurry to leave. Hope to see you again soon.

Photos
 

My photos from Philly if anyone is interested: https://goo.gl/photos/1KvWKiy7H6trEp339

Great pictures and what a great show...Thanks for sharing.

Great pictures, thank you for sharing these wonderful memories of a great night. And thank you for taking the time to upload and share these with everyone.