[michelej1]

Originally Posted by David

Actually, she is completely wrong.

I can't think of a single magazine that reported that Fleetwood Mac had broken up in 1983. But besides that, this isn't Stevie's claim. Her claim in the interview is that Lindsey left the band in 1983. That's completely wrong.

Yes, I've been looking at the old articles and I'd say you're right. But when Tango arrived, the press treated it like a reunion and that's when all the band members started saying that they'd never broken up. Here's an article with Christine, from The Advertiser, June 18, 1987:

HEADLINE: FLEETWOOD MAC ENDS THE FRUSTRATION

BYLINE: DAVID SLY

BODY:
FOR the past two months, Christine McVie has been quizzed by bemused journalists over how Fleetwood Mac came to reunite for the recording of the new Tango In the Night album. She's plainly sick of it. "I really don't know how you people got a hold of that story. We never broke up," she claimed in a near hysterical tone.

Fine. But five years between albums is a ridiculously long time, especially when no Press statement had been issued on the impending future of the band during that period.

"Yes. Okay. I'll grant that five years is a long hiatus, but it didn't seem like such a big deal to each of us. We all went off and did our own projects, finished them and then came back to work on a new Fleetwood Mac album.

"You really can't expect much more from us. Everyone should know by now that we are notoriously slow workers." The world was largely aware that the five band members - Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, McVie and her former husband John McVie - were virtually at each others' throats by the completion of the Mirage concert tour throughout the US in 1982.

McVie admitted that it was not an easy time for the band, as two albums in a row had failed to match the colossal commercial success of the Rumours album and tensions among all parties were mounting.

"We simply decided that we needed a break from each other, though it was never decided that we would split the band," she said.

"We were going through a difficult patch, but I think we all knew that eventually we would come back together and record.

"We had to get over the personal disappointment of Mirage,

which we felt was one of our weaker albums - not because it didn't sell fantastically, but because we made the record for all the wrong reasons.

"After Rumours, we recorded the double album Tusk, which saw us stretch so far out to the left in a completely different direction to Rumours. Therefore, we decided that Mirage should get back to something that the record company, or at least the public, would expect from us.

"It was a compromise . . . lacking in intensity and passion and it therefore paled alongside everything else we had done."

A procession of solo excursions followed, with albums from Nicks, McVie and Buckingham (Nicks's Rock A Little album was the most successful), while Fleetwood forged the experimental rock troupe Zoo and John McVie returned to playing bar room blues.

Christine doubted that any of the solo outings were responsible for reshaping the sound of Fleetwood Mac for the new album.

"If anything, they cleaned the musical frustrations out of our systems so that we can get on with the job ahead," she explained.

"Our feelings towards working with each other in the studio were at a peak again and we agreed that it was time for us to do something constructive as a unit. Yes, we had grown apart as individuals but were still very much a band.

"In many ways it was a comforting feeling getting back with the musicians you had been making music with for the previous 12 years of your life. That mild sense of celebration saw us return to the feeling that we had while recording the Rumours album."