[michelej1]

[Did she really call him "honey"?]

HEADLINE: Mac without the knives out

BYLINE: Iain Shedden

BODY:
Fleetwood Mac are still as hot -- and almost as argumentative -- as they were in their heyday. Iain Shedden reports

AS befits a luxury hotel, there's a lot of expensive baggage around. It's not the tangible sort, though. It's the emotional baggage that comes from being in one of the richest, most successful, most complicated rock bands in the world: Fleetwood Mac.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, two of the chief protagonists in a rock soap opera that has flirted with the public imagination for almost 30 years, are holed up in a room at Sydney's InterContinental hotel.

Nicks and Buckingham are 55 and 54 respectively, were once a couple and a recording duo, and for a quarter of a century have been doing their best to paste over the cracks of their personal and occasional professional break-ups.

Even today, sharing a sofa and being fraternally hands-on, there are moments where their troubled past flits before them.

"It's not that we don't still have disagreements and arguments and see everything the same way," Nicks says, "but beyond that we have a deep and caring friendship. If anything happened to Lindsey I'd be devastated -- and vice versa."

Nicks, like some of her colleagues, has done the rock'n'roll lifestyle thing big time. On the surface, her long-term drug abuse in the 1980s (cocaine and later the tranquilliser Klonopin) have left her unscathed. Her voice is still in great shape and the long sweep of straight blonde hair complements a face that could be 10 years younger.

Her memory is another matter, but we'll get to that later.

Fleetwood Mac's first Australian tour in 14 years is part of a global assault that has already taken them across the US and Europe. Given the acrimony that has haunted the band since the album Rumours launched them into the stratosphere in 1977, it is remarkable that they are prepared to be in the same room, never mind on the same stage night after night.

In the beginning, the entwined personalities and careers of the band's personnel were a disaster waiting to happen. The bass player, John McVie, was married to keyboard player Christine McVie. Buckingham-Nicks had their own recording career before joining Fleetwood Mac and they too were a couple. It was bound to end in tears. No one could have predicted that it would also fuel Rumours, one of the most successful albums in rock history.

"Things are better now than they used to be," says Nicks. "In the old days we were angry with each other and didn't like each other. We had to go on stage and play. It was all about dirty looks and not having much fun. That's partly to do with why Lindsey left the band in '83."

"Eighty-seven," interjects Buckingham and, as if on cue, there follows a few minutes of intense discussion between them about just when the guitarist was in the band and when he wasn't.

"But honey, you really left in '83, you only came back to do [the album] Tango in the Night in 1987. You didn't tour."

"No, no, I was in the band until 1987," he insists, and suddenly it's as if only the two of them are in the room. "I was there for the whole thing. I produced the album and then I pulled out for the tour because it was just too crazy."

Nicks gives this a few seconds' thought.

"I thought you pretty much left. Oh, I can't even remember," she concedes.

Buckingham, however, is eager to make his point, recalling how the artistically adventurous Tusk, the relatively unsuccessful follow-up to Rumours, was a turning point in his relationship with the other members. He's still addressing this only to Nicks.

"It was harder for me because after Tusk there was this dictum that came down [from the other members] that we weren't going to move to the left too much anymore. It was hard for me to reconcile the process because that was interesting to me. In some ways I was treading water, but I was never not there. I was there for everything."

Nicks thinks again. "So where was I?"

Then, realising there's a third person in the room, they laugh and acknowledge the therapy session ambience.

The pair are accompanied on this tour by John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, as well as seven other musicians and a touring entourage that totals 86. Not included is songwriter Christine McVie, who quit the band in the late '90s. This leaves Nicks and Buckingham as the chief songwriters, as is reflected on the album Say You Will, which they are on the road to promote. McVie's departure has altered the dynamics of the group and allowed Buckingam's guitar playing to become more prominent, he says. "Fleetwood Mac has survived by being able to be flexible," he says. "One of the reasons I'm having the best time on stage is because I have more room to manoeuvre out there."

The Say You Will tour is about more than just survival, however. The band grossed $91 million in the US last year from ticket sales and the Australian leg is close to sold out -- so any agonising among them can be done on the way to the bank.

Nicks says she would like to concentrate on other things. She has a successful solo career, but would also like to write children's books and to indulge her favourite, non-music activity, painting. Their extracurricular interests -- and the personal demons that inhabit their world -- might not be enough to stop another Fleetwood Mac tour down the track.

"You have a band of people who are sovereign and talented in their own right and who have found ways to stay together," says Buckingham. "We are musicians, songwriters and singers par excellence ... I would like to think. We are a band and in many ways we are better now than we have ever been."

And what about simply getting along with each other?

"We are still shaping what we are to each other," Buckingham says, in the way only a Californian can. "Stevie and I can still push each other's buttons quite easily. That does happen. But we all have other things that we can do. It's all about respecting each other and finding a rhythm.

"What makes it meaningful and makes it have poetry and makes it tender is that we are now in the aftermath of the coda, working out all these things from a more mature and distant perspective ... working on being adults."

"Trying," says Nicks.

"Yes, we're trying," he agrees.