Fleetwood Mac Billboard Article 5/7/2014

BlueDenimLamp · #1 05-07-2014, 12:36 PM

Fleetwood Mac Billboard Article Billboard

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie talk about collaborating ahead of the band's upcoming tour. "We've been working very closely together, so there is a freshness"

It appears that Christine McVie will be returning to Fleetwood Mac to do more than play some old songs in concert. The group -- sans Stevie Nicks, who was busy with "some other commitments," according to Lindsey Buckingham -- has just finished a nearly two-month run in Studio D at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles, where Fleetwood Mac made 1979's "Tusk" album, working on a batch of new songs by McVie and Buckingham.

"This has kind of been a project in slow motion, that's the only way I can put it," Buckingham tells Billboard. "We got in the studio not knowing what to expect, and the chemistry was just unbelievable... We got eight tracks very far along, like, 75 percent done. It just played out really organically in a way that seemed appropriate." Buckingham says the new songs came from ideas McVie brought into the band, and coupled with material he worked on previously with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the group has "about 14 or 15 things, and some other things we want to get to down the line" even before Nicks begins making contributions.

"We're all very excited about it. Knowing me, I'm going to be pushing for a double album," Buckingham says with a laugh.

Describing the new songs -- which include "Carnival Begin," "Red Sun" and "Too Far Gone" -- McVie says, "There's a wide variety, starting from sort of blues-based songs to very commercial songs. It's very, very exciting. We get chills when we hear them. They sound really fresh. There's an element, I guess, that hasn't really existed so much in the past although it has been there in the fact Lindsey and I have been collaborating more. We've been working very closely together, so there is a freshness and obviously there are parts for Stevie to sing on all of these songs, which she will do eventually."

When the rest of the world hears them remains up in the air, however. Fleetwood Mac released a four-song digital EP in April of 2013, and Buckingham and McVie say they don't expect to have a new album ready before the group's upcoming tour starts September 30 in Minneapolis.

"We haven't finished what we've done here," McVie explains. "these are just tracks with some overdubs, and they're certainly not finished. I go back to England now until the beginning of rehearsals, which is the end of July, and then we're rehearsing and then we're touring, so we won't really have time to (finish the songs). There's some talk about some time next year. Fleetwood Mac always take a long time to make a record -- you know what."

Buckingham concurs, though he acknowledges that there may be a bit of clamor for the new music once word of the sessions leaks out, which may effect the timetable for the material's release. "We want to plant some seeds of awareness about what we're doing," he says. "We won't want to pretend it doesn't exist. We're very proud of it, and we do want to get the word out. But we'll have to see how much clamor there is by the time we get into rehearsal and we have some time to let these seeds grow and see what kind of interest there is. That may inform our decisions one way or the other."

Buckingham, meanwhile, says he's particularly stoked that making new music is part of McVie's return after a 16-year absence. "It just took on a life of its own for sure," he says. "For years I was telling everybody, 'Y'know, she'll never be in the band again. She's gone.' I really believed that. But right now the whole thing has really got such a circular feel to it. And if you're talking about one more act for this play or whatever you want to call it, I can't think of a better way to do it."

Fleetwood Mac formally announced McVie's return in January after she joined the group on stage in London last September. McVie -- who released one solo album, 2004's "In the Meantime," during the interim but mostly spent her time as "a retired lady of leisure with the Range Rover and the Dogs" in rural England -- has gone through therapy to overcome a fear of flying that was one of the reasons he left the group. And she promises that she's back in Fleetwood Mac "for perpetuity, yeah. For as long as I'm around. I'm here. I'm committed." And she adds that returning to the studio with the group was like getting back on the proverbial bike.

"I thought I was going to get nervous coming in the studio, but it's felt very easy and natural," she says. "Before I got to L.A. Lindsey and I had been ping-ponging ideas on computers and that; I'd send him my very, very rough, funky demos and he made some kind of sense out of them and sent them back to me with him playing guitar and they started to turn into really lovely ideas. I really missed playing with them and the chemistry of it all and started to really, really desire to start doing something again, and the only people I could think of that I would have any desire to do anything with would be them, Fleetwood Mac."

michelej1 · #2 05-07-2014, 12:45 PM

michelej1 · #3 05-07-2014, 12:50 PM

Lindsey wants a clamor from the fans. He wants us to help spur things into happening and to do it in time for the FM rehearsals.

I really don't know how to make a clamor. Where should I send my letters Lindsey? You guys don't even have a record company, so it's not as if I can just bombard Warner Bros. with pleas. Where do I go to stage a protest? To whom should I complain?

Michele

BlueDenimLamp · #4 05-07-2014, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

Lindsey wants a clamor from the fans. He wants us to help spur things into happening and to do it in time for the FM rehearsals.

I really don't know how to make a clamor. Where should I send my letters Lindsey? You guys don't even have a record company, so it's not as if I can just bombard Warner Bros. with pleas. Where do I go to stage a protest? To whom should I complain?

Michele

If Lindsey want's to do something to draw attention to the new songs they should put together a little video for one of the new songs and post it on youtube...I'm quite sure a record company will take notice if they get a MILLION hits...

WildHearted · #5 05-07-2014, 01:08 PM

If Lindsey wants clamor, they need to start being social media savvy. Get the FM twitter account more active. Each band member make a personal twitter, start tweeting about what they're doing... some pictures from the studio, etc. Snippets of what is being worked on. Get it trending.

BlueDenimLamp · #6 05-07-2014, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WildHearted

If Lindsey wants clamor, they need to start being social media savvy. Get the FM twitter account more active. Each band member make a personal twitter, start tweeting about what they're doing... some pictures from the studio, etc. Snippets of what is being worked on. Get it trending.

Stevie has a "Verified" twitter and it has been re-tweeting Dave Stewart's...Since being "Verified" her twitter is gaining about a 1,000 new followers a week...They are clueless about modern media...How hard would it be for them to tweet something or make a little video in the studio and post it on line...They Just Don't Get It...

michelej1 · #7 05-07-2014, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueDenimLamp

If Lindsey want's to do something to draw attention to the new songs they should put together a little video for one of the new songs and post it on youtube...I'm quite sure a record company will take notice if they get a MILLION hits...

Nice idea. Even if the video is just them playing the song in the studio, just a little four-piece, I'm sure it could get loads of hits on Youtube.

Right Wild-Hearted about social media. He and Christine were sending songs back and forth to each other via computer, they might as well tweet.

Michele

michelej1 · #8 05-07-2014, 01:20 PM

I really understand that the Macsters don't know how to market themselves, but what I don't understand is how they have consistently had managers and PR agents who have been so abysmal at it as well.

They're compared to the Eagles in another thread and think how much more exposure the Eagles get, how much more money the Eagles have made, not because of greater talent or more hits (although their catalog is very impressive), but because of better marketing.

It's a head scratcher.

Michele

gldstwmn · #9 05-09-2014, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

Lindsey wants a clamor from the fans. He wants us to help spur things into happening and to do it in time for the FM rehearsals.

I really don't know how to make a clamor. Where should I send my letters Lindsey? You guys don't even have a record company, so it's not as if I can just bombard Warner Bros. with pleas. Where do I go to stage a protest? To whom should I complain?

Michele

I'm beginning to think this is his campaign to actually get Stevie into the studio again.

michelej1 · #10 05-09-2014, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

I'm beginning to think this is his campaign to actually get Stevie into the studio again.

Yes, definitely. That's what he wants the feedback for. That's what he was hoping the EP would do, show her that there was such an interest in an album from ... what? Fans? Record labels? Whatever. He wanted her to see there was an interest and decide to do an album because of that interest. Now, he wants that same thing.

Michele

elle · #11 05-09-2014, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

Yes, definitely. That's what he wants the feedback for. That's what he was hoping the EP would do, show her that there was such an interest in an album from ... what? Fans? Record labels? Whatever. He wanted her to see there was an interest and decide to do an album because of that interest. Now, he wants that same thing.

Michele

well, if we go according to what they said, that's what Stevie said she wanted from the EP, in order to convince her she should put her time in more FM recording.

my take was that Lindsey just wanted to put out some new material before that tour since he didn't want to do another purely greatest hits tour. that was the jest of his speech when he was introducing Sad Angel too. they went into the studio, he wanted to perform some of the new material, and since they didn't finish the album at the time, putting some songs out for download was the second best thing. the actual EP format seemed to have been Stevie's idea. at first they were just going to make 2 songs available on itunes - Sad Angel and Miss Fantasy.

gldstwmn · #12 05-09-2014, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

Yes, definitely. That's what he wants the feedback for. That's what he was hoping the EP would do, show her that there was such an interest in an album from ... what? Fans? Record labels? Whatever. He wanted her to see there was an interest and decide to do an album because of that interest. Now, he wants that same thing.

Michele

She saw that there was interest... in her doing another solo record.

Remember when they were doing press for the EP and he expressed his dismay because the thing she most wanted to talk about was the Buckingham Nicks track? I didn't understand his dismay. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that these two happened in any way. I don't think they really get each other at all and that gap has only continued to widen as the years have gone by. Strange are the ways of a very complicated world indeed... Why did Stevie suggest that track for the EP?