macfan 57
03-05-2005, 05:15 PM
This is one of the best Christine McVie interviews I've ever read.
Goldmine: You’ve actually been involved with Fleetwood Mac since the very beginning. I believe you played on one of the band’s first singles, “Need Your Love So Bad.”
Christine McVie: Yeah, I always ended up doing sessions with them. I was a big idol of Fleetwood Mac anyway, I absolutely worshipped them. And so when I was in Chicken Shack and we had a night off I used to always find Andy Sylvester, the bass player in our band, and we’d go and check out their gigs. To me they were the ultimate in music that was going around at the time. I was introduced to Peter(Green) first of all, I think, and then I sat in with them on quite a few occasions. Actually, I think, mainly because I was the only blues pianist that they knew, that was immediately available to them. And I think they liked the way I played; Peter really like the way I played.
Goldmine: You played on Fleetwood Mac’s second album, Mr. Wonderful, in 1968, so you really have been there from the beginning.
Christine McVie: Yes, I’ve been there in all senses of the word, as a fan and being really honored to play along with them.
Goldmine: How did it feel to be part of Fleetwood Mac and take over from where Peter had left off?
Christine McVie: When I married John (McVie) I felt that it was so great to be around them anyway, just as one of their wives. I used to listen to all their music. When Peter did leave I was there, and when they rehearsed for the Kiln House album I knew the songs back to front. So when it came down to it they decided they wanted to augment the band with another instrument, because it was just not happening without Peter. So they just asked me, completely out of the blue, would I care to join the band, and of course I could have fell over backwards. Of course I said yes, immediately!
Goldmine: You contributed the Kiln House album cover artwork as well.
Christine McVie: I did that in a day, well actually, in a couple of hours. They were desperate for a cover, and I don’t know quite how it ended up me doing it. I think I’d done some drawings of things and Mick said, “This is really good, why don’t you try and knock up a cover?” So I did. Fantasy land, Kiln House. That’s what it was at the time.
Goldmine: You then worked with a series of great musicians. Tell us about Danny Kirwan.
Christine McVie: Well, Danny was a tough one. We’re laying our cards on the table here, right? He was really, really neurotic and difficult to work with. I used to love the way he played guitar, but as a person, as an individual, I found him really difficult to get on with. He was one of those people that would never look you in the eye. He’d always be crawling around kind of looking at you out of the corner of his eye, if at all. He didn’t have any manners, and he was just very, very neurotic, and to be around him was a very nerve-racking thing. So he and I never actually wrote together at all.
Goldmine: Bob Welch?
Christine McVie: We wrote a lot together, me and Bob. Bob was always a tremendous conversationalist. He was the kind of guy that after dinner would sit down with a glass of wine and a huge cigar about the size of a billiard cue and tell these amazing stories. He was a wonderful story-teller with a terrific sense of humor, so he and I hit it off well. We collaborated on the Mystery To Me album, more so than any of the other albums.
Goldmine: You co-wrote “Did You Ever Love Me” with Bob. That should have been a hit.
Christine McVie: I always thought that was a really good song. We didn’t actually sit down at the piano and say what should we do here? I think I started it off, and he kind of added a bit in the studio-you know how things escalate in the studio-so it ended up being co-written. That’s a song that never really surfaced anywhere. I think somebody should cover it, it’s a sweet song and it somehow holds up today.
Goldmine: From when you joined the band to 1975, it was lean years for Fleetwood Mac singles-wise. Some of your songs remain hidden gems, like “Prove Your Love,” and “Why.”
Christine McVie: Yes. “Prove Your Love” is a good one too. That was one I often wondered why it never became a hit. I think “Prove Your Love” is a song I’d actually like to re-record because listening back it sounds like a demo. I wasn’t singing it very well and I’m sure I can do a better performance now, but the actual song I think was pretty good. “Why,” that was one of the songs that I used a Mellotron on. I think I bought the prototype, one of the first. It has a very low serial number, and I still have it. I’d never heard anything like it, an instrumental that played choirs and strings, before. That was unheard of back then and so we kind of stuck that all over “Why.”
Mick had this huge bass drum at the top of the stairs at Benifolds that made this enormous noise, ‘cause there was no furniture in that huge house. That was a goody, nice slide playing from Bob Weston.
Goldmine: You are by far Fleetwood Mac’s leading hit songwriter. How do you see your role in the band?
Christine McVie: My role in this band…I let the songs speak for themselves. I guess I’ve never been one that would blow my own trumpet. I think the songs speak for themselves. I have never claimed to be a brilliant keyboard player. I’ve never claimed to be a brilliant singer. I’ve never claimed to be a brilliant songwriter either, if it comes right down to it, I’m not prolific. I don’t write many songs, and the ones that I do write and complete I do because I like them. If I start something off that’s a dog, I dump it. I don’t have banks and banks of songs that are gathering dust. I’ve got ideas on a bit of tape with a nice little riff that I’ll drag out, and go, okay, I’m going to make something of this. And for that reason I don’t have many songs to give away. If I like them I want to do them myself.
It’s never been a situation where I’ve played songs for Mick or John or the band, where they’ve said, “I don’t really like that, Chris.” That hasn’t happened very often. If it’s happened it’s enough times to only count on one hand.
I’m not a show biz type person and I sort of go through the years wondering why the hell I ever did get where I did get, in terms of the fact that I’m not a very extroverted type of person. I don’t really enjoy the road very much. I used to enjoy playing live, once I was on stage, but now that’s got to the point where I just feel I’ve had enough of it.
Goldmine: That influenced your decision not to tour with Fleetwood Mac anymore?
Christine McVie: Mick and John are happy with me writing songs for the band at this particular point in time. I don’t know what’s going to happen down the road a couple of years. This happened to me. I didn’t go for this. For example, I ended up in a situation with Chricken Shack because I didn’t have anything else to do, and I was bored, and I wasn’t earning any money, I was broke. I enjoyed playing the blues, once I figured out how to play them, after I’d bought enough records and copied a few licks off Sonny Thompson.
Goldmine: You had a major hit with “I’d Rather Go Blind” and then left Chicken Shack.
Christine McVie: That’s right, and that’s when I won the Melody Maker award for vocalist of the year.
Goldmine: You won that award two years running and another more unusual accolade. You were voted in a major newspaper as having one of the top 10 pairs of legs in Britain.
Christine McVie: (After much laughter) I think they’ve improved since then, they used to be rather chubby!
Goldmine: You’ve been recording new songs, for the Anthology set. How are you enjoying being back In the studio?
Christine McVie: Well, this has been tremendous. I’d never met Patrick Leonard (the producer) before we started doing this project, and I know who he’s worked with before and he’s done some fantastic work, but I’m really happy with what He’s doing. He seems to have got into the Fleetwood Mac brain. He really understands. You can hear this, to me it’s sounding really hot.
Goldmine: When you say the Fleetwood Mac brain, do you mean the Lindsey, Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat production area?
Christine McVie: No, it’s more than that. It’s an entity that exists between us. Mick’s in there, John’s there, It’s the kind of amoeba thing that is impossible to describe. There is no way of defining the sound but it seems that Patrick knows that sound, he feels it, which is great.
Goldmine: So it’s a very good experience for you coming into the studio this time.
Christine McVie: It is, because having not been produced by anyone except Lindsey, the last album with Greg Ladanyi an exception, it’s fun to come into the studio. This guy works so fast as well, it’s unbelievable, really. So at the moment I’m really happy, and I hope that we have some ongoing relationship with Patrick, I think he’s great.
Goldmine: Would you ever consider doing some more solo work?
Christine McVie: Yes, I am, I’m definitely going to do another solo project down the line some time, But first of all I think there’s another Fleetwood Mac studio album to do, after this boxed set, some time next year. I’m not in a hurry to do the solo project. I’ve got to be ready for that. I’ve got too much domestic hoo-ha going on at the moment. I’ve got a house in England I’m restoring and I need time. I have got to have a lot of songs, and you need to be committed for a good six months to a year, to get the material together. I need to be, I hate to use that ‘92 word, focused, but that’s the word.
Goldmine: What’s the difference between you and Stevie [Nicks]?
Christine McVie: Stevie was always a lot more visible. She has this sort of personality which is conducive to that. She enjoys all the accolades, she enjoys the attention, she’s at the front of the stage, she adorns herself in stuff, she does it and commands a lot more attention that someone like myself, that has always been, or tends to have been back with John and Mick as a rhythm person in the band. I don’t take wild organ solos and things like that. The guitar players do all the solo work in Fleetwood Mac. I just kick back with John and keep the rhythm and pulse going, the glue. I keep good time and make minimal mistakes on the chords. I’m back there with John and Mick.
Goldmine: Do you prefer to remain quietly in the background?
Christine McVie: I do. In fact when I have to come out and do something like “World Turning” I’m going, must I, really?
Goldmine: So you try to shy away from the stardom side?
Christine McVie: Yes.
Goldmine: Within Fleetwood Mac you have been responsible for writing the majority of the hits. You can’t shy away from that.
Christine McVie: Well, I am very proud of that, and I love singing, it’s a source of constant pleasure to me. And when I listen to those songs I realize that’s been my life, really. Stack those records together, and that’s really all I’ve done. And there it is to listen to. It’s not as much as some people have done, and it’s more than others, but it’s me.
Goldmine: How did you enjoy working with Lindsey [Buckingham]? Was there a special bond there?
Christine McVie: I don’t think so as people. As musicians, yes, I think that he respected me as a musician, and I certainly respected him as a musician. We weren’t close friends. You couldn’t say that. I mean, Lindsey’s not really close friends with anybody.
I particularly like the Tango In The Night album, I think that was a superb record, and I particularly liked what Lindsey and I wrote together, There again we didn’t sit down at a piano and decide the chords together, and that kind of thing. It was a rolling motion , where I’d start something off, and he’d carry on, or he’d start something off and I’d suggest an idea. So it ended up being far more of a collaboration than had existed in the past, and I enjoyed that because I think he had great ideas. But you know, enough said on that.
Goldmine: You’ve actually been involved with Fleetwood Mac since the very beginning. I believe you played on one of the band’s first singles, “Need Your Love So Bad.”
Christine McVie: Yeah, I always ended up doing sessions with them. I was a big idol of Fleetwood Mac anyway, I absolutely worshipped them. And so when I was in Chicken Shack and we had a night off I used to always find Andy Sylvester, the bass player in our band, and we’d go and check out their gigs. To me they were the ultimate in music that was going around at the time. I was introduced to Peter(Green) first of all, I think, and then I sat in with them on quite a few occasions. Actually, I think, mainly because I was the only blues pianist that they knew, that was immediately available to them. And I think they liked the way I played; Peter really like the way I played.
Goldmine: You played on Fleetwood Mac’s second album, Mr. Wonderful, in 1968, so you really have been there from the beginning.
Christine McVie: Yes, I’ve been there in all senses of the word, as a fan and being really honored to play along with them.
Goldmine: How did it feel to be part of Fleetwood Mac and take over from where Peter had left off?
Christine McVie: When I married John (McVie) I felt that it was so great to be around them anyway, just as one of their wives. I used to listen to all their music. When Peter did leave I was there, and when they rehearsed for the Kiln House album I knew the songs back to front. So when it came down to it they decided they wanted to augment the band with another instrument, because it was just not happening without Peter. So they just asked me, completely out of the blue, would I care to join the band, and of course I could have fell over backwards. Of course I said yes, immediately!
Goldmine: You contributed the Kiln House album cover artwork as well.
Christine McVie: I did that in a day, well actually, in a couple of hours. They were desperate for a cover, and I don’t know quite how it ended up me doing it. I think I’d done some drawings of things and Mick said, “This is really good, why don’t you try and knock up a cover?” So I did. Fantasy land, Kiln House. That’s what it was at the time.
Goldmine: You then worked with a series of great musicians. Tell us about Danny Kirwan.
Christine McVie: Well, Danny was a tough one. We’re laying our cards on the table here, right? He was really, really neurotic and difficult to work with. I used to love the way he played guitar, but as a person, as an individual, I found him really difficult to get on with. He was one of those people that would never look you in the eye. He’d always be crawling around kind of looking at you out of the corner of his eye, if at all. He didn’t have any manners, and he was just very, very neurotic, and to be around him was a very nerve-racking thing. So he and I never actually wrote together at all.
Goldmine: Bob Welch?
Christine McVie: We wrote a lot together, me and Bob. Bob was always a tremendous conversationalist. He was the kind of guy that after dinner would sit down with a glass of wine and a huge cigar about the size of a billiard cue and tell these amazing stories. He was a wonderful story-teller with a terrific sense of humor, so he and I hit it off well. We collaborated on the Mystery To Me album, more so than any of the other albums.
Goldmine: You co-wrote “Did You Ever Love Me” with Bob. That should have been a hit.
Christine McVie: I always thought that was a really good song. We didn’t actually sit down at the piano and say what should we do here? I think I started it off, and he kind of added a bit in the studio-you know how things escalate in the studio-so it ended up being co-written. That’s a song that never really surfaced anywhere. I think somebody should cover it, it’s a sweet song and it somehow holds up today.
Goldmine: From when you joined the band to 1975, it was lean years for Fleetwood Mac singles-wise. Some of your songs remain hidden gems, like “Prove Your Love,” and “Why.”
Christine McVie: Yes. “Prove Your Love” is a good one too. That was one I often wondered why it never became a hit. I think “Prove Your Love” is a song I’d actually like to re-record because listening back it sounds like a demo. I wasn’t singing it very well and I’m sure I can do a better performance now, but the actual song I think was pretty good. “Why,” that was one of the songs that I used a Mellotron on. I think I bought the prototype, one of the first. It has a very low serial number, and I still have it. I’d never heard anything like it, an instrumental that played choirs and strings, before. That was unheard of back then and so we kind of stuck that all over “Why.”
Mick had this huge bass drum at the top of the stairs at Benifolds that made this enormous noise, ‘cause there was no furniture in that huge house. That was a goody, nice slide playing from Bob Weston.
Goldmine: You are by far Fleetwood Mac’s leading hit songwriter. How do you see your role in the band?
Christine McVie: My role in this band…I let the songs speak for themselves. I guess I’ve never been one that would blow my own trumpet. I think the songs speak for themselves. I have never claimed to be a brilliant keyboard player. I’ve never claimed to be a brilliant singer. I’ve never claimed to be a brilliant songwriter either, if it comes right down to it, I’m not prolific. I don’t write many songs, and the ones that I do write and complete I do because I like them. If I start something off that’s a dog, I dump it. I don’t have banks and banks of songs that are gathering dust. I’ve got ideas on a bit of tape with a nice little riff that I’ll drag out, and go, okay, I’m going to make something of this. And for that reason I don’t have many songs to give away. If I like them I want to do them myself.
It’s never been a situation where I’ve played songs for Mick or John or the band, where they’ve said, “I don’t really like that, Chris.” That hasn’t happened very often. If it’s happened it’s enough times to only count on one hand.
I’m not a show biz type person and I sort of go through the years wondering why the hell I ever did get where I did get, in terms of the fact that I’m not a very extroverted type of person. I don’t really enjoy the road very much. I used to enjoy playing live, once I was on stage, but now that’s got to the point where I just feel I’ve had enough of it.
Goldmine: That influenced your decision not to tour with Fleetwood Mac anymore?
Christine McVie: Mick and John are happy with me writing songs for the band at this particular point in time. I don’t know what’s going to happen down the road a couple of years. This happened to me. I didn’t go for this. For example, I ended up in a situation with Chricken Shack because I didn’t have anything else to do, and I was bored, and I wasn’t earning any money, I was broke. I enjoyed playing the blues, once I figured out how to play them, after I’d bought enough records and copied a few licks off Sonny Thompson.
Goldmine: You had a major hit with “I’d Rather Go Blind” and then left Chicken Shack.
Christine McVie: That’s right, and that’s when I won the Melody Maker award for vocalist of the year.
Goldmine: You won that award two years running and another more unusual accolade. You were voted in a major newspaper as having one of the top 10 pairs of legs in Britain.
Christine McVie: (After much laughter) I think they’ve improved since then, they used to be rather chubby!
Goldmine: You’ve been recording new songs, for the Anthology set. How are you enjoying being back In the studio?
Christine McVie: Well, this has been tremendous. I’d never met Patrick Leonard (the producer) before we started doing this project, and I know who he’s worked with before and he’s done some fantastic work, but I’m really happy with what He’s doing. He seems to have got into the Fleetwood Mac brain. He really understands. You can hear this, to me it’s sounding really hot.
Goldmine: When you say the Fleetwood Mac brain, do you mean the Lindsey, Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat production area?
Christine McVie: No, it’s more than that. It’s an entity that exists between us. Mick’s in there, John’s there, It’s the kind of amoeba thing that is impossible to describe. There is no way of defining the sound but it seems that Patrick knows that sound, he feels it, which is great.
Goldmine: So it’s a very good experience for you coming into the studio this time.
Christine McVie: It is, because having not been produced by anyone except Lindsey, the last album with Greg Ladanyi an exception, it’s fun to come into the studio. This guy works so fast as well, it’s unbelievable, really. So at the moment I’m really happy, and I hope that we have some ongoing relationship with Patrick, I think he’s great.
Goldmine: Would you ever consider doing some more solo work?
Christine McVie: Yes, I am, I’m definitely going to do another solo project down the line some time, But first of all I think there’s another Fleetwood Mac studio album to do, after this boxed set, some time next year. I’m not in a hurry to do the solo project. I’ve got to be ready for that. I’ve got too much domestic hoo-ha going on at the moment. I’ve got a house in England I’m restoring and I need time. I have got to have a lot of songs, and you need to be committed for a good six months to a year, to get the material together. I need to be, I hate to use that ‘92 word, focused, but that’s the word.
Goldmine: What’s the difference between you and Stevie [Nicks]?
Christine McVie: Stevie was always a lot more visible. She has this sort of personality which is conducive to that. She enjoys all the accolades, she enjoys the attention, she’s at the front of the stage, she adorns herself in stuff, she does it and commands a lot more attention that someone like myself, that has always been, or tends to have been back with John and Mick as a rhythm person in the band. I don’t take wild organ solos and things like that. The guitar players do all the solo work in Fleetwood Mac. I just kick back with John and keep the rhythm and pulse going, the glue. I keep good time and make minimal mistakes on the chords. I’m back there with John and Mick.
Goldmine: Do you prefer to remain quietly in the background?
Christine McVie: I do. In fact when I have to come out and do something like “World Turning” I’m going, must I, really?
Goldmine: So you try to shy away from the stardom side?
Christine McVie: Yes.
Goldmine: Within Fleetwood Mac you have been responsible for writing the majority of the hits. You can’t shy away from that.
Christine McVie: Well, I am very proud of that, and I love singing, it’s a source of constant pleasure to me. And when I listen to those songs I realize that’s been my life, really. Stack those records together, and that’s really all I’ve done. And there it is to listen to. It’s not as much as some people have done, and it’s more than others, but it’s me.
Goldmine: How did you enjoy working with Lindsey [Buckingham]? Was there a special bond there?
Christine McVie: I don’t think so as people. As musicians, yes, I think that he respected me as a musician, and I certainly respected him as a musician. We weren’t close friends. You couldn’t say that. I mean, Lindsey’s not really close friends with anybody.
I particularly like the Tango In The Night album, I think that was a superb record, and I particularly liked what Lindsey and I wrote together, There again we didn’t sit down at a piano and decide the chords together, and that kind of thing. It was a rolling motion , where I’d start something off, and he’d carry on, or he’d start something off and I’d suggest an idea. So it ended up being far more of a collaboration than had existed in the past, and I enjoyed that because I think he had great ideas. But you know, enough said on that.