Christine mention in Stevie article
 

http://www.pe.com/entertainment/stor...8.2314625.html

I got this off the Stevie board.

So Stevie isn't too sure about working with FM again if Christine isn't there.

I'm not sure if she means recording or touring.

I think it could be possible if Christine wants to do it. Even if it was not participating in the whole album. I'm sure they could come to London to record.

If Mohammed wont come to the mountain then the mountain should come to Mohammed

Gail

Gail, that link isn't working for me. It says page not found.:confused:

I think it's great that Stevie doesn't want to record/tour without Chris. I assume she meant recording since I don't think anything will get Chris back out on the road again. I definitely think Chris would agree to record in her studio/barn. I don't think she'd want to spend a year or more recording in California away from her family & dogs.

EDIT: I did read the Chris related excerpt in the Chris forum on the Seven Wonders board.

Bum! it says page not found for me too.

I'll try and get it sorted but in the meantime (?) it is on the Stevie board if anyone cares to look

Gail

Here is the bit we're interested in

"Nicks is optimistic about her future, hinting that she's eager to return to making new music after this summer's tour.

Another round of recording and touring with Fleetwood Mac isn't out of the question, although she would love to see McVie -- who essentially retired from music after "The Dance" tour -- participate if there is another Fleetwood Mac reunion.

"She was such a strong personality," Nicks said. "It was kind of like Chris was the boss. ... She had a definite defining hand over the whole band.

"So it was very hard for me," she said. "First of all, I had always toured with another woman in the band. That was really fun for me because I had a girl to hang out with . ... That is my problem now with Fleetwood Mac. I don't know whether I could do it again without her. That does not mean that the door is closed. It does not mean that the decision has been made."

I like this part best.:D You don't usually hear of Chris having a strong personality because she was so reserved on stage. Obviously, behind the scenes that was not the case.

I always get the impression that although on stage she is, as you say, reserved she is not "backward in coming forward" as we say. In other words not shy about voicing her opinion.

I bet she's quite scary if she got mad - Lindsey knows all about that :laugh:

Gail

I don't know why recording an album should take a year. Honestly, we're talking pop music, not sending a space probe to Mars. Get a producer who is committed to keeping it simple, keep Lindsey away from any mixing boards, pick no more than 12 songs to record, and give the guys and gals two weeks of studio time.

:lol:

Two weeks! This is FM we're talking about here! First of all there has to be a Lindsey album which gets hi-jacked. that's the law. So it could happen next year.

Then they'd have to hire a producer which they would no doubt argue about. Then he'd get fired. Then they'd argue about where to record it. LA or London? Or Kent maybe? Then Stevie would have to find the exact right spirit catcher. It's all so complicated.

Sending a space probe to Mars is probably simpler

Gail

I think this translates too.... It's harder for me to tame LB's crazy crap... w/o Christine... and........... I went insane dealing with him w/o Christine there..

I really believe they were a little lost without McVie there.... The music while good in moments really lacks foundation.... And McVie's music lacks that spark that LB and SN create.....

They do indeed need each other...

Especially if you consider the last few actually made it there in one piece, and have basically tripled our knowledge of Mars in the last five years. All that, without burning up in the atmosphere, crashing into the planet, or ****ting the bed after taking three pictures.

That's certainly better than Fleetwood Mac's recent track record. :rolleyes:

I agree, though I'm probably a bit more chartiable on both sides. I think there are some excellent moments on SYW. And, as everyone here knows, I am a HUGE fan of ITM. That said, you're right: those songwriters/perfomers flourish best in the company of one another.

Wow. I am SO glad Stevie said what we all knew already. Somebody had to and hell knows neither Mick nor Lindsey would.

LMAO!!!! joanne, i nominate you to produce the next album.

thanks for the head's up on this gail!! it's exciting to hear stevie voice all of our collective concerns and frustrations.

Two weeks?::shocked: Well, it only took a few days for Chicken Shack to record their studio albums. Mike Vernon really got things moving FAST. Now, I don't think Lindsey could finish anything in two weeks.:laugh:

Nomination accepted. Now let me practice this.

"SHUT UP, LINDSEY."

"MORE KEYBOARDS on this track, please."

"Linds? Did you hear me say to be quiet? Where's the guitar tech? We need duct tape, quick, to make a muzzle for Lindsey."

"Okay, Chris, what was that again? You want to record eight of your songs, two of Stevie's, and two of Lindsey's? Very good; very fair."

"ROLL TAPE!"

i think i just died laughing!! crack that whip! i love it.

her album is really good... especially Anything is Possible... but sometimes... it's just conservative.... and i know with a dash of LB and Stevie... or a young fresh producer... she would be really burnin it up...

:lol: :lol: :lol:

That seems fair enough to me.

Gail

Yes, that sounds good to me.:thumbsup: :D

haha. lol. give Sevie another song and thats fair.
but i do agree. Chris needs to come back. I really couldnt say that i loved either ITM or SYW...they do need each other for the 'Perfect' combination that is Fleetwood Mac.
I think it would be a waste of time for them to record another album without Chris there. God knows that all of the precessors where the 5 created the magic did better than the latest semi-disaster [RTTG, WTWCT, RR, and TD are the only 'gems' on SYW-IMO], but any mac album would be better than none...right?? [heck they did 90% of Tango without Stevie....]

anyways nicepace is a genius. i love her production ideas XD

I loved ITM more so than her 1984 outing which seemed more like a Christine/Todd Sharp album to me.

I liked SYW but thought it was too long by about 15 - 20 minutes and IMO it lacked the balance that Christine brought to the band.

she wont tour again but I still hold out faint hope of some kind of participation on another FM album if they get to record another before they all get too old to care.


Gail

I totally agree with your points. Interestingly enough, SYW has about 12 great songs on it--6 from each writer. Not bad at all! The rest is a bit indulgent for me. However, 6 Christine tunes would have been awesome.

Still, I'm glad to have gotten 12 Chris songs on ITM instead...

That was my preference. I'd rather have 12 Chris songs instead of just 6 Chris songs, even if those 12 songs aren't with Fleetwood Mac, especially since she hadn't made a solo album in 20 years & she had talked about making another solo album since the late 1980's.

If I thought she would have carried on working I would have preferred 6 Christine songs on an FM album. BUT as ITM is probably the last album she will make (I cant believe I just said that) then 12 on a solo is the better option.

Gail

"First of all, I had always toured with another woman in the band. That was really fun for me because I had a girl to hang out with."

So Sharon is a man??? I KNEW IT!

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I think something is up. I'm not suggesting there's a chance in hell of Christine touring, but why would Stevie even bring the subject up? I guess she didn't catch any of the IMT interviews. On the one I saw on VH-1 Classic, Christine looked like she was either going to vomit or have a stroke when asked if she was going to tour. But, that was four years ago. Maybe Chris is bored. I know she said she didn't like it, but then again, she did it for so long that it has to be in her blood. A 180 date tour is out of the question, but a 40 date tour would give her a fix and buy mama a new swimming pool.

I can't see that she has any motivation to tour. She certainly doesn't need the money and she hasn't played live for 10 years.

I really can't see it happening.

Now some studio work .... that would be a different matter.

Gail

Of course, I agree.;) She mentioned several times in her ITM interviews how much she had enjoyed recording ITM, how much fun it was. I think she still loves that part of the process. As for touring, it's never going to happen. When they played in England back in 2003, she didn't even want to join them onstage for just one song. It just doesn't make sense that they told her she couldn't record with them if she didn't want to tour. Who cares? They worked around Stevie's absence in the studio during the Tango period. Why not accomodate Chris this time?

Absolutely.

I love John to bits but his comment about her not recording if she wasn't prepared to "work" the album was total crap IMO.

If she has participated fully in SYW she would have had 6 songs. So only 6 more songs to add to the dozens of others of hers they weren't going to play live. As you say who cares?

If FM ever record again and Christine wants to take part then she should be able to state the conditions and the others all say "yes Chris". Judging by Stevie's recent comments about Christine I imagine they're all pretty used to that :laugh:

Gail

Sorry, but I've never been under the impression that Christine really wanted to be a part of the SYW process. We've all read and seen the same things over the years. What I came away with is that Christine offered her services to the band, but under a sense of obligation to the band, not a strong desire to work with the band again. I think the only one who might have liked the fact Christine wasn't there was Lindsey, and even then it was more because it let him do things he probably wouldn't have been able to do if she had been there. The others, AT BEST, only appeared to be resigned to the fact she was not there.

Christine has talked A LOT about the pressures that would have been on her had she been a part of that process. The bottom line is that the others went in on SYW under the assumption that they were going to be a working band, which is hard to do if one of the members is semi-retired. It was weird during the "Time" days, and it would have been weird here, too. To put it another way, how is it fair to Mick, John, Lindsey, and Stevie to be giving 100% to the project, but Christine only 50%?

I'm not sure whether Christine wanted to be part of SYW. I'm saying that if she had wanted to it could have been possible to work it out. Lindsey certainly did feel that he had more freedom without her there. Stevie was more than just "resigned" to her not being there, she missed her. That's how this whole thread started because of Stevie's comments about Chris.

If there was another album and if Christine wanted to take part but not tour that wouldn't preclude the others from doing so. They would get bloody well paid for a tour and she wouldn't. That would be fair.

Gail

I know you're gonna think I'm crazy... But I think he wanted her there badly (LB) and when she didn't break.... as they tried several times to have her go one more round with them (tour and album)... Once he realized she wasn't comin back... that's when he said ok... "i'm gonna make it more masculine and we're gonna rock out more"....

I don't think he achieved his statements per se... but that was his take after all was said and done...

i don't think i've ever definitely read that chris was opposed to working on SYW. i know she didn't want to tour, but that's the extent of it. if everyone had been ok with the idea of her working on the album, but staying behind for the tour, i don't think we would have seen only 50% of chris showing up, especially since what she probably would have contributed would have been tracks that eventually showed up on ITM. i happen to think that album is dynamite, so i would have considered it a job well done on her part if they had happened to show up on fleetwood mac album as opposed to a solo record. of course we can only speculate until someone comes out and says definitely what the case was (she didn't want anything to do with the project vs. she didn't want to tour & the band decided not to allow her on the album). since stevie seems so candid these days, maybe she'll weigh in on what the real situation was eventually!

RE the idea of lindsey originally wanting her there, no, i don't think that's crazy. all of his talk about masculinity and rocking out and blah blah blah seems excessive (to put it mildly), and it wouldn't be far fetched to speculate that it's just to cover what he felt might be missing with chris absent. i have to believe that with all those two have worked on in the past, if he had really felt repressed by christine's artistic bent, it would have come out much sooner than SYW. all this stuff about being held back and now he can do what he really wants to do? if that's true, why would he have had her work on his solo stuff?

I don't think there's ever been an interview published with any of them stating definitively what the situation was with regards to whether Christine wanted to take part in SYW or whether they were prepared to let her if she wouldn't tour.

I think all the band wanted her to be there but I'm not sure she wanted to and there is still this no tour no record thing which persists.

When it was clear she wasn't going to be there I believe Lindsey came out with the freedom/testosterone crap to hide his disapppointment. They all knew the album would have benefited from her presence but they're hardly likely to say "we've done a new album but it's rubbish without Chris". They put a positive spin on it as you'd expect. I think Lindsey went a little too far in his comments but it does prove my theory that he was disappointed that she wasn't there.

Gail

Here's an excerpt from an interview Chris did to promote ITM. It's in the Blue Letter Archives.




"When Fleetwood Mac's new studio album, Say You Will, came out last year, there was one great glaring thing missing – Christine McVie's harmonies and her songs.

Yet here she is with a new solo album, In the Meantime, sounding much more Fleetwood Mac than nearly anything on the Say You Will album.

In fact, that album would have been greatly helped by a few of the songs here. Why didn't anyone take the initiative, to get the two groups together, and make one great album?

"In principle, that would have been a great idea," McVie says. "I'm quite sure they would have liked it, and I think I probably would have quite liked it.

"But I didn't want to end up being beholden or committed to this massive machine anymore," she continues via phone from New York City. "I'm quite aware that it's probably not going to be a commercial success, but that isn't the reason I did it, really."

She notes "I'm better off doing it in my own little way. I kinda get trapped by those guys. I'd feel beholden and guilty if I didn't tour . . . and I didn't want that. You get sucked in and it's difficult to get out. It's like being in the army, Fleetwood Mac."



It sounds to me that her not wanting to tour was the deal breaker. I believe they gave her an ultimatum, either all or nothing & she chose nothing. I think if they had offered her a few songs on the album with no touring, she would have said yes, something similar to TITN with Stevie or Time with Chris.

1. I didn't get the vibe that she was at all disappointed with how things worked out. What I got is that she would have liked to work with those people, but not really be in the band. Christine isn't the type to hold back when she's angry. If it had ended badly, she would have said as much.

2. Stevie has never really been a creative force in terms of production with Fleetwood Mac. Basically, she gives her stuff to Lindsey, he does his thing, and she layers her voice. Maybe her being on the road and in rehab weren't ideal, but she would have just been there taking up space. When it came time to work the album, Stevie was there.

3. Look at what happened with Lindsey during TITN. For that matter, read HER comments about the situation during that time. It IS like an army, and she knew the score.

If she wasn't part of the tour, it would have been only 50%, in that she would really only been 1/2 a member of Fleetwood Mac (a part of the recording entitiy, but not the touring entity). It really didn't work during "Time," and I'm not sure it would have worked on SYW, though the album itself would have been better.

Marketing. But, I've always rolled my eyes with Lindsey's masculinity comments, since he's really one of the most effeminate straight men I've ever seen. His songs might have had a little extra edge, but that doesn't translate into masculinity. Greg Allman...now THERE'S a masculine dude!

[QUOTE=SteveMacD;692444]
"Stevie has never really been a creative force in terms of production with Fleetwood Mac. Basically, she gives her stuff to Lindsey, he does his thing, and she layers her voice. Maybe her being on the road and in rehab weren't ideal, but she would have just been there taking up space. When it came time to work the album, Stevie was there.
If she wasn't part of the tour, it would have been only 50%, in that she would really only been 1/2 a member of Fleetwood Mac (a part of the recording entitiy, but not the touring entity). It really didn't work during "Time," and I'm not sure it would have worked on SYW, though the album itself would have been better."

I think MacFan made a valid point about the TITN situation. Stevie was allowed to be only a 1/2 member during that time. I simply don't see the difference.

It probably boils down to what you'd rather see - an FM album with Christine on it and no tour or an FM without Christine and a tour. I know where my vote lies but I'm probably in the minority of FM fans.

Gail

[QUOTE=Gailh;692454]Stevie is a singer and songwriter. She wrote two songs, sang lead vocals on three, and harmony on the others. She played her role on the album. Minimal though it may have been, she WAS a part of the recording process, and certainly part of the touring process. It was a similar situation with "Mirage," as the band had been working on that album, too, while she was working "Belladonna." The only difference there was scale.

[QUOTE=SteveMacD;692456]"I wanted you to sing on it too" Chris said in measured tones that signalled she was furious, "but you weren't here. In fact, we've been working for a year and you were only with us for a couple of days. Now why don't you just say you're sorry and we'll work it out?" Quite gracefully Stevie capitulated in front of the whole band and we gleefully layered her vocals into the mix of the album.

Two days and then another few more to add some vocals.

That's not being part of the recording process. Being part of it involves a lot more commitment than that.

I still think it is possible for Christine to take part in a future FM album (if they ever get round to recording one before they get too old and always assuming she would want to) and not tour. The way Stevie is talking it might be the only way another FM gets done. If Mick feels that's the case then he'll make it happen. He would do whatever it takes to get FM working again. For SYW he needed Lindsey. For a subsequent album he might find he needs Christine.

Gail

My understanding of the TITN sessions was that the band would have invited Stevie to help them record the songs as soon as she could but that she was at Betty Ford. In fact, in his book, Mick suggests various members of the band (including Chris) were annoyed with her for her lack of involvement.

Nonetheless, in terms of the band's machinery (the FM Army), I assumed everyone was much more pleased to have a fully functioning Stevie on tour than an absent one who worked day and night on the studio album. The band makes its real $ on the tours.

But you are right, Gail, if the landscape changes and Mick realizes certain concessions have to be made to accomodate another Mac outing he may say "Gosh, I really need Chris more than ever" and do what she wishes.