The Times interview
 

From here:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i...mula-nlj08kvdk
You have to register to read the full article. But I copied the text:



MUSIC INTERVIEW
‘In Fleetwood Mac nothing fits into any formula’

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie have got back together to sing duets, they tell Will Hodgkinson

Will Hodgkinson
May 26 2017, 12:01am, The Times

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie: “It was clear early on that this wouldn’t be Fleetwood Mac”

Just when you have a handle on the Fleetwood Mac drama, the principal characters go way off script and do something nobody could have predicted. First, the songwriter and pianist Christine McVie makes a surprise return in 2013 after a 15-year absence. Now McVie has recorded a duets album with Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist associated, through good and bad times, with the other woman in the group: one Stevie Nicks.

“This is a band where nothing fits into any formula,” says Buckingham, on an atypically stormy afternoon in Los Angeles. He is at the Beverly Hills office of Fleetwood Mac’s manager, Irving Azoff, where I have just heard a handful of songs from the forthcoming duets album. From Buckingham’s sweet, fairytale-like In My World to McVie’s breezily romantic Feel About You, the album features classic Fleetwood Mac-style soft rock, which isn’t surprising given that Mick Fleetwood and John McVie form the rhythm section. The only Maccer missing, in fact, is Nicks.

“Oh, she’s fine about it,” insists Buckingham, on what Nicks makes of her old boyfriend recording an album with her one-time ally in the male-dominated world of 1970s rock. “She was off on her own thing [a solo tour], she knew what we were doing, and it was clear early on that this wouldn’t be Fleetwood Mac. You can look at it cosmically. The universe was speaking to Christine and me, even to Stevie, for this to be a duets album.

“Doing a duets album with Lindsey was the last thing I expected,” says McVie. “We don’t hang out in the way Stevie and I do, but we do work well together, and we ended up with all this material while Stevie was off doing other things. It started when I was in LA to rehearse for the tour and it developed from there. It’s just another splinter off the tree.”

Ever since 1977’s Rumours — 45 million albums sold and counting — the world’s leading purveyors of break-up rock have turned personal turmoil into musical gold. Buckingham and Nicks, the Americans of the group, teenage sweethearts who wrote the classic kiss-offs Go Your Own Way and Dreams about each other respectively, have maintained some sort of affection amid the mutual friction. To this day they hold hands while performing Landslide, written by Nicks when they were still in love. Christine McVie wrote Don’t Stop as a way of telling her ex-husband, the bassist John, to get over their marriage and move on. And throughout it all Mick Fleetwood kept the show on the road, turning Fleetwood Mac into one of the world’s biggest live acts. Their 2014-15 tour, which featured the return of Christine McVie, grossed $200 million.


“When Christine returned I thought, ‘OK, here comes the next chapter’,” says Buckingham, who looks much the same as he always did. The mass of black curls may have given way to cropped grey hair, but he’s still slim and somewhat intense, with piercing blues eyes suggesting a steeliness beneath the friendly exterior. “Christine burnt all her bridges in LA and made a new start in the UK, so when she said she wanted to join I told her, ‘If you do come back, you can’t just leave again. It can’t be this year’s lark.’ And then she started talking about these songs she had.”

Rejoining the band at the end of 2013 saved McVie from a downward spiral. After her marriage to the Portuguese musician Eddy Quintela came to an end in 2003 she became something of a recluse, living alone in a big house near Canterbury and becoming increasingly isolated from the world.

“I said I left because of a fear of flying, but it went deeper than that,” says McVie, who now lives in a high-ceilinged flat, filled with Mac memorabilia, opposite Hyde Park. “My father was dying, I realised I had spent most of my life in Fleetwood Mac, and I made the unwise decision to return to England and live like a retired person. At first I thought I was happy, and I loved the countryside. Then my marriage broke up, he left, I got very depressed, and my two dogs became my excuse for living. Nobody would call me prolific, but I wasn’t writing anything at all. Eventually I went to a therapist, who said I had to get on a plane or I would never go anywhere.That led to visiting Mick in Maui, where I asked him what it would be like if I joined the band again."

The history of Fleetwood Mac is so full of tragedy, intrigue and surprise that McVie’s shock decision not only to return, but also to make an album with Buckingham, is almost par for the course. Take the former guitarists. Peter Green gave away all his money before being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Danny Kirwan was homeless for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Jeremy Spencer joined the LA cult the Children of God. Bob Welch killed himself.

“It’s a grim story, isn’t it?” says McVie, who has a no-nonsense way of talking about the band’s history, a product, perhaps, of her Birmingham upbringing. “Mick started wondering if he was the Devil incarnate. The rest of us survived because we have a great capacity to laugh at ourselves, which goes a long way to solving uncomfortable issues. It could be tricky singing Don’t Stop in front of John, and You Make Loving Fun was rubbing his face in it [McVie wrote the song about the lighting engineer she was having an affair with], but you exorcise those demons through song and feel better for it.”

“Animosity has been fodder for the songs, and Stevie and I have problems to this day,” says Buckingham. “But you have to acknowledge that underneath it all is a great deal of love. It is the glue that keeps this band together, against the odds.”

Buckingham left the band for a while too, after substance abuse by his fellow members reached an apotheosis during the recording of Tango in the Night in 1987. Fleetwood, having filed for bankruptcy, was living in a trailer in Buckingham’s front yard in LA. Nicks had checked into the Betty Ford clinic to quit cocaine, while embarking on a debilitating addiction to the painkiller Klonopin.

“It was the 1960s and 1970s reaching its ugly conclusion,” says Buckingham about that era. “Mick was transcending, shall we say. Stevie was a non-presence. For an album that took ten months to a year to make, she was in the studio for a couple of weeks. But back during Tusk [1979], Mick and Stevie were setting examples I wanted to reject. We recorded it at Village studio in Santa Monica and it would be one in the morning, I would go out to my car to drive home and Mick would drag me back into the studio. It got to the point where I’d say, ‘I’m just going to the bathroom,’ and then I’d run to the car and drive away. And they would stay up well into the next day.”

“Me and Lindsey . . . we’re not exactly the best of friends,” confirmed Nicks, when I spoke to her this year. That lack of amiability has curtailed plans to reissue Buckingham Nicks, the 1973 album the couple (and they were a couple back then) made before joining Fleetwood Mac. It is something of a buried treasure, long revered among fans of heartfelt 1970s Californian rock.

“The problem is, a reissue would require Stevie and myself to carve out time to do something together,” says Buckingham. “And there is never a meeting of the minds on when that would be a good thing to do . . . Go figure.” He raises his eyebrows meaningfully.

The universe was speaking to Christine and me
In their separate interviews, Buckingham and McVie reach the same conclusion: Fleetwood Mac should, by the standard laws of physics and divorce, have split up decades ago.

“We’ve never had a fantastic time,” says McVie when I ask if she has memories of a golden period for the band she has been in, apart from that 15-year break, since 1970. “All of the albums have been strewn with angst. Making Mirage in 1982 was particularly weird. We decided we needed a bubble to work in so we rented the Honky Château [a recording studio in D’Hérouville, France]. Lindsey and Stevie did not like that one bit, partly because Lindsey does not care for Europe in any big way. God knows how we survived.”

As Buckingham points out, there is no precedent for Fleetwood Mac. No other band has featured the same five wildly different, frequently warring people for so long.

“Stevie is very ethereal while also enjoying the trimmings of being a singer,” says Buckingham, describing his fellow band members. “She’s concerned with how things are perceived from the outside. I’m the opposite. I have a good time on stage, but I could be just fine never going on the road again, and I’m most grounded when working. Mick is the guy that keeps it all together, and it’s a comment on his tenacity that people have floated in and out and still Fleetwood Mac has continued. John is more like me, except without the drive. He plays his bass and chills out on his boat. It’s a healthy way to be.”

How about McVie? “When Christine came back, it was so clear she was the middle ground of this band. She’s a woman who has a lot of things she can share with Stevie, but she’s also a musician grounded in her craft, which falls on my side. It’s why she can get on with both of us.”

Buckingham and McVie are doing a handful of dates to support the album. Nicks has been carrying on with a solo tour, and joined her mega-fan Harry Styles on stage at a recent LA date. Then it is back to Fleetwood Mac for all. American summer dates lead to a world tour planned for next year, but not a much-rumoured Glastonbury festival appearance (“I’m a bit suspicious of the mud,” explains McVie). Against all odds, Fleetwood Mac is the thing that endures. Go to one of their concerts today and the audience is multi-generational, a far cry from the early 1980s when, according to Buckingham, “we were the enemy for not being the Ramones. Or even the Police”.

“I never thought we would still be doing this,” Buckingham concludes, as our interview winds up. “When I met my wife, and had my first son at 48, it changed everything because you can’t live a crazy rock’n’roll life and be a spouse and a parent at the same time. Yet these five disparate people create something intangible, something other people can see so much better than us. Despite all the animosity and chaos, there is a shared destiny.”

Or, as McVie states in her unflappable way about a life in Fleetwood Mac: “I’m up for it if they are.”
Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie (Rhino) is out on June 9

Wow, an interview where the reporter asked some different questions! So weird about the inability to get together to have Buckingham Nicks rereleased. Still, it's practically a moot point now. I mean, bootlegs can easily be bought off the internet, and if Stevie and Lindsey can't agree on something as simple as a rerelease, that's their loss.

I really liked this interview, but just remember- it's not a Fleetwood Mac album, it's a duets album!

The bulk of the interview is about Fleetwood Mac and clearly the making of this record--whether they call it a duet or acknowledge it as a 4/5 Mac project--is inextricably connected to the band dynamics Lindsey points out.

The upcoming band tour will be different from the 2015-16 one. I'm not sure yet how it will play out, but LB-CM's dynamic will be that much stronger having written and recorded and toured together before reconvening with the other three. Given Mick's interviews last October and November about the future of the record, it's clear he WANTED this to be a full-blown Mac project. So I'm also not sure how his disappointment will play out on the road, either.

Isn't it funny they have to keep repeating that to not make someone feel left out. They are tripping over themselves over and over saying this.
Just remember....EVERY Fleetwood Mac musician plays on the album. Say You Will was Fleetwood Mac. Behind the Mask was Fleetwood Mac. Time was Fleetwood Mac. The difference now is the name of the band member only.

"and Stevie and I have problems to this day,” says Buckingham. "

hmm, that's different. usually he said that they are still working on new chapters etc etc, not that they are still have having problems.

Notice that there only seems to be a problem when one person is around?

Other than that, it's all hugs and kisses. Seemingly GENUINE hugs and kisses.:wavey:

Yes I noticed this....usually he talks about the new chapters in a positive and excited way

Now its ....we got 'PROBLEMS'

.....There is Trouble in Little China

maybe new chapters talk was when he was still hoping there might be some creative endevours in their future.

It used to be bittersweet, now it's just sweet. Fastforward 20 years and now it's just bitter.

Michele

:lol: i love you!! :wavey:

I wonder if she knows that she's the problem now? Or she just doesn't care? Or she just believes her own delusional crap she spews?

I think in her mind she's like "F Lindsey, Im more popular then him and I'm going to go on a big tour just to prove it". I could care less how many seats she sells to sing that Rhiannon and Landslide for the thousandth time. She could have been a part of the this and said F U to the band. Screw her. If there is a God, Buckingham Mc View will get some sort of grammy nod. I can only imagine she'll be tearing her weave out. BTW honey, stop saying you look young because you stopped going in the sun at 30. NO ONE is buying it.

Sigh. In reference to something I just posted on another thread, if Mick's team reads this thread the meet and greet prices will be even higher. I don't blame Mick one bit!

I suspect he would offer discounts. The fans have his back! FM is his life -- and it remains dormant because of one person who holds it all hostage. And I wish people wouldn't post the same thing in multiple threads. We heard you the first time.

That is one theory, but I don't believe it. It's hard to imagine Lindsey and Christine being that afraid of Stevie, and I think you're overestimating her power.

Another theory would be that by going out of their way to insist this is not a FM album, they are lowering the expectation that it should sell well. This is not an insult, I'm just being objective here, and this is a possible theory. Some people can believe this, or they can believe the band is so afraid of Stevie that they recorded under another name.

no offense but your posts always crack me up like how can you even breathe with your head so far up stevie's asshole

they're going out of their way to say it's not a FM album so they don't have to deal with the awkwardness of talking about how that's what they really wanted but stevie was being her stevie self so they had to change their plans

the end.

Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!:woohoo::woohoo::woohoo: god I love this board.


Exactly. And this isn't even a duets album. The pink elephant in the room is that old goat's her name held out on them and wouldn't participate. They're afraid to call it FM(I now kind of believe that maybe legally, they can't, without her...?), so we're stuck with a much less popular moniker, thanks to her.

((Mick's people: Mick, we have to charge even more for the next meet and greet. Your fans are BAT**** CRAZY. You won't believe they crying, moaning, insulting, this person vs. that person going on. You shouldn't meet ANYONE who doesn't pay TEN GAZILLION DOLLARS.))

I'd give $5 to meet him. Okay, $10. $12.50, tops! And that should include a bottle of the wine he's always pushing...

BTW, is he still pushing that stuff? It's been a while since I've seen anything where he's out doing that.

i'm completely confused. why?

if you are posting on Stevie board or in the thread called "Stevie" here, many of us are not reading those because from previous experience i just have to deduce those threads are place for Stevie fans who have that kind of need to spew hate on anything that the other 4 FM members do - so probably right now on the upcoming BuckVie album and tour. poor chiffs have to have some place for that and they can go to town there as far as i'm concerned (and i don't have much doubt they do :lol:), and leave BuckVie threads to be a happy place for the rest of us.

but i still don't get what kind of logic even in those threads would have as an end result Mick charging more for his m&gs? plus, Mick is not on BuckVie tour anyway, so why would you be even worried about that?




EDIT: adding disclaimer before peeps jump on me - it is probably a minority of really loud chiffs i'm referring to in my post above, not every single Stevie fan. i'm good friends with many amazing people who are Stevie fans and what i wrote above certainly has nothing to do with them.

So you disagree with my post LOL

No offense but your posts always crack me up like how can you even breathe with your head up Lindsey and Christine's assholes

they're going out of their way to say it's not a FM album so they don't have to deal with the awkwardness of talking about how that's what they really wanted but the record label was concerned it wouldn't sell without Stevie so they had to change their plans

the end.

hi! :wavey: please don't respond if this is too invasive, but just curious - are you a pre-teen maybe?

Hey Elle, I just responded to dreamsunwind using the exact same insult he said to me, and you ask me if I'm a preteen, but not him/her? Lol that's funny. I guess you could say I'm... on the edge of... 17...

hey bwboy, thanks for responding. was just curious. i'm reading this to mean you are a teen, regerdless of pun. :)

bwboy, i appreciate your reiterating my post as imitation is the highest form of flattery but i think you ought to know that i am different from you in that i don't have a single bias towards any one member of fleetwood mac. they are my favorite band and every single member i love, i love each one as much as the other and i have posted plenty of things all about what i love about stevie and you can probably even see the threads still since it wasn't too long ago, the same way of how i post about how i love the others and how excited i am for BM. but right now, stevie is the one who was the 'problem causer' for the whole FM album turned into BM album debate, which is why i don't have any issue in calling her out on it, and i also don't have any issue either of saying i don't like how lindsey produced this song or how i've never thought christine wrote the greatest lyrics in the world. i can praise and criticize every single member of the band without bias because i don't have a slant towards any of them. you on the other hand obviously DO have a stevie favoritism, it's evident in almost all your posts and it makes everything you say biased in her favor, often taking a negative taint against the others.

and i don't disagree that the record label or whoever else was concerned it wouldn't sell without stevie or it wouldn't be the same and were hesitant to proceed without her, i even started a thread about that myself a while ago, if you look, you can find it, in fact i think i remember you replying and agreeing with what i was saying, so i don't see how your point there is supposed to disagree with what i said. THEY (being lindsey and CM and Mick and John) wanted to have a final fleetwood mac album, STEVIE did not, VARIOUS reasons made it so that it would not be the greatest idea to release an official fleetwood mac album without stevie on it (in my opinion anyone who thinks having stevie on it would have made a BIG difference in sales is delusional, because odds are, it wouldn't have sold too well either way) so THEY had to change their plans to make a duet album. and because answering questions about that subject is pretty awkward, they're pushing it in a different perspective.

You still don't get it. They are not afraid of Stevie. Its quite the opposite. They don't want to crush her, upset her, and make her feel excluded even though it was her choice to not do the record. There already is enough drama without her tantrums about a Fleetwood Mac record she is not on. Its mostly her ego but I am sure they also realize she is a big draw to her shows.
It really is a window into how the group functions. In any other band if a band member sat out on an album or did not tour full time, it would not be a big deal. They would not go to great lengths to re-name themselves. They are trying to keep everyone happy is the bottom line. Personally I think its silly but if it works, that's wonderful. It really works for the tour because it would be a Fleetwood Mac show without Stevie. They made a record and should promote it and play some of their songs.

A very well said post, dreamsunwind. I'll try to match your sincerity.

I don't think the BuckVie album is going to sell very well. That is my objective opinion. It will probably sell about the same as Stevie's last solo album, which didn't sell that well. See, I have no problem saying 24 Karat Gold bombed. It simply didn't sell well. And the singles released also bombed. And this is where the comparison becomes relevant- 24 Karat Gold was an album of rerecorded demos and only took a few weeks to record, and was released with little fanfare. So even though it was a disappointment, sales wise, I think most people agree expectations were fairly low to begin with.

A new Fleetwood Mac album, however, would not have low expectations. A new FM album with the return of Christine McVie would understandably create a higher expectation in terms of sales, but I also believe the record label was concerned that Stevie wasn't on the album, so to temper those expectations, Christine and Lindsey are bending over backwards saying this album is NOT a FM album.

Like you, I love the band, and I do wish they would have all come together one more time. But Stevie didn't want to, and there are a dozen theories as to why she didn't. You've read them- she's selfish, she doesn't care about the fans, she's jealous of Christine, she can't stand working with Lindsey, she's greedy, she wants a break, etc. In my opinion, Stevie probably wasn't pleased with how the EP turned out, and just figured the new album would be more of the same, so she chose to pass. Just my opinion, but it's as valid as anyone else's opinion.

Just like I can say I disliked 24 Karat Gold, I can also say I haven't liked the three songs I've heard from the BuckVie album. Yes, I love the band, but I am not a person who likes a song just because I like the artist- I like it if I like it, that's all. And just because I posted I didn't like the three songs so far doesn't mean I hope the album flops. I bought the special $50 edition of 24 Karat Gold, and I hated it, I was so disappointed, but I didn't hope it would bomb.

I like trying to predict how an album or tour will do. Although I wasn't surprised 24 Karat Gold bombed, I was completely shocked when Stevie's latest tour did so well. I mean shocked! Touring to support an album that had bombed AND was released a full year plus earlier? Plus so soon after touring with Fleetwood Mac? But I was wrong. And I could be wrong about the upcoming "not a FM" album. And if I am wrong and it goes to #1 or platinum, I will be thrilled. Objectively, I don't think that will be the case. And people shouldn't think I must not really be a fan, or only like Stevie, etc just because I have that opinion.

I don't know why you're surprised or shocked by the success of Stevie's last tour. Historically, her tours that immediately follow a Fleetwood Mac tour (full lineup) do very well, AND she was co-headlining with the Pretenders who draw from a different crowd than Stevie/Fleetwood Mac, so it's not like everyone was there for Stevie.

i think that you and some others here, including me, are talking about 2 very different things. you are saying In Your Dreams bombed because it didn't sell. i see it differently - wasn't it Stevie's most critically aclaimed solo album ever? so who cares if it wasn't successful commercially, she was still pushing ahead. with 24kg she was stalling. she just re-recording old demos and people may have liked originals better. kinda like Lindsey re-recording She Smiled Sweetly which i adored in his Gift of Screws version, and didn't care much for when he re-recorded it. but you all had the whole album of such re-recordings with 24kg. theories differ why she did it, but i disagree with you that it was worth it just because she put minimal effort in it... while you think Buckingham and McVie and Mick and John expressing themselves creatively is not worth it because new music from older artists won't sell. people keep telling you over and over that BuckVie don't care about sales, that they just enjoyed the process of reconnecting and working together and still being creating artists. you are poopooing that and saying that's all worth nothing without sales.

see what i'm saying? we are talking apples and bananas. :)

exactly. she is a master in riding Fleetwood Mac's coattails.

Actually, her TISL tour sold much better than Enchanted, even though the latter followed The Dance.

I didn't say anything about In Your Dreams, my comments were about 24 Karat Gold. And I agree, it doesn't matter whether an album is a hit or a bomb, I just like to try to predict one way or the other. No where in any of my posts have I said "Buckingham and McVie and Mick and John expressing themselves creatively is not worth it because new albums from older artists don't sell." I've never said that, suggested it, or even thought it, so I have no idea why you attribute that to me. I have no idea whether they care about sales, but judging from what they've said about sales of Tusk compared to Rumours, they seem to care a little bit. And if the new album does really well, don't you think that would make them happy? So yes, they do care a little bit about sales, but whether it sells well or bombs, it's obvious they enjoyed recording it.

So no, I'm not saying it's all worth nothing without sales. I hope they continue to record, both together and separately. Just because I point out 24 Karat Gold bombed doesn't mean I think Stevie shouldn't make another record- it just means that, objectively, the album didn't sell well. Likewise with the duets album- just because I think it won't sell well doesn't mean they shouldn't record another album later.

Two words: Sheryl Crow.

Because she popped up for a few dates?

good! :thumbsup:

that's how your posts come across, that nothing is worth it but the sales - even if you apparently don't realize it and / or don't actually think that.

This is my thought, but all this talk about stevies tour has me thinking that they I don't think the majority of the people who went to the 24KG tour actually went for 24KG. They went for 'Stevie Nicks'. What Stevie always says about how people only want to hear hits really is kind of the truth. It's only the really devoted fan that would've been delighted that she added some of her more recent songs to the set list. Odds are most people went so they could see Stevie Nicks sing the classic songs they most associate with Stevie Nicks.

Idk anything about The Pretenders tho, I'd never even heard of them before and I find Chrissy Hyde to be painfully obnoxious.

Steve's tours only do well when Sheryl Crow appears with her, when the Pretenders open for her, or right after she tours with Fleetwood Mac. :laugh:

She was on a lot of shows that tour, enough to be included in the tour book. I know they promoted her being in the band for the Cincinnati. I guess I thought it was that way for the majority of the tour.

Aside from the guest-filled Arizona Heart Institute benefit, I saw 4 other TISL shows, and Sheryl only appeared at one of them and was only on stage for a couple of songs.

I remember TISL being a big deal for Stevie and FM fans because it was her first studio album of new material since STREET ANGEL. She had built up her fan base the year or two before THE DANCE and then after FM took a hiatus. But the new album was a real draw. Alas, I never got to see her on that tour because I live in Rochester, NY and her date to play there was September 12--one day after 9/11. She was trapped in NYC and then canceled the rest of the tour, for obvious reasons. But I was bummed. I enjoyed TISL.