When Did Mac Members Get Clean/ Sober?

[bluecalmsea]

I was thinking about this the other day- when did the band members "clean up?"

I don't mean Stevie, we know all about her situation

I am not familiar with their exact battles- wasn't John an alcoholic? Is he sober now? Has he discussed his addiction at all?

When did the cocaine and alcohol stop in large quantities for Lindsey, Christine, and Mick? Did anyone besides Stevie go to rehab?

Oh and one more unrelated question- has Christine ever talked about not having children?

Thanks!

[michelej1]

As of 1997 Stevie was saying John still drank and what are they going to do? She said they couldn't throw him up against a wall and make him stop.

I don't know if he's stopped since then. For SYW everyone was talking about how much mellower they all were than they were in days past, so I got the impression that John wasn't getting drunk and angry any more.

He has talked about his drinking to the extent that it hurt Christine and she got tired of seeing him that way.

Michele

[Andrew Smith]

I do know that Stevie was the only member of Fleetwood Mac who ever went to rehab. She mentioned this in an interview a few years ago.

[Ulpian]

Christine smokes but no longer drinks or takes drugs.

She mentioned in 2004 that she might have liked children and that it was a regret, but that it just didn't happen.

As for John, he drank heavily on The Dance tour from one article I read. I think it was the Guardian here when they accompanied the band on the first few tour dates. John got really drunk and was still talking about Christine; very sad. However, I really think not having her on tour helped him post-1998.

[CADreaming]

In 2009 in the Don't Stop doc Stevie said she didn't know if the others ever went to rehab. I find that hard to believe - that she didn't know, but I guessed it was her way of not speaking for them.

[MikeInNV]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

I do know that Stevie was the only member of Fleetwood Mac who ever went to rehab. She mentioned this in an interview a few years ago.

I was told by Sharon Celani that Christine went to rehab, and that's why she didn't want to perform with the Mac when they were in London; she thought she could only do it if she had a drink first.

[Ulpian]

Originally Posted by MikeInNV

I was told by Sharon Celani that Christine went to rehab, and that's why she didn't want to perform with the Mac when they were in London; she thought she could only do it if she had a drink first.

I wonder if she was on the Chivas Regal before her stage performance last week?!

[elle]

Originally Posted by bluecalmsea

I was thinking about this the other day- when did the band members "clean up?"

I don't mean Stevie, we know all about her situation

I am not familiar with their exact battles- wasn't John an alcoholic? Is he sober now? Has he discussed his addiction at all?

When did the cocaine and alcohol stop in large quantities for Lindsey, Christine, and Mick? Did anyone besides Stevie go to rehab?

i was wondering about that re Lindsey too. Lindsey kept saying during the Dance days how nice it is to be together again with Stevie and Mick now that they are themselves again, so obviously the 3 of them must have been clean by then.

i'm thinking that Lindsey's quitting the band in 1987, with all the other often discussed reasons, may have had something to do with trying to clean up too (obviously you can't do that in the company of people who will undermine your efforts), but maybe not yet at that time. i am kinda thinking he got off harder drugs sometime between 1987 and 1992, but during OOTC time there's no doubt he was still on something or other... there are some of his radio interviews from that time where he clearly seemed out of it. so i'm thinking that Lindsey definitely cleaned up some time between 1993 and 1995 or 1996 maybe? i have no idea whether he went to rehab or not, but it seems very obvious he has had tons of therapy.

don't know whether he still drinks on occasion (like celebrating a bday, or a glass of wine with the meal?), although i would suspect if he does that it's never heavily anymore. he doesn't smell like cigarette smoke, but that may be because he always seems to chew gum when not performing... during SWS tour you could see his other band members always smoking outside the venue, but not him.

i would love to hear people's insight on this, i know there are people who paid attention to these kinds of things much more than me.

[WildHearted]

I tend to think that Lindsey either already had or was starting to mellow down on that lifestyle(pot not withstanding) by the Tango era.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by MikeInNV

I was told by Sharon Celani that Christine went to rehab, and that's why she didn't want to perform with the Mac when they were in London; she thought she could only do it if she had a drink first.

I had never heard this. Interesting. So I'm assuming if she went to rehab it was sometime after the Dance tour, presumably before In the Meantime...

[jenniferuk]

This might be the article referenced above-Oct 1997. John was drinking and Mick mentions being sober for 7 yrs.

I found, and still find, this so sad. I flew over from London for that Detroit show and it was a bit sluggish, but I had full FM reunion fever and savoured every moment. However, I had hoped that JM had found a bit of peace (after sobering up in the late 80s following a seizure I seem to recall).

http://www.fleetwoodmac-uk.com/artic...rt_arc009.html


Oddball: The Dance Tour Review

Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac: reunited for the music,
for each other and for something to do



Q Magazine 1997
By Mark Blake

PALACE AT UBURN HILLS, MICHICAN
October 4, 1997



The banner is still visible in the 10th row of this 16,000-seat basketball arena: “My name is Rhiannon. I am five years old and I love Fleetwood Mac!” Judging by the fact that if flutters above the heads of the audience, it’s unlikely that the bearer is the five-year-old Rhiannon herself. Nevertheless, the sentiment is clear. For one couple here, Fleetwood Mac were such a defining presence in their lives that they had to name their child after one of the band’s songs. For one segment of the American populace, the reunion of this particular incarnation of Fleetwood Mac (the commercially lucrative one: Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) is a serious affair.

Rhiannon, the song, shows up late in a 150-minute set. By then the heartstrings of this partisan throng have already been tugged by the fluid, tuneful Dreams, Landslide and Gypsy, just what the audience of fortysomethings and their offspring – eager to see their folks’ favourite band – expect. The hangar-like sports hall is located in a sprawl of greenery, an hour’s drive north of Detroit. Aside from the West Coast with which they were so closely identified, if is there far-flung corners of the American heartland that is Fleetwood Mac country.

Three weeks into the tour and the band’s new album, The Dance, a recording of their reunion concert for MTV, is still nestling in the Billboard Top 5. The last Fleetwood Mac album, Time, in 1995, recorded with sole survivors Fleetwood and John McVie, failed to enter the American charts. Humiliated, they threw in the towel.

Cynicism dictates a cautious approach to such get-togethers, but as the band deliver their opening gambit, The Chain, replete with Buckingham’s almost comically brilliant guitar workout, only the most unforgiving could find fault. As Buckingham notices later with rascally glee, “Sure, go ahead, talk about the money, but there’s an emotional resonance to what we’re doing in these shows that you won’t have got from The Eagles,” whose Don Henley serenade Nicks, Buckingham’s ex.



The emotional resonance was always a selling point, especially on 1977’s 23-million-shifting Rumours, recorded while Buckingham and Nicks’s relationship crumbled, the McVie marriage fell apart and Fleetwood’s wife sloped off with his best friend. Inevitably, the set draws largely from this album and the four others recorded by this line-up between 1978 and 1987. And what a curious line-up it is: Fleetwood, implausibly tall and decked out in a pantomime pirate’s outfit; McVie, his hangdog, sad-eyed bass-playing partner; ex-wife Christine, charmingly posh – like a minor royal in velvet leggings; Buckingham, serious, undeniably gifted and very Californian (“My lawyers and manager both signified that this tour could be a good move for me in the long term”) and Nicks, mid-‘70s uberbabe, mid-‘80s solo superstar, and perhaps the only 49-year-old woman with the gall to appear on stage wearing platform heels high enough to give Ginger Spice vertigo.

It is Nicks to whom the audience warm most, her faintly ludicrous routine of tambourine pounding and pirouettes egging them into mild hysteria. Yet when she husks her way through Gold Dust Woman – a spooky homage to the cocaine that, in the word of Buckingham, “rendered us bleary-eyed for a long time” – her act’s sometimes pantomime showiness is upstaged by the eerie quality of her voice.

Offstage, all five seen surprised, amused and even a little embarrassed about working together again.

“The music is easy,” states Nicks earnestly. “It’s the other stuff that’s hard. But I realised a long time ago that there is no Fleetwood Mac without Lindsey. If it can’t be with him, then let’s not do it.”

The “we all love each other” party line may be trotted out once too often, but Nicks’s platitudes are not completely misguided. Buckingham remains the band’s musical linchpin; instilling a touch of barely-controlled mania into the jerky, angular 1979 hit single Tusk (“Back then I really wanted to be in The Clash,” he will confess later) and playing the tetchy, demanding musical foul to the more melodic Nicks and Christine McVie. It’s little wonder the band foundered without him.

Go Your Own Way sees out the main set, Buckingham and Nicks – once American rock’s most beautiful couple, all too quickly a grudge match in cheesecloth and flares – ham it up, trading knowing looks and even returning to the stage holding hands.

“Sure, we’re playing it out,” admits Buckingham, looking faintly appalled. “But when I quit the band, Stevie and I still had unresolved issues. It’s kinda nice to be getting along again.”

After the show, the general consensus of opinion seems to be that the show flagged a little. John McVie confesses to “sluggishness”, while Nicks grumbles that it was too long. To the onlooker though, there’s nothing that couldn’t be rectified by judicious pruning and a tweak of the set list. Buckingham’s solo spot, including a pared-down Big Love, is superb; the group’s parting shot of Brian Wilson’s The Farmer’s Daughter understated and effective.

Cosseted by a 150-strong staff, including no less than seven fractious managers, the saga of this oddball gathering of ex-wives and husbands continues to play in the manner of what Christine McVie freely describes as “a mini-soap opera”.

“America wants a happy ending to the fairy story,” she laughs. “I’m sure there were people out there tonight who genuinely believe that Stevie and Lindsey will be reunited, and everything will be alright again. Let me say now that will never happen.”

Ms McVie seems the least likely to entertain anything more permanent.

“I’m moving back to England soon, Kent actually,” she says, cheerily. “What I really want to do is open a restaurant.”

This odd gathering of five wildly different individuals is never more evident than back at the band’s hotel after the show. Having emerged from a limousine, John McVie ambles into the lobby and heads straight for the bar where he will hold court, tipsy but touchingly affable, for the next two hours (“My ex-wife’s a luverly, luverly lady, even though she told me to **** off,” he informs no one in particular).

In contrast, Stevie Nicks’s arrival is heralded by six handmaidens, who huddle around their mistress before hustling her in a pincer-like movement towards the waiting lift.

“Christ knows why this band works but it does,” avers Fleetwood. “Lindsey asked me and John to work on his solo album and it just took off from there. I wanted it to happen, but I didn’t dare ask for almost a year. We’re survivors. Being in this band is like going to that Gordonstoun school in Scotland that ****ed Prince Charles up.”

Older, wise and straighter – “I’ve been clean for seven years” – Fleetwood is adamant that he won’t force anyone into a more permanent commitment.

“If we go to Europe, great. If we split up at Christmas, that’s fine too. Let’s be dignified about it.”

Yet there’s still a nagging feeling that for him and McVie, there is no life without Fleetwood Mac.

“John asked me the other day, What are we going to do when this is all over?” he shrugs, before outlining a remarkably detailed game plan to get ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green’s solo career back on track. “I’d love to help him,” he whispers, with a conspiratorial wink.

“It’s working at the moment,” concedes Buckingham. “But there have already been times when I’m up there hammering away and I start thinking, Jesus, How did I end up back here?”

With three excellent but largely unsuccessful solo albums to his name Buckingham admits the reunion might help him sell a few more of his own records next time around. “That’s, er, kinda the idea,” he confesses, nervously.



The next evening’s gig is in Indianapolis and in the morning there’s a private plane waiting at a nearby airstrip. Limousines pull up kerbside; Nicks’s entourage usher her into lobby; a clearly hungover John McVie re-appears.

“Y’know before Lindsey and I joined we had to steal ourselves not to go into stores,” recalls Nicks, stepping into the stretchiest of limousines. “Six months later we were earning $400 a week each and I was totally famous. We used to pin $100 bills up on the walls of our apartment just for fun. You go through that with someone, you don’t forget.”

At the airstrip she follows her former other half into the plane. Strangely, this time they don’t hold hands.

..

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by jenniferuk

Q Magazine 1997
By Mark Blake

PALACE AT UBURN HILLS, MICHICAN
October 4, 1997


Offstage, all five seen surprised, amused and even a little embarrassed about working together again.

“The music is easy,” states Nicks earnestly. “It’s the other stuff that’s hard. But I realised a long time ago that there is no Fleetwood Mac without Lindsey. If it can’t be with him, then let’s not do it.”


Go Your Own Way sees out the main set, Buckingham and Nicks – once American rock’s most beautiful couple, all too quickly a grudge match in cheesecloth and flares – ham it up, trading knowing looks and even returning to the stage holding hands.

“Sure, we’re playing it out,” admits Buckingham, looking faintly appalled. “But when I quit the band, Stevie and I still had unresolved issues. It’s kinda nice to be getting along again.”



“America wants a happy ending to the fairy story,” she laughs. “I’m sure there were people out there tonight who genuinely believe that Stevie and Lindsey will be reunited, and everything will be alright again. Let me say now that will never happen.”


In contrast, Stevie Nicks’s arrival is heralded by six handmaidens, who huddle around their mistress before hustling her in a pincer-like movement towards the waiting lift.


“It’s working at the moment,” concedes Buckingham. “But there have already been times when I’m up there hammering away and I start thinking, Jesus, How did I end up back here?”

With three excellent but largely unsuccessful solo albums to his name Buckingham admits the reunion might help him sell a few more of his own records next time around. “That’s, er, kinda the idea,” he confesses, nervously.




..

Thanks for posting, I hadn't seen this one before.

[elle]

Originally Posted by jenniferuk

The “we all love each other” party line may be trotted out once too often, but Nicks’s platitudes are not completely misguided.

.........

Go Your Own Way sees out the main set, Buckingham and Nicks – once American rock’s most beautiful couple, all too quickly a grudge match in cheesecloth and flares – ham it up, trading knowing looks and even returning to the stage holding hands.

“Sure, we’re playing it out,” admits Buckingham, looking faintly appalled. “But when I quit the band, Stevie and I still had unresolved issues. It’s kinda nice to be getting along again.”

.........

the saga of this oddball gathering of ex-wives and husbands continues to play in the manner of what Christine McVie freely describes as “a mini-soap opera”.

“America wants a happy ending to the fairy story,” she laughs. “I’m sure there were people out there tonight who genuinely believe that Stevie and Lindsey will be reunited, and everything will be alright again. Let me say now that will never happen.”

............

“Y’know before Lindsey and I joined we had to steal ourselves not to go into stores,” recalls Nicks, stepping into the stretchiest of limousines. “Six months later we were earning $400 a week each and I was totally famous. We used to pin $100 bills up on the walls of our apartment just for fun. You go through that with someone, you don’t forget.”

At the airstrip she follows her former other half into the plane. Strangely, this time they don’t hold hands.

these parts made me laugh... they sound exactly like things such as all the handholding discussed in thread about 2013 press and videos. nothing ever changes, does it?

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by michelej1

As of 1997 Stevie was saying John still drank and what are they going to do? She said they couldn't throw him up against a wall and make him stop.

I don't know if he's stopped since then. For SYW everyone was talking about how much mellower they all were than they were in days past, so I got the impression that John wasn't getting drunk and angry any more.

He has talked about his drinking to the extent that it hurt Christine and she got tired of seeing him that way.

Michele

well, it sounds like he didn't stop drinking, even then, and not for decades after. Do we think his drinking was better controlled in later years, or that Julie just handles it better?

[elle]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

Thanks for posting, I hadn't seen this one before.

we highlighted some of the same parts, at the same time