New Reader Q&A with Christine in Guardian UK - post your questions now...

[bwboy]

Originally Posted by David

I’ve always had the feeling — certainly with Fleetwood Mac and probably in her own solo career — that she just did not have enough to do. Other than the first year of her solo career and despite what she always said, I thought she was mostly idle. She was busiest on solo tours because she had to sing the entire show. But her solo albums didn’t require as much time from her as some people think. There’s a lot of down time for a vocalist in the studio. The time spent on instrumental tracks and mixing far outpaces the time spent on recording vocals. Whereas Ann and Nancy Wilson and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were more like the instrumentalists in Fleetwood Mac, needing to stay sober enough to play in the studio and onstage, Stevie could toot to her heart’s content and the album would be completed by the crew around her. Just a hypothesis of mine.

If you think Stevie was idle back then, despite releasing solo albums, doing solo tours, and recording FM albums and doing FM tours during that period, then Christine and Lindsey must look downright lazy to you during that same time period.

I don’t get the connection to Heart you mention, but I do remember my brother showing me a video many years ago of Ann and Nancy in a recording studio and some guy was yelling at them (I presume the producer) about how worthless they were and they were crying. It was disturbing to me, but my brother said they looked like they were high and that was probably why they were crying and why he was yelling. I didn’t like seeing anyone being yelled at that way, high or not; and it was hard for me to look at Heart the same way after seeing that. Now I see it as a moment in time, and not as their entire career trajectory. They clearly worked hard for their success, but they had a good deal of help as well.