Fleetwood Mac: Going long with Lindsey Buckingham

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by elle

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In addition to the tour, there’s apparently a new record in the works. How has that been going?

Well, it’s been going great. It’s sort of piecemeal, in the sense that I went in quite a while ago and cut some tracks with John and Mick, and some of those got put on the shelf for a while. And then when Christine showed up, she and I went in the studio and did quite a bit, maybe seven or eight tracks over the period of about two months in the studio. And that was phenomenal really, because it kind of tapped into something that I had always done for her and for Stevie, in terms of production and co-writing and informing the whole sensibility. When someone like that has been away that long as Christine has, you don’t know if the tools or the context remains. But we locked in with a vengeance and did some of the most creative and beautiful stuff I think we’ve ever done together.

So we’ve got that, and now the missing piece is just Stevie. The tour, and the rehearsals for the tour, had already begun, so, like I say, it’s been a little bit piecemeal. But I think it’s going to be incredible when we finish it. We’ve got quite a bit left to do touring-wise, and then we will sit down and try to formulate some kind of a plan. This is one of the differences between us and someone like the Eagles — I admire the fact that they always seem to know what they want, why they want it, and the all want it at the same time. And we are really just the opposite politically. It’s a wild animal and it’s hard to pin everybody down for a common vision. It’s kind of always been that way, but it’s a little more disparate now than it was back in the day, because everyone sort of wended through their particular journey.

Have you been doing any of the new material at the shows?

No, we’ve been keeping it pretty much under wraps. You know, on the last tour we did before Christine returned, we had done an EP, and we did a couple of things that were new then. But it seemed to us that the message right now, with Christine’s inclusion, which is such a circular thing, it seemed like the message was really, let’s just underscore the body of work. And that’s what we’re doing.

Any chance you’ll write songs on this tour that might end up on the record?

I’m always fooling around with stuff on the road, but as of yet there has not been any formalized interaction in that direction on the road. There is kind of a tendency for everyone to go off to their respective corners. So, as of yet, no. But we still have quite a bit of time. We’ll just have to wait and see. I wouldn’t say there’s been a real sense of urgency for that.

Thanks for posting, Elle. I'm glad the interviewer asked two questions about the new material. And I'm even more glad that LB continues to speak of the record the same way he did last summer.

But I'm annoyed that, as usual, no one can commit to a timeline and that Stevie is still the wrench in the works. I'm also annoyed that LB has to say the tour is all about how the old work "holds up." Of course it does! But that isn't enough anymore.