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

[aleuzzi]

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.

She got quite careless with her talent. Who knows why? May have been her personality, pinpointed long ago by Mick Fleetwood when he said her strength was to emote in the moment, rather than to pace and measure out and plan long term. Stevie’s a free spirit. If anything, once she finally started being more careful with her singing to conserve it, her shows got a little boring to me. I used to go to her concerts and desperately wish for even a few moments of dangerous abandon.

Interesting theory about how busy she may or may not have been while making her solo albums. There’s no question she was “mostly idle” during the Mac records, but I suspect she was very present and aware of the importance of the sound for her first two albums. After that, who knows?

You and bombaysaffires make apt comments about her carelessness with her instrument. She WAS really careless, brazenly so. But I agree with you—that was when her shows were, to use a choice descriptor, bewitching. After that, she had heroic moments (“Silver Springs” on The Dance, “At Last”) but there was a sense of balance, and of caution, which, ironically, undermined what made her so special…