transcription from Uncut Mag

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

Ok..... I'm not transcribing the first bit of the interview because it re-hashed old stuff that we all know about. I'll perhaps do that later. Thought you might want to read this part though:



MORE THAN 15 YEARS LATER, Buckingham is back, rehearsing for a new stadium tour at Culver City Studios, Los Angeles, and with a new Fleetwood Mac studio album. Christine McVie has gone, having moved back to England to retire with her husband to a big house in Kent. Otherwise, it is the classic Fleetwood Mac line-up. Older and wiser and a little less volatile. But back with the same melodic and beguiling sound they perfected on albums such as Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk.
And after years of being regarded as the enemy, it seems that Fleetwood Mac are cool again. "I think the intriguing thing to a lot of people is that there's never been a period in rock as debauched as the period after Rumours," said Courtney Love, who in the late 90's covered Stevie Nicks' cocaine-inspired "Gold Dust Woman". "Nobody's touched it."
Ex-Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan is another fan (in the mid-90's he recorded a cover version of "Landslide" from 1975's Fleetwood Mac). And when Uncut recently visited Tricky at his home in Venice Beach, California, even the dark one was playing Fleetwood Mac, proclaiming them to be "****ing brilliant".
For Buckingham, Say you Will is the first Fleetwood Mac studio album he has been involved with since the fateful Tango in the Night, and although he disputes some of the details of the confrontation that resulted in his 1987 departure, he concedes euphemistically it was "not a happy day". Yet he regards the new album as a "vindication" of his walk-out. "If I hadn't left then, I wouldn't be in this place now," he reasons. "So it all makes sense in some way. That's part of the beauty of us being back together".
At 55, Buckingham seems far more relaxed and less intense than the character we met on Fleetwood Mac's 1997 reunion tour. Sitting cross-legged and relaxed on a couch at the Culver City Sound Stage rehearsal space in LA, he scratches his head and laughs a lot. When the band's US publicist sticks her head around the door to say,"five more minutes," he replies, "Hey, 10, 15, whatever, it's cool."
"I'm now married and I have a four-and-a half-year-old son and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter," he explains. "I think all that calms you down in increments, without you even being aware of it. You get more balance and you feel like there's something greater than yourself in the scheme of things. I'm just happier. I spent quite a few years in emotional exile and that includes all my time in Fleetwood Mac, really."
There was never a time in the band when his relationship with Nicks wasn't characterised as "dysfunctional" and "denial", he admits with total candour. "That sounds strange when we split up so many years earlier. But most couples in that position don't carry on seeing each other all the time. Being in a band is like still living with someone. We weren't able to resolve things because I don't think we were focused enough even to know what needed to be resolved."
Even on the 1997 tour he feels there was still a "residue". Since then he gained a family of his own for the first time and has finally been able to move on. "And this time when we started again I found I really liked the chemistry of the band without the baggage we carried around for so long. We can acknowledge what happened. But we are different people."
Talking to Mick Fleetwood at the rehearsal studio where the band are preparing for their forthcoming tour, the drummer agrees. But he also says that the unique chemistry that created Rumours has not entirely dissipated. " There's an incredible amount of emotional investment outside of the music within this band. The vibration of what happened is still alive. It's not theatre, it's real," he adds, stretching his long frame across a couch, still the elegant English dandy.
"Christine has gone, but Stevie is surrounded by three men, two of whom she's had relationships with. This makes for an interesting copy. My friendship and absolute love for Stevie is still able to exist. She's my wife's best friend and we've all just come back from a vacation in Hawaii together. It's not corporate. It's still a powerful thing emotionally. There are area's for Stevie and Lindsey that are still sticky for them. But we've found a road map where this can happen.


Stevie's part of the interview to follow.....

[Les]

Thank you again, Pip. Great of you to do all this typing for us.

[CarneVaca]

Mick says it's "not corporate." Perhaps he's been feeling the sting of the criticism?

Someday I hope to be as calm as the article portrays Lindsey to be. And it should only take me another 20 years or so!

Pip, I've got some notes that need typing too! Hey, thanks again.

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

Originally posted by CarneVaca
!

Pip, I've got some notes that need typing too! Hey, thanks again.

[FiercestCalmSea]

She's my wife's best friend and we've all just come back from a vacation in Hawaii together

She is? I would think they were talking about Sara Fleetwood,but that is his ex....i dunno...struck me as weird..

[Johnny Stew]

Yeah, sorta blows a hole in all those "maybe Stevie's bitter because she's still single" theories.