June 23, 1990 Interview

[michelej1]

[Forgive me if you have this already, but I searched online and can't find it. Some things seem familiar, like where the mask idea came from, but some things seem new, so I uploaded]

Atlanta Journal and Constitution (GA), June 23, 1990

Section: LEISURE GUIDE

MUSIC NO MASKING FLEETWOOD MAC'S APPEAL

Russ DeVault Staff writer


The end is not in sight for Fleetwood Mac, but Christine McVie, a member for all but three of the band's 23 years of triumph and turmoil, has a vision of how it will happen: "We'll all just turn to dust one day," she says, "and that will be it for us."

The point Miss McVie is making is that it seems only the inexorable passage of time will ever stop Fleetwood Mac, which will play at Lakewood Amphitheatre tonight during its first North American tour in nearly three years.

The Mac, born in Britain and based in Los Angeles since the mid-1970s, has survived more personal, financial and management problems than most pop groups can conjure up in their darkest moments of paranoia. But the band happily enters the 1990s with a fresh new album titled "Behind The Mask," a lineup expanded to six by the addition of guitarists Billy Burnette and Rick Vito and a renewed sense of unity.

"We're getting on an awfully lot better than we have in awhile," Miss McVie says during a pre-tour interview from her Los Angeles home. "We do have a good sense of humor and that's important when you've been together as long as we have and been through so much."

Only drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, Miss McVie's husband when she was persuaded to join the band in 1970, have been through it all. They helped Peter Green and Jeremy Spenser create Fleetwood Mac in 1967, welcomed vocalist Stevie Nicks and her then-lover Mr. Buckingham aboard in 1975 and approved the addition of Messrs. Burnette and Vito after Mr. Buckingham quit three years ago.

It's only fitting that the group be named for its rhythm section. Mr. Fleetwood, an exceptionally powerful drummer who is 6 1/2 feet tall, and the stolid Mr. McVie capably anchor the band musically and otherwise. Under their stewardship, Fleetwood Mac has played on despite Mr. Green's decision to leave the secular world to join a religious commune in 1970. He was replaced by Miss McVie, who had retired as singer for the band Chicken Shack in favor of being a housewife. Later that year, Mr. Spenser defected during the middle of an American tour. He, too, opted for a purely religious life and was replaced by Bob Welch, whose resignation in 1974 led to the band's successful courtship of Mr. Buckingham and Miss Nicks.

Other problems have included the end of the relationships involving the McVies and the Buckingham-Nicks duo, an ex-manager who formed a bogus Fleetwood Mac and put it on the road in the mid-1970s and Mr. Fleetwood's personal bankruptcy in 1984. "This band has had some trials and tribulations," Miss McVie says, "but there's an inherent something that keeps it going."

At the moment, that something is created by the compatability of the revamped lineup - which is the 11th version of Fleetwood Mac - and some striking commercial success. "Behind The Mask," released by Warner Bros. on April 10, has sales of more than 800,000 in the United States and a worldwide total of more than 1.5 million, pushing overall sales of Fleetwood Mac's 19 LPs to more than 42 million.

The songs on "Behind The Mask," currently No. 26 on Billboard's pop chart after peaking at No. 18 in May, continue in the smooth, California-style rock vein the Mac mined so successfully in 1977 with its Grammy-winning album "Rumours." But the tunes also reflect the rockabilly heritage of Mr. Burnette - he's the son and nephew, respectively, of 1960s hitmakers Dorsey Burnette and Johnny Burnette - and the love of the blues that caused Mr. Vito to become a musician after hearing an early version of Fleetwood Mac in the late 1960s.

The band now has four accomplished vocalists and songwriters in Miss McVie, Miss Nicks, Mr. Vito and Mr. Burnette, but it's not a closed shop when it comes to the songs it performs. Miss McVie co-wrote "Save Me," which made it to No. 33 on the Billboard hit list in May, with her husband, Eddy Quinela, while Miss Nicks collaborated with Mike Campbell, a member of Tom Petty's band, on "Freedom."

"But we end up being democratic about things," Miss McVie says. "If all four writers have songs, we each get a quarter and if we have three, we each get a third. Obviously, we do have a lot of excess material floating around and I don't even finish some songs until I see that we need them."

Songs are also shaped by the entire band and Miss McVie says the process isn't always a pretty one, although she laughs while explaining how a song she originally called "Devil in White" became the title track for the new LP. "It went through so many metamorphoses on me that I was giving up on it," Miss McVie says. "I said, `The hell with it,' and decided I never wanted to hear the song again.

"Then Mick and Rick and Billy start telling me there's got to be a way to do it and they came up with a little different drum beat and some keyboard and guitar licks," she says. "I went in to rewrite the choruses and the song took on ominous qualities."

After emerging as a rather sombre tale about disenchantment and the treacherous guises love adopts, "Behind The Mask" was a natural choice as the title track - and as the motif for the stage the band designed for this tour. "We really liked the sound of `Behind the Mask' and we wrote it on a list of about 300 prospective titles," Miss McVie says, adding, "Most were asinine and stupid.

"But then Rick found this really wonderful art store with some Mexican masks for sale and bought four of them and we all fell in love with them," she says. "Now the stage set we're using is like a treasure chest that opens up and it's got all these masks painted on it."

However, Miss McVie laughs off the possibility the masks are intended to represent the many faces of Fleetwood Mac or that "Behind The Mask" is where the band keeps its real identify. "Oh," she says, speaking of the significance of the song and LP title, "we just kind of liked it."

FLEETWOOD MAC. 8 p.m. Saturday, with opening act Squeeze. Lakewood Amphith eatre, Lakewood Fairgrounds off I-75/85 at Lakewood Freeway. $18 and $24.50 at Ticketmaster. 249-6400.