Christine McVie wants to rejoin Fleetwood Mac
Christine McVie is eyeing a return to Fleetwood Mac after 15 years away. Back in September, McVie hopped onstage with her former bandmates at London’s O2 Arena for a show-closing rave-up of their 1977 Rumours classic, “Don’t Stop.” 1998, following the band’s massive sold-out reunion tour, McVie quit the band, sold her L.A. home, her songwriting publishing, got divorced, and moved back to her native England to retire. Now, she’s having second thoughts, telling The Guardian, “I like being with the band, the whole idea of playing music with them. I miss them all. If they were to ask me I would probably be very delighted. . . but it hasn’t happened so we’ll have to wait and see.”
When asked why she quit the band in the first place, McVie explained: “I think I was just music’d out. I suffered from some kind of delusion that I wanted to be an English country girl. . . and it took me 15 years to realize that it’s not really what I wanted at all.”
When asked about how it felt to be back leading the band at the London gig — if only for one song — she said, “It was amazing, like I’d never left. I climbed back on there again and there they were, the same old faces on stage.”
Fleetwood Mac is currently on hiatus after cancelling a tour of Down Under while McVie’s ex-husband, bassist John McVie undergoes cancer treatment. When asked about his prognosis, McVie said it was “really good. He’s having his treatment in L.A. right now, but they caught it really early so he should be up and running in a couple of months.”
- Bandmate Stevie Nicks has long been pining for Christine’s return — but respectful of her decision to retire from the band. Lindsey Buckingham on the other hand, has shown slight resentment for Christine splitting on them just as their personal lives seemed to finally settle down and the lucrative brand finally restored to its former glories. Christine said, “Fair enough. From his point of view, it was a business thing. (Promoters) would be asking why I wasn’t playing in Amsterdam or Berlin. They obviously wanted headlines about them, not me, and I quite agree with that.”
- When pressed about her rejoining the band on tour, she diplomatically offered up: “It’s a long way down that path if it ever were to happen. John’s got to get well first, so it hasn’t been talked about. We’ll have to wait and see.”
- Lindsey Buckingham says that although the band missed Christine McVie terribly on a personal level — he didn’t feel as though losing her really affected the band that much in practical terms: “I don’t think anyone felt that that was a negative, y’know? I mean, in the spirit of Fleetwood Mac reinventing itself, we saw it — yes, it was a challenge, but it was also an opportunity to flex our muscles in a different way.”
Stevie Nicks reveals Lindsey Buckingham tensions with Christine McVie
With the rock world buzzing about Christine McVie’s possible return to Fleetwood Mac after 15 years, Stevie Nicks reveals that Lindsey Buckingham might be the one to block it. The December issue of Mojo magazine features an interview with Nicks conducted in September just before McVie joined the band at London’s O2 Arena to close the show with her 1977 Rumours classic, “Don’t Stop.” Nicks admitted that there are some tensions that need to be ironed out, explaining, “She’s just emerged to do one song. It could have been a few songs, but Lindsey’s very funny about that. Chris left in 1998, and we didn’t start (the) Say You Will (album) until 2002. It took us that long to figure out what the hell we were going to do without her — or even if we could do without her.”
When the interviewer told Nicks that Buckingham had asked the magazine not to use a group shot featuring McVie on the cover of Mojo’s recent Rumours retrospective, Nicks went on to say, “I think his words to us we, ‘She can’t just come and go.’ That’s important to him, but it’s not quite so important to me. . . Much as Lindsey adores her — and he does; she’s the only one in Fleetwood Mac he was ever willing to listen to, he doesn’t want the first might reviews to be all about Christine’s one song, rather than the set we rehearsed for two months.”
Although Fleetwood Mac still performs some Christine McVie material — “Don’t Stop” and “World Turning,” her 1975 co-write with Lindsey Buckingham — he told us that he and Stevie Nicks don’t feel the need to go overboard in filling the setlist with McVie’s songs: “Obviously we’re not doing too much of the Christine stuff. We’re trying to show her the respect just by including one or two. We don’t feel like we have to go out and do all of her songs.”
Internet Comments
via USMagazine.com and Eonline.com — agree or not?
Jmw26red wrote: “I hope she does. I saw them in Vegas back in May and it was a bummer in the fact that they didnt do any of the songs where she sang lead vocals. The concert was still awesome as it was on Stevie’s birthday.”
Pat Geary wrote: “They all miss the spotlight – and the money”
Drea wrote: “I highly doubt they are hurting for money.”
Jim Bodkin wrote: “I’d love to see her back in one of the great bands of all time.”
Mark wrote: “Lack of money changes everything! Realizing you are now 70 also has an effect!”
gary wright wrote: “That would be so heavy if she did, in fact, rejoin the band. Her contributions, without exception, were a real asset to their style. She was able to adjust to all of the band member changes, and still maintained that blues rock, that worked well with even in their rock tunes. Man, I have always thought that she had class and although she wasn’t flashy like Stevie Nicks, when she joined the band, she didn’t take a backseat either. Good news on McVie as well. That group would probably be as good as it was thirty years ago.”
Michael wrote: “I’m 75 and that news brought tears to my eyes, I can ‘t wait.”
Blossom wrote: “McVie is CRUCIAL to the band’s over all sound. Stevie may be the queen soloist but without McVie it’s just Stevie and her backup band. McVie is where the signature FM sound comes from. Not the same without her, imo.”
cfred wrote: “I’d love to see Christine back in the band. Brilliant songwriter, keyboardist and vocalist.”
Fast Facts
- Christine McVie wrote some of Fleetwood Mac’s most enduring hits, including 1975’s “Over My Head” (#20) and “Say You Love Me” (#11); 1977’s “Don’t Stop” (#3) and “You Make Loving Fun” (#9); 1979’s “Think About Me” (#20); 1982’s “Hold Me” (#4) and “Love In Store” (#22); and 1987’s “Little Lies” (#4) and “Everywhere” (#14).
- She scored a solo Top 10 hit with 1984’s “Got A Hold On Me” (#10)
- In 2003 McVie was credited as an additional musician on Fleetwood Mac’s last full-length studio set, Say You Will. She contributed keyboards and backing vocals on “Bleed To Love Her” and “Steal Your Heart Away.”
- In 2004 Christine McVie released her third solo album, In The Meantime, which she collaborated on with her nephew, Dan Perfect.
WMMR / Wednesday, November 27, 2013
