Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood takes pride in being part of one of music’s greatest soap operas, the band’s landmark 1977 album Rumours.
“The album is a chronicle of everything that happened with us on a personal level, which became a story almost too out of control, but the quality of the way we approached that album sonically, it’s very natural,” Fleetwood, 68, said in Sydney yesterday.
The drummer, a founding member of one of the world’s most successful and enduring rock acts, will be joined by Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Christine McVie on stage in Sydney tonight as the veteran band begins its On With the Show Australian tour.
The shows, which come at the end of a world tour, mark the return to the Australian stage of Christine McVie, who quit the band in 1998, but rejoined at the beginning of last year. Her return reunites the line-up whose fractious relationships formed the lyrical backbone of the Rumours album and shot them to international superstardom.
“She is a dear friend to all of us,” said Fleetwood, “even when she wasn’t in the band, so to have her back and with such a level of enthusiasm is a joy to see. It’s fair to say that Stevie is happy to not just be surrounded by a bunch of ex-boyfriends.”
Nicks was in a relationship with Buckingham when they both joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, but after they split she had an affair with Fleetwood, who was married at the time.
Fleetwood has been the only constant in the band since it began as a blues rock outfit in England in the 1960s and believes he has been partly responsible for keeping the group together through its many turbulent periods.
“I don’t write the songs, I don’t sing the songs, but in a way that has been my contribution to a bunch of wonderful, crazy people, present and past, that have come through Fleetwood Mac.”
The drummer, who has also toured Australia with his blues band, said that a new album would be forthcoming from Fleetwood Mac.
“There will be a new record,” he said.
“John and myself and Lindsey cut a lot of stuff about three years ago, which remains in our swollen archive. Much later we recorded with Christine. Whether Stevie becomes a part of that we’re not quite sure. I live in hope that it will work out.
“We’re not done yet, that’s the main thing.”
Iain Shedden / The Australian / Wednesday, October 22, 2015
