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REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie

Fleetwood Mac – Stevie Nicks = Buckingham/Mcvie. Typical Fleetwood Mac math, yet somehow it adds up to a pretty-good album.

Over past few decades, a couple of would-be Lindsey Buckingham albums have been co-opted into Fleetwood Mac albums. Tango in the Night (1987) and Say You Will (2003) both began as Buckingham solo projects, but fate, not to mention the record company, intervened. This time, though, things have worked out the other way around, sort of.

Since Christine McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 2014 after a 16-year absence, the band have talked excitedly about a new era and a new album, and have been recording new material. All of them except Stevie Nicks that is. Nicks has been doing Fleetwood Mac and solo tours but apparently, has little interest in recording.

Apparently, the rest of the band got tired of waiting for her. Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie also features the Mick Fleetwood/John McVie rhythm section. So that’s four-fifths of Fleetwood Mac. Though Buckingham and McVie have claimed their album was not intended as a Fleetwood Mac record, that’s only because Nicks precluded the idea. It is safe to say that any new Fleetwood Mac album would have featured much of the material on Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie. All this makes it difficult to listen to Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie without thinking of it as a companion piece to Say You Will, which featured all involved save McVie.

Even after all these years, it’s never simple with Fleetwood Mac.

Still, Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie commands some attention in its own right. McVie has not released anything since her 2004 solo album. Save a low-key Mac EP, Buckingham has not been heard from since 2011. Do the pair, who between them have written some of the most enduring radio hits of the last 40 years, still have it? Do they, at their ages (Buckingham is 67; McVie turns 74 this year), have anything new to say, and can they still sing, even?

This is a “duet” album, which is not to be mistaken for a “duets album”. Each of the ten songs alternates between a Buckingham vocal and a McVie vocal. There are no duets. Not surprisingly, Buckingham fairly dominates affairs, writing or co-writing nearly all the tracks and co-producing with Mitchell Froom. The sound is crisp, clean, and slightly DIY, in the manner of Buckingham’s last several solo albums.

And the songs?

Buckingham still has it, because he never really lost it. He still has a way with an incisive-yet-catchy, quirky-yet-charismatic melody and arrangement. He is more straightforward here than on his solo releases, keeping his trademark fingerpicking filigree at a minimum and his eccentricities in check. His “Sleeping Around the Corner”, a years-old, remodeled solo outtake, has one of those classic, giddy choruses he is so good at, and it would be a great opener on any album. Single “In My World” is nearly as good, with Fleetwood and John McVie laying down their trademark, rock-solid, less-is-more groove. In fact, one of Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie ‘s true pleasures is Fleetwood’s drumming, deft as ever.

“Love Is Here to Stay” is a breezy, fingerpicked ray of sunlight. All the effortless “Lay Down For Free” is missing is some Nicks harmonies. “On With the Show” seems to address her absence, with Buckingham proclaiming, “I will stand with my band / There’ll come a day / When we all feel the same.”

As for McVie, well, her method has not changed much, either. She still deals in sweet, guileless romance. She has lost something, though. Time has taken a substantial toll on both singers’ voices, but McVie seems to struggle just to sound like herself. More importantly, often there is not enough of a pure pop rush to make up for her simplistic lyrics and phrasing. “Red Sun” gets some good vibes out of her familiar rolling piano sound, and the hard-boogying “Too Far Gone” just barely manages to avoid being an embarrassment. Only the beautifully stark piano ballad “Game of Pretend” stands on its own without the production propping it up.

A curious album to be sure, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie could just as well have been released as two separate EPs. In particular, it is difficult to hear McVie in the Buckingham-fronted songs. Still, in the end, an almost-Fleetwood Mac album turns out to be a pretty good Fleetwood Mac album, especially this late in the game.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM / CHRISTINE MCVIE
Rating: 6/10

John Bergstrom / Pop Matters / Wednesday, July 12, 2017

July 12, 2017
A long-lost Fleetwood Mac album?

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham tells all about his collaboration with Christine McVie: “We didn’t have an idea what it was going to be, we just wanted to welcome her back,” Buckingham says. “Less than a week in we were like, ‘Oh, my god, this is better than it’s ever been.’”

Before Christine McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 2014 after a 16-year hiatus, she reconvened with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, bassist and ex-husband John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood in the studio. Buckingham was working on a solo album and, before rehearsals began for Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming tour, the four — sans Stevie Nicks — played around with some songs. “We didn’t have an idea what it was going to be, we just wanted to welcome her back,” Buckingham says. “Less than a week in we were like, ‘Oh, my god, this is better than it’s ever been.’ ”

They recorded for a few weeks and then put things on hold until the tour wrapped. The resulting album, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, released this month, sounds like it could be a long-lost Fleetwood Mac album. It’s all there (except for Nicks): Buckingham’s jangly guitar and pop sensibility, Christine’s breathy vocals and melodic piano playing, the classic rhythm section. Express spoke with Buckingham ahead of the duo’s first tour, which stops at Wolf Trap on Monday.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this album is the first time that you, Christine, Mick and John worked together in the studio since 1987’s Tango in the Night.

That is true. We did do a Fleetwood Mac album, [2003’s] Say You Will, without Christine. I’d never really thought of it that way.

For this album, it had been almost 30 years since you four had worked together in the studio.

Jeez, did you have to say that? Oh, my god, that’s scary.

Did it feel strange to be working together in this context again?

Well, no, not really.

It helped that you recorded the album at the same studio where you made 1979’s Tusk.

Yeah, that was a very conscious decision to sort of revisit a piece of our past. And that was a studio that, not only we’d helped to design, but we’d also spent almost a year there, and the Tusk album obviously represents a life choice for me. …

I had this conversation with [Christine] before formally saying, “Yes, come on back and rejoin the band,” which was basically, “Chris, we’d love you to come back, but you know if you do come back you can’t leave again.” I didn’t want it to be a whim for her or a knee jerk into something she felt she was missing but wasn’t willing to be grounded in and put in the discipline for. And she said, “No, no, no — I’d never do that.”

Do you feel like your creative relationship with Christine is stronger now that you’ve made this album?

Generally speaking, it kind of feels like there was always this mutual respect and always this mutual regard for each other’s artistry. But we never really tapped into it on this level. In retrospect, we’re sitting around going, “Gee, what took us so long?” So, we’ll just have to see where it goes. I have a solo album waiting in the wings that’s probably going to come out in January and of course the big machine [Fleetwood Mac] will come calling sometime next year as well, so I can’t really say what it all means other than we had a hell of a time doing it.
[Fleetwood Mac welcomed Christine McVie back to Verizon Center on Halloween]
What do you admire about her as a songwriter?

I love her sense of rhythm and her sense of melody. I love how she infuses her piano playing through the body, the fabric of the song in a way that’s really supportive and atmospheric. Just her ability to craft lyrics that are really strong rhythmically was brought to the forefront on this album because we did a lot of co-writing.

We’d done very occasional co-writing [in the past] — “World Turning” [for example]. I took great liberties with her songs and ended up sharing the writership on a couple of things she had. I gave her tracks that I had done in my studio that were all blocked out in terms of arrangement and chord changes and even melody. … And it was really fascinating to have her take the idea of the melody but then make it her own.

Do you have examples from the new album?

“Red Sun” is one of those. “Too Far Gone.” She would take the melody as it was expressed as a guitar line and be true to it and yet change it up and make it conversational and make it go with the pauses in her lyrics that would enhance the rhythm, and it was just really a nice thing to see evolve.

Is the plan for the tour to mix Fleetwood Mac songs with the new album?

Obviously, you can’t get away without doing some of the body of work. I think they’d probably run us out on the rail, so you try to find a balance. We’re going to possibly open up with a few things with just the two of us, maybe on acoustic and piano, and then by the time we get to the encore I think we’re doing eight of 10 songs from the new album. Then of course you have to throw in a few chestnuts. And that’s fine. I think it’s going to be a nice, fresh show.

Next month, you’ll play a couple of Fleetwood Mac festival dates, then next year is supposed to be a farewell tour, maybe?

Well, I’ve been hearing that, “farewell tour.” Where did that come from?

I read it in another article about the new album. Are you not ready to say goodbye to Fleetwood Mac?

It’s not a question of being ready or not ready, but we’ve never as a band talked about this being our last tour, so I’m a little curious about that.

You don’t see it as a farewell tour?

I certainly don’t. And given how long people seem to keep going and how we all feel individually, I would be shocked — but stranger things have happened.

Wolf Trap, Filene Center, 1551 Trap Road, Vienna; Mon., 7:30 p.m., $45-$95.

Rudi Greenberg / Washington Post [Express – Blogs] / June 22, 2017

June 22, 2017
REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie’s strange, surprising collaboration

Our take on the unexpected full-length team-up between the two Fleetwood Mac songwriters

Well, here’s an album nobody thought would happen – the first-ever collabo from Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. It’s full of surprises, considering we’ve all spent years already listening in on both their private worlds. But these two Fleetwood Mac legends have their own kinky chemistry. When McVie jumped back in the game for the Mac’s last tour, the songbird regained her hunger to write. And Buckingham remains one of the all-time great rock & roll crackpots, from his obsessively precise guitar to his seething vocals. They bring out something impressively nasty in each other, trading off songs in the mode of 1982’s Mirage – California sunshine on the surface, but with a heart of darkness.

So we’ve made it to the second paragraph of this review without mentioning any other members of Fleetwood Mac. That’s an achievement, right? We should feel good about that. So now let’s discuss how weird it feels that a certain pair of platform boots was not twirling on the studio floor while this album was being made. Stevie Nicks is the unspoken presence on this album, the lightning you can hear not striking. There’s something strange about hearing Lindsey and Christine team up without her, but that just enhances the album’s strange impact. This would have been the next Mac album, except Stevie didn’t want in. It sounds like that might have fired up her Mac-mates’ competitive edge – but for whatever reason, these are the toughest songs Buckingham or McVie have sung in years.

“In My World” is the treasure here – Lindsey digs into his favorite topic, demented love, murmuring a thorny melody and reprising the male/female sex grunts from “Big Love.” In gems like “Sleeping Around the Corner” and the finger-picking “Love Is Here to Stay,” he’s on top of his game, with all the negative mojo he displayed in Tusk or his solo classic Go Insane. McVie is usually the optimistic one, but she seizes the opportunity to go dark in “Red Sun.” And what a rhythm section – Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, cooking up the instantly recognizable groove no other band has found a way to duplicate. Everything about this album is a little off-kilter, right down to the way the title echoes the pre-Mac Buckingham Nicks. But if this had turned out to be a proper Fleetwood Mac reunion album, that would’ve felt like a happy ending – and who wants happy endings from these guys? Instead, it’s another memorable chapter in rock’s longest-running soap opera, with both Lindsey and Christine thriving on the dysfunctional vibes.

Rob Sheffield / Rolling Stone / June 7, 2017

June 7, 2017
Buckingham McVie: Promotional appearances

CBS This Morning – Saturday Sessions, June 10, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzuDMgrIOxQ

In My World

Feel about You

Love Is Here to Stay

Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, June 9, 2017

In My World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB1TSmz6AsI

BUILD Series, June 8, 2017

Longtime Fleetwood Mac members, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie join together on Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, their first-ever album as a duo. The 10-song album will be released by Atlantic Records this summer, followed by a run of special U.S. concerts. Hear how the album came about when the duo takes the stage.

The Making of Buckingham McVie, May 25, 2017

Christine McVie on Later with Jools Holland, April 2017

May 25, 2017
Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie ‘In Their World’

Two members of Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie are joining forces for a duo album and a tour to introduce the masses to the new tunes.

The new album, titled Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, will hit digital and physical stores June 9. The first single, “In My World,” will be available for a listen on Friday.

The album also features the stylings of their famous bandmates Mick Fleetwood and John McVie and was recorded at The Village Studios in Los Angeles, which is a studio Fleetwood Mac has a long relationship with.

“We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I,” McVie said of the collaboration, which has it roots in her rejoining Fleetwood Mac three years ago. “This has just spiraled into something really amazing that we’ve done between us.”

The new dates start June 21 in Atlanta’s Chastain Park and continue for a bit more than a month, wrapping in Denver, Colo.’s Paramount Theatre.

Here’s the plan:

June 21 – Atlanta, Ga., Chastain Park Amphitheatre
June 23 – Nashville, Tenn., Ascend Amphitheater
June 26 – Vienna, Va., Filene Center At Wolf Trap
June 28 – Boston, Mass., Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
June 30 – Philadelphia, Pa., Mann Center for Performing Arts
July 2 – Detroit, Mich., Fox Theatre
July 3 – Chicago, Ill., Huntington Bank Pavilion @ Northerly Island
July 5 – Toronto, Ontario, Ontario Place
July 19 – Woodinville, Wash., Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery
July 21 – Murphys, Calif., Ironstone Amphitheatre
July 22 – Las Vegas, Nev., Monte Carlo Resort & Casino
July 25 – Phoenix, Ariz., Comerica Theatre
July 27 – Denver, Colo., Paramount Theatre

American Express and Citi cardholders get access to presales on April 17 and the general onsale is April 21.
The duo’s website is BuckinghamMcVie.com.

Pollstar / April 11, 2017

April 11, 2017
UPDATE: Buckingham McVie out June 9

According to the L.A. Times, Fleetwood Mac members Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie are planning to release their first…wait for it…duets album! There’s no doubt that Lindsey and Christine have long had musical chemistry. After all, some of their best songs — “Don’t Stop” and “Hold Me” — have been Buckingham/McVie collaborations, not to mention Billboard Top 5 singles and now SiriusXM classic rock radio staples.

But are they serious? Maybe. Stevie has made it clear that she isn’t in a hurry to release another Fleetwood Mac album, arguably residual effects from the contentious 2003 Say You Will sessions, where Stevie and Lindsey bickered like bitter ex’s (cue: their screaming match in Destiny Rules documentary DVD). The rest of the band is clearly restless to get back on the road and probably hoping to support something besides Rumours for the gazillionth time. So now they’re tired of waiting.

But the proposed name of the album, Buckingham McVie, sounds like a little…cheeky…and far too similar to the iconic Buckingham Nicks brand. And will they seriously go down the indie route again, like 2013’s Extended Play. (Warner Bros. Records is unlikely to back a Fleetwood Mac release without Stevie Nicks.) Sounds a little fishy.

With Mick Fleetwood and John McVie still involved in the project, it seems more likely the latest media bombshell is intended to light a fire under Stevie to finally get on board with a legitimate Fleetwood Mac release. It’s a passive-aggressive approach, but it may ultimately get Stevie to declare, “Uh, not over my dead body! Still, with Stevie’s 24 Karat Gold Tour to pick up again this February in the States, with a possible leg in Australia and New Zealand to follow, the dream of another Fleetwood Mac album with the classic 1975 lineup seems to be fading.

Whatever happens, the latest news adds yet another dimension to the crazy Fleetwood Mac story, whether it’s “the-drama-of-the-moment” posturing or going their own way, once again.

Read more about the ambitious project here, here, and here.

April 1, 2017
The Last Word: Stevie Nicks

(Rolling Stone, RS1283)

(Rolling Stone, RS1283)

Stevie Nicks appears in the March 23, 2017 issue of Rolling Stone (RS1283). She is featured in “The Last Word,” a Q&A column on page 58 of the magazine. Here is an exclusive transcript of the feature.

The Last Word: Stevie Nicks

The singer on approaching 70, what she learned battling Klonopin, and when she’ll be back with Fleetwood Mac

What’s the hardest part of success?

I work very, very hard. I have a piece of typewritten paper here that says, “You keep going and you don’t stop.” You do your vocal lesson. I have a lot of friends from high school and college who want to hang out when I play in their city. I have to rest for my show. It breaks my heart, but what comes first? Don’t endanger my show. That’s been my mantra my whole life: Don’t endanger my show.

Who is your hero?

Michelle Obama, because she has such an optimistic outlook and she was able to move into the White House with kids and do such a beautiful, graceful job. That had to be really hard. After spending two weeks with my family for the holidays, which was long and emotionally difficult, I know that’s superhard. I think she’s wisdom personified.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

How about my early-forties self? That’s when I walked out of Betty Ford after beating coke. I spent two months doing so well. But all my business managers and everyone were urging me to go to this guy who was supposedly the darling of the psychiatrists. That was the guy who put me on Klonopin. This is the man who made me go from 123 pounds to almost 170 pounds at five feet two. He stole eight years of my life.

Maybe I would have gotten married, maybe I would have had a baby, maybe I would have made three or four more great albums with Fleetwood Mac. That was the prime of my life, and he stole it. And you know why? Because I went along with what everybody else thought. So what I would tell my 40-year-old self: “Don’t listen to other people. In your heart of hearts, you know what’s best for you.”

What do you understand about men that you didn’t understand in your twenties?

I understood men pretty well in my twenties. Lindsey [Buckingham] and I lived together like married people. I had one girlfriend in Los Angeles in those years, so I really had a lot of different types of men in my life that I really got to know and respect.

I made a choice to not get married. After eight years of Klonopin, I was just gonna follow my muse, and if somebody came into my life, they would always end up being second. I wanted so badly to do what I’m doing right now.

What have 42 years as a member of Fleetwood Mac taught you about compromise?

A lot, because when you’re in a band you have to be part of the team. There’s something comforting about that. But in my solo career, I get to be the boss. Having both, for a Gemini like myself, is perfect. And I knew that in 1981: that me having a solo career would only make Fleetwood Mac better.

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie are about to release an album as a duo. It seems like it started as a Fleetwood Mac album, but you chose not to participate.

I’ve been on the road [solo] since last September, so I don’t understand their premise. Christine was gone [from Fleetwood Mac] for 16 years and came back, did a massive tour, and then it’s like, “Now I’m just gonna go back to London and sit in my castle for two years”? She wanted to keep working. I will be back with them at the end of the year for, I think, another tour. I just needed my two years off. Until then, I wish them the best in whatever they do.

Do you want to make a new record with them?

I don’t think we’ll do another record. If the music business were different, I might feel different. I don’t think there’s any reason to spend a year and an amazing amount of money on a record that, even if it has great things, isn’t going to sell. What we do is go on the road, do a ton of shows and make lots of money. We have a lot of fun. Making a record isn’t all that much fun.

How do you feel about turning 70 in two years?

I don’t like that number. I see lots of people my age, and lots of people who are younger than me, and I think, “Wow, those people look really old.” I think it’s because they didn’t try. If you want to stay young, you have to make an effort. If I wanna walk onstage in a short chiffon skirt and not look completely age-inappropriate, I have to make that happen. Or you just throw in the towel and let your hair turn white and look like a frumpy old woman. I’m never gonna go there.

Do you ever see yourself retiring?

I’ll never retire. My friend Doug Morris, who’s been president of, like, every record company, said to me once, “When you retire, you just get small.” Stand up straight, put on your heels, and get out there and do stuff. I want to do a miniseries for the stories of Rhiannon and the gods of Wales, which I think would be this fantastic thing, but I don’t have to retire from being a rock star to go and do that. I can fit it all in.

Andy Greene / Rolling Stone (RS1283) / March 23, 2017

March 10, 2017
Stevie on ‘Buckingham McVie’: ‘I’m happy for them’

Stevie Nicks says another Fleetwood Mac album is unlikely: ‘We’re not 40 anymore’

The music icon says the band are more keen to focus on touring

Stevie Nicks says she does not think Fleetwood Mac will make another album together — because they are “not 40” any more.

The singer, 68, believes the band are more likely to focus on touring and doubts they will ever record a follow-up to 2003’s Say You Will.

She said: “If the five of us were to get together to make a record it would take a year, which is what it always takes us.

“It would be a whole year of recording, then press, then rehearsal, and by the time we got back onto the road, it would be heading towards the second year, and I don’t know whether at this time it’s better for us just to do a big tour.”

The band has sold more than 100 million records and reformed with the classic line-up of Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John and Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood for a world tour, which ended in 2015.

Nicks said: “It’s every single penny we make divided by five, so the expense of making a record, which is huge, and then to get back on tour … we are not 40.

“We have to take that into consideration — how long can we do tours that are three-hour shows? Would you rather spend a year in the studio or get back on the road? I think that the band would choose to tour.”

Nicks, who is focusing on her solo career, is also reluctant to make new music.

She said: “I don’t write as many songs any more because with the internet, the way that kids listen to music, all the streaming, and the fact that if they’re very savvy, if they want to get it and not pay for it, they can.

“It goes against the grain of our whole belief in, ‘You write a song, you record it, and you put it out there and people should buy it’.

“We realise it’s not our world any more and the younger kids don’t look at it like they’re taking from us… we don’t have the impetus to write 20 songs because we know that unless you’re under 20 you’re not going to sell many records.”

She is not involved with the new album by McVie and Buckingham, which is not a Fleetwood Mac record.

She said: “I’m sure it’s going to be great, because Christine is super-inspired. I’m really happy for them.”

On July 9, Nicks will support her old friend Tom Petty with his band The Heartbreakers at Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time in Hyde Park.

She said: “I’m the girl who always wanted to be in his band and he’s always the one who said, ‘No, no girls allowed.’ There’s just no one else I’d rather be on stage with than Tom.”

Alistair Foster / Evening Standard / Tuesday, January 17, 2017

January 17, 2017