Lindsey Buckingham started working more than six years ago on the new Fleetwood Mac album, Say You Will, that hits stores today. He just didn’t know it at the time.

Buckingham originally thought he was making another solo album when he started recording with former band mates Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass for the first time since he left the group in 1986.

“At that point, some sort of light bulb went off somewhere,” Buckingham said, “in Mick’s head or Warner Bros.’ Probably everywhere, unbeknownst to me. People started saying ‘We got John, Mick and Lindsey in the studio maybe.’ ”

The band did reunite for a 1997 live greatest-hits album, The Dance, and sold-out tour, but Buckingham went back to his solo album. “The live album and the tour that followed was basically the result of a kind of an intervention that we had on me to sort of say ‘You’ve got to put your album down and do this,’ ” said Buckingham, a notorious obsessive who has spent years sealed away recording albums.

When he did finish the solo album, the label wasn’t all that enthusiastic. “When we got off The Dance and I got finished with it maybe a year after that, and took it to Warners, they had been bought out by AOL and they were sort of on their way out as a regime. (Warner Chairman) Russ Thyret didn’t like my stuff anyway. It was like, well, geez. And Mick and I decided to start cutting some tracks of Stevie’s and it just sort of morphed into that thing.”

“That thing,” of course, is what the Warner publicity campaign is calling the first new Fleetwood Mac studio album since the 1986 multiplatinum Tango in the Night, conveniently omitting two entirely forgettable, far less successful albums released under the franchise name with different lineups in the interim. But Warner is right in spirit — Say You Will is the second coming of the ’70s supergroup, even without keyboardist-vocalist Christine McVie, a triumphant return to form for a group that has been all but washed up for the better part of 20 years.

“We rented a house over on the west side (of Los Angeles) and we moved all of my gear over there,” Buckingham said on the phone before a rehearsal for a tour that starts May 7 (July 8 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose). “I started engineering. Probably 95 percent of the time spent in this house was really spent working on Stevie (Nicks) ’cause my stuff was pretty much completed and the other 5 percent was just opening up my tracks, recalling my mixes and getting her voices on them.”

The 76-minute CD — at one point in the session, band members pondered a two-CD set — rekindles the trademark sound with magician’s ease, simultaneously recalling such varied past efforts as Rumours, Tusk and Tango in the Night. “Certainly on the album, you do have things that fall in the category of being very familiar or very Fleetwood Mac,” said Buckingham. “Then you have things like ‘Come’ or ‘Red Rover’ or ‘Murrow Turning Over in His Grave,’ which, in many ways, are more adventuresome than anything we’ve ever done.”

Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac apparently need each other in important ways.

Not only has the group failed to produce any memorable records since Buckingham left, but Buckingham has spent countless thousands of hours crafting brilliant solo albums that are appreciated by no more than a slender handful of big Mac’s audience. After the current project changed from a Buckingham solo album to a new Fleetwood Mac record, he noticed a different attitude at the label.

“I was always seen as the troublemaker,” he said, “as someone who would shake up the status quo of what was a good thing. I was really trying to be honest to what I thought was important, which was to do your work, look into things that help you to grow. To think long term and to do it for yourself. And not run one thing into the ground because that’s what sells. There’s always been a kind of wariness between myself and the record company and vice versa and none of that helps in terms of getting the machine behind you.”

Without Christine McVie, the songwriting and vocals come down to Buckingham and Nicks, who recorded an album as Buckingham Nicks before joining Fleetwood Mac. They first met when Buckingham attended Menlo Atherton High School and they began working together seriously when they were at College of San Mateo. At this point, almost 40 years later, they blend like the seasoned collaborators they are.

“It’s that inexplicable thing that we’ve always had,” he said.

“There’s a song on there called ‘Thrown Down’ that I think she tried about three different times with three different producers and never made it anywhere. It was supposed to go on a solo album. It was just obvious to me it needed a guitar riff in the chorus. It was a fairly simple thing, for some reason. There seems to be an understanding between us as to what to do.”

Buckingham talked about “reconciling” the styles of recordings he used with Rumours, the band’s 1977 release that still ranks among the best-selling albums of all time, and Tusk, a 1979 double-record set that was a stark departure from the band’s sunny trademark sound.

“If you go back to Tusk, ” he said, “that was an album where I was trying a certain approach, you might call more of a painting approach, where I was sort of working on my own in a studio with a machine and kind of allowing things to happen. It was kind of a subconscious approach, one-on-one with the canvas, as opposed to working with the group, which is more verbal and political, more like moviemaking, probably. I had to lobby to get that album made the way it was made. Everyone was quite happy with how it turned out. In fact, Mick would tell you now it’s his favorite album, as it is mine. But at the same time, when it did not sell 16 million albums, a dictum kind of came down from the group that we’re not going to do that anymore.” Buckingham, 55, is recently married, raising a son, 4, and daughter, 2.

For someone who once groused that he would rather belong to the Clash, Buckingham has more than made his peace with Fleetwood Mac at this point.

“The subtext of all of this is really that we are here,” Buckingham said, “and, in many ways, are better than ever, maybe breaking the mold a little bit.

I know there certainly are enough ’80s Boomer acts still making music. But the fact is that we are here and still caring so much about it and, in many ways, doing the best work we’ve ever done at a point in our lives where, you know, the cliche of rock ‘n’ roll being: By the time you’re 40, you’re either burned out or tapped out. It feels very fresh and very new, and still solid. The history, it’s deep. And we’re just thrilled to be here.”

Joel Selvin / San Francisco Chronicle / Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Billboard
Monday, April 14, 2003

On “Say You Will,” due this week from Reprise, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks have collaborated together on their first Fleetwood Mac studio album since 1987’s “Tango in the Night.” Drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie are both on board as well, but Christine McVie appears on just one of the set’s 18 tunes and will not be touring with Fleetwood Mac this summer.

Luckily, Nicks penned the set’s sunny title track, which is catchy and destined to be a radio hit. Buckingham’s meaty, bass-heavy stomper “Murrow Turning Over in His Grave” is another highlight, while the driving rocker “Running Through the Garden” showcase’s Nicks’ passionate vocals. The single “Peacekeeper” is No. 15 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart this week.

“The whole energy in Fleetwood Mac right now is incredible,” Fleetwood says. “Our story is a really happy one at the moment. We’ve pushed some envelopes with this new album. We’ve made an album that we love, and we’re not frightened or insecure about who we are.”

The group’s first tour since 1997 will kick off May 7 in Columbus, Ohio.

By David Giammarco
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Sunday, March 30, 2003

The Santa Ana winds are blowing in from the desert, and from Stage 9 at Culver City Studios, the mystically melodic strains of Dreams drifts onto the warm afternoon breeze. “Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions,” swirls the unmistakable raspy vocals of rock’s gypsy priestess, Stevie Nicks. And for a moment it sounds … it feels … like summer, 1977.

That year, Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours seized the airwaves, volleying a stream of superbly crafted hits to the top of the charts and unspooling an irresistible — inescapable — soundtrack for many people’s lives.

But alas, this is not a dream. It’s spring, 2003, and the famed members of Fleetwood Mac — the reigning dysfunctional family of 1970s rock royalty — are hunkered down in this cavernous sound stage, rehearsing classic tunes and rehashing classic tensions that originally tore the supergroup apart amidst epic indulgences during their hedonistic heyday. Stevie Nicks, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, bassist John McVie, and percussionist Mick Fleetwood have reunited for a much-anticipated concert tour — only the second such occurrence in 21 years — all in support of an equally remarkable feat: the “classic” Mac’s first studio album in 16 years.

Say You Will — due for release April 15 — is 18 tracks of exuberant melodies and alluring lyrics, brazenly fused with an instrumental aggression recalling the sprawling innovation of the band’s 1979 double-album Tusk.

But while the sound is vintage Fleetwood Mac, the substances fuelling it are not.

In the 1970s and 1980s, copious amounts of cocaine and cognac stoked their frequently stormy sessions. These days, Mick Fleetwood still carries around a plastic baggie, but it’s full of trail mix.

These last crucial weeks of preparation before the tour launch finds Nicks fretting — needlessly, it seems — over the road-readiness of the band.

“We just literally finished this record, and now we’re trying to quickly flip over from recording mode into touring mode in a very compressed period of time,” sighs Nicks, explaining that even some of the most renowned Fleetwood Mac tunes need to be relearned for the tour. “Not for me, because I never stopped doing a song like Dreams over the last 2,500 years,” she grins, “but Fleetwood Mac hasn’t done Dreams since 1997, and that was only briefly for three months on “The Dance” tour.

“Most of these songs I’ve done on every single one of my tours since I started my solo career in 1982. I’ve never stopped touring, whereas Lindsey and everyone else haven’t played in front of audiences since 1997 … I think they’re much more nervous about the old stuff than I am.”

Buckingham, however, doesn’t seem to be sweating it. Rather, the consummate musician is still ruminating the “epic effort” of birthing a new Fleetwood Mac album, something no one — least of all himself — imagined happening after his acrimonious departure following 1987’s Tango in the Night. “After leaving the band, I was really able to push the envelope on my own … so that this coming together really started to make sense in terms of what I could give back,” reflects Buckingham, 53, who also engineered and produced Say You Will. But somehow this wouldn’t be a true Fleetwood Mac reunion without some expected unease between Buckingham and ex-paramour Nicks.

“I think Stevie is seeing part of this record through some dark colours right now,” hints Buckingham later in the afternoon, “only because towards the end we had some conflicts about running order and some other things, and she hasn’t quite been able to come out the other end and say, ‘Wow, this is really something!’

“I think it’s hard for her to feel the catharsis that I’m feeling, and that Mick is feeling … it’s been hard for her to turn and say, ‘Gee, nice job, Lindsey — thanks for working on my songs for an entire year.’ But having said that, which really only speaks of maybe how difficult it got near the end, the whole thing was pretty great.”

A perplexed smile then spreads across Buckingham’s face. “I must admit,” he says, shaking his head, “there did seem to be a weird sense of destiny to all of this.”

To fully understand rock n’ roll’s sudsiest, longest-running soap opera, you must rewind through Fleetwood Mac’s private — but mostly musically documented — record of inner-group marriages, divorces, affairs, animosities, band defections, drug abuse and alcoholism, back to 1967. That’s when Fleetwood and McVie first formed — alongside guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer — what was originally a British blues band that gained fame for their hits such as Albatross and Black Magic Woman (which would be re-recorded in 1971 by Carlos Santana to greater success in the U.S.).

By then, however, the first of many odd occurrences began afflicting Fleetwood Mac: In 1970, Green descended into madness after a bad acid trip and left to become a roving religious zealot, while shortly thereafter, Spencer mysteriously disappeared into the Children of God cult. Keyboardist Christine Perfect then joined the band, becoming McVie’s wife and infusing their sound with a more pop sensibility. A string of temporary musicians would come and go (including one fired after an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife) until Fleetwood, having transplanted the band to Los Angeles in 1974, stumbled upon a record by little-known California folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. He soon invited the romantically linked pair to join the band, andthen everything coalesced for Fleetwood Mac.

The new lineup’s eponymous 1975 album featured a rejuvenated direction into a winsome rock, pop and blues blend that yielded Top 20 singles Over My Head, Say You Love Me, Landslide and, what would become Nicks’s signature song, the bewitching Rhiannon. The album soared to No. 1 and sold over five million copies, but that unexpected triumph would be dwarfed by the monster lurking just around the corner.

In 1976, Mick Fleetwood marshalled the troops up the California coast to Sausalito, where over the course of a year-long stint at the Record Plant, the blood and guts of their romantic meltdowns spilled into the recording studio. John and Christine McVie divorced, Buckingham and Nicks split and Fleetwood separated from his wife.

“Usually when you have a bad breakup, you aren’t still locked up together all day,” says Nicks, dressed in her trademark Dickensian attire of wispy lace and flowing chiffon. “It was so intense every day, so heavy … it was like being in the army. I was never as exhausted in my whole life as when we were doing that album.” That album was, of course, Rumours, named by McVie as a nod to the scandals surrounding the band, which arrived like a hurricane in February, 1977, to spend 31 weeks at No. 1.

To date, Rumours has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, making it the second biggest-selling album of all time. Ironically, that made the path between then and now an even rockier road for Fleetwood Mac, faced with having to match that mammoth success. The band was next spurred on largely by Buckingham in 1979 to record a complete about face: the wildly experimental double album Tusk. But despite selling millions of copies, Tusk was deemed a commercial failure.

Virtually imprisoned by near-mythic expectations and vastly deteriorating relations, the band still soldiered on throughout the decade to record two more albums: 1982’s Mirage and 1987’s Tango in the Night. By then, however, both Nicks and Buckingham had branched out into successful solo careers, and the band slowly eroded despite Fleetwood’s best efforts to keep everyone together. “Sometimes I wish I played another instrument, but I’m a drummer, so I inherently need to have a band to play with and I’m relatively useless without that,” explains Fleetwood with a shrug. ” I was always playing the mediator and trying to make things work and keep everyone happy — at a great cost to my private life, my marriage, my time with my children.”

Neatly attired in a crisp white shirt, jeans and with now short gray hair, Fleetwood looks far more distinguished than in his “eccentric Keith Moon days” and he partially blames himself for the disintegration of his beloved band. “During the ‘crazy’ times towards the end of the eighties, my life was so involved in alcohol and drugs and just having a good time, that my managerial skills were completely blunted out,” he admits.

“Stevie and Lindsey both know that I’m not a maniac any more,” adds Fleetwood with a laugh. “That feels good.”

The undeniable propellant of Fleetwood Mac has always been the potent chemistry between Buckingham and Nicks — often taking the form of vicious lyrical battles — as when Buckingham jabs in Go Your Own Way: “Packing up, shacking up is all you want to do.” Though they each have indeed gone their own way personally (Buckingham is recently married with two young children), it’s apparent there still exists some unresolved heartache for the pair, who have known each other since high school. “It’s a curse,” Nicks admits quite candidly. “And if I really was a witch, you know that’s the first thing that I would make stop. But there’s been nothing I could ever do to fix that.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Stevie and I still have a few conversations to have,” concedes Buckingham, who also figures those old demons probably helped spark the vitality heard on Say You Will. “There was certainly a period of time during the making of this album where it felt like we were really going at it through the music. You can really feel the energy between us … I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.”

How such tensions could produce such exquisite harmonies remains one of the most enduring — and endearing — enigmas surrounding Fleetwood Mac. “People say that to me all the time,” admits Nicks with a smile. “They’ll say stuff like, ‘I’m sorry that you guys had to be so miserable and suffer so much, but we’re really glad that you did because otherwise, we wouldn’t have these songs.’ So it’s all been a real Catch-22 situation.”

Though Buckingham feels Say You Will represents the “healing” of Fleetwood Mac, there is one valuable link missing: Christine McVie. The elegant songbird opted out of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle after briefly tasting it again on “The Dance” tour in 1997, and the band decided that she couldn’t do the record if not prepared to tour. In hindsight, Buckingham feels it was maybe for the best.

“One of the things that made this album as strong as it is, oddly enough, is the fact that Christine was absent,” he says. “Because on a musical level, you have more room for Mick, John and myself to manoeuvre. And on an emotional level, the absence of Christine gave John an opportunity to be a little more down in himself, a little grittier, and not so on his guard. Because the occasional button might have gotten pushed being around Christine.”

What originally started off as Buckingham’s fourth solo album, Say You Will evolved into a Mac reunion when a regime change at Warner Brothers forced Buckingham to reconsider releasing his project amidst the corporate uncertainties. While waiting for the dust to settle, Buckingham invited Fleetwood and McVie to help lay down some tracks, and from there, “the gravity of Fleetwood Mac just sucked me in,” he smiles. “It was just like old times.”

Once Nicks became involved, Buckingham had already rented a house in Bel Air to record, which he says further helped to provide a revived communal spirit for the band. And according to Fleetwood, the experience helped erase some of their painful past. “It was very different,” he laughs. “I mean, there was no drug abuse, no alcohol abuse, no romances falling apart, no midnight creeping from door-to-door and sleeping with each other … we’re all very different people now.”