It has certainly become fashionable for members of a superstar band to break out with their own solo LPs.

Fleetwood Mac is a case in point. Side projects have made a solo star of the group’s resident mystic dreamer Stevie Nicks, and won critical renown for the rock eccentricities of Lindsey Buckingham. Mick Fleetwood has jumped at exotic African recording opportunities (for The Visitor) and hit the road with Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo. Unfortunately, Mick also has found himself recently in the bankruptcy courts.

Pianist/vocalist/songwriter Christine McVie, the 40-year-old earth mother of Fleetwood Mac, is a latecomer to the solo LP arena. Now, she’s making up for lost time with an absolutely delicious Warner Brothers release of romantic rock shufflers (Christine McVie), and a tour bringing her to the Tower Theater tomorrow.

Self-doubts, she says, have held her back from solo-land ever since 1968, when last this native Britisher headlined an LP as Christine Perfect, then stepping out from her blues cocoon Chicken Shack.

“People have constantly been saying, ‘When is Christine going to do her album, when, when, when?’,” she says. “But I wasn’t ready when everybody else was doing it. I didn’t want that kind of pressure or responsibility. Also, I’m always insecure about material.”

This, you gotta understand, is coming from the woman who has contributed the likes of “Show Me a Smile,” “Over My Head,” “Say You Love Me,” “You Make Lovin’ Fun,” “Think About Me,” “Hold Me” and “Love In Store” to the big Mac. However, producing three songs for a group project, knowing that your work will be balanced out by two or three other composers, isn’t nearly as difficult as doing it all yourself, she suggests. “I tend to get bored by solo artists.”

So McVie’s LP, carefully planned out in California (a switch from FM’s painful “wing it-in-the-studio” approach) and then recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, and London, is also a collaborative effort. It’s designed, she says to “protect my own interests.” Guitarist Todd Sharp, whom she met when he was playing with former Mac member Bob Welch, co-authored five songs with Christine. Alone or with other writers, Sharp also takes credit for three of the remaining five tracks. “Ask Anybody” is a McVie-Stevie Winwood collaboration. Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham make instrumental contributions.

“Got a Hold On Me” has gotten the most radio play, to date. Now a very funny video for “Love Will Show Us How,” featuring Paul “Eating Raoul” Bartel as a symbolism-crazed director, is boosting the cause of that song.

The LP’s sound is comfortingly familiar to Mac fans, though a bit happier, overall, than one might have suspected from the often bittersweet McVie. ”There was no particular thing I aimed at. I do have a personal love for close harmonies and guitars. And I do think I might have backtracked toward a blues flavor that’s been missing from recent songs with the band.”

Yes, Virginia, there is still a Fleetwood Mac. The two once-married, now divorced couples in the band (Christine and John McVie, Nicks and Buckingham) are getting on quite amiably, claims McVie (which may explain why recent group albums have lacked the bitter sting of their soap-opera-on-vinyl Rumours.) Another FM group recording project, she says, is scheduled for the fall.

Jonathan Takiff / Philadelphia Daily News / May 18, 1984

Christine McVie
Christine McVie
Warner Bros. Records

For years Christine McVie has been Fleetwood Mac’s hidden strength. Though the addition of the carbonated California pop of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in the mid ’70s is credited with rejuvenating this warhorse ’60s band, their frothy effervescence would have quickly dissipated without the cap provided by McVie’s solid, fundamental musical approach.

In Mac’s vocal arrangements it’s her haunting smoky voice that provides the root melody for Buck/Nicks to soar through, and it’s McVie’s songs — “Over My Head,” “Say You Love Me,” “Don’t Stop,” “You Make Loving Fun, etc. — which consistently demonstrate the most soul and depth in the group’s book.

It is this quality of soulfulness that has distinguished McVie’s work over the years, from her game contributions to the Chicken Shack blues band and her first solo album, Christine Perfect, to her role in Fleetwood Mac and now a second solo record after a 15 year hiatus, Christine McVie.

The new solo project is less of a departure from her current day job than her first record was from Chicken Shack. Where Christine Perfect was far superior to anything Chicken Shack recorded, Christine McVie trades off the strengths of the Fleetwood Mac formula that she is such an essential part of. Though “Love Will Show Us How” is harder edged and simpler than a Fleetwood Mac song, stylistically it’s the similarities rather than the differences that stand out. Co-writer/guitarist/vocalist Todd Sharp uses the same kind of melodic single-line guitar figures that Lindsey Buckingham favors, and Buckingham himself guests on several tracks.

McVie’s songs are as eloquent and personal an account of her love life as, say, Joni Mitchell’s, but without the unseemly exhibitionism. (The name of her publishing company, Alimony Music, indicated her bemused attitude toward affairs of the heart.) Her expressions of love’s pain (“The Challenge”) and exhilaration (“So Excited”) are couched in simple, universal images like the lonely bed and the long awaited knock on the door, yet her subtle melodies and sly, confiding voice infuse the images with tremendous emotional resonance. In “I’m The One” and “Keeping Secrets,” she adopts a get-tough attitude about love as she refuses to allow herself to be a victim, yet in “The Smile I Live For” she accents her capacity for total surrender through some beautiful piano accompaniment.

Two of the album’s best songs feature vocal and instrumental exchanges with Steve Winwood. The opus-de-funk “One In A Million” is a dramatic vocal trade-off between the two that reminds you just how good a blues singer Christine is. In “Ask Anybody” McVie explores the psychology of her love entanglements with characteristic irony and that determined faith that keeps her searching for the ideal even after countless disappointments. The gentler, introspective tone she strikes here is supported superbly by Winwood’s brilliantly understated keyboard and backing vocals, all of which combines for McVie’s most moving vocal performance on the record. Let’s hope she doesn’t wait another 15 years to make her next record, because Christine McVie is, quite simply, the finest Fleetwood Mac spinoff solo album yet.

John Swenson / Creem / May 1984