Several random articles

[macfan 57]

Here are 2 articles about Christine. The first is from the New York Times in 1984. I found the second article buried in the Fleetwood Mac section of the Blue Letter Archives. It's from the Dance era. Apparently Chris would have liked to have played "Just Crazy Love" on the Dance tour! And, they also considered re-creating that Rolling Stone bed cover for the Dance album cover.

3/21/84 N.Y. Times C19
1984 WLNR 480548
New York Times (NY)
March 21, 1984
Section: C
THE POP LIFE; CHRISTINE MCVIE: SINGLE IN TOP 10, NEW ALBUM
Robert Palmer

CHRISTINE McVIE'S current top -10 single, "Got a Hold on Me," has a comfortably familiar sound and feel, as well it might. Miss McVie has been a key member of Fleetwood Mac since 1971, and her singing and keyboard stylings helped make this band's "Rumours" one of the best-selling albums of all time, with sales of more than 15 million.

She wrote and sang the lead on "You Make Loving Fun" and several other Fleetwood Mac hit singles. And during the middle and late 1960's, some years before she joined Fleetwood Mac, Miss McVie enjoyed a moderately successful career in British blues and folk music. There she performed with Spencer Davis, recording several albums with a band called Chicken Shack, even making an album of her own using her maiden name, Christine Perfect.

It isn't surprising that Miss McVie has a hit single, given credentials like these. It is surprising that "Got a Hold on Me" is her first hit single as a solo artist, and that "Christine McVie," her Warner Bros. album, currently in the top 40, is only her second solo album. In fact, Miss McVie would rather forget her first album and first brief solo career and call the "Christine McVie" album her first.

"I really didn't intend to launch that first, disastrous solo career," Miss McVie recalled recently. She was visiting New York, taking a short break from preparations for her first real tour as a solo artist, which is scheduled to begin next month. "I had married John McVie," she continued, referring to the bassist who founded Fleetwood Mac with the drummer Mick Fleetwood. "And I had quit playing with Chicken Shack. I was quite happy being a housewife. But I had sung a soul ballad on my last album with Chicken Shack, and a British music paper gave me an award for it - top female vocalist of the year."

A manager convinced Miss McVie to take advantage of the award, record an album and undertake a few performances. "I did around 10 shows in pubs and other small venues," she said. "Not many women were doing this sort of underground club circuit in the late 60's. And I was very immature emotionally; I wasn't at all ready for it. I wanted to be with John. Then there were some personnel changes in Fleetwood Mac. I played keyboards on an album of theirs and then was asked to join the band."

John McVie and Mick Fleetwood were recent graduates of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers when they started Fleetwood Mac in 1967, and for the first few years the band was heavily blues oriented. By the time Miss McVie became a member, the band's personnel was fluctuating from album to album, with the two founders providing the only real stability. There were several more changes before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined forces with the two McVies and Mick Fleetwood in 1975. With their arrival, the band finally achieved a proper balance, with Miss McVie, Miss Nicks and Mr. Buckingham all singing and writing songs while Mr. McVie and Mr. Fleetwood held down the rhythm.

The McVie marriage survived Fleetwood Mac's difficult years intact, but in 1976, just when the group was beginning to sell millions of records, the McVies broke up. Mr. Buckingham and Miss Nicks, who had been together for several years, also separated around the same time. But Fleetwood Mac managed to stay together, and parlayed its romantic frictions into the multimillion seller "Rumours."

At present, the band is on "vacation." Miss Nicks, whose first solo album was a big success, is working on a follow-up, and Lindsey Buckingham is making a second solo album as well. Mr. Fleetwood has been recording in Africa. Fleetwood Mac
will not be getting back together to work until next fall; clearly, if Miss McVie wanted to make an album of her own, this year was the ideal time.

Although she comes from a family of classical musicians and had studied piano for a dozen years before she was out of her teens, Miss McVie's recordings rarely spotlight her instrumental facility. At her best, she is one of pop music's most distinctive vocal stylists, with a richly husky sound and deliberate phrasing that are instantly recognizable.

Miss McVie collaborated with the guitarist Todd Sharp on most of the songs for her album. Most of the tunes they wrote together give her plenty of room to shine. But several songs on the second side, songs she did not help write, seem to rush her phrasing. Her two collaborations with Steve Winwood on Side 1 work more convincingly because they give her enough room to sing with real feeling.

And feeling is what Miss McVie's music is all about. "I never like to analyze music," she said. "I want to know if it moves me; that's first." Even her airiest pop confections are built on the solid foundations of blues and soul, idioms that emphasize "the singer, not the song." Perhaps the experience of performing on her own again will give her more confidence in her own musical intuition.

New York Times (NY)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tribune (9/24/1997), McVie says time is right for big Mac reunion

McVie says time is right for big Mac reunion
By Lynne Margolis
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
When Fleetwood Mac announced plans for a new album, tour and video, it wasn't a far leap to make the assumption there was something special behind it. Dollar signs. After all, everyone knows what happened when hell finally froze over for the Eagles: The money was so good, the band's once-in-a-lifetime reunion turned into repeat concerts in many markets.

Then there were the Beatles. A video box set and three anthology albums put them on the Forbes magazine list of the top-earning entertainers more than 25 years after they were last together. Kiss did it. Styx did it. Even Hall and Oates are, to borrow their own words, back together again. Well, why not Fleetwood Mac?

Remember the Rutles, the parody band with a "mockumentary" titled "All You Need is Cash?" Christine McVie has already heard it. And she's not gonna take it. "I'm quite sure there are cynics out there who are going to be saying that," McVie said via telephone recently. "But we know why we're doing it. We're doing it as a celebration."

If nothing else, she said, the band is putting closure on a lot of unresolved issues from 15 years ago, when broken relationships, too much drug use and egos run amok caused fissures that eventually split the band apart. "What we're doing is celebrating each other's music," McVie, former wife of band co-founder John McVie, said.

"Obviously, there's money involved, but that is not our primary reason for doing that at all," she insisted. If people want to think that, she added, "I don't care."

The two McVies, co-founder Mick Fleetwood and the rest of the most renowned Mac lineup, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, are also at work mending old wounds, rehashing the old days and sharing their mutual love. "It's a rush that you can't believe," McVie said of being together again. "Especially when we heard the news yesterday. We almost cried."

She was referring to learning, the day before, that the band's new album, "The Dance," entered Billboard magazine's Top 200 album chart at No. 1. To say the band was surprised was putting it mildly, McVie said in her light British lilt. "I think our status was suspended disbelief. I'm sort of in a state of shock. ... I just can't even describe to you how we feel. It's unbelievable. We're all walking around looking at each other with new eyes."

They even went out and celebrated together.

While the band first reunited to perform at President Clinton's inaugural - their song "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" was his campaign theme - McVie said that wasn't where the seed of reformation got planted. It came later, when Fleetwood was asked by Buckingham to help out on a solo album. "The obvious natural progression from that was the bass player," she said. John McVie joined in, then Christine was invited to help.

"It ended up with all of us being involved," she said. Then Buckingham assisted his former paramour, Nicks, on her solo project. You can fill in the yada-yadas for the rest. "You don't want to tempt providence," McVie said, "but at the moment, everything is going really, really well."

Issues that were important 20 years ago, when the band was riding high on the success of what became the third-best-selling album in history, "Rumours," and on copious amounts of cocaine and alcohol, just aren't so relevant anymore, she said. Freely admitting the band's past drug use ("if you didn't do drugs, you were weird"), McVie said while it didn't take much to ignite an argument then, "life in general is sweeter now."

She's working with her current husband on restoring a house in England and has written more than 40 songs for a solo album, now on hold.

As for the old Fleetwood Mac tunes, the ones from the era before the Buckingham-Nicks duo joined, they won't get an airing on this tour. To do that would sell short the songs from the band's heyday, McVie said, admitting, "It's a difficult choice. I agree with you. I would love to do `Crazy Love.'"

A few new songs will be added, however. Some are on "The Dance," cleverly designed with cover art closely resembling the "Rumours" cover. (Not coincidentally, this reunion comes on the 20-year anniversary of that album.) "That was a little bit camp, a little bit cheeky. That was Mick's idea," McVie said. They also considered re-creating the famous Rolling Stone magazine cover shot of them all in bed together - which, at one time, wasn't far from the truth.

They backed off on that, but they're still stirring it up some. For "The Dance" video, originally aired on MTV, the band brought in its own band - the University of Southern California Trojans Marching Band - for the encore songs "Tusk" and "Don't Stop." In their Ben-Hur helmets, crimson capes, sunglasses and funky moves, the USC band is a highlight of the 106-minute video. And it certainly lightens up what threatened to lapse into sugary sentimentalism.

But who can blame Fleetwood Mac's members if they're feeling affectionate? It's not every day you can reunite with ex-bandmates (not to mention lovers) and top the charts again. Come to think of it ... is the devil still wearing that sweater the Eagles gave him?

[Gailh]

Thanks for posting these. Very interesting.

So in Sep 97 she was restoring her Kent home with Eddy. Things must have fallen apart pretty damn quickly after that. Didn't she come home in early 98?

I would have loved to see them recreate the Rolling Stone cover. That would have been hilarious!

Gail

[ThePenguin]

Originally Posted by Gailh

Thanks for posting these. Very interesting.

So in Sep 97 she was restoring her Kent home with Eddy. Things must have fallen apart pretty damn quickly after that. Didn't she come home in early 98?

I would have loved to see them recreate the Rolling Stone cover. That would have been hilarious!

Gail

I believe the sh*t hit the fan fairly quickly re: Eddy. She was outta there.

I was thinking the same thing about the recreation of the RS cover-- that would have been a hoot!!!

-Lis

[macfan 57]

I agree with you guys about that Rolling Stone cover. That would have made quite a Dance album cover.

Also, don't forget this interview was probably done around mid-August 1997 or so. She mentions just hearing about the Dance album being #1. I believe she did this interview before the tour actually had begun. They just published the interview at a later date. I believe everything with Eddy ended DURING the tour.