Uncut Magazine: Lindsey and Mick on the new tour

[trackaghost]

I typed this two-page news feature out myself, so please excuse any mistakes. It's in the new issue of Uncut (dated December 2008) with Paul Weller on the cover.

“Lindsey is saying we’re going out on the road, right? Tell me that he’s going…”

He is, Mick. FLEETWOOD MAC reveal their reunion plans for 2009. “About 40 dates.” All the hits. No Christine McVie… Or Sheryl Crow…

By Michael Bonner

“Fleetwood Mac?” Says Mick Fleetwood cheerfully. “This band is the most abused franchise in the music business.”
It is, certainly, hard to think of another band whose lifespan had been characterised by such wildly fluctuating circumstance. The comically high turnover of personnel during the ‘70s – the fallout from which, less hilariously, involved mental illness, religious cults, alcoholism and adultery – is really only the start. Add in prolific drug abuse in the ‘80s and what Fleetwood jovially refers to as the “petty selfish needs” of the individual members, and you get a soap opera as compelling as Fleetwood Mac’s music.
But 41 years since Fleetwood formed the band with bassist John McVie, it seems the Mac have reached a healthy state of equilibrium; “wounds” as Fleetwood says, “have healed”. As Lindsey Buckingham, the band’s driving force since he and then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks signed up on New Year’s Eve ’74, explains: “You get to a point when you’ve worked through whatever polarities or aspects of denial, or whatever the issues that have remained from years ago are. I think we value each other now.”
And so, next year a revived and functional Mac will head out on the road for the first time since 2004. That is, if all the band members can get their story straight.
“Lindsey is saying that we’re going out on the road, right” asks Mick Fleetwood disarmingly. “Otherwise it’s news to me if we’re not. Tell me that he’s going.”

The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s imminent return, and what’s happened in the years since 2003’s Say You Will, may arguably lack the colour of the Mac in their stadium-and-cocaine pomp, but it’s not without its fair share of drama. Particularly the will she-won’t she? question of whether Stevie Nicks will rejoin. Nicks revealed to The Daily Telegraph in September 2007 that she had no interest in working with the group, unless Christine McVie (who left in 1998) returned. Meanwhile, in March this year, Sheryl Crow told Spinner.com she was joining the band, an announcement that caught many people by surprise, not least Fleetwood Mac themselves.
“There was some discussion about Sheryl Crow for a while,” explains Buckingham. “We went out behind out last LP without Christine. Because we weren’t doing a ton of Christine’s material, it gave me much more sense of being a guy onstage, and I think Stevie felt a little uncomfortable with that. She was looking to re-establish a little female presence in the band.
“It was only a hypothetical discussion we were having, and then Sheryl Crow decided she was going to announce to the world she was joining Fleetwood Mac. I guess Stevie and Mick were put off by that, because it was not something that had been decided upon and possibly was a bit self-serving of Sheryl. So that led to a bit of friction between Stevie and Sheryl.”
What changed Stevie’s mind about going on tour?
“She felt she missed the whole thing,” says Fleetwood. “She is a loyalist at heart and she is married to this crazy band called Fleetwood Mac. The last time we went out, Lindsey was really pushing to do all the new stuff, which was appropriate, but it didn’t marry Stevie and Lindsey particularly well onstage. Which, in truth, is where Buckingham Nicks came from. They sang, they played, they wrote together and Stevie bemoaned the fact that never happened to the extent she wanted, and it enlarged her missing Christine’s influence. Now, as Lindsey doesn’t have that pulsing drive to be doing something new, it’s different. They’ve spoken about how they need to get back to a real partnership onstage. So all of that became an attractive package to her loyalty to the company store.”
Then there’s the revelation of how a band on this scale gear up to a new project. You’d think this was all plotted out years in advance, right? Think again.
“This is probably the first time in our career that we have ever thought of planning,” chuckles Fleetwood.
“This is not easy or usual for us to do,” agrees Buckingham. “I said to the band that I wanted to put a boundary around roughly a three-year period in order to do two solo albums and to be able to do some touring behind each one. And then I’d be ready to start another round of Fleetwood Mac after that.”
“When we do go out, it is when the grape is the right texture,” continues Fleetwood. “How do I know when that is? Well, John rings me up every week and says, ‘It’s time’. But truly, it’s when everyone’s finished with his or her petty, selfish needs. We worked so hard for so long back in the day. We lived and breathed each other – literally. So it really is about not forcing the issue.
“I’ve had good discussions with Lindsey. I don’t want him doing something in my world if he’s distracted. We were supposed to go out a year ago, and then one thing led to another. It got put back a little further. Stevie’s been great about it; she gets bored. You just have to be careful you don’t wait too long and someone goes off and does something else. Truly, we are done and we’ll start rehearsals in February. We’ll be out in the States in early April. The guys in the ivory tower are counting their pennies and deciding where we go.”
“I’ve heard about 40 dates,” elaborates Buckingham. Then adds: “I shouldn’t say that, ‘cos you know what? I don’t know. And one thing leads to another.”

The Mac lineup headed by Buckingham and Nicks has been the most stable, lasting now for 34 years, although within 18 months of them joining you could have been forgiving for assuming it might not last. The very public relationship breakdowns in the band became the source material for Rumours, their domestic situations exacerbated by alcohol and cocaine addiction. Ironically, as the band unravelled they became platinum-selling superstars, with Rumours spending 31 weeks atop the Billboard charts.
“It was difficult,” acknowledges Buckingham.
“Joining the band was a strange and very quick thing. Before we even cut the first album [1975’s Fleetwood Mac], when we were rehearsing it was very clear there was this chemistry going on that was kind of making it effortless. Then, the downside came. Stevie and I were in the very long process of breaking up, and John and Christine were in the same position. When Rumours started to roll, it was very exciting, but also bittersweet. And Stevie was being pulled away by forces that were to some degree, manipulative. At some point it got a little darker than I would have liked. Today, we would have been fodder for the tabloids.”
“It’s very different now,” says Fleetwood. “On the last tour, for instance, it was children, nannies and dogs. It’s still a circus of sorts, but we are all changed. We don’t stay up for three days at a time. It’s like a certain type of bicycle. You get back on, and there are a few bells and whistles missing on this bike. But happily so.”
If Rumours, whose sales now exceed 30 million copies, is a major landmark in ‘70s American rock, what do Fleetwood Mac mean in 2008?
“It’s a double-edged sword,” says Buckingham. “A lot of established groups go out and do good business. And we fall into that category. You can’t get away from a body or work that’s familiar to people. As time goes by, you appreciate things more and more. You think, ‘OK, we’ve X number of hits.’ And at one point, I’d have said, ‘OK, let’s not play that song.’ You tend to try to relax and think about what your assets are. No one’s competing with My Chemical Romance or whoever.”
Do you hear anything of Fleetwood Mac in today’s music? Certainly, two recent Uncut-approved albums – Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky and Rilo Kiley’s Under The Blacklight – have a kinship of sorts with Fleetwood Mac’s sun-baked Californian soft rock.
“I don’t listen to as many things as I used to,” says Buckingham, an on-record fan of The Clash and Gang Of Four. “But, sure, I can even listen to things like Death Cab For Cutie and hear modalities that remind me of Fleetwood Mac. The only reason for making music is to exchange ideas and keep the flame going.”
So what can we expect from this next tour?
“For the first time ever, we’re going out without an album and we’re all totally committed to giving people everything that they would be most desirous of,” reveals Fleetwood. “It’s like a fans’ fantasy. We are playing anything and everything we feel everyone would love to hear, from when Stevie and Lindsey joined Fleetwood Mac. On this next trip out, the new creative challenge is that we are going to do some of Christine’s lovely songs. We’ll find the songs that we feel comfortable doing and Lindsey and Stevie feel they can attack in a slightly different way, but also pay tribute to the lineage of Christine’s songs. And, hey, we are the band that we are now, and Christine is so much part of that legacy. It was her choice. She did not enjoy the whole rigmarole of touring, and no amount of coercing with golden carrots on strings in front of her nose attracted her to get back on the boards again.”
And a new album? In June this year, The New York Times reported that Fleetwood Mac’s manager Irving Azoff was already negotiating a distribution deal for a new record with retail giant Wal-Mart, presumably based on a similar release model he applied to The Eagles’ comeback Long Road Out Of Eden.
“We talked about that with him,” says Buckingham. “That was a formula that worked for The Eagles. If that strikes a better deal for us, sure. The record company model has broken down, so let’s see.”
“There are mumbling in the ranks about a new LP,” adds Fleetwood. “We have discussed that we would like to make another album, if the tour is happy and everyone’s glad to be doing what we’re doing. So, over the next three or four years of planning, some of that will be doubtless the better part of a year making an LP. I hope that does happen. My gut tells me that it will.”

[PenguinHead]

[QUOTE=trackaghost;782059]So what can we expect from this next tour?
“For the first time ever, we’re going out without an album and we’re all totally committed to giving people everything that they would be most desirous of,” reveals Fleetwood. “It’s like a fans’ fantasy. We are playing anything and everything we feel everyone would love to hear, from when Stevie and Lindsey joined Fleetwood Mac. On this next trip out, the new creative challenge is that we are going to do some of Christine’s lovely songs. We’ll find the songs that we feel comfortable doing and Lindsey and Stevie feel they can attack in a slightly different way, but also pay tribute to the lineage of Christine’s songs. [/QUOTE}

This is amazing news to hear. Hopefully they will follow through with it. I wonder where Mick's getting his information as to what constitutes "fans' favorites." We should gather a list for him?

[michelej1]

Wow, Sharon. Thanks for typing that all out.

I am not happy about some descriptions of things that Mick gave, but I guess it does sound like we may get to hear some old chestnuts performed that we haven't heard in concert for awhile and I'm thrilled about that.

Michele

[Moz]

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

This is amazing news to hear. Hopefully they will follow through with it. I wonder where Mick's getting his information as to what constitutes "fans' favorites." We should gather a list for him?

I don't know if Mick is well acquainted with the internet, but The Ledge/fleetwoodmac.net is the second site when you Google "Fleetwood Mac". Perhaps he stopped in here..?

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Moz

I don't know if Mick is well acquainted with the internet, but The Ledge/fleetwoodmac.net is the second site when you Google "Fleetwood Mac". Perhaps he stopped in here..?

Well, we know that Mick is aware people want to hear SOTM because he said he wanted add it to the 2nd leg of the last tour, but everyone else vetoed him. So, that's one he knows about.

Michele

[dino]

"But 41 years since Fleetwood formed the band with bassist John McVie"

Whoa, thanks for that piece of rewritten history, Michael.

[Sanne2]

Thanks for posting, that was interesting!
I'm gonna see if I can buy that mag over here.

[wolfontherun]

Psssst Mick! One word Sistahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Strange that he says everyone dissed the idea. Waht? Even Stevie? She can be so fickle sometimes.