FLEETWOOD MAC 60 MINUTES AUSTRALIA

Michael Usher talks about interviewing the

members of Fleetwood Mac

[airing Sunday September 13, 2013 in Australia]

60 Minutes Australia
September 11, 2009

A nice plate of sandwiches, a smooth glass of red wine and endless offers of fresh bottled water.

Sounds like a pleasant brunch, a casual weekend get together, but certainly not the hospitality I'd expected from three musicians whose sex drugs and Rock'n'Roll lifestyle in the 1970's made them legends.

I'm talking about Fleetwood Mac. Earlier this week, I returned from Los Angles and Hawaii where I caught up with Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham.

Now to understand the band's history and music, you first have to get your head around these three members of the band. Their lives have been a rollercoaster. Stevie and Lindsay were lovers and broke up, and ever since have had a love-hate relationship. Stevie and Mick had a lengthy affair - that started in Australia by the way - and today call each other soul-mates. Stevie and Mick also happened to have spent most of the late 70's and 80's hooked not only on each other but drugs, especially cocaine. "Booze, cocaine, dope, booze, cocaine, dope," Mick told me when he was describing that time of his life.

These days, their lives are very different. They're clean, loving their music again and, after 34 years, liking each other enough to tour again.

In fact, for all their personal turmoil over the past few decades, they've always come together for the music. They may not have been speaking with each other at times, but what they had to say they said in song. And luckily for us, that meant great classics that made Fleetwood Mac one of the biggest-selling, most popular bands of all time.

Lindsey Buckingham was our first interview at his beautiful home in L.A. He has his own recording studio beneath his garage so we set up there for the interview. Lindsay's about to turn 60 next month but married for the first time 10 years ago and has three young children. A few of them popped their head in on the interview after getting home form school. You can tell Lindsey is loving being a dad, as much as he loves playing his music. He rightly has been hailed as the creative force behind Fleetwood Mac, especially the 'Tusk' and 'Tango in the Night' albums.

After the interview, Lindsey was good enough to pull out one of his many guitars and play us two songs, 'Never Going Back Again' and 'Big Love". He plays beautifully and, as many of his fans know, has enjoyed a successful solo career away from Fleetwood Mac. And here's some trivia – you remember that movie "National Lampoon's Vacation" with Chevy Chase? Well Lindsey wrote and performed the film's catchy theme song "Holiday Road".

Our next interview was a little way down the road in an equally nice area of L.A., at Stevie Nicks' home. And what a host she was, an open kitchen, fresh sandwiches, anything you wanted. Lucky there were supplies, because this lady loves to talk, and so do I. Our main interview ran almost one hour overtime and nothing was off limits.

Her 10-year cocaine binge, her love life with Lindsey and Mick, the music, her solo career – the lot – we talked about it all. Stevie likes to be open and candid because she hopes her life might be a lesson to some of the Hollywood starlets making a mess of their private lives at the moment. This woman has been through it all, survived, is still singing and loving life. And Stevie can't wait to tour Australia.

Next stop was the Hawaiian island of Maui that Mick Fleetwood has called home for a few years now. He has a magnificent lodge half way up a mountainside with sweeping views of the surf below. And here he can go hell for leather on the drums and there isn't a neighbour within hearing range who can complain. And Mick did just that for us. He hit the kit -belting away with all the power and emotion that helped him form this legendary band way back in the 60's.

Fleetwood Mac has reinvented itself a few times over, but Mick has always been there steering it through, finding new members and convincing the old ones to come back. And, in between gigs with Mac, he has a blues band that tours the world.

Mick like Lindsey loved and lost Stevie Nicks, and late in life also married and started again with a new family and young children.

Like Stevie, Mick was incredibly gracious with his time. We spent hours with him as he told Fleetwood Mac's turbulent tale and explained the often tortured inspiration behind the band's music. These days, Mick doesn't touch drugs but he does have a vineyard in California, so to help lubricate the interview he had a bottle of his favourite Pinot Noir within arm's reach.

It was a great experience talking with these music legends. The drummer, the guitarist and their Queen of Rock'n'Roll. They've got a story to tell and don't mind telling it. They were refreshingly honest, and generous. And without a single new song to plug, they're just enjoying being back together, touring the world, and performing the songs that made them superstars.

Lindsey Buckingham says the Rumours hitmakers will regroup and tour in 2009

Mac is back
By JANE STEVENSON, SUN MEDIA
Toronto Sun
The Rumours -- pun intended -- are true: The Mac Attack is coming back next year.

Guitarist-singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham said that legendary rock group Fleetwood Mac -- with remaining members singer Stevie Nicks, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie -- will launch a tour in 2009.

"Fleetwood Mac is going to start doing something, rehearsals for some touring, in January, (and) we will probably be out in spring," said Buckingham, 59, in Toronto this week to promote his latest solo record, Gift of Screws (whose title track was inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem), and play a solo show at the Music Hall tonight after last night's gig at Hamilton Place.

'BETTER EXPERIENCE'

"It'll be the four of us and a couple of other additional backup musicians. No one of note."

That means you Sheryl Crow (see sidebar).

Buckingham says a new Fleetwood Mac album would come later -- hopefully. "We're talking about an album but we didn't want to go in cold," he said. "It's been awhile. And in my mind, the mantra really needs to be, 'Let's put any particular musical agenda second to the agenda of trying to enjoy each other as people.'

"And I've known Stevie since I was 16 and we still have some things to work out, and I think that that's the important thing at this point, otherwise, nothing's going to happen. We won't make it to the album otherwise. Let's acknowledge each other's feelings, let's be adults for a change, if that's possible. It may not be, we'll see.

"So if we go in with that attitude and we use the touring as a kind of proving ground and hang time, then I think it'll make an album after that a much better experience."

Strangely enough, Buckingham originally turned in an album named Gift of Screws back in 2001-02 but the record label asked him if they could use most of it for a new Fleetwood Mac album, which turned out to be 2003's Say You Will (it followed the group's last tour -- both sans keyboardist Christine McVie).

"It has been a bit of a pattern of sort of re-grouping and getting ready to do solo work in one form or another and have Fleetwood Mac sort of intervene. That's happened a few times," Buckingham said. "But you know if you're in the band, you gotta be part of the band."

Buckingham sounds positively easy-going within the dynamic of the famously fractious group -- whose various relationship breakups were documented on their landmark 1977 album, Rumours.

'HEALTHY TROUBLEMAKER'

"I'm working on it. I haven't always been," he said. "I've had very definite ideas which to some degree have been, I wouldn't say a thorn in the side, but I've been the healthy troublemaker who keeps things from being too complacent. That would be the way I would see it. Others might categorize it differently."

This time, however, Buckingham saw the rock-oriented Gift of Screws -- the followup to the more acoustic-based 2006 effort, Under the Skin -- through to its fruition with some lyric-writing help from his wife Kristen (Do You Miss Me, Love Runs Deeper) and 10-year-old son, Will (Great Day). The couple also has two daughters, eight-year-old Leelee, and four-year-old Stella.

Still, Fleetwood drums on three tracks and McVie plays bass on two from those much earlier recording sessions.

"This is a completion of a goal which was very specific that I had. And I said to the band, 'Please don't come knocking on my door for at least three years, because what I want to do is put out two albums and tour around both of them.'"

No Sheryl Crow for Fleetwood Mac "IT WAS PREMATURE"

Sheryl crowed just a little too early
By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun

Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham says reports that Sheryl Crow was going to hook up with the legendary rock group for their upcoming 2009 tour are false -- although there were some early discussions about it.

"There was some element of truth to that but it was completely hypothetical," Buckingham said this week.

He says the genesis for the idea was the previous Fleetwood Mac album, 2003's Say You Will, and 2004 tour, were both without singer-keyboardist Christine McVie.

"I was out there being a guy on stage, which is what I do. I think it made (singer) Stevie (Nicks) feel that the context of femaleness on stage had somehow been diminished in her mind and I think she felt less comfortable on stage because of that," Buckingham said.

"So I think there was just a moment where she was looking for a (female) counterpart again and so this idea of Sheryl was floated by (Stevie) and probably (drummer) Mick (Fleetwood), who was probably thinking of it more in terms of the business side. And I said, 'Hey, whatever, that's fine with me.' So it was thrown around. I know Sheryl was made aware of it. Nothing was ever decided, it was a hypothetical (idea)."

'IT WAS PREMATURE'

Buckingham says two months later, Crow was releasing a solo album and started mentioning to the press that she was joining Fleetwood Mac.

"Which didn't sit well with any of us really, because even if it had been decided it was not the appropriate time. It was premature, it wasn't hers to announce. It should have been done in a different way, but it was not even a real thing," he said.

Needless to say, phone calls were made.

"So that led to some not very good conversations, as I understand, which I was not a part of, and I guess the whole thing just went away.

"(Crow is) not a part of it. But all of that was actually a catalyst to Stevie and me having some very good conversations which have been long overdue and acknowledging that there's a way to do this that doesn't have to be about bringing in a surrogate Christine.

"Because in my mind if you're starting by bringing in someone like Sheryl to do Christine's songs, it starts to get a little loungey."

Lindsey Buckingham vibrant sans Fleetwood Mac

JournalGazette.net

I listen to a lot of new music, and much of it leaves me flat.

I don’t know whether it’s the music or my age, but I began to suspect the latter when I received Lindsey Buckingham’s new CD, “Gift of Screws.”

Wow, is it ever good.

Is it hip to admit you like the new Lindsey Buckingham CD?

Is it hip to say “Wow”?

Yes to both questions, as it turns out.

After all, the Fleetwood Mac frontman long ago moved beyond the California rock that made that once-famous band famous again in the mid-’70s.

The songs in “Gift of Screws” are catchy, of course, but they are also kind of crunchy.

There’s lots of fierce fingerstyle guitar and generally chilly atmosphere reminiscent of the late Chris Whitley’s full band recordings.

Only one song, “The Right Place to Fade,” sounds like it could have come off “Rumours.”

At the risk of using an adjective that is so overused it almost signifies its opposite, “Gift of Screws” is timeless.

In a phone interview, Buckingham said he doesn’t set out to make “timeless” music.

“I don’t think anyone writing music and putting together material does so with the objective of making it timeless,” he said. “We’re all just goofing around. Hopefully, in the process of that, we manage to make something that works.

“I just feel thankful when I get to the end of something that it is actually finished and it turned out OK,” Buckingham said. “ ‘By the skin of my teeth’ is always the sense I have.”

Buckingham performs tonight at the Murat Egyptian Room in Indianapolis.

These days, Buckingham has the luxury in his solo career of doing whatever pleases him: He doesn’t need the money and he doesn’t have anything to prove, he said.

But it wasn’t always thus.

“What really started me making solo albums was what I perpetrated in the wake of the mega success of ‘Rumours,’ ” he said. “Namely, the ‘Tusk’ album. That was a left turn.

“It was a bit risky and was, to some degree, confounding of people’s expectations.”

And how.

Where “Rumours” was filled with ingratiating hits, “Tusk” was a crazy quilt with occasionally cacophonous stuff that reflected the emotional chaos within the band.

“It wasn’t ‘Rumours 2,’ ” Buckingham said simply. “And because ‘Tusk’ did not fulfill someone’s idea of what the requisite number of sales should have been, the band decided it was not going to do anything like that anymore.”

“That decision created a line of solo material that was free of any artificial impositions about how things should be done and not be done,” Buckingham said.

If Buckingham’s words sound bitter, the man himself is not. He said he has mellowed considerably over the years.

“I have grown as an individual,” he said. “For a long time, I led a very emotionally defended life. Then I met my wife (Kristen Messner) and we had three kids. I have enjoyed the fruits of a lot of good karma.”

Buckingham has nothing but pride in the behemoth known as Fleetwood Mac, but he admits his outlook wasn’t always so upbeat.

When he first joined the band, he had to perform a lot of material that wasn’t his and mesh with people who had played together a long time. And then, of course, the band members decided (unsuspectingly) to mix business with pleasure, which led to a mix of business and resentment.

“The interpersonal dynamics were challenging,” he said. “It is difficult to break up with someone and see them move away slowly or not so slowly and then try to find it within yourself to keep doing your job in the band and doing it well, that job being constructing the music for everyone.”

“It wasn’t always easy to feel unconflicted about that,” Buckingham said. “Also, obviously, we lived in a subculture where no one was taking care of themselves very well.”

When the band reunited in 1997 for a tour and live album, there was still lingering bitterness. That began to dissipate only recently, Buckingham said.

What people have to remember, Buckingham said, is that Fleetwood Mac’s sense of itself is more about the relationships than the hits.

“All of that is something that remains and is more present to me now than any of the success,” he said. “Bands are a lot less connected to their success than what goes on behind the scenes.”

Buckingham said he has started finally to bury the hatchet with former lover Stevie Nicks, and the unwitting catalyst for this was singer Sheryl Crow.

In March, Crow announced that she would be replacing former member Christine McVie in Fleetwood Mac, and the band quickly unannounced it.

“That was ridiculous,” Buckingham said of the debacle. “We’d had a very hypothetical conversation with her.”

Buckingham said Nicks was craving for “more female presence onstage” in the wake of McVie’s departure, and the band floated a trial balloon with Crow.

Apparently, Crow floated away on it.

You can’t really blame Crow for her enthusiasm.

Well, Buckingham can.

“Sheryl took it upon herself to tell anyone and everyone that she was joining Fleetwood Mac, an announcement that wasn’t just premature, it wasn’t on solid ground,” Buckingham said.

But the misunderstanding led to “some good conversations” between Buckingham and Nicks.

“That’s one thing that came out of this Crow thing is that we started talking,” he said. “We acknowledged that we do need to approach whatever is going to come in the sense of caring for each other as people more than anything.”

Buckingham said it is unlikely that anyone will replace McVie at this point.

The band has none of the pressures it experienced in the ’70s, Buckingham said, and that frees it up to focus on more important matters.

“We just have to enjoy each other as people up there (onstage),” he said. “We don’t have to have any more musical agendas. It is absurd for us to try and keep competing with bands in their 20s.”