Q&A: Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac's new fans and next album

Lindsey Buckingham, the Fleetwood Mac guitarist on why the band’s relationships are always a work in progress

I’ve noticed that the band seems to be connecting with a new, younger audience. True?

“We’ve gotten a multigenerational response. You’ve got people who were young adults when we first hit the market way back when, and then you’ve got young people who’ve just been introduced to our work. You can hear our approach in a lot of younger groups who are coming along now and have obviously listened to our music. Everyone seems to be appreciating the body of work.”

American Airlines Magazine - June, 2015

Fleetwood Mac is famous for how the relationships of the band members influenced the music. What is the dynamic now?

“When Stevie [Nicks] and I joined ­Fleetwood Mac, it didn’t look like we would all fit well together. But it ended up being this synergy created from the divergent sensibilities and different tastes and outlooks on how to approach creativity — how to approach life in general. It was greater than the sum of its parts. Now, you’d think all these years later that somehow we would have figured out our drill. That we know how to be on the same page or deal with a certain amount of chaos within the ranks. But on some strange level — and it’s kind of refreshing — the interaction between the members is still a work in progress.”

What does that stem from?

“A lot of it stems from the fact that there were these two couples that broke up. Things have settled down pretty well. But it is somehow reflective of the fact that we don’t all want the same things at the same time for the same reasons. So you’ve got elements of that, and it makes it that much more special when we do come together. And people do seem to buy into the subtext behind the scenes as much as they buy into the music.”

I’ve heard a new album may be on the horizon after this tour. Any truth to that?

“I think so. Christine [McVie] gave me some very rough stuff, of her just playing the piano and singing into a microphone. I took it home and, as I’ve always done, took some liberties with it. At some point, I sent it over to her before she came over to L.A. [before the tour]. Then we all spent about two months at ­Village Studios, which is where we cut Tusk, and we cut all these great new songs. It was really a transcendent experience.”

Fleetwood Mac’s worldwide tour includes a trip through the U.K. this month, with four nights in London.

June 16 - SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland

June 20, July 10-11 - 3 Arena, Dublin

June 22, 24, 26, 27 - O2 Arena, London

Fleetwood Mac set to bring 18th world tour to Glasgow

Fleetwood Mac on 18th world tour: Rock and roll still means pills and joints for Fleetwood Mac.. but now it's all about arthritis
by Halina Watts
Daily Record

Daily Record (UK) June 6, 2015

Mick Fleetwood snorted seven MILES of cocaine while Stevie Nicks has a hole bigger than a 5p

piece in her septum - but those hellraising days are behind them.

Multi-million dollars of cocaine ordered in bulk, 14 black limousines on tours where pink-painted dressing rooms had to have a white piano installed, and, of course, alcohol. Lots of it.

For years Fleetwood Mac rode a wave of drug-fuelled excess.

Drummer Mick Fleetwood last year revealed how he’d worked out that all the cocaine he’d snorted would make a line seven miles long.

And singer Stevie Nicks took so much she has a hole bigger than a 5p piece in her septum.

They once hired Hitler’s private railway car to travel across Europe, allegedly to avoid drug searches. It even came with the same elderly attendant who served the Fuhrer.

But as we meet it’s clear their days of hell-raising are well and truly over. They’ve swapped cocaine and champagne for, er, ice baths and physio.

Christine McVie talks about her return to the fold

Christine McVie: Why I went back to Fleetwood Mac
by Lydia Jenkin
The New Zealand Herald

She wrote some of the band's best known hits but walked away for a quiet life in the country. But now Christine McVie is back with Fleetwood Mac on a tour which is heading to New Zealand. She talks about her return to the fold.

Speaking from London, Christine McVie sounds a bit like a more mellow, less posh Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.

There's a lovely, light, warm huskiness, and plenty of character in the voice that's been missing from the Fleetwood Mac line-up for the past 17 years - the voice (and pen) behind many of their hits, like Don't Stop, Little Lies, Songbird, and You Make Loving Fun.

Weekend Herald (Australia) June 6, 2015

But now that voice is back.

Rumours swirled after McVie appeared on stage with the band in Dublin and London during their 2013 tour, and in January 2014 it was announced that she was officially back in the band.

And now, more than halfway through their current world tour - entitled On With The Show - the 71-year-old sounds totally convinced she made the right decision, and is thrilled to be touring again.

"We're having a ball. Every night, I look across the stage from where I'm playing piano, stage right, and I can see the rest of them, John, Mick, Stevie, and Lindsey, and it awes me every night. I just think, blimey, you guys are fantastic. I think the difference this time is that we're all smiling."

Review Fleetwood Mac Live in Cologne, Germany - June 4, 2015

Fleetwood Mac summon old ghosts
focus.de
[translated review - original at link above]

The very large time of Fleetwood Mac's over - but by no means forgotten. In Cologne, the rock band

plays exclusively hits their most successful albums of decades ago. For the first time since 16 years, Christine McVie is back on board.

Yes, she was missing. From the fans. And from the band. For 16 years, leaving singer and keyboardist Christine McVie is a gap in the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac - until her comeback last year.

On Thursday, the band came to a single concert in Germany of the current European tour to Cologne. See 14,500 fans in the nearly sold out Lanxess Arena as Fleetwood Mac summon half hours old ghosts.

Full review at focus.de

Legendary original lineup: "Fleetwood Mac" rocks Cologne
By Anna Jacobi and Bernd Peters
express.de

KÖLN –  „Lasst uns die Party starten“ - bei ihrem einzigen Konzert in Deutschland rockten Fleetwood Mac die Lanxess-Arena mit der legendären Original-Besetzung aus den 70ern. Erstmals seit 16 Jahren stand Sängerin Christine McVie (71) wieder mit ihrer Kult-Band auf einer deutschen Bühne.

Legendary Formation is back

Von Sascha Kinzler

wdr2.de

Fleetwood Mac fühlt sich wieder komplett: Nach sechzehn Jahren kehrt Sängerin und Keyboarderin Christine McVie zur Band zurück. Mit neuer Energie spielten die Rock-Pop-Legenden vor 14.500 Zuschauern in Köln.  

PHOTO ALBUM (23 Photos)
Fleetwood Mac in Cologne
It was a historic event, the concert by Fleetwood Mac in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne.

Mick Fleetwood Interview in the August issue of RYTHM (UK) Available June 30th

Look for a Mick Fleetwood interview in the August issue of Rythm Magazine (UK) Available June 30, 2015.

Reviews Fleetwood Mac Live in Amsterdam - May 31, 2015

Fleetwood Mac in Ziggo Dome - May 31st and June 1, 2015
lflmagazine.nl
[translated review - original at the above link]

The return of Christine McVie Fleetwood Mac appeared about three years ago as unlikely as a new album of Pink Floyd or a musical comeback of David Bowie. Or as Stevie Nicks's not so long ago expressed in an interview with Rolling Stone, "The chances of this are not hit bigger than the Earth by an asteroid." She stood in October 2013 still with her three male colleagues in the Ziggo Dome, last night Nicks shared the stage with the same room with the other women of the classic Rumours occupation. Did McVie standing adhere after more than fifteen years of absence?

Joy about the comeback of the lady who wrote so many classics and sang with Fleetwood Mac is not only visible on the faces in the audience, but also in the rest of the band. "I think we can say: she's baaack" Stevie Nicks raises some theatrical during one of the breaks between the songs. And so we are reminded tonight a couple of times on this joyous occasion. And rightly so, because this band - or at least the version of Fleetwood Mac who dominated the pop charts since the mid-seventies - is simply not complete without Christine McVie.

So too was shown when in 2013 an unimpressive ep appeared on the then reduced to a quartet Fleetwood Mac. During the first of two nights in the Ziggo Dome setlist consists therefore entirely of successes from the glory years, where McVie was responsible for. Elegant British singer looked perhaps a bit duller than Nicks, but they wrote some of the most beloved songs in the works, including Do not Stop, You Make Loving Fun and Everywhere.

On With The Show

Of course runs the On With The Show Tour not only McVie. Rarely was undersigned all such chills (positive meant, of course) during the first song of a concert and during The Chain, thanks to the combined voices of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie - all still about as powerful as the nearly twenty year-old live album The Dance, but helped by some background vocalists. In addition, attach as many as eight other songs popmijlpaal Rumours how well those turbulent times made ​​plate after all these years remains: from McVie's optimistic sounding You Make Loving Fun and an acoustic Never Going Back Again to the ominous Gold Dust Woman and singalong Go Your Own Way. And of course, win all those numbers only effective if you know what kind of history behind it.

With her witch-like dress and characteristic low, almost masculine voice remains the most iconic Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac band member. But it's her ex Lindsey Buckingham that brings the most energy and intensity, including during the almost punkish I Know I'm Not Wrong by double album Tusk (1979), a violent solo in the stunning I'm So Afraid and obviously the well-known acoustic version of Big Love. The "undress" a pop or rock song adds not always something, but Buckingham's brilliant fast guitar work and bestial vocal play make this arrangement is superior to the original.

Perfect pop songs

Big screens beside and behind the stage not only show the band in action, but also matching atmospheres. Thus we see the - for her age - young-looking Nicks in the background graceful dance in the rain. Not that the band needs these visuals, because the vibrant renditions of many perfect pop songs make Fleetwood Mac might be more exciting than ever. At most, the drum solo from Mick Fleetwood during World Turning rubs against it unnecessary to, though he and bassist John McVie also deserve their moment in the spotlight. Yet logically draws no attention to itself so as Christine McVie, who evening darkness closes with perhaps its most beautiful ballad: Songbird. At such a moment at the end of a very impressive concert you realize what the group lacked in the years of her absence. Last month I wrote in my enthusiasm that AC / DC probably show of the year was given at Gelredome, but maybe I should come back there already.