Christine McVie on Fleetwood Mac's 'Peculiar' 'Mirage' Sessions, New LP
Singer-songwriter looks back on heady days at Château d'Hérouville, discusses band's future plans
By Richard Bienstock
Rollingstone
Christine McVie has a confession to make. The 73-year-old singer, songwriter and keyboardist is on the phone with Rolling Stone to discuss the new deluxe reissue of Fleetwood Mac's 1982 effort, Mirage; but, she admits, she hasn't actually listened to it yet. "I just now got my copy of the remastered edition in my hands," McVie says, calling from her home in the U.K. "But I just moved to a flat where I don't have my DVD or CD player yet. So I'm unable to play it. And there's all these outtakes and demos and things in there that I certainly haven't heard since we made them. So I'm most curious to listen."
Indeed, the new package is a treasure trove for Mac completists (and, apparently, band members). In addition to presenting the original 12-track album – which spent five weeks at Number One and spawned two of the group's biggest and enduring hits in McVie's "Hold Me" and Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy" – in remastered form, the three-CD and DVD set offers up a disc of B sides, titled "Outtakes and Sessions," as well as a live collection culled from two nights at the L.A. Forum in October 1982 on the Mirage tour. The whole thing is rounded out by a vinyl copy of the album and a DVD in 5.1 surround sound, as well as a booklet with extensive liner notes and photos from the era.
An impressive package, to be sure, and one that is perhaps necessary for an album that, for all its multi-platinum success, never quite gets its due, having been overshadowed in the band's canon by the career-defining trio of records that preceded it – 1975's Fleetwood Mac, 1977's mega-smash Rumours and 1979's sonically adventurous double album Tusk. In an earlier interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Mick Fleetwood acknowledged that, in such imposing company, Mirage often gets overlooked – a notion that McVie seems to agree with. "It does, and I don't know why," she says. But, she adds, "As it stands today, a lot of people know every track on it. Which is quite unbelievable. So I just take it for what it is."
McVie spent some time reminiscing about the album with RS, from the "unusual" experience of recording at the Château d'Hérouville outside of Paris, to the "nightmare" of filming the video for her song "Hold Me" in the Mojave Desert outside of Palm Springs. But she wasn't only looking backward. McVie also discussed Fleetwood Mac's plans for the future, which may include a new album and another world tour. "We're just gonna keep on doing what we do best," she said, then laughed. "Which, I'm not really sure what that is!"
What was the state of Fleetwood Mac going into the making of Mirage?