Buckingham McVie Duet Album Tentatively Scheduled For May Release

Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham talk about making their first duet album
By Randall Roberts
LATimes

Longtime devotees of the rock band Fleetwood Mac might be forgiven for letting out a gleeful yelp when registering the news that singer-keyboardist Christine McVie shared with The Times in December while sitting next to her band mate -- guitarist, singer and producer Lindsey Buckingham.

“I've been sending Lindsey demos in their very raw form,” she says, sitting in the Village Studio’s storied Studio D in West Los Angeles, “and he's been doing his Lindsey magic on them, which I love.”

The product of that magic is tentatively scheduled to come out in May, and the two are at the Village to work on vocals. Working with them are two familiar names: Mick Fleetwood, whose towering drum kit is in the next room, and bassist John McVie.

The album coming out of these sessions, however, won’t bear the Fleetwood Mac imprimatur.

Rather, the release with the working title “Buckingham McVie” will arrive as the first full-length collaboration between the pair.

For hard-core fans, it’s not news that, save band mate Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s members have been holed up at the Village. At various intervals over the past few years, the band has acknowledged working on an unspecified project thought to be a new Fleetwood Mac album. 

In fact, during a studio visit in 2014, The Times’ Randy Lewis sat down with Christine McVie and Buckingham to discuss her return to touring after 16 years away from the band.  

“I thought, I'm really missing out on something — something that's mine, that I’ve just given up,” she said to Lewis. “I'm not paying respect to my own gift."

Nearly three years later, sharing a couch in the same suite where decades earlier Fleetwood Mac recorded its epic album “Tusk,” Buckingham says that after her return, he and McVie generated an entire album’s worth of material during the sessions.

“We got in here, and it made sense to me with what she had given me and what I done with it. But we still didn't know how it was going to play out in the studio,” Buckingham says. 

He quickly realized that he’d had a pent-up enthusiasm for this kind of collaboration. “I loved doing it, because it's something that I haven't had a chance to do for Stevie as much as I did in the past,” he says, stressing that he continues to compose for solo projects.

“Those are a little more esoteric and off to the side,” he says, “but that's not the same as doing it for somebody else.”

McVie says she reconnected with Mick Fleetwood prior to joining the 2014 Fleetwood Mac “On With the Show” tour. She’d been living a solitary life in rural England when the drummer traveled to London in order to escort her to Hawaii, the destination she chose to help her overcome her fear of flying.

“I'd been virtually doing nothing in the country in 16 years of being a retired lady. Being busy walking my dogs — actually not doing anything very constructive,” she says. “I made one little solo album in my garage.” (2004’s “In the Meantime.”)

Buckingham remembers Fleetwood calling him soon thereafter. “He said, Christine's been over here and, you know, she would like to maybe rejoin the band." For Buckingham, it was a no-brainer.

McVie lets out a big laugh. “It’s unprecedented!”

“Yeah, but a lot of things about Fleetwood Mac are unprecedented,” says Buckingham. “I left for a long time and you guys got two guitar players and went ahead and did that for a while. Then I came back.”

“Weird times,” McVie says.

“Yeah,” Buckingham agrees. “I mean it's a band like no other.”

McVie, who is best known for writing and singing Mac gems including “Don’t Stop,” “Over My Head” and “Think About Me,” acknowledges that, early on in the Buckingham-McVie project, she doubted her ability to reconnect with her muse.

“I suppose I wondered if I believed in myself,” she says. “But I was like, 'Go for it, Chris. Go for it.' And, you know, a better thing's never happened to me. I've reconnected with the band and found a fantastic person to write with.” 

Looking at Buckingham, she adds, “We've always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiraled into something really amazing that we've done between us.”

For his part, Buckingham’s initial songwriting contributions were the product of sessions with Fleetwood and John McVie, which Buckingham invited Christine McVie to augment. 

“It was just pieces with no wording,” she says. “ so I put melody and lyrics on some of his material.”

“That was a first,” says Buckingham. “She would write lyrics and maybe paraphrase the melody — and come up with something far better than what I would have done if I'd taken it down the road myself.”

Those up on the history of Fleetwood Mac might note in the Buckingham McVie moniker the echo of an earlier duet album, “Buckingham Nicks.” Released in 1973 by the two future Fleetwood Mac members when they were a romantic and musical partnership, the Nicks and Buckingham release led Fleetwood a year later to invite the couple to join his band. 

Nicks hasn’t contributed to the forthcoming Buckingham McVie project. She’s been on her own trip. In 2016, Nicks embarked on her “Rockin’ 24 Karat Gold Tour” with the Pretenders as openers. That tour will continue with a few dozen more dates across early 2017.

Her schedule, however, had little bearing on what Buckingham and McVie were creating, says Buckingham.

“All these years we've had this rapport, but we'd never really thought about doing a duet album before,” Buckingham says. “There is that album that I did with Stevie back before we joined the band, but other than that, it's all been Fleetwood Mac or solo.”

Interrupting with a tone of bafflement, McVie says, “And why on Earth? It seems absurd after 45 years.”

“Sometimes,” Buckingham says, “it takes, oh, about 40 years of perspective to figure it out.”

Fleetwood Mac help UK reach 25 year high in vinyl sales

Vinyl sales have been climbing steadily over the world but in the UK, it has reached a 25-year high with 3.2 million albums purchased on vinyl in 2016.  Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was the 5th best selling vinyl in the country for 2016.  Below is the Top 10.

OFFICIAL VINYL ARTIST ALBUMS CHART 2016 – © Official Charts Company

Pos.         Artist & Title  

1.  David Bowie / Blackstar
2.  Amy Winehouse / Back To Black
3.  Various Artists OST / Guardians Of The Galaxy - Mix 1
4.  Radiohead / A Moon Shaped Pool
5.  Fleetwood Mac / Rumours
6.  The Stone Roses / The Stone Roses
7.  Bob Marley And The Wailers / Legend
8.  The Beatles / Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
9.  Prince & The Revolution / Purple Rain OST
10. Nirvana / Nevermind

All about the lights... Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold Tour

Stevie Nicks has gone solo for the 24 Karat Gold tour playing more than two dozen arena dates in North America before the end of the year. Production designer Paul Guthrie of Toss Film & Design in Minneapolis chose 88 ClayPaky Mythos fixtures for the lighting rig.

He previously deployed Mythos on tours for Miranda Lambert and Macklemore. Nicks’ latest tour, in support of her album, 24 Karat Gold – Songs from the Vault, launched in Phoenix and will wrap in Los Angeles. While the iconic singer/songwriter appears as a solo artist, she tapped the Pretenders to open for her – delivering a powerhouse show for ticket holders.

A veteran of Nicks’ tours, Guthrie endeavoured to: “create something new and a bit more modern” for her new show. “Stevie enjoys using video content so the tour features a lot of video on an LED videowall backdrop and L-shaped scenic pieces,” he explained. “Our overwhelming lighting edict is always no smoke. So we defer to lighting the band and adding in layers of light to create new looks.” The versatility of Mythos offers myriad options to Guthrie. “It’s fun to have one light that can produce a multitude of different effects in the same head,” he said. “Mythos is basically the workhorse light in the rig.” He notes that the tour’s complement of 100-120 moving lights is now considered a medium- size rig for an arena tour adding: “It used to be that 16 were considered to be a lot! We’ve come a long way.” PRG’s Las Vegas office supplied the fixtures.

Eighty Mythos are mounted in the overhead lighting trusses where they form solid lines of fixtures. Guthrie reported: “On the downstage and mid-stage trusses they provide stage wash and beam effects. Those on the most upstage of the trusses, upstage of the videowall, create layers to add depth.” Eight more Mythos are positioned on the floor upstage of the band to illuminate their dynamic performance.

Tom Wagstaff, the lighting director for the Pretenders deploys about 60 Mythos, on the downstage and mid-stage trusses, and repositions the complement on the floor, says Guthrie. For the 24 Karat Gold Tour Thomas Mayer is the lighting crew chief and Cecil Nelson, Matt Schiller and Scott Naef are the lighting crew. A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive North American distributor for Clay Paky. Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky Area Manager for North and Latin America, added, “Mr. Guthrie always does great work and is trusted to work with great artists. It’s always a please to collaborate with him.”

TPIMagazine

Best Reissues of 2016 - Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks: “Bella Donna”/”The Wild Heart” (Atco/Modern/Rhino) -- The albums that established the charismatic Fleetwood Mac singer as a solo star get expanded nicely. “Bella Donna” gets supplemented with nine outtakes (including four worthy songs that didn’t make the album) and a 1981 concert. “The Wild Heart,” her solid, if overly synthy, 1983 follow-up, meanwhile has nine outtakes. Insightful liner notes help illuminate Nicks’ life and career during this period. -- Ratings: “Bella Donna” -- 4 stars; “The Wild Heart” -- 3 ½ stars

Fleetwood Mac: “Mirage” (Warner Bros.) -- Following the artistically bold, but commercially disappointing “Tusk,” Fleetwood Mac retreated to safer pop territory on “Mirage.” This reissue adds 20 outtakes to the finely crafted original album, including a pair of strong unreleased Stevie Nicks songs, “If You Were My Love” and “Smile at You.” -- Rating: 3 ½ stars

Daily Herald

Review Stevie Nicks in Las Vegas December 17th

FIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT STEVIE NICKS WITH THE PRETENDERS AT PARK THEATER (DECEMBER 17)
by Spencer Patterson
Las Vegas Weekly

1. For the record, the first song performed publicly at the Las Vegas Strip’s newest music venue—attached to the Monte Carlo resort (soon to be rebranded with the same Park name as the theater and adjacent outdoor plaza)—was “Alone,” the title track from the Pretenders’ latest studio album. The first hit, 1981’s “Message of Love,” arrived two numbers later.

The sound inside Park Theater ranged from fairly muddled for the Pretenders’ first half-dozen songs (turn up Chrissie Hynde’s vocals!; and is that slide guitarist actually playing, ’cause we can’t hear him at all) to somewhat improved midway through that opening set (Hynde sounds great, but there’s still no slide in here) to pretty pristine for Stevie Nicks’ headlining performance (which bodes well for the future).

3. The venue lays out roughly like the Colosseum at Caesars Palace or the Axis at Planet Hollywood, though it’s less ornate than the former and less comfy than the latter. The lobby’s chandeliers and the second floor’s circular patio deck are memorable touches, and two giant side-stage screens provided close views of the musicians, but the theater itself felt a bit generic for Las Vegas’ most modern concert hall.

Sight lines seemed clear across the venue—unless you were seated on the flat floor and someone stood up in directly in front of you. The primo seats appear to be those in sections 201 through 205, and then working back.

A few logistical quibbles: Armrest drink holders render armrests virtually useless (there’s a reason most venues build their drink holders into the backs of the seats in front of you). Concession lines looked lengthy all night, probably because there aren’t many areas set up to sell food and drinks at this point. And upstairs bathrooms are quite small, so time your visits wisely.

4. The Pretenders are one of those, “Oh, I know that song!” bands. Serious fans aside, I doubt most attendees knew they’d recognize so many tunes on Saturday—“Back on the Chain Gang,” “I’ll Stand by You,” “My City Was Gone,” “Middle of the Road” and “Brass in Pocket” among them—and the band still left some of its classic cuts (like “Talk of the Town” and “Show Me”) unplayed during a healthy 15-song set.

At age 65, Hynde remains a strong singer and a magnetic presence, bringing an Elvis T-shirt and good grand-opening awareness to the stage: “Elvis played on this stage … in spirit. We’re the first band to play this stage.” She also marveled that Las Vegas will soon have hockey, and delivered this zinger during her intro of 65-year-old founding drummer Martin Chambers: “We couldn’t get Buddy Rich, because he’s dead.”

5. Nicks explained that she designed her latest solo tour to excavate deeper cuts from her catalog, and she did just that Saturday night, at one point reeling off six-consecutive non-charting songs between Fleetwood Mac classic “Gypsy” and synthy solo favorite “Stand Back.” That unorthodox approach largely succeeded, on the strength of Nicks’ still-powerful pipes (her voice sits in a lower octave these days but retains its singular, spine-tingling quality), her crack eight-piece backing band (Hynde also joined in for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around") and her folksy between-song storytelling. The 68-year-old singer occasionally got off track as she related the origins of songs like Buckingham-Nicks oldie “Crying in the Night” or newer solo composition “New Orleans,” but the loose approach brought a cozy, living-room vibe to the sold-out, 5,300-capacity room.

Of course, the crowd cheered loudest for the night’s closing quartet of all-timers—“Gold Dust Woman” and “Edge of Seventeen,” and then “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” in the encore—and whenever Nicks twirled in place, proving that even in shiny new buildings on just-enlivened stretches of the Las Vegas Strip, some things never change.

Review and Photos Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders Live in Los Angeles

Review Stevie Nicks opens a 'gothic trunk' of lost songs at the Forum
by Mikael Wood
Pop Music Critic
LA Times

Stevie Nicks brought her usual assortment of accessories to the Forum on Sunday night, including a tambourine festooned with glittering streamers and a dark-blue garment she described as “the original ‘Bella Donna’ cape.’”

Unchanged since she started wearing it around the time of her debut solo album in 1981, the cape cost $2,000, she said, and was made of silk chiffon — the same material used to create ships’ sails, according to Nicks.

“It’ll never fall apart,” she added.

Yet the 68-year-old singer also had one item she doesn’t normally bring on the road, and that was her “dark Gothic trunk of mystical, magical lost songs.”

Two years ago, Nicks reached into the vault for “24 Karat Gold,” an album collecting new recordings of orphaned tunes she’d written as long ago as 1969, well before she and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac and quickly became pop superstars.

Now, with Fleetwood Mac on a break following last year’s reunion tour with Christine McVie, Nicks is touring behind the record, performing those lost songs for adoring audiences happy to hear them (provided she also sings “Gypsy” and “Stand Back,” of course).

Implicit in any such project is the determination to set a story straight — to show it was the world, not the artist, that kept this music from achieving its full potential.

On Sunday, for instance, Nicks told a story about recording “Starshine” decades ago at Tom Petty’s place in the Valley. Then she suggested the crisp, hard-driving rock cut would’ve been a huge hit if only she or Petty had been putting together an album at the time.

Because they weren’t, she said, “it ended up in the trunk.”

Instead of bitterness, though, Nicks found warmth in her recollections, helped along perhaps by the concert’s location — not merely in her hometown but at one of the arenas where Fleetwood Mac helped invent arena-rock.

“Ah, the Forum,” she said at one point, and you could sense the fond memories swimming in her head.

Indeed, as strong as Nicks’ singing was, she was even better company between songs as she told funny, detailed stories about where the music had come from.

“Belle Fleur,” she said, had been inspired by all the times she’d happily left behind a boyfriend at the beginning of a Fleetwood Mac tour; “If You Were My Love” was about … well, she couldn’t place the name exactly.

She provided entertaining background on more familiar tunes too, including “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” her early-’80s duet with Petty that she said represented her attempt to worm her way into the Heartbreakers. (Here she shared the tune with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, who opened Sunday’s show with an assured set of punchy, no-frills rock.)

Nicks also did an extended homage to Prince, dedicating her recent piano ballad “Moonlight” to him and explaining that she’d written “Stand Back” after hearing his “Little Red Corvette” while in the car driving to Santa Barbara for her honeymoon.

Later, images of the late pop icon flickered across a video screen as Nicks, her voice wavering with emotion, appended a bit of “When Doves Cry” to “Edge of Seventeen.”

In Prince, she no doubt recognized a fellow traveler, someone as devoted to image as to sound. But what gratified about this straight-talking performance was Nicks’ willingness — her eagerness, really — to chip away at her outsize persona.

Like that $2,000 cape, it’s sturdy enough to withstand some wear.

Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde are timeless in Forum show

By ROBERT KINSLER

OC Register

Photo by Kelly A. Swift - View Gallery

While 2016 has seen more than its fair share of loss in the music world (David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Merle Haggard, Sharon Jones, Sir George Martin and Leonard Cohen for starters), two of classic rock’s most celebrated women showcased their distinguished legacies in a sold-out concert at the Forum in Inglewood on Sunday.

On the final night of their two-month 24 Karat Gold tour, Stevie Nicks and the Chrissie Hynde-led Pretenders seemed energized by the large and enthusiastic crowd, and the two icons were frequently able to acknowledge each other and the bond each has with her fans.

Over the course of more than two hours, headliner Nicks and her backing ensemble (six musicians and two female backing singers) showcased both Fleetwood Mac classics and solo hits. However, it seemed the Phoenix native was equally revitalized by material not well known, acknowledging some songs had not made it on her records despite the strength of the initial demo recordings.The 68-year-old songstress was in an especially introspective and reflective mood, often providing details on the genesis of her songs and celebrating the life of her late friend Prince.

Among the hidden gems performed was “If Anyone Falls,” a beautiful song enhanced by colorful and moody visuals projected on a large screen, including two ghostly ballet dancers. But Nicks could turn things around quickly; for the third selection she jump started the mood in the Forum when Hynde joined her on stage for the playful duet “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around” (originally recorded with Tom Petty). Other audience favorites included “Gypsy” with Nick’s seasoned soprano enticing while artful black & white images of rain and old city views appeared in the background, the propulsive rocker “Enchanted,” and a powerful song written in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (“New Orleans”) among other standouts in the first half of the night.

The last half of her run included the shimmering “Starshine,” driving “Stand Back” (when Nicks twirled during an instrumental break, the crowd cheered), a luxurious “Crying in the Night” (one of the oldest songs she performed, a track from 1973’s “Buckingham Nicks” album), the piano-anchored “Edge of Seventeen,” and sweeping encore featuring two of her most beloved Fleetwood Mac classics, “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.”

Chrissie Hynde’s hour-long set leading the Pretenders may have drawn the most cheers when radio hits were played, but there is little doubt the Ohio native is equally concerned with the here-and-now. The Pretenders’ 15-song outing featured a number of songs from her wonderful 2016 album “Alone,” one of the best discs of 2016. In fact, the Pretenders kicked off their set with the title track from the Dan Auerbach-produced effort, with lead guitarist James Walbourne unleashing some blistering guitar work, and the 65-year-young Hynde showcasing her distinctive vocals with the power of her early ’80s performances.

She also positioned her new album prominently with “Gotta Wait,” another guitar-anchored new track that immediately entices. Listening to the Pretenders (whose lineup includes original drummer Martin Chambers) was to be firmly reminded that Hynde’s songs never sound dated. If “Message of Love,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” “Mystery Achievement,” “I'll Stand By You” and “Middle of the Road” were released today, this writer’s guess they would still find favor with discerning modern-rock audiences.

Fans are likely divided on her position, but Hynde’s clear-cut admonitions to fans positioned near the stage to “stop taking pictures” and to “stop using your phones” was cheered by many in the crowd. A rocker at heart, Hynde still believes in the power of live music to sweep fans into another realm sans distractions that take the focus away from a powerful performance.

Indeed, this is one long-time fan who has seen many fans experience too much of their concert-going experiences through the distractions of their smart phone while missing out on the singular power of a great rock show.

Stevie Nicks And The Pretenders Perform At The Forum Decembe 18, 2016
Photos: Kevin Winter
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