Fleetwood Mac's fab five back together again for tour and new material
Having conquered her fear of flying, Christine McVie has reunited with Fleetwood Mac for a new album and tour, writes Randy Lewis
Christine McVie eases comfortably into the corner of a leather sofa, about a foot between her and Lindsey Buckingham. He leans forward and side by side, they listen to the playback of Too Far Gone, a danceable new Fleetwood Mac song they've written together over the last few weeks in a Los Angeles studio.
"This was a great collaboration," Buckingham says. "I had a track without any singing on it, and she wrote the song over it."
"We've been doing that quite a bit lately, haven't we?" McVie says.
Helping McVie write songs, Buckingham says to her, "is something you always wanted me to do for you, which was not necessarily the case with Stevie [Nicks]. She's a little more complicated in her needs."
I saw that if I want to start to play again, there's only one band I want to play with, and that's Fleetwood Mac
It's a scene that would have been pure rock'n'roll fantasy barely two years ago. At that point, McVie was securely ensconced in her 17th- century mansion in rural northern England, having retired from touring and recording with a band she'd been part of for a quarter of a century. Crippled by a fear of flying that made the idea of a trip to Los Angeles - or anywhere else - unthinkable, the '70s rock goddess stopped touring in 1998and spent much of her time cooking and gardening.