Keyboardist Christine McVie Rejoins Fleetwood Mac
Singer and keyboardist Christine McVie has rejoined Fleetwood Mac after a 16-year hiatus for a tour and new album, USA Today reports. McVie was one of the band’s primary songwriters and vocalists during its “Rumours”-era heyday.
It was McVie’s voice featured on “Say You Love Me,” “You Make Loving Fun” and “Go Your Own Way.”
Alas, the reunion comes a year too late for local fans. Fleetwood Mac performed at the 2013 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell without the female McVie. As a result, several of Fleetwood Mac’s signature songs, originally recorded with McVie on lead vocals, were left out of the set.
USA Today music writer Edna Gundersen visited with the band in the rented Los Angeles-area mansion where McVie, 70, and drummer Mick Fleetwood are living – platonically – while McVie works to get her chops up.
She spent most of the hiatus living quietly in a 17th century mansion in rural England. She says she left the band in 1998 because she was tired of touring. She had also developed a fear of flying.
Over the years, she resisted numerous entreaties to return, including what she describes as a $5 million offer from Stevie Nicks, who was apparently tired of being the only woman in the otherwise all-male band.
She finally decided that the quiet life wasn’t exactly what she wanted.
“I basically wanted to be the country lady in the Range Rover baking cookies for the local charity,” McVie told Gundersen. “But I was missing something. I idealized a life that didn’t exist.”
Everybody was so warm and friendly and welcoming,” she says of the re-entry. When primary Mac songwriter and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham advised her, “Be sure it’s what you really want,” she says, “ the fear of starting up again went away.”
Buckingham told Gundersen that sessions for the next Mac album – the first with McVie since 1987’s “Tango in the Night” — are underway at the same L.A. studio where the band recorded the “Tusk” album.
This summer, Fleetwood Mac will began rehearsals for an extensive world tour that kicks off Sept. 30 in Minneapolis. No New Orleans dates have been announced. The closest shows are Dec. 15 in Houston and Dec. 17 in Atlanta.