Back in September, former Fleetwood Mac member Christine McVie stunned the music community by reuniting with her former bandmates on-stage. Back behind her keyboard, McVie made two guest encore appearances with the band, performing the classic “Don’t Stop” — the first time all five members of the classic Rumours-era line-up had played together since 1998. It was a brief tease of what could be, and McVie is reportedly eager to join the band for a more full-fledged reunion.
The singer-songwriter has been vocal about how much she enjoyed the experience, and she gives more details in a new interview with The Guardian. “At the time, they tried to persuade me to stay so hard,” she said of her original departure. “But back then I’d made my mind up that I’d done enough touring. I just couldn’t live out of a suitcase any more. Whereas now I would really rather like to again.”
Of course, Mac fans got some back news back in October, with bassist John McVie’s cancer diagnosis. The band were forced to cancel 14 dates in Australia and New Zealand while the male McVie (Christine’s former husband) received treatment. But the good news is that, according to Christine, the “prognosis is good” and the bassist should be “up and running again in a couple of months.”
The reunion performance, it turns out, wasn’t even as nerve-wracking as she expected.
“It was like falling off a bike,” McVie says. “I climbed back on there again and there they all were, the same old faces! (…) It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought. In fact, it felt great!”
The same interview also features some choice quotes from McVie’s partner-in-crime, Stevie Nicks. Reflecting on the band during their ’70s prime, she calls Fleetwood Mac “a force of nature” and describes the determination she felt to remain a strong, independent woman in a male-dominated industry.
“And we made a pact, probably in our first rehearsal, that we would never accept being treated as second-class citizens in the music business,” Nicks says. “That when we walked into a room we would be so fantastic and so strong and so smart that none of the uber-rockstar group of men would look through us. And they never did.”
McVie also describes her friendship with Nicks, emphasizing the importance of their simple bond — which strayed far from the cocaine-fueled debauchery of their male bandmates. “We shared rooms,” she says of Nicks, “did each other’s makeup and lived on Dunkin’ Donuts.” (That is…adorable.)
“We really were quite tame people back then,” Nicks says. “The band had two couples in it, plus Mick was married with two little girls – so we had to behave. We’d play a gig, get on an aeroplane right after the show and leave to the next place. And we were watched like hawks. We had security outside each of our rooms so Chris and I were almost like traveling rock ‘n’ roll nuns.”
