Buckingham, McVie rekindle chemistry on duet album, tour

When Christine McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac on the band’s 2014 tour, which saw the classic five-piece lineup playing together again for the first time in 15 years, it was a pleasant surprise for fans — and the band. McVie had left the band to enjoy a peaceful life in the English countryside. A change of heart ultimately convinced her to return.

“Christine rejoining Fleetwood Mac — nobody saw that coming,” said Fleetwood Mac singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham during a recent phone interview. “I guess she just realized that she was missing that part of herself and that sense of community, and missing the creative process of writing. When I heard that she was interested in possibly rejoining, it struck me as being a beautiful idea. It struck me as being karmic and timely and perhaps circular.”

While McVie was in the process of getting back on track with the band, she shared some song ideas that she had written.

“What was as much of a surprise was the fact that she reached out to me with very rough song ideas and wanted me to sort of take them into my studio at home and to develop them into things that have more form. Which I did,” said Buckingham. “And not for any particular reason, but just because I was wanting to be supportive of her re-entry into the creative world.”

Six weeks before the band’s rehearsals for their reunion tour, Mick Fleetwood and Buckingham invited McVie into the studio with John McVie to see what they could do with the songs, “without any agenda in mind.”

“I think more often than not when that much time has elapsed, it becomes difficult to reconnect with the context and the set of creative tools you might have had long ago with someone,” he said. “But for some reason, our individual journeys had somehow gotten us to this place where our creative dynamic was actually more potent than it had ever been. That took less than a week for us to become extremely aware of it.”

While the new tunes did not make the set list for Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham and McVie started thinking of the songs in terms of a duet album. The duo released their debut, simply titled “Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie” in June. Buckingham and McVie were concentrating solely on their “dynamic as two writers and two people who were putting music together,” Buckingham said.

While Buckingham is no stranger to performing as a duo, having done so with Stevie Nicks in the early ’70s before they joined Fleetwood Mac, this pairing is a completely different world, he said.

“[Stevie and I] were a couple, and the album reflected our unity as a couple. It wasn’t long after joining Fleetwood Mac that we began to have a lot of problems,” he said. “So, I think you’ve got to look at the album with Christine as something you can approach with more of a sense of wisdom and more of a sense of being grateful for the road you’ve been down and what you’ve learned. Even sort of being happy that all of us are here still doing what we’re doing.”

After the tour wraps up, Buckingham plans to release a solo album early next year, and Fleetwood Mac has already announced that they will go on a lengthy world tour next summer.

While Buckingham said the duet album didn’t refuel “any great great fire as to pursuing new Fleetwood Mac music,” he’s open to it, if things align just right. For now, he’s excited to play Chicago. In 2003, when Fleetwood Mac was touring behind their last album, “Say You Will,” they used Chicago as a base of operations for a number of weeks, which gave Buckingham a chance to spend quality time with his family.

“A memory I have so strongly etched into my mind is staying at [the Gold Coast hotel],” he said. “There’s a little park down below and I’d take my son and daughter down to play at the playground every day. Just the whole trip of us being together as family is just something I’ll never forget about Chicago.”

Joshua Miller is a local freelance writer.