CHAPTER 19

IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK

As of now, the most famous line-up of Fleetwood Mac is together and creating again. And it’s different this time. It’s better. It really is. If you don’t believe me, take it from John. Unlike me, my dear friend is a man of few words. He chooses them wisely and well, and he isn’t one to gush. That said, after we got together in April 2014 to work on music with Chris and Lindsey, and after John had successfully undergone treatment for colon cancer, he sent me a very uncharacteristic email. He had received a clean bill of health from his doctor and was excited to get his boat all outfitted to sail from LA to Honolulu. He planned to captain it himself and couldn’t wait to get going. He emailed me this note before he went: ‘Hey Mick, how you doing? I hope well. Don’t get too stressed out. Listen… it’s all different now… isn’t it? It’s fun.’

But wait, before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you how we got here.

It was Christine’s return to the group that changed everything. After she left us in 1998, she made one solo album that she will be the first to say was the wrong idea. Not musically, but because she was unable to promote it due to a paralysing fear of flying. In fact, none of us realised just how deep-seated her phobia had become by the end of her tenure with Fleetwood Mac. For years afterwards she would not go near a plane. She ended her time in the music business altogether, because that meant air travel, and spent the better part of seventeen years in the English countryside. That was part of her plan, to have a gorgeous country house and spend her days hunting and fishing and driving her Rover and raising her dogs.

We would see her from time to time; I probably kept in touch more than anyone else. We’d go out to dinner whenever I was in England and we would talk about what she was doing. She was detached; she’d made a concerted effort to leave music and all that she’d known, but in the process she became alienated from life itself. She spent a lot of her time on her own, alone in her gorgeous house. After a while, she found that lifestyle investment was paying her no dividends. People missed her, not just us, and when we toured her absence loomed large. Whenever any of us did an interview we’d be asked about her. All of us in our way would paraphrase what we knew: ‘Chris is living the life she wants to live and we all wish she were here with us but she doesn’t want to be.’

I’d be open about saying that I didn’t understand how she was okay with not writing or performing music. Truthfully, I didn’t know how that was possible for someone like Chris. She didn’t have to rejoin us, but I couldn’t comprehend how someone so connected to her musicality could simply turn that off. I thought she’d miss it and though it was none of my business, I didn’t think it was good for her. Now that she’s come round, Chris agrees with me. She’s basically said, ‘What was I thinking?’

She came back to herself through a deep desire to travel and only by confronting her fear was she able to find herself again. After a few years fulfilling her idyllic English country dream, Chris began to fantasise about visiting China and other places, all of them feasibly accessible only by plane. At that time, she was like a fly in a wine glass, buzzing around, hitting the four walls of her house. Over the years her world had grown increasingly small, so much so that she finally sought help. She got a therapist who specialised in the fear of flying and they began to go to work. In one of their early sessions he asked her where she would like to go first.

‘I’d like to go to Maui,’ she said. ‘I’d like to visit Mick and John.’

‘Well, book a ticket, then,’ he said.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You can’t do that now and I don’t want you to book a ticket to go tomorrow. I want you to book a ticket for six months from now.’

She worked every day to be able to get on that flight, because it had been a long time coming. She’d been bullshitting me for years that she was going to come and visit John and me, so when she referred to it again during our conversations I tried not to get my hopes up; by then I knew how hard it was for her to even contemplate boarding a plane.

Time wore on and just before the date for her promised trip to Hawaii, I flew to London to do some press in advance of our shows at the O2 arena. I was there for a week, and I saw Chris and asked her if she’d rather move her holiday forward and come back with me to Hawaii. I was well aware that this would be her first flight in over fifteen years, and England to Hawaii is a long haul, so I told her we’d make it fun and I’d be her roadie. I’d sit with her, tend to her, and do whatever it took to make the journey a smooth one for her. I wasn’t sure she’d go for it, but she did and we had a ball. She’d done the work for all those months and though she wasn’t without apprehension, she was mentally prepared to face the fear that had held her landlocked for over a decade.

She had the greatest time in Hawaii, I mean, she really fucking loved it. She stayed down in Lahaina at a great hotel and she came up to my farm to hang out while I rehearsed with Rick Vito and my blues band for an annual fundraiser that I do. I knew Steven Tyler was off tour, relaxing at his house on the island at the time, so I’d called him in to join us. Chris hadn’t seen Rick in years and they had a proper reunion and she and Steven got on smashingly.

I would be a liar if I said I didn’t hope that Chris would play with us but I honoured my vow to her and never brought it up. The main room at my farm has high, vaulted ceilings and is acoustically a dream to play in; it has been my music retreat for many years and where I always rehearse. At the back of it is a quiet sitting room, where you can watch the proceedings without being in the thick of it. That’s where Chris sat, with the splendour of Maui Harbor laid out behind her through the big bay windows. She didn’t once approach the grand piano, sitting there just a few feet away, although it begged for her.

After one rehearsal, Rick joked to me that he was going to play ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, the Etta James tune that Chris covered in Chicken Shack, earning them a Top 20 hit in England back in the day. He did and launched into it without warning, thinking that surely that siren song would draw Chris to the piano. No such luck. She sat there unfazed. Unbeknownst to me, when I was out of the room, Steven and Rick even asked Chris flat out if she’d like to do a song or two at the gig, and from what I understand now, she replied with an unconvincing ‘yes’.

With four days to go before the gig, I was up in my bedroom, lying there early in the morning, when the house phone rang. That was uncommon, because not many people have that line. I picked it up thinking something was wrong.

‘Hello, Mick? It’s Chris.’

There is no other way to describe this than to say she sounded tiny. Tiny like a nervous schoolgirl asking to use the toilet.

‘Chris? Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah sure,’ she said. ‘Um, I’ve been thinking, um, would you like me to play at this gig?’

‘What? Yes! Sweetheart! Of course I would! Are you kidding me?’

‘I thought it might be fun.’

I had no words–I was overjoyed.

We’ve spoken about it since, and everything she’s done in terms of playing music again hinged on that moment; it literally all started there. I’ve known Chris a long time and played with her for over forty years so I can say without a doubt that the timbre of her voice expressed just how tentatively she took that first step.

Once she did, she was on her way. She did the gig with us, but to allow her the comfort of backing out at any point up until the last minute, I didn’t announce that she would be performing with us. Rick and I brought a piano round to her hotel suite that day and sat with her and rehearsed the songs she wanted to do. We played ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ and ‘Don’t Stop’ and I could barely contain myself thinking about how the audience was going to go bananas. On the day of the gig I alluded to a special guest, knowing that I could always say it was Steven Tyler, but Chris came through. She did more than any of us expected–in addition to ‘Rattlesnake’ and ‘Don’t Stop’ she did one of her old ones, ‘Get Like You Used to Be’, and even stayed on stage for ‘World Turning’. She’d flown six thousand miles and got on stage for the first time in seventeen years and she wasn’t fucking frightened, in fact, she was amazing.

Her next step was in London at the O2 arena. You can imagine how excited I was to tell Lindsey about what had gone on in Hawaii, but both of us knew that this didn’t mean Chris was ready or willing to come back completely.

Lindsey kept me in check, reminding me that we should find out whether Chris was coming back for good or not. We were all fine with her coming out and doing a song, maybe two, but until we knew she was serious, we had to be sceptical. As she had before, Chris started phoning us, and we started phoning each other.

‘Linds, have you spoken to Chris?’

‘I have, what’s going on? She’s talking about doing the European tour and playing music again.’

‘I know. What do you think?’

‘She’s talked about doing this before.’

‘I know. Maybe she’s reconnecting. This really could be it.’

‘Yeah, but she can’t mess around.’

‘I know, Lindsey. No, she can’t.’

‘Yeah, but what if?’

‘I know!’

Our worry was that Chris might not want to commit to the degree of work we were talking about. We had a three year plan for the band so before we got our hopes up, we had to be sure she understood what coming back meant.

‘Mick, do you think she realises what we’re looking at if we do this?’ Lindsey asked.

‘Sort of.’ It was the best I could do.

A day or so later each of us got a call from Stevie, who had just spoken to Chris.

‘Is she kidding?’ Stevie asked. ‘Is this some fantasy she has, about what this is?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. “I believe she’s really thinking about it.’

After that Stevie spoke to her again and said unabashedly that she wanted Chris back. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘it would make life easier for me!’

Chris had tremendous deference about coming back to the band and when she’d call me to talk about it, she had that same humble, little girl tone to her voice. She wanted to be sure everyone wanted her and that she wouldn’t be taking away from what we’d done in her absence because she’d been gone nearly fifteen years.

We flew Chris to Ireland to rehearse with us and it was a lot of fun, as if no time had passed. We decided she’d make an appearance in London and do another few gigs and then we’d address the situation again. We had practised a handful of songs, but in the end we thought it best that Chris come out and do just one, which is what we did. We waited even longer, after the tour had ended, to let the cat out of the bag and announce that she was back for good. But the truth was that after London, in our minds, the band was back together.

During the European shows that Chris came out for, we started exchanging song ideas, and watching her and Lindsey reactivated as a creative pair was invigorating. We started talking about getting into the studio and working on a new record and discussing how we would–and should–give it another go together.

At the end of that tour, I went to her room in Amsterdam and told her the news that John had cancer. She was devastated, no matter how much I assured her that the prognosis was good. We had one last dinner together and the next time I saw Chris was in the studio in Los Angeles in April 2014. She has transformed from the fly trapped in a wine glass of her own design to a world traveller. After that first trip, she went on a huge safari in Africa, flying all over the continent in single-engine Cessnas. She went straight from there to live in LA with us for two months. After we’re done with the last date of our next tour, she’s going to South Africa on holiday because she was there once and loved it so. She’ll be away from home for seven months! I’d say she has faced her fears and then some. It’s amazing how much she’s changed her life. I might have worried about her considering all the road work we have in store, but she’s already done it. She’s ready to go.

Chris, Lindsey and I spent two months working on what will be the next Fleetwood Mac album this spring, with John, Chris and me sharing a gorgeous house in Santa Monica and all of us recording in Studio D at the Village Recorder where we did Tusk. Chris and I were like the odd couple sitting around the pool, joking that there would be a new rumour that we were emotionally involved. We had the greatest time. It was rock-and-roll boot camp; for two months we’d get up at 7 a.m. and do yoga and exercise, then head to the studio for the day. Quite a different routine to the way we used to prepare to record.

I say without hesitation that this has been altogether different and altogether wonderful. The chemistry between us has never been better and it’s all coming together so easily and enjoyably. I’m not alone. Chris has been saying lately that it all feels like a dream, and I know exactly what she means. It is a dream. It’s the same one we’ve been having, all of us, apart and together. But now we’re having it together again.

We will start rehearsing for an extensive tour in August 2014. By then we will have the makings of what I hope will be a new album by Fleetwood Mac written by all of us, as it should be. Our tour is already sold out and we’ve just sold another forty dates well into 2015. That will probably become sixty shows. And that is all before we go overseas.

We have no intention of running our ensemble into the ground the way we used to do; we’ve learned to look after ourselves. Stevie takes great care of her voice and for the first time Chris is using Stevie’s voice coach to take care of hers, as well. Lindsey is a unique creature; he sounds perfect whether he’s just finished a tour or hasn’t sung in months. I think he could not sing for fifteen years and get on stage and still sound flawless out of the gate. John is a perfectionist and he was back up to speed in no time, cancer be damned. As for me, my job is pretty physical and I’ve learned my lesson. I need to stick to a healthy regime or none of this will be possible.

Sometimes I think about how I used to carry on and it amazes me that I’m still here. Back then, most of my days off were spent repairing myself. If I knew I had two days off, after the gig I would stay up, organise a party, then go round to some other hotel where another band might be in town. Before I knew it, my days off were gone and I’d been up the whole time. I’d end up backstage pretending to sleep for two hours before our next show, but I wouldn’t be sleeping. I’d be way too wired. So then I’d have to really do myself in by drinking heavily just to get through the gig.

As fun as some of those memories are, it’s not a healthy business model, and the romance for me is gone. I used to find the lunacy of it electrifying, but now the thought of those scenarios coming to life again makes me feel physically ill. There is a real sense among us all that this is our victory lap, and though we haven’t said as much, I’ve known all of these people long enough to know they feel it too. The mood in the studio–the vibe that John hit upon in that email–is tangible. It’s just so wonderful that we’re all together again and making such great music that even Lindsey’s generally aloof demeanour has been challenged. I’m the first one to shed a tear and bear-hug everyone, but this time around that’s been Mr Buckingham! He’s been more available emotionally than I’ve ever seen him. I found myself walking around the studio snapping photos like a tourist: ‘Oh look, there’s Lindsey and Chris riffing on the couch, happy as two pigs in shit!’ This rebooting of our relationship with Chris has brought us all back and reminded us from whence we have come–and it’s been awesome.

All of this, of course, is in preparation for Stevie, who will join us in the studio later this year after she finishes her last solo album for Warner Brothers. She won’t be distant from the process; rather, we will be ready for her. The truth is that Stevie is a vocalist, while the rest of us are musicians, so we will set the stage for her entrance, and together we will work out what I believe will be a fitting return for this line-up of the band.

One thing I do know is that whenever this band ends, no matter what, that won’t be the end for Stevie. I believe she will perform until her very last breath, much like Edith Piaf, whom she reminded me of the first time I heard her sing. The first gift I ever gave Stevie was a boxed set of albums by Edith Piaf, because those two are one and the same in many ways. Edith was on stage only twenty hours before she dropped dead and I think Stevie will go in much the same way, because as much as she claims she’d love some time off, the girl never stops. I picture Stevie in her eighties, writing gorgeous romance novels and finally telling her incredible life story. Like Edith’s, Stevie’s fans will be there because they are devoted and they will follow their Gypsy wherever she goes.

And me, perhaps I’ll be the same.