The Fleetwood Mac albums Christine McVie said no one liked: “I don’t think anyone likes those”
Throughout every single era of Fleetwood Mac, there was never any doubt about Christine McVie whenever she started singing.
Lindsey Buckingham had his fair share of crazy moments, and even Stevie Nicks went through a period where things could be uninspired, but whenever Christine stepped up to the microphone, there was a stable level of quality that she was always going to have whenever she wrote a tune. Not everything can be at the level of a tune like ‘Songbird’ or anything, but she did feel that some records could definitely go off in the wrong direction.
Ever since the band started, though, there has always been trouble getting records together in one form or another. I mean, one of their most classic albums that’s still one of the best-selling albums of all time was made under tumultuous circumstances for everyone involved, and even when they nursed the wounds of their failed relationships, working with everyone again on Tusk didn’t exactly help matters.
That record was already marred by more than a few musical experiments, but all they really needed was a break from one another. They were more than happy to work together if they had the right songs, but even after all of those tearful nights on the road, all it took was the recording of Tango in the Night for Lindsey Buckingham to realise he had better things to do than argue with the band all day.
While his dismissal wasn’t exactly the most civil thing in the world, the band didn’t see it as a setback. They had been through enough lineup changes to weather through virtually any storm, but when they started working with Rick Vito and Billy Burnette, it wasn’t like they were delivering the same kind of magic material that Buckingham brought to the table every single day.
Never mind the fact that they had to find two guitarists to replace Buckingham, the next album was even more strained once Nicks left to focus on her solo career. Even if some of those records had traction back in the day, the era of Time and Behind the Mask aren’t ever going to be considered the best that the band has to offer, and if you were to ask Christine back in the day, she wouldn’t necessarily disagree with the rest of the fans, either.
Compared to the few albums that are an acquired taste in their catalogue, Christine felt that there was no audience for that period of the band, saying, “I don’t think anyone likes those albums. They’re terrible. They’re scrubbed under the carpet. Dave Mason and I did not get along, and I thought the music was suffering. I think Mick thought it was the end of the road as well, for the first time. Also, I was more gone than them during the making of Time. Emotionally not there, physically not here. I just didn’t show up.”
Since Christine was the motherly figure throughout most of the band’s development, to think that she had people that were impossible to deal with says a lot about the state they were in. And given how many scattershot ideas are on Time, it’s not exactly hard to see why Mick wanted to break up the band, especially with all of those pseudo-country tunes that feel like a strange amalgamation of Fleetwood Mac and bad Garth Brooks outtakes.
If they are favourites among a certain subsect of fans, that would be one thing, but Christine was never going to roll over and claim that they were masterpieces. Because when an album is so bad that one of the members is actively walking out before the album is even over, that’s normally a sign that things are going in the wrong direction.
