RETURN TO STUDIO,
Longtime devotees of the rock band Fleetwood Mac might be forgiven for letting out a gleeful yelp when registering the news that singer-keyboardist Christine McVie shared in December while sitting next to her bandmate, guitarist, singer and producer Lindsey Buckingham.
“I’ve been sending Lindsey demos in their very raw form,” she said, sitting in the Village Studio’s storied Studio D in West Los Angeles, “and he’s been doing his Lindsey magic on them, which I love.”
The product of that magic is tentatively scheduled to come out in May, and the two are at the Village to work on vocals. Collaborating with them are two familiar names: Mick Fleetwood, whose towering drum kit is in the next room, and bassist John McVie.
The album coming out of these sessions, however, won’t bear the Fleetwood Mac imprimatur.
Rather, the release with the working title “Buckingham McVie” will arrive as the first full-length collaboration between the pair.
For hard-core fans, it’s not news that, save band mate Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s members have been holed up at the Village. At various intervals over the last few years, the band has acknowledged working on an unspecified project thought to be a new Fleetwood Mac album.
During a studio visit in 2014, Randy Lewis of the Times sat down with McVie and Buckingham to discuss her return to touring after 16 years away from the band.
“I thought, ‘I’m really missing out on something, something that’s mine, that I’ve just given up,’ ” she said to Lewis. “I’m not paying respect to my own gift.”
Nearly three years later, sharing a couch in the same suite where decades earlier Fleetwood Mac recorded its epic album “Tusk,” Buckingham said that after her return, he and McVie generated an entire album’s worth of material during the sessions.
“We got in here, and it made sense to me with what she had given me and what I had done with it. But we still didn’t know how it was going to play out in the studio,” Buckingham said.
He quickly realized that he’d had a pent-up enthusiasm for this kind of collaboration.
“I loved doing it, because it’s something that I haven’t had a chance to do for Stevie as much as I did in the past,” he said, stressing that he continues to compose for solo projects.
“Those are a little more esoteric and off to the side,” he said, “but that’s not the same as doing it for somebody else.”
McVie said she reconnected with Mick Fleetwood before joining the 2014 Fleetwood Mac On With the Show tour.
She had been living a relatively solitary life in rural England when the drummer traveled to London to escort her to Hawaii, the destination she chose to help her overcome her fear of flying.
“I’d been virtually doing nothing in the country in 16 years of being a retired lady. Being busy walking my dogs — actually not doing anything very constructive,” she said.
“I made one little solo album (2004’s ‘ In the Meantime’) in my garage.”
McVie, best known for writing and singing Mac gems including “Don’t Stop,” “Over My Head” and “Think About Me,” acknowledged that early on in the Buckingham McVie project she doubted her ability to reconnect with her muse.
“I suppose I wondered if I believed in myself,” she said. “But I was like, ‘Go for it, Chris. Go for it.’ And, you know, a better thing’s never happened to me. I’ve reconnected with the band and found a fantastic person to write with.”
Looking at Buckingham, she added, “We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiraled into something really amazing that we’ve done between us.”
For Buckingham’s part, his initial songwriting contributions were the product of sessions with Fleetwood and John McVie, which Buckingham invited Christine McVie to augment.
“It was just pieces with no wording,” she said, “so I put melody and lyrics on some of his material.”
“That was a first,” said Buckingham. “She would write lyrics and maybe paraphrase the melody — and come up with something far better than what I would have done if I’d taken it down the road myself.”