Lindsey Buckingham Gave Christine McVie This 1 Warning When She Rejoined Fleetwood Mac
Christine McVie overcame her fear of flying to rejoin Fleetwood Mac after a 15-year hiatus, but Lindsey Buckingham gave her warning about returning to the classic rock band. Here’s what happened when McVie said she wanted to come back to the group and what Buckingham told her.
Christine McVie took a 15-year hiatus from Fleetwood Mac due to her fear of flying
In 1998, Christine McVie dropped out of Fleetwood Mac shortly after the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The keyboardist has been open about her flying phobia and panic attacks, and how they contributed to the reasons why she left the group. “I did have a phobia about flying. And I had the phobia when I left Fleetwood Mac,” McVie told CBS News (via Express). “It was a multiple of different reasons that led me to leave – my father had died in England, and I wanted to be close to my own family there. So I bought a house.”
She added, “The (Northridge, California) earthquake happened in ‘94 and I developed a phobia about flying. It was multiple reasons why I thought, ‘I’ve had enough. I wanna go home, and live in the country and get a Range Rover and get the dogs, the wellie boots and the scarf and cook for the YMCA,’ or whatever.”
After years of being too afraid to fly, McVie worked with a therapist to overcome her phobia. The therapist asked her where she would fly if she could go anywhere in the world.
“I said Maui because that’s where Mick [Fleetwood] was living at the time,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in March 2019. “So, the therapist said, ‘Why don’t you just buy a ticket. You don’t have to get on the plane, just buy the ticket.’”
It turned out that drummer Mick Fleetwood had just booked a flight to see McVie. “Then as irony would have it, Mick called me just after and said, ‘Look, I’m coming to London, are you around?’ I told him that I’d just bought a ticket to see him and he said, ‘Well I’ll meet you in London then and we’ll fly back together.’ So that’s what I did.”
Lindsey Buckingham gave Christine McVie 1 warning when she rejoined Fleetwood Mac
After overcoming her fear of flying, Christine McVie was ready to rejoin Fleetwood Mac. She met up with Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood in Los Angeles for dinner.
“Just the five of us had a private room and had the most lovely, lovely evening together,” McVie told CBS News in September 2014. “We were just going, ‘How weird is this, the five of us back together again?’ And then I went back to England. And then conversations started. And I’m pretty sure it was me that ventured forth to Mick and said, ‘Well, what would be the chances, you know, of me getting back with the band?’”
She said that Buckingham gave her a warning about rejoining the band. “I had a conference call with Lindsey and Mick. John was absolutely fine with everything,” McVie described. “And Lindsey said, ‘What are you doing now, if you’re coming back? You can’t be coming and going. You’ve gotta, like, commit, you know?’ And I said, ‘I commit. I commit. I do. I do.’”
Stevie Nicks also warned the ‘Songbird’ singer about rejoining the band
Another member of Fleetwood Mac warned Christine McVie about rejoining the group. Stevie Nicks was elated that the keyboardist wanted to come back, but she also gave McVie a piece of advice.
“I called Stevie, who was then in Paris, and said, ‘What would you think, hypothetically, if I was to come back to the band?’” McVie said. “And she just jumped for joy and said, ‘Are you kidding? Absolutely.’”
But McVie told The New Yorker in January 2015 that Nicks’ acceptance came with a caveat. “Stevie told me I had to get in shape, because the road was grueling, and I said, ‘Stevie, you must recall that I was in the band before you were. I know how hard the road is.’”
