Back in 2014, something wonderful happened to Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. They tried writing songs together for the first time in ages – taking a tentative, low-stakes approach – and were overjoyed to discover that “within the first hour,” as Buckingham puts it, “it was like, ‘Holy shit, whatever we used to have—’ ” “—is still there,” says McVie, sitting a few feet away. It’s mid-May, and the Fleetwood Mac icons are on a soundstage in L.A., about to rehearse. Those new songs grew into an album, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, which will imminently give way to a new tour, so they’ve booked this space for five weeks of practice.
The pair’s success was in no way guaranteed. Sure, back in the late Seventies, while working on Rumours and Tusk,…