A life of music, laughter and ‘fantastic friends’

FLEETWOOD MAC SINGER-SONGWRITER WAS SIMPLE, DIRECT AND CONFESSIONAL IN HER SONGS — AND IN HER LIFE

WHEN I REACHED THE CHORUS THEY STARTED SINGING WITH ME AND FELL RIGHT INTO IT. I HEARD THIS INCREDIBLE SOUND — OUR THREE VOICES — AND  SAID TO MYSELF: ‘IS THIS ME SINGING?’ I COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW GREAT THIS THREE-VOICE HARMONY WAS. — CHRISTINE MCVIE

Christine Mcvie, who has died aged 79, was a singer and songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. She saw the band through their first incarnation as a British blues band and was part of the successful lineup during the subsequent years in the U.S., when her writing and singing formed the backbone to the highly personal album Rumours (1977), a musical autobiography cataloguing the emotional and drugfuelled lives of the band’s five members.

A classically trained pianist with a warm and smoky alto singing voice, she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970, a year after her marriage to the band’s bass player, John Mcvie. At this stage based in Britain and still very much part of the British blues scene, Fleetwood Mac had just lost their founding member, Peter Green.

Mcvie was to become a key member (and initially the only female) of the group. She recorded three albums with them before agreeing, reluctantly, to move to the U.S. with her husband and the band’s drummer, Mick Fleetwood, in an attempt to revive Fleetwood Mac’s waning popularity.

Within a year they had recruited two American musicians, Lindsey Buckingham, an established guitarist and singer-songwriter, and his girlfriend and musical partner, Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and Nicks became, alongside Mcvie, the band’s principal singers and songwriters.

From the start, Mcvie realized that they had found a distinct new sound. “I started playing Say You Love Me,” she recalled, “and when I reached the chorus they started singing with me and fell right into it. I heard this incredible sound — our three voices — and said to myself: ‘Is this me singing?’ I couldn’t believe how great this three-voice harmony was.”

The three singers also complemented each other in terms of their songwriting and performing styles. Mcvie was the most understated, and when on stage she would always remain seated at her keyboards. Her songs were simple, direct and confessional, usually about the joy and heartache of love. Her fellow singer-songwriters were in turn mystical and ethereal (Nicks) and highly strung but technically controlled (Buckingham).

The new lineup released the album Fleetwood Mac in 1975. In addition to hit songs written and performed by Buckingham and Nicks, the album included Over My Head and Say You Love Me, by Mcvie, both of which reached the Top 20. But it was Rumours, which, two years later, was to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time.

Christine McVie appeared to maintain a cosmic serenity through it all

Voice of composure

Christine Mcvie helped hold Fleetwood Mac together with cosmic calm

CHRIS RICHARDS

The Washington Post

Love songs can be quaint little things or wild metaphysical proclamations, and it's so nice when they can be both, like in the case of Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere.

The year is 1987. The place is in the song's title. Christine Mcvie, her band's sturdiest yet somewhat stealthiest member, soars into the refrain on a rising melody that feels like a heart being released from gravity. Then comes a line as casually wonderful as a scribbled love note. “I wanna be with you everywhere.”

Here's the small way to hear it: I want you by my side when I wake up, when I walk the dog, when I do the grocery shopping.

Here's the big way to hear it: I want to experience the entirety of space-time with you, the sheer immensity of our love permeating every moment and location in this known universe, including the produce aisle.

In the turbulence of the Fleetwood Mac universe, it's also easy to hear Everywhere as a sort of culmination.

Mcvie, who died Wednesday at 79, wrote the song for the band's last great album, Tango in the Night, and it contains so many of the group's paradoxical magic tricks — vocal harmonies that sound both dreamy and in-your-face; a groove that lands pillowy and taut; that twitchy yearning beneath an overall sheen of calm that makes so many Fleetwood Mac songs feel effortless, urgent, fragile and expensive.

Famously, Mcvie was the voice of composure in her historically tumultuous crew. She married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie in 1968, then joined the group a few years later, only to divorce in 1976 — a separation outshone by a concurrent split between bandmates Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. A year later, the gang released their planeteating Rumours album and became the biggest rock stars drawing breath.

McVie appeared to maintain a cosmic serenity through it all. This year, in an interview with Rolling Stone, she described herself as “the Mother Teresa who would hang out with everybody or just try and (keep) everything nice and cool and relaxed” — additionally noting, “Even though I am quite a peaceful person, I did enjoy that storm.”

Was she talking about her role in the band's dramarama or her place in their music?

Focus your attention on Mcvie's voice during the finest songs that she wrote, co-wrote, sung and co-sung — Don't Stop, You Make Loving Fun, Hold Me, Little Lies, Everywhere — and you can hear the durability of her singing as a form of peacekeeping, imbuing Fleetwood Mac's opulence with a sense of consistency, continuity and equanimity.

In that same interview, when asked in which era of the band she felt most happy, Mcvie said, “I think I was happy pretty much all the time.”

Christine McVie's music so powerful, so meaningful

Christine McVie

Spotify Playlist

1

At least today, in their grief, everybody can listen to Christine McVie's music.

It didn't used to be this way. First and foremost because the record stores immediately ran out of inventory, and it would take weeks for new records to be pressed and shipped.

But that makes the point that we owned a limited number of records in the pre-internet, pre-Spotify era. Which is all to say there were groups we were aware of that we owned no albums of, like Fleetwood Mac.

Of course I knew "Oh Well," it was an FM staple when most people were still listening to AM. FM addicts were hipper, clued-in on certain tracks and bands that were unknown to the hoi polloi.

And ultimately "Oh Well" was stripped into the band's 1969 album "Then Play On," which I saw all the time in the bins, it had that unique cover.

And then Santana had a huge hit with "Black Magic Woman," which the same FM acolytes knew was written by Peter Green and done by Fleetwood Mac, even though in many cases we'd never heard the original, which we eventually did, you'd think it would have gained contemporaneous airplay on these same FM stations, but it did not. But eventually we were at somebody's house who had "Then Play On." That was a feature of going to a friend's domicile, to not only comb through their albums, but to play certain tracks you loved that you didn't own and probably never would.

And then Peter Green left the band and not only was there an endless succession of guitarists, one left the group to join the Children of God, and then there was that fake band put out by the manager and...

This was all news, I knew all this, but most of the music meant nothing to me, I'd never even heard it.

And then came "Station Man." Christine McVie neither wrote it nor sang the lead vocal, after all she wasn't even a band member, but she was unmistakable in the background vocals, it was the first Fleetwood Mac track I cottoned to, that I wanted to hear again, that I turned up every time I heard it on the radio.

And then Christine joined the band. I read that she'd been in Chicken Shack, but that band meant absolutely nothing in the U.S. Cool that she was married to the group's bass player, John McVie, but...

It was the early seventies. You could make a number of albums for a major label and never have a hit. Which was the case with Fleetwood Mac. They'd promote the records, you'd see them in ads, in the store, but chances are you never bought them. I certainly did not.

And then, five albums after "Kiln House," which contained the aforementioned "Station Man," came "Heroes Are Hard to Find."

I'm talking the single, the opening cut, not the entire album. Like "Station Man," you heard "Heroes Are Hard to Find" on the radio and continued to hear it. There was that groove, but even more there was that recitation of the title in the chorus that was so magical, actually the same magic Christine brought to subsequent Fleetwood Mac albums, but this was the first time I remembered it shining, hearing it shine on the radio.

And then came "Over My Head."

2

"You can take me to the paradise

And then again you can be cold as ice"

Let's see, it was my second year in Utah. At the end of which I realized I had to leave or else I'd be there forever.

You see I'd made friends with the freestylers the previous May in Mammoth, we were all gonna compete on the tour the following year. Jimmy Kay had competed the year before.

But Jimmy got aced out the following December, I choked and Jimmy went back to New Jersey to lick his wounds with his family, Al went back to L.A. and I stayed in the apartment with "Chang," a Vietnamese student who hadn't heard from his family in years.

This is when it hit me, what was I doing here? I didn't even want to ski. It made no sense. When I was in college skiing was part of my overall life, now it was everything and I needed more.

Jimmy said I could sleep in his bed while he was gone (I'd been sleeping on the couch before this). And therefore I could play his 8-tracks, he had two brand new ones, that he'd recorded from albums he bought, "Fleetwood Mac" and "A Night at the Opera." This is when I fell in love with "I'm in Love With My Car." And "39." My favorite song on the album was and probably still is "Your My Best Friend," but when listening to the album these two tracks surfaced. As for "Bohemian Rhapsody," it was just a cool novelty song, a track dedicated radio listeners knew, not a classic on the level of "Stairway to Heaven," that would take years, really it was the "Wayne's World" movie that made it iconic, the same way "Don't Stop Believin'" was made iconic by its inclusion in the finale of "The Sopranos."

Now I first heard "Over My Head" on the radio, I found it infectious, because contrary to seemingly everything else, it was understated, a track that set your mind free. You know, the kind that made you think you too could be in love, maybe even with Christine McVie.

Yes, I knew who she was. Stevie Nicks was just another woman in the band, one who did not play an instrument, Christine's single came out first. And I'd say Christine was the star, but that's just the point, she was an anti-star, she wasn't dolled up to look like a model, she wasn't asked twenty questions in a dumb magazine article, she was one of the guys, a boys' girl, and there were very few of those in rock and roll. Bonnie Raitt is the only other one that comes to mind. You felt like you could hang with both of them, that there was something below the surface, that they spoke your language, that they weren't prissy, you didn't have to be on guard the entire time, you could just be yourself. and isn't that what we're all looking for?

And on Christmas Day, my parents called. Jews do this, even though the holiday does not apply. Usually we eat Chinese food and go to the movies, maybe two, at least that's what we used to do, well, when I moved to L.A. But before that, every Christmas Day I went skiing, and my parents were in Vermont doing same and I told my mother I was at loose ends and she castigated me and told me to get a job. My father said he didn't know what was going on, but he was gonna send me twenty bucks and I should go for a good meal, that I'd figure it out.

And then I got back into Jimmy's bed and fired up "Over My Head," listened to it over and over again, which ain't that easy to do on an 8-track.

There’s much to applaud about the multitalented Christine McVie

Farewell to Christine McVie, who gave us music for all time

Barbara Ellen

Dec 4, 2022

The Guardian

The Fleetwood Mac singer songwriter, who died last week, is among a select group whose music is culturally indelible

Most of us have our favourite musical artists, the ones we deliberately seek out, but what about the other kind, the ones who wriggle in through the trapdoor of your mind? That, in the sweetest, strangest way, gatecrash your cultural consciousness when you’re not quite paying attention, then embed there. Forever.

When news came of the death of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie at age 79, the internet did one of its loving, sorrowful double-takes. Of course it did. There’s much to applaud about the multitalented McVie: those scuffed-velvet vocals; the chilled charisma of a woman who truly knew herself; that decades-spanning rock’n’roll sisterhood with fellow band member Stevie Nicks laying waste to the sexist fiction that two highly creative women always have to end up in a catfight.

And, of course, McVie’s songwriting: Little Lies, Songbird, Don’t Stop, The Chain – the last three all from a single album, Fleetwood Mac’s 1977, 45m-selling Rumours. This is where the reaction to McVie, and more generally to Fleetwood Mac, starts to splinter. On the one hand, the many devotees, the Mac-heads. On the other, people, hazy on details, but who realise they know more Mac-songs than they thought. And who mentally flash on to the Rumours album cover (Mick with his ponytail; Nicks arching in shadowy robes) as easily as recalling the face of a childhood friend.

None of which is remotely surprising. What McVie’s passing brings home is that, somewhere along the way, she and Fleetwood Mac near as dammit became their own genre. That they’re part of a relatively select canon of artists who have not only been enjoyed for decades, but have become culturally indelible, like a tattooing of the collective psyche.

There’s nothing new about this or about monetising it. It’s why companies such as Hipgnosis have been paying out billions on back catalogues, to older and younger artists (with McVie and certain other members of the band signing up). The companies know certain artists have an impact far beyond music platforms. That it’s not just about what people choose to hear through their headphones or speakers, it’s also about musical osmosis: background sounds swirling around us. The idea that, to a certain extent, the soundtrack of your life is decided without you.

This is how songs from rock, pop, and every other genre become as immortal as Christmas carols. How Elton John can announce that next year’s headlining Glastonbury slot will be his last, but we all know Goodbye Yellow Brick Road isn’t going anywhere. It’s where Madonna will always be vogueing and the Beatles eternally walk barefoot across the Abbey Road crossing. It’s also where Christine will be playing synth and singing into her mike, alongside Stevie, John, Mick and Lindsey forever.

Isn’t this the sweet spot in which Fleetwood Mac find themselves? They’re woven into the tapestry of life in a way beyond mere commercial longevity, rather a blend of talent, magnetism and cultural immersion. I like to think the famously modest McVie was privately thrilled this is where her musical contribution ended up. She did the work, she paid her dues and now all those songs – those California-soaked hymns to dreams and nightmares – are just “there”, part of the collective memory; music society has decided it just can’t shake.

McVie forged a legendary history on the Billboard Hot 100 with Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie’s Top 10 Biggest Hot 100 Hits

McVie forged a legendary history on the Billboard Hot 100 with Fleetwood Mac & as a soloist.

By Keith Caulfield

Billboard

Photo Randee St. Nicholas

Late singer-songwriter Christine McVie, who died Nov. 30 at age 79, left a great impression on Billboard’s charts through the decades, thanks to her pure pop/rock sensibility that often lifted Fleetwood Mac, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band in which she was a longtime member, to incredible heights.

For most of Fleetwood Mac’s hitmaking career, McVie was one of its three primary singers and songwriters, alongside Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Notably, McVie wrote and sang lead vocals on three of the band’s top four biggest hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – including the group’s biggest song, “Hold Me.”

Billboard has exclusively compiled McVie’s top 10 biggest hits on the Hot 100 chart, based on actual performance on the weekly survey. Included were any charted songs by Fleetwood Mac that McVie wrote and on which she sang lead vocals, as well as her solo recordings outside the band.

McVie’s biggest Hot 100 hit is the 1982 Fleetwood Mac song “Hold Me,” which was released as the first single from the band’s Mirage album. It spent a staggering seven weeks at its peak of No. 4 on the weekly Hot 100 chart – a then-record for that peak rank. McVie sang lead vocals on “Hold Me,” and it was written by McVie and Robbie Patton. (Overall, “Hold Me” is Fleetwood Mac’s biggest Hot 100 hit, while the group’s No. 2 hit is its lone chart-topper on the weekly Hot 100 – 1977’s “Dreams,” penned by Nicks, who also sang its lead vocal.)

McVie’s second-biggest all-time Hot 100 hit is “Little Lies,” which was released in 1987 as the third single from Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night album. McVie had lead vocal duties on the cut, and she co-wrote it with her then-husband Eddy Quintela.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” – which was solely written by McVie, who shared lead vocals with Buckingham – is her third-biggest Hot 100 hit. The track became one of four top 10-charting singles from the mega-successful Rumours album. The set spent 31 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 – still a record for any album by a group.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me” and “You Make Loving Fun” (both singularly written by McVie, who sang lead) round out McVie’s top five biggest Hot 100 hits. The former was released in 1976 as the final single from the band’s self-titled album. That album was the first to feature the lineup of Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Nicks, Christine McVie and her first husband John McVie.

The Buckingham/Fleetwood/Nicks/McVie/McVie lineup would release five studio albums (from 1975’s self-titled set through 1987’s Tango In the Night) and two live albums (1980’s Live and 1997’s The Dance). All four of the act’s No. 1 albums were by that famed lineup, with the self-titled set, Rumours, Mirage and The Dance all topping the Billboard 200.

Christine McVie’s 10 Biggest Billboard Hits recap is based on actual performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at No. 100 earning the least. To ensure equitable representation of the biggest hits from each era, certain time frames were weighted to account for the difference between turnover rates from those years.

10. Fleetwood Mac’s “Think About Me,” from Tusk, peaked at No. 20 in 1980.

09. Fleetwood Mac’s “Love In Store,” from Mirage, peaked at No. 22 in 1983.

08. Fleetwood Mac’s “Over My Head,” from the band’s self-titled 1975 album, peaked at No. 20 in 1976.

07. Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere,” from Tango in the Night, peaked at No. 14 in 1988.

06. Christine McVie’s “Got a Hold On Me,” from her self-titled second solo album, peaked at No. 10 in 1984.

05. Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun,” from Rumours, peaked at No. 9 in 1977.

04. Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me,” from Fleetwood Mac, peaked at No. 11 in 1976.

03. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” from Rumours, peaked at No. 3 in 1977.

02. Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies,” from Tango in the Night, peaked at No. 4 in 1987.

01. Fleetwood Mac’s “Hold Me,” from Mirage, spent seven weeks at No. 4 in 1982.

Christine McVie staked her claim as one of the most potent singer-songwriters of her generation

Remembering Christine McVie Of Fleetwood Mac Through Her GRAMMY Triumphs, From 'Rumours' Onward

Unflashy and undramatic, McVie's contributions to Fleetwood Mac led to some of their greatest contributions to popular song — with two GRAMMY wins to boot.

ROB LEDONNE

GRAMMYS - DEC 2, 2022

In an acclaimed career that spanned more than half a century, Christine McVie staked her claim as one of the most potent singer-songwriters of her generation. A beloved original member of the seminal rock group Fleetwood Mac, with whom she sang, wrote and played keyboard, she and her bandmates catapulted to fame in the early '70s, scoring GRAMMY gold and influencing generations of musicians.

"As a GRAMMY Award winner and 2018 Person of the Year honoree, the Recording Academy has been honored to celebrate Christine McVie and her work with Fleetwood Mac throughout her legendary career," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. stated. In an announcement of her death, the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac mourned her passing by saying "She was truly one-of-a-kind, special, and talented beyond measure."

McVie, who passed away Nov. 30 at 79 after a brief illness, may have not been as flashy, or as dramatic, as fellow Fleetwood Mac members Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But McVie's contributions to the band led to some of their greatest contributions to popular song, with two GRAMMY wins among seven nominations.

The tour de force that is Rumours is one of the most acclaimed and best-selling albums of all time and an inductee into GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. The masterpiece earned McVie her first GRAMMY (for Album of the Year no less) at the 20th Annual Ceremony in 1978, also earning a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance By A Group.

Fleetwood Mac's 11th studio album, Rumours was actually McVie's 7th album with the band after making her name in the English blues scene, rising through the ranks as part of the band Chicken Shack, and even releasing a solo album.

In 1971, McVie joined Fleetwood Mac alongside her then-husband John McVie. The potent combination of the McVies, along with Mick Fleetwood, Buckingham and Nicks, catalyzed and detonated into the stratospheric Rumours.

"It's hard to say (what it was like) because we were looking at it from the inside," McVie said about the iconic album earlier this year.  "We were having a blast and it felt incredible to us that we were writing those songs. That's all I can say about it, really."

McVie's coyness may stem from the fact that prior to its production, Christine and John divorced after eight years of marriage. Meanwhile, Buckingham and Nicks were having a tumultuous relationship themselves. 

McVie is credited as sole songwriter on a handful of instant-classic Rumours tracks, all written during a perilous moment. "I thought I was drying up," explained McVie. "I was practically panicking because every time I sat down at a piano, nothing came out. Then, one day,  I just sat down and wrote in the studio, and the four-and-a-half songs of mine on the album are a result of that."

That includes "Don't Stop," an ironically peppy ode considering the turmoil McVie and her bandmates were grappling with at the time. With lyrics that staunchly proclaim "Yesterday's gone!," the song was reportedly written as a plea from Christine to John to move on from their relationship.

"I dare say, if I hadn't joined Fleetwood Mac, we might still be together. I just think it's impossible to work in the band with your spouse," McVie later said. John, meanwhile, was oblivious to the song's message during its production and early acclaim. He revealed in 2015: "I've been playing it for years and it wasn't until somebody told me, 'Chris wrote that about you.' Oh really?"

John was also equally ignorant to the source inspiration of "You Make Loving Fun"; McVie told him the joyful song ("Sweet wonderful you/ You make me happy with the things you do") was about her dog. In reality, it was about an affair with the band's lighting designer.

"It was a therapeutic move," McVie later mused of her lyrical penchant for hiding brutal honesty in plain sight. "The only way we could get this stuff out was to say it, and it came out in a way that was difficult. Imagine trying to sing those songs onstage with the people you're singing them about."

When McVie was asked earlier this year what song she written she was most proud of, it was an easy answer: the Rumours track "Songbird."

"For some peculiar reason, I wrote "Songbird" in half an hour; I've never been able to figure out how I did that," she told People. "I woke up in the middle of the night and the song was there in my brain, chords, lyrics, melody, everything. I played it in my bedroom and didn't have anything to tape it on. So I had to stay awake all night so I wouldn't forget it and I came in the next morning to the studio and had (producer) Ken Callait put it on a 2-track. That was how the song ended up being. I don't know where that came from."

McVie's most recent GRAMMY nominations were for her contributions to The Dance, Fleetwood Mac's 1997 live album that featured her stand-outs from Rumours along with the McVie penned-tracks "Say You Love Me" and "Everywhere."

The album earned McVie and the band GRAMMY nominations for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal (for the Lindsay Buckingham-written "The Chain") and  Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal (for "Silver Springs," penned by Stevie Nicks). It also landed a nomination for Best Pop Album. It was her final album with the band before a 15-year self-imposed retirement.

In her final years, McVie was a vital member of Fleetwood Mac, including in 2018 when they became the first band honored as MusicCare's Person of the Year.

Speaking to the Recording Academy before the ceremony, Nicks expressed that her initial goal upon joining the group was a humble one: "Christine and I made a pact. We said we will never, ever be treated as a second-class citizen amongst our peers."

Album Sales Jump In Response To Christine McVie's Death

UK Album Sales

 

The death, at the age of 79, of Fleetwood Mac legend Christine McVie was announced on Wednesday (30 November). In apparent response, the band’s most celebrated album, Rumours, bounces 42-24, achieving a 31-week high on consumption of 3,585 units, while the most recent compilation of the band’s work, 50 Years: Don’t Stop holds at No.23 (3,667 sales). In reality, Rumours was already at No.28 on Wednesday’s sales flashes before McVie’s death, while 50 Years was at No.24. They therefore secured only minor improvements after her demise – partly because, as is most frequently the case, streaming data was not available from most major players for Thursday, with the week’s data to that point being upweighted to compensate. However, sales of CD & vinyl editions of Rumours were up 56.36% week-on-week from 848 to 1,326, while digital downloads were up 2045.45% from just 22 to 472.

The Warner family has lost a dear friend of many decades with the passing of Christine McVie

CHRISTINE MCVIE,

1943-2022

Hits Daily Double

Keyboardist, singer and songwriter Christine McVie, a key member of Fleetwood Mac during its commercial peak in the 1970s and '80s, died on 11/30 after a short illness. She was 79.

The surviving members of Fleetwood Mac issued a statement that reads: “There are no words to describe our sadness at the passing of Christine McVie. She was truly one of a kind, special and talented beyond measure. She was the best musician anyone could have in their band and the best friend anyone could have in their life. We were so lucky to have a life with her. Individually and together, we cherished Christine deeply and are thankful for the amazing memories we have. She will be so very missed.”

McVie, who used her maiden name, Christine Perfect, as a solo artist and member of Chicken Shack in the 1960s, married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie and joined his band as a permanent member in 1971. (She was a guest on two of their '60s albums.) As the group evolved from its blues-rock roots with a revolving cast of guitarists and singers, McVie blossomed as a songwriter and lead singer on such albums as Mystery to Me and Heroes Are Hard to Find; a contribution to 1972's Bare Trees, "Spare Me a Little of Your Love," demonstrated the unique soulfulness that would become her vocal trademark.    

Even after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the band and gave it a new look and pop spin, McVie was on equal footing as a writer and singer: She had two Top 20 hits, “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me,” on Fleetwood Mac's self-titled 1975 breakthrough album and for its follow-up, 1977’s era-defining Rumours, wrote and sang “Don’t Stop,” “You Make Lovin’ Fun,” “Oh Daddy” and “Songbird.”

Following the Buckingham/Nicks-dominated Tusk, which featured McVie’s “Think About Me,” she provided the band’s late-era hits “Hold Me,” “Little Lies” and “Save Me.” Her voice has lately been used to sell Chevrolets, with “Everywhere,” from 1987’s Tango in the Night, revived thanks to the oft-played commercial.

McVie chose to stop playing live with the band following a 1990 tour and sat out a 1994 reunion with Buckingham, Nicks, John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, performing with the group a handful of times through 1998. The standout gig during that period was the televised 1997 special that became the multimillion-seller The Dance.

McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac for a 2014 tour and a 2018 run with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell replacing Buckingham.

As a solo artist, McVie released three albums—1970’s Christine Perfect, 1984’s Christine McVie, which cracked the Top 30, and 2004’s In the Meantime—and, most recently, an eponymous 2017 album with Buckingham.

McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac. 

"The loss of Christine McVie is not only devastating to all of us in her Warner Music family across the globe but to the entire music community and her countless millions of fans," reads a quote from WMG Recorded Music chief Max Lousada. "From her early days with Chicken Shack to her phenomenal time with Fleetwood Mac to her brilliant solo work, Christine has been in our collective musical consciousness for nearly six decades. Her voice was unmistakable and indelible, her songwriting beautiful and peerless and her live performances powerful and entrancing. She was, and is, a musical icon for the ages, and she will be deeply missed. Our condolences go out to her family, friends and bandmates."

"The Warner family has lost a dear friend of many decades with the passing of Christine McVie," added President of Global Catalog, Recorded Music Kevin Gore. "She was an exceptionally gifted musician, with her signature vocals and impeccable songwriting front and center on many of Fleetwood Mac’s most beloved hits. I had the honor of spending time with Christine a few years ago to discuss how to best present her solo work, and I’m so pleased with the collection she produced, which recently earned a Grammy nomination. Our deepest condolences go out to Christine’s family, bandmates and friends, along with her legions of fans around the world. Warner Music will continue to honor and preserve Christine’s unparalleled legacy and, though she may no longer be with us, we will all, like the songbird, keep singing her songs."

"We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Christine McVie," reads a statement from the Eagles. "Hers was a vibrant, soulful spirit, and her music was, and will remain, a gift to the world. We had the utmost admiration and respect for Christine. We send our heartfelt condolences to her family, her bandmates and her legions of fans." 

Stevie Nicks once said from the stage that McVie was her “mentor, big sister, best friend”

‘I would probably be delighted’ – how Christine McVie opened up about wanting to rejoin Fleetwood Mac

For a fan, interviewing the late musician was like a surreal dream. Better still was the privilege of hearing about her lifelong friendship with Stevie Nicks

By Tim Jonze

The Guardian

Dec 2, 2022

For a fan, interviewing the late musician was like a surreal dream. Better still was the privilege of hearing about her lifelong friendship with Stevie Nicks

It was strange enough being in Christine McVie’s flat – high up and hovering over a stretch of the River Thames in Battersea with an upright piano in the corner of the room (oh, to be her neighbour). But it was stranger still hearing what she had to say. As we sat together on her light grey sofa in December 2013, McVie told me how she had left Fleetwood Mac in 1998 thinking that she wanted a quiet life in the Kent countryside with her dogs and Hunter wellies. But that hadn’t been what she had wanted at all. Fifteen years on, McVie was restless, isolated, a little lonely … and wouldn’t it be nice if she could be back playing with the band? “If they were to ask me, I would probably be very delighted,” she ventured nervously.

What was I supposed to say to this? It seemed obvious to me that they would take her back in a flash. Earlier that year, Stevie Nicks had said she’d “beg, borrow and scrape together $5m and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That’s how much I miss her!” And just two months before, McVie had even appeared on stage with Fleetwood Mac to thrill the crowd with a surprise encore of her hit Don’t Stop.

Of course, it’s eminently possible that this was all stage-managed by the band: ask McVie to sound reticent in front of a journalist in order to build the hype around her grand return. But this was also a genuinely dysfunctional band that revolved around the careful massaging of male egos. Communicating their deepest desires to each other via the press was equally likely. I think McVie was being genuine in her cautious approach, not just because I like to pretend I played a key role in getting the classic lineup of Fleetwood Mac back together, but because everything about her seemed genuine.

When I told McVie how excited I was to meet her – a rare bit of fanboying that I would normally steer well clear of – she looked uncertain how to respond, a tad embarrassed. While Nicks, who I had met a few weeks earlier in Paris, had spoken fantastically about fate and celestial beings and communicating with her late mother through her jewellery, McVie told me tales about mastering blues bass lines with her left hand and how she supposed she must be “good with hooks”. (“Oh, do you think so?” I had to hold myself back from replying to the woman who had written Say You Love Me, Over My Head, You Make Loving Fun, Songbird, Don’t Stop, Over and Over, Hold Me, Little Lies and Everywhere.)

The difference between the two female members of the band played out in the music, too, where McVie, with her optimistic songs about falling head over heels in love and moving on from broken hearts, complemented Nicks’s more mystical and poetic output. In a way, McVie was the McCartney to Nicks’s Lennon; each was stronger for having the other by her side.

The same was true, I discovered, about them as people. It was a privilege to hear the story of their friendship, something that can get lost beneath the wreckage of the affairs and cocaine-fuelled rows that serve the Fleetwood Mac myth. Because what really kept the band afloat during their most tumultuous period was the bond that these two sisters of the moon shared from the moment they first met up – for Mexican food in 1974.

Back then, McVie was given the final say on whether Nicks could join the band. She admitted that she might have felt threatened by another woman, five years younger and from glamorous Los Angeles, competing with her for songwriting space. But she liked Nicks instantly – and from there the band’s music blossomed. There were still plenty of tantrums, of course, and lots of bitchy infighting – only it was the men providing all that. Whenever tensions simmered too high between the guys, Nicks and McVie would seek solace in each other: sharing Dunkin’ Donuts, doing each other’s makeup, rolling their eyes at the bad behaviour of their male counterparts.

There were double standards galore. After the splits – between Christine and John McVie, and Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham – the two women were discouraged from bringing their subsequent partners on tour. What would be the point when their exes would just glare at them and start fights? But the men would happily bring their new girlfriends along. “Oh, it was all right for them,” said McVie. “But whatever keeps the lads happy, I suppose.”

They might have been pragmatic but they were no pushovers. “We made a pact, probably in our first rehearsal, that we would never accept being treated as second-class citizens in the music business,” Nicks told me. “That when we walked into a room we would be so fantastic and so strong and so smart that none of the uber-rockstar group of men would look through us. And they never did.”

Nicks once said from the stage that McVie was her “mentor … big sister … best friend”. I was probably only in her London flat for an hour or so, but I left feeling that if I were ever in a globe-straddling rock band, dealing with the many madnesses of the music industry, there would be few better people to have on your side than Christine McVie.

Fleetwood Mac Band Members Statements on the Passing of Christine McVie

Stevie Nicks Memorializes Christine McVie, Her ‘Best Friend in the Whole World’
by Devon Ivie
Vulture

Christine McVie, the prolific soul of Fleetwood Mac, died November 30 at the age of 79 following a short illness. Stevie Nicks, her songbird in music and life for nearly five decades, released a statement to honor their relationship, which began when Nicks joined the band for their Fleetwood Mac album. “A few hours ago I was told that my best friend in the whole world since the first day of 1975 had passed away. I didn’t even know she was ill until late Saturday night,” Nicks wrote on social media. “I wanted to be in London. I wanted to get to London. But we were told to wait. So, since Saturday, one song has been swirling around in my head, over and over and over. I thought I might possibly get to sing it to her, and so, I’m singing it to her now. I always knew I would need these words one day.” Nicks included a page of handwritten lyrics to Haim’s “Hallelujah” as the mentioned song, which recounts the death and legacy of a friend. “See you on the other side, my love,” she added. “Don’t forget me.”

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Mick Fleetwood, the band’s drummer, wrote on social media that “memories abound” when thinking of McVie. She joined Fleetwood Mac as a full member in 1971, with Future Games serving as her official debut as a singer and songwriter, although she worked as a session musician for the band starting with 1968’s Mr. Wonderful. “This is a day where my dear sweet friend Christine McVie has taken to flight and left us earthbound folks to listen with bated breath to the sounds of that ‘song bird,’ reminding one and all that love is all around us to reach for and touch in this precious life that is gifted to us,” he said. “Part of my heart has flown away today.”

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Guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham posted a handwritten note on Instagram calling McVie’s death “profoundly heartbreaking.” “Not only were she and I part of the magical family of Fleetwood Mac, to me Christine was a musical comrade, a friend, a soul mate, a sister,” he wrote. “For over four decades, we helped each other create a beautiful body of work and a lasting legacy that continues to resonate today. I feel very lucky to have known her.” The final classic lineup member of Fleetwood Mac, McVie’s ex-husband and bassist John McVie, has yet to speak publicly about her death.

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 Statement from Fleetwood Mac

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Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac's biggest hitmaker dies, she was 79

Christine McVie, Hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, Is Dead at 79

As a singer, songwriter and keyboardist, she was a prolific force behind one of the most popular rock bands of the last 50 years.

By Jim Farber

Nov. 30, 2022

New York Times

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday, November 30th. She was 79.

Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.

Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)

The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Loving Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).

All those songs had cleanly defined, easily sung melodies, with hints of soul and blues at the core. Her compositions had a simplicity that mirrored their construction. “I don’t struggle over my songs,” Ms. McVie (pronounced mc-VEE) told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I write them quickly.”

In just half an hour, she wrote one of the band’s most beloved songs, “Songbird,” a sensitive ballad that for years served as the band’s closing encore in concert. In 2019, the band’s leader, Mick Fleetwood, told New Musical Express that “Songbird” is the piece he wanted played at his funeral, “to send me off fluttering.”

Ms. McVie’s lyrics often captured the more intoxicating aspects of romance. “I’m definitely not a pessimist,” she told Bob Brunning, the author of the 2004 book “The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumours and Lies.” “I’m basically a love song writer.”

At the same time, her words accounted for the yearning and disappointments that can lurk below an exciting surface. “I’m good at pathos,” she told Mojo magazine in 2017. “I write about romantic despair a lot, but with a positive spin.”

‘That Chemistry’

Ms. McVie’s vocals communicated just as nuanced a range of feeling. Her soulful contralto could sound by turns maternally wise and sexually alive. Her tawny tone had the heady effect of a bourbon with a rich bouquet and a smooth finish. It found a graceful place in harmony with the voices of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, together forming a signature Fleetwood Mac sound.

“It was that chemistry,” she told Mojo. “The two of them just chirped into the perfect three-way harmony. I just remember thinking, ‘This is it!’”

A sturdy instrumentalist, Ms. McVie played a range of keyboards, often leaning toward the soulful sound of a Hammond B3 organ and the formality of a Yamaha grand piano.

With Fleetwood Mac, she earned five gold, one platinum and seven multiplatinum albums. The band’s biggest success, “Rumours,” released in 1977, was one of the mightiest movers in pop history: It was certified double diamond, representing sales of over 20 million copies.

In 1998, Ms. McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with various lineups of Fleetwood Mac, reflecting the frequent (and dramatic) personnel shifts the band experienced throughout its labyrinthine history. Ms. McVie served in incarnations that dated to 1971, but she also had uncredited roles playing keyboards and singing backup as far back as the band’s second album, released in 1968. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, she scored a No. 14 British hit with the blues band Chicken Shack on a cover of Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she sang lead.

Christine Anne Perfect was born on July 12, 1943, in the Lake District of England to Cyril Perfect, a classical violinist and college music professor and Beatrice (Reece) Perfect, a psychic.

Her father encouraged her to start taking classical piano lessons when she was 11. Her focus changed radically four years later when she came across some sheet music for Fats Domino songs. At that moment, she told Rolling Stone in 1984, “It was goodbye Chopin.”

“I started playing the boogie bass,” she told Mojo. “I got hooked on the blues. Even today, the songs I write use that left hand. It’s rooted in the blues.”

Ms. McVie studied sculpture at Birmingham Art College and for a while considered becoming an art teacher. At the same time, she briefly played in a duo with Spencer Davis, who, along with a teenage Steve Winwood, would later find fame in the Spencer Davis Group. She helped form a band named Shades of Blue with several future members of Chicken Shack.

After graduating from college in 1966, Ms. McVie moved to London and became a window dresser for a department store. One year later, she was asked to join the already formed Chicken Shack as keyboardist and sometime singer. She wrote two songs for the band’s debut album, “40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve.”

She was twice voted best female vocalist in a Melody Maker readers’ poll, but she left the band in 1969 after marrying John McVie, the bassist in Fleetwood Mac, which had been formed in 1967 and had already recorded three albums. That same year, she recorded a solo album, “The Legendary Christine Perfect Album,” which she later described to Rolling Stone as “so wimpy.”

“I just hate to listen to it,” she said.

Joining the Band

Her disappointment in that record, combined with her reluctance to perform, caused Ms. McVie to put music aside for a time. But, in 1970, when Fleetwood Mac’s main draw, the guitarist Peter Green, suddenly quit the band after a ruinous acid trip, Mick Fleetwood invited her to fill out their ranks.

Initially, she found the invitation to join her favorite band “a nerve-racking experience,” she told Rolling Stone. But she rose to the occasion by writing two of the catchiest songs on her first official release with the band, “Future Games” (1971). That release found the band leaning away from British blues and toward progressive Southern Californian folk-rock, aided by the addition of an American player, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Bob Welch.

The band fine-tuned that sound on its 1972 set “Bare Trees,” which sold better and featured one of Ms. McVie’s most soulful songs, “Spare Me a Little of Your Love.” The band’s 1973 release, “Penguin,” went gold. The next collection, “Heroes Are Hard to Find,” was the band’s first to crack the U.S. Top 40. But it was only after the departure of Mr. Welch and the hiring of the romantically involved team of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, for the 1975 album simply called “Fleetwood Mac,” that the band began to show its full commercial brio.

Ms. McVie‘s song “Over My Head” began the groundswell by entering Billboard’s Top 20; her “Say You Love Me,” reached No. 11. After a slow buildup, the “Fleetwood Mac” album eventually hit Billboard’s summit.

Just over a year and a half later, the group released “Rumours,” which generated outsize interest not only for its four Top 10 hits (two of them written by Ms. McVie) but also for several highly dramatic behind-the-scenes events within the band’s ranks, which they aired out in the lyrics and openly discussed in the press.

During the creation of the album, the two couples in the band — Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham and the married McVies — broke up. Ms. McVie’s song “You Make Loving Fun” celebrated an affair she was then having with the band’s lighting director. (At first, she told Mr. McVie that the song was about her dog.) The optimistic-sounding “Don’t Stop” was intended to point her ex-husband toward a new life without her.

“We wrote those songs despite ourselves,” Ms. McVie told Mojo. “It was a therapeutic move. The only way we could get this stuff out was to say it, and it came out in a way that was difficult. Imagine trying to sing those songs onstage with the people you’re singing them about.”

It helped dull the pain, she told Mojo, that “we were all very high,” adding, “I don’t think there was a sober day.” And the album’s megasuccess gave the members a different high. “The buzz of realizing you’ve written one of the best albums ever written; it was such a phenomenal time,” Ms. McVie told Attitude magazine in 2019.

But the group yearned to stretch creatively. The result was the less commercial sound of the double-album follow-up, “Tusk,” released in 1979. Though not a success on anything near the scale of “Rumours,” it sold more than two million copies and produced three hits, including Ms. McVie’s “Think About Me.”

Into the ’80s

The group moved smoothly into the new decade with the 1982 release “Mirage,” which hit No. 1 aided by Ms. McVie’s “Hold Me,” a Top Five hit that was inspired by her tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. Two years later, Ms. McVie issued a solo album that made the Top 30, while its strongest single, “Got a Hold on Me,” broke the Top 10.

In 1987, the reconvened Fleetwood Mac issued “Tango in the Night,” which featured two hits written by Ms. McVie, “Everywhere” and “Little Lies.” (“Little Lies” was written with the Portuguese musician and songwriter Eddie Quintela, whom she had wed the year before. They would divorce in 2003.) Mr. Buckingham left the group shortly afterward, shaking the dynamic that had made their recordings stellar. The 1990 album “Behind the Mask” barely went gold, producing just one Top 40 single (“Save Me,” written by Ms. McVie), while “Time,” issued five years later, was the band’s first unsuccessful album in two decades.

Ms. McVie didn’t tour with the band to support “Time.” But the early 1990s brought broad new attention to her hit “Don’t Stop” when it became the theme song for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. In 1993, Mr. Clinton persuaded the five musicians who played on that hit to reunite to perform it at an Inaugural ball.

They came together again in 1997 for a tour, which produced the live album “The Dance,” one of the top-selling concert recordings of all time. Yet by the next year a growing fear of flying, and a desire to return to England from the band’s adopted home of Los Angeles, inspired Ms. McVie to retire to the English countryside.

Five years later, she agreed to add some keyboard parts and backing vocals to a largely ignored Fleetwood Mac album, “Say You Will,” and in 2006 she produced a little-heard solo album, “In the Meantime,” which she recorded and wrote with her guitarist nephew Dan Perfect.

Finally, in 2014, driven by boredom and a growing sense of isolation, she reunited with the prime Mac lineup for the massive “On With The Show” tour. In its wake, Ms. McVie began to write lots of new material, as did Mr. Buckingham, resulting in an album under both their names in 2017, as well as a joint tour. The full band also played shows that year; even though Mr. Buckingham was fired in 2018, Ms. McVie continued to tour with the group in a lineup that included Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 2021, Ms. McVie sold publishing rights to her entire 115-song catalog for an undisclosed sum.

Information on her survivors was not immediately available.

Throughout her career, Ms. McVie took pride in never being categorized by her gender. “I kind of became one of the guys,” she told the British newspaper The Independent in 2019. “I was always treated with great respect.”

While she always acknowledged the special chemistry of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup, she believed her role transcended it.

“Band members leave and other people take their place,” she told Rolling Stone, “but there was always that space where the piano should be.”