Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird" Finally Gets Her Own Bio

[ { "name": "Related Stories / Support Us Combo", "component": "11591218", "insertPoint": "4", "requiredCountToDisplay": "4" },{ "name": "Air - Billboard - Inline Content", "component": "11591214", "insertPoint": "2/3", "requiredCountToDisplay": "7" },{ "name": "R1 - Beta - Mobile Only", "component": "12287027", "insertPoint": "8", "requiredCountToDisplay": "8" },{ "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2", "component": "11591215", "insertPoint": "12", "requiredCountToDisplay": "12" },{ "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2", "component": "11591215", "insertPoint": "4th", "startingPoint": "16", "requiredCountToDisplay": "12" } ] It's always something of a jolt for fans of a band when its first original or classic member dies. A reminder that even "ageless" rock stars face mortality—and that the listener's own march toward death is keeping up at the same pace. Still, it was something of a shock in late 2022 when news of Christine McVie's sudden death at the age of 79 broke. Most didn't even know she had been ill when she died of a stroke brought on by metastatic cancer. Sure, she had drunk and drugged along with the rest of the "Classic Five" Fleetwood Mac lineup during their most hedonistic heyday of the late '70s/early '80s. But if you put money down that the quiet, reserved and somewhat mysterious McVie would go before Mick Fleetwood, ex-husband John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, or Stevie Nicks—all with deeper histories of substance abuse and health challenges—the odds would have paid you handsomely. Music journalist Lesley-Ann Jones comes offers a look at life and music of the woman whose signature tune mentioned in the title could reduce even grown men to tears in (352 pp., $41, Hachette Books). It's the first substantive look at the woman who wrote and/or sang a murderer's row of Mac Classics like "Save You Love Me," "Don't Stop," "Little Lies, "Everywhere," "You Make Loving Fun," "Over My Head," and "Hold Me." Jones has previously chronicled the lives of John Lennon, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury. As a girl born with the impossible-but-true name Christine Perfect, she fell in love with the blues during the '60s when the American music seemed to grip the attention of (mostly male) English teenagers. As keyboardist and sometimes reluctant singer, she was an integral part of the band Chicken Shack. She left to pursue a solo career after marrying Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie (though, as Jones points out, her initial infatuation was with singer/guitarist Peter Green). Soon, she was asked to play a bit on Mac albums when the band was going through transitions and shifting lineups before eventually joining full-time. A chance encounter in the studio brought the McVie's and Fleetwood into the orbit of Buckingham and Nicks, and thus the million-selling, sold out concert tour glory years of the "Classic Five" began. That they mined gold with songs that were often about each other and the band's messy inter- and intra-relationships has been the subject of hundreds of millions of words in books, magazines, and documentaries. Jones takes McVie's story through the decades when the band dominated charts, broke up, reformed in various combinations, and built their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend. Through it all, there's a lot of laughs had, tears shed, and music made. And Jones puts McVie – for once – at the focus of the band's tale over its more extroverted members. Save her even more implacable former husband, whose own love for the bottle would help shatter their relationship. It seems that living and working with your spouse 24/7 on the wild Rock and Roll Express is a recipe for romantic disaster. After the wildly successful live album and subsequent tour, this time it was McVie who left the Mac. Spending the next dozen-plus years living quietly—if feeling isolated by choice—in the English countryside. Suffering from a new fear of flying, she was happy to leave the Mac Machine behind once and for all. That is, until 15 years later when a handful of guest spots with members turned into the shocking announcement that she was back, to the thrill of audiences who weren't even born when came out. She even found time to do a record with Buckingham, who was ejected from the lineup the next year. And played with a new lineup for a couple of years, still in the role of "den mother." With McVie's death, both Nicks and Fleetwood have said in interviews that the story of the band is finished as well. Though, as dedicated fans know, that's a song that's been sung before. There are a couple of weaknesses to the book. Jones will sometimes veer the narrative into Wikipedia-style backgrounders on topics that touched McVie's life: sculpture, the English countryside and rural lifestyle, blues history, and even neuroscience as it relates to romance. And she'll often quote a psychotherapist who opines on McVie's life. These detours are both unnecessary and jarring in a narrative sense. And while she herself has interviewed both McVie and Stevie Nicks in prior decades, it seems original interviews for this book were few, and then tangentially related. Still, Jones offers by far the most insightful look of any Mac book on the compelling, opposites-attract between McVie and wild child and sometimes unhinged Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. Compelled and drawn together by powerful forces, McVie would either turn a blind eye or unsuccessful try to alter Wilson's behavior whether it was from drinking, drugging, or blatant cheating. And even Wilson sharing a bed with scores of women during their relationship including his ex-wife, the teenage daughter of bandmate Mike Love, or McVie's own song sister Stevie Nicks couldn't pry her away. Until it became too much. Though she would still mourn deeply when an inebriated Wilson drowned in the water off a friend's boat in 1983, practically refusing to accept is his death. "Madness, I know," Jones quotes McVie at the time. "Complete and utter madness. It's what heartbreak does. They call it 'magical thinking' in America, what we call 'wishful thinking.' I was in denial."