The first thing I saw her in, as a lad, was “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” where she was like a fun, crazy aunt. Years later I got to see her in a re-release of “Manchurian Candidate,” where she was one of the most chilling villains in movie history. That’s a pretty broad range, IMHO. My mom loved her as Jessica Fletcher, the woman I always said should have been under perpetual house arrest, since every wedding, cruise, reunion, convention or other getaway she attended always ended in murder. I always thought having Jessica show up on your doorstep would be like having the Grim Reaper come knocking.
Good on her making it to 96. She had an amazing life and career. RIP.
This one was a real upsetting one to see online earlier today.
Absolutely love this woman’s music. The lead singer of the group who gets the least amount of attention behind the theatrics of Stevie Nicks and the manic genius of Lindsey Buckingham, McVie’s music was what kind of bridged the gap between the other two extremes and made the whole thing a more cohesive unit. Some great hits to her name like “You Make Loving Fun”, “Hold Me”, “Little Lies”, “Everywhere”, “Songbird”, and her signature hit “Don’t Stop” while also often collaborating with Buckingham to form what I always thought was the strongest tandem within the band, which was on full display with Tango in the Night (the strongest non-Rumours Mac album, IMO) and then the should-have-been Fleetwood Mac album Buckingham McVie, both of which showcased some truly exceptional work by McVie.
Christine McVie’s music had such an earthy warmth. Always relatable, never pretentious, yet brilliantly written. I love her soulful voice and bluesy piano playing. Her music really grounded the band. When she left for a while, I missed her. Say You Will was a brilliant album, really Buckingham Nicks Redux. But, without Christine McVie’s songs unifying the two extremes of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the album lacked coherence. I was so happy when she rejoined the band. I don’t think there were any new Fleetwood Mac studio albums, though she did record an album with Lindsey Buckingham that, as I recall, paved the way for her re-entry into Fleetwood Mac.
Such a sad loss for her family, friends, bandmates and all who knew and loved her. At least we will always have her music.
That album, called Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie, actually was very much intended to be a Fleetwood Mac album. Despite the revisionist history that they undertook while promoting the album, it began its life as an attempt for a, potentially, final Fleetwood Mac studio album. Mick Fleetwood plays the drums on the album and John McVie is there to provide the bass. The only thing missing is Stevie, which makes it essentially a pseudo-sequel to Tango in the Night. It was only after several attempts to get Stevie to come into the studio and contribute some material to the effort failed that it wound up being a “duet” album, as nobody at the label thought that perhaps a Fleetwood Mac album that just happened to only feature the two true architects of the band’s sound could actually be successful. In reality, Buckingham McVie has as much of a right to be called a Fleetwood Mac album as Say You Will, Time, and Behind the Mask do based on the number of core members of the band are present for it compared to those other three efforts, not to mention the band’s only constant over its decade of existence has been change itself.
2022 has been a really difficult year for Fleetwood Mac and the people in its orbit. We’ve now lost two members of the Mac family, with McVie having just passed and then earlier in the year Brett Tuggle, who played keyboard for Fleetwood Mac for years (essentially filling in for McVie during her decade-plus absence) in addition to being a fixture of Buckingham’s solo band, also passed away. And with Buckingham’s recent health troubles, there’s been little to no good news on the Fleetwood Mac front for quite some time now.
Thank you for these insights, dalton. Obviously I didn’t know the details of how this album came together, though I did know that most members of Fleetwood Mac were playing on the album. I wonder why Stevie wouldn’t participate. Her enmity with Lindsey Buckingham is well documented, even though they’d mended fences enough to record and tour together during Christine McVie’s absence. You’d think that the return of a beloved bandmate would cause everyone to pull together. And, certainly, they toured together. The only logical explanation I can think of is that Stevie was booked doing solo tours at the time, or she was in the studio recording her own material. Otherwise, why not record with the rest of her band? I doubt that she had a shortage of her own songwriting material to contribute.
Which brings me to Lindsey’s firing. I’d read somewhere that it was because he was smirking behind Stevie’s back while she was speaking at an awards ceremony, and she laid down an ultimatum that this was the last straw, and either he went or she would. While it seems he does have some issues, he is also a brilliant musician. I read several critiques of the band, during the couple of stages when he was not with them, that referred to needing two guitarists to replace him. And this doesn’t even get into his remarkable songwriting and production talents. It was especially sad, to me, when he suffered his heart attack. I never heard of any Fleetwood Mac members reaching out to him (though, of course, that may have happened privately). On the “better news” front, Lindsey has been touring and recording. So I take it he able to recover his singing voice?
