I was driving home the other night and happened to turn to the Classic Rock channel on Sirius. The DJ was about to play a Fleetwood Mac song and all I caught was “Christine McVie, dead at the age of 79.” Total shock. Not only that she was 79 but also that she’d been ill.

I tell you that this one hit me unexpectedly hard. I have been a fan of all versions of Big Mac writing about them here, here, and here. Some people thought that the best version was Peter Green’s blues version and maybe it was.

But times change and Mick Fleetwood was savvy enough to know that the popularity of blues in the Sixties morphed into something else in the Seventies. And he took them from a (not quite) cult band to one of the biggest powerhouse bands ever in popular music.

Wikipedia: “Christine McVie was born on 12 July 1943 in the Lake District village of Bouth, and grew up in the Bearwood area of Smethwick near Birmingham.

Her father, Cyril Percy Absell Perfect, was a concert violinist and music lecturer at St Peter’s College of Education, Saltley, Birmingham, and taught violin at St Philip’s Grammar School, Birmingham. McVie’s mother, Beatrice Edith Maud (Reece) Perfect, was a medium, psychic, and faith healer. McVie’s grandfather was an organist at Westminster Abbey.

Although McVie was introduced to the piano when she was four, she did not study music seriously until the age of 11, when she was reintroduced to it by Philip Fisher, a local musician and school friend of McVie’s elder brother, John. Continuing her classical training until age 15, McVie shifted her musical focus to rock and roll when her brother, John, came home with a Fats Domino songbook. Other early influences upon her included the Everly Brothers.”

McVie (still then Perfect) fell into a band called Sounds of Blue and then in 1967, joined a blues band called Chicken Shack. It turned out that Christine could not only play the piano but could also sing the blues and write tunes. Here’s a nice, shuffly 1968 tune she wrote called “It’s Okay With Me Baby.”

As you doubtless know, blues was THE predominant genre in the late 60s, especially in England. Chicken Shack used to tour and run into Fleetwood Mac frequently. And contrary to any idea you might have that the perfect Ms. Perfect wasn’t associated with Mac till the 70s, she was actually a guest keyboardist on Mac’s second album Mr. Wonderful which was released in 1968.

“I absolutely worshipped them … To me they were the ultimate music that was going around at the time,” she said.

Here’s a tasty blues from that album which includes only Peter Green’s sweet, sweet guitar but also a nice blues piano solo from Christine that comes in about 4:27. If you didn’t know her mad piano skills you have missed something:

Facts are murky but somewhere in here she left Chicken Shack, married Mac bassist John McVie and recorded a 1970 solo album called Christine Perfect. (Since re-released as The Legendary Christine Perfect Album.

Here’s a funky little tune called “Let Me Go (Leave Me Alone).” Present on this album are husband John, Mac guitarist Danny Kirwin and (interestingly) the Yardbirds’ original guitarist, Top Topham:

Christine officially joined the Mac in that same year, 1970. The first Mac album where she’s listed as a member and not “additional personnel” is 1971’s Future Games. Peter Green was by now gone and had been replaced by Bob Welch. They were already transitioning from a blues band to, well, not sure. More of a pop-rock band. Certainly more harmonies in the singing.

You can already hear the difference and future direction in McVie’s “Morning Rain.” Not blues but a really nice rocker:

“McVie agreed to move with the rest of Fleetwood Mac to the United States in 1974. Within a year, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Buckingham Nicks joined the band, giving it an added dimension.

Their first studio album together, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac had several hit songs, with McVie’s “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me,” both reaching Billboard’s top-20 singles chart. “Over My Head” put Fleetwood Mac on American radio and into the national top 20.”

They weren’t yet Big Mac but they were well on their way. I have always loved “Over My Head.” Is there any better song that captures the feeling of being in love?

I’ve already written about the landmark album Rumours here. You know all the hit songs. You can still hear them pretty much everywhere all the time. Let’s do a deeper track here, McVie’s “Songbird.”

Rumours sold about 80 billion copies, the band toured behind it and at the end of it all, McVie and McVie were divorced. Christine said that there was just too much togetherness and the cocaine-fueled Seventies (and Rumours) did not help matters any.

Space prevents me from writing about the rest of the journey but suffice it to say you can read about Mac in those other posts. The band never had another album as big as Rumours but you know, so what? They gave us a lot of good shit over the years and I’m happy to revisit it any old time.

Christine came and went from the band and was still very much with them on their most recent tours. Earlier this year, she confessed to Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and had back problems.

On her death in November 2022, Stevie Nicks said this: “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 continued. ” 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 then wrote out the lyrics to Haim’s “Hallelujah,” which was released in 2019. “See you on the other side, my love,” Nicks concluded. “Don’t forget me — Always, Stevie.”

We will all miss her.