Farewell Christine McVie – Fleetwood Mac Keyboardist/Vocalist Dies @ 79 – 2022 – Statement – Stevie Nicks – Mick
Christine McVie (Official): Rest In Peace Christine McVie
Fleetwood Mac Statement:
Mick Fleetwood Statement:
Stevie Nicks’ Statement:
Christine Anne McVie (12 July 1943 — 30 November 2022) was an English musician, and the vocalist and keyboardist of Fleetwood Mac, which she joined in 1970. She also released three solo albums. Her direct but poignant lyrics focused on love and relationships. AllMusic described her as an “Unabashedly easy-on-the-ears singer/songwriter, and the prime mover behind some of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits.” Eight of her songs including “Don’t Stop”, “Everywhere” and “Little Lies”, appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s 1988 Greatest Hits album.
In 1999, McVie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac and received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. The same year, after almost 30 years with the band, she opted to leave and lived in semi-retirement for nearly 15 years. She released a solo album in 2004. In September 2013 she appeared on stage with Fleetwood Mac at the O2 Arena in London and rejoined the band in 2014 prior to their On with the Show tour.
In 2006, McVie received a Gold Badge of Merit Award from Basca, now The Ivors Academy. In 2014, she received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and was honored with the Trailblazer Award at the UK Americana Awards in 2021. She was also the recipient of two Grammy Awards.
McVie was born in the Lake District village of Bouth, Lancashire, 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 age 11, when she was reintroduced to it by Philip Fisher, a local musician and school friend of McVie’s older 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 included The Everly Brothers.
McVie studied sculpture at Moseley School of Art in Birmingham for five years, with the goal of becoming an art teacher. During that time, she met a number of budding musicians in Britain’s blues scene. Her first foray into the music field came when she met two friends, Stan Webb and Andy Silvester, who were in a band called Sounds Of Blue. Knowing that McVie had musical talent, they asked her to join. She often sang with Spencer Davis. By the time McVie graduated from art college, Sounds of Blue had split up, and because she did not have enough money to launch herself into the art world, she moved to London and worked briefly as a department-store window dresser.
When McVie married Fleetwood Mac bandmate John McVie in 1968, Peter Green was best man. Instead of a honeymoon they celebrated at a hotel in Birmingham with Joe Cocker, who happened to be staying there, before going off with their own separate bands. The couple divorced in 1976 but remained friends and maintained a professional partnership. During the production of Rumours she had an affair with Fleetwood Mac’s lighting engineer, Curry Grant, which inspired the song “You Make Loving Fun”. From 1979 to 1982, she dated Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. McVie married Portuguese keyboardist and songwriter Eddy Quintela on 18 October 1986. Quintela and McVie collaborated on a number of songs together including “Little Lies”. They divorced in 2003, and Quintela died in 2020.
During the height of Fleetwood Mac’s success in the 1970s, McVie resided in Los Angeles in a house that had previously been owned by Joan Collins and Elton John. In 1990, she moved to a Grade II-listed Tudor manor house in Wickhambreaux, Kent, to which she retired after leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1998, and worked on her solo material. For years, McVie found inspiration in the home’s country setting, not only writing songs there, but restoring the house. However, after rejoining Fleetwood Mac in 2014, McVie began spending more time in London, and put the house on the market in 2015.
McVie died in hospital at age 79 on 30 November 2022, following a short illness.
