Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still
Nobody recognised a rock and roll dickhead quite as well as Christine McVie.
McVie spent the best part of her career surrounded by them, arguably married to one and most definitely sharing vocal duties with one. Fleetwood Mac seemed to be a homing beacon for a lot of problematic characters, and so the songbird was well averse to dealing with them.
But while Fleetwood Mac were famous for writing scathing songs about one another, McVie rarely engaged. As infuriated as she may have been by the behaviour of her bandmates, she rarely called them out in song and instead aired her frustrations in a more nuanced way. Her fallout with ex-husband and bassist John McVie was chronicled in the love song she penned for the band’s lighting director, and instead of kicking him while he was down, she helped pick him back up with the motivational track ‘Don’t Stop’.
She was empathetic, even at her lowest ebb, and ultimately, that’s what made McVie the secret sauce of the band. Because when drama swirled, and the knives were sharpened, she calmed it all down and saw things from a more human perspective.
It carried on into the band’s 1980s discography, which came at a time when McVie was in a relationship with The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. A man whose drug-addled behaviour sent McVie into a spiralled experience of torment that rivalled that of anything she had experienced in Fleetwood Mac. Yes, that’s right, despite being in a band with her ex-husband, starting a relationship with the lighting technician and watching Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham kick seven shades of verbal shit over each other, it was Wilson who bugged her the most.
“He was a thoroughly annoying human being,” she remembered. “Who was really bloody out of his brain with drugs. But there was something very endearing about him as well. And he had a big soul. A very, very hurt soul, but big. And a great capacity to write songs, when he was sober.”
Once again, the empathy of McVie prevails, who never kicked him while he was down. Songs ‘Never Make Me Cry’ and ‘Only Over You’ were about Wilson and his difficulties, but showcased McVie’s understanding of the very worst of times.
She continued, “Yeah, there was a sweet side to him when he came out of one of these weeks of debauchery – when he’d just be normal and sit on the couch with a cup of tea, and the smile, the real Dennis came through. There were some good times. But not many. The real Dennis didn’t come out that often.”
Their three-year relationship came to an end in ‘82, and McVie bid the Beach Boy farewell with a warm heart. It was the sort of relationship that any average singer would have salaciously advertised in their music, but not McVie – no, as always, she approached it with understanding and nuance to create songs that showed an unmatched level of empathy. I often think Fleetwood Mac did nothing to deserve Christine McVie, but maybe music as a whole ought to be grateful for having her.
ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 