Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac Hitmaker, Dies at 79 (2023)

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker of Fleetwood Mac, one of the world's most popular music bands, died Wednesday. She was 79 years old.

Your familyAnnouncedhis death on Facebook. The statement said she died in a hospital but did not provide her whereabouts or a cause of death. In June, Mrs. McViethisRolling Stone that he is in "fairly poor health" and suffers from debilitating back problems.

McVie's commercial potency peaked in the 1970s and 1980s and was fully showcased in Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits anthology, released in 1988 and selling over eight million copies. Copies: She wrote or co-wrote half of the 16 tracks. His tally doubled that of the second most prolific member of the band's singer-songwriter trio, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard hits with this collection.)

The most popular songs Mrs. McVie wrote preferred strong rhythms and upbeat melodies, numbers like"Say that you Love Me"(who topped the Billboard Top 10)"You make love for pleasure."(You just broke it)"Hug me"(No. 4) and"Don't Stop"(their biggest hit, which peaked at #3). But it can also be combined with elegant ballads"In the head"(No. 20) and"Little Lies"(which cracked the release's top five in 1987).

All of these songs had well-defined, easy-to-sing melodies with soulful and bluesy undertones at their core. His compositions had a simplicity that reflected their construction. "I have no problems with my songs," Mrs. McVie (pronounced mc-VEE) told Rolling Stone in 1977. "I write them quickly."

In just half an hour he wrote one of the band's most popular songs,"Singing Bird"a sensitive ballad that served the band as the final encore at a concert for years. In 2019, bandleader Mick Fleetwood told the New Musical Express that "Songbird" was the track he wanted to play at his funeral "to make me hum."

McVie's lyrics often captured the most intoxicating aspects of the novel. "I'm definitely not a pessimist," he told Bob Brunning, author of the 2004 book The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumors and Lies. "I'm basically a love songwriter."

At the same time, his words conveyed longings and disappointments that can be hidden under an exciting surface. "I'm good at pathos," she told Mojo magazine in 2017. "I write a lot about romantic despair, but with a positive twist."

Mrs. McVie's voice conveyed an equally subtle range of emotion. Her soulful alto could alternately sound maternally wise and sexually alive. Its reddish hue had the heady effect of a bourbon with a rich aroma and smooth finish. He found an elegant place in harmony with the voices of Mrs. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, which together form a distinctive Fleetwood Mac sound.

"It was that chemistry," he told Mojo. “The two just screamed in perfect threesome harmony. I just remember thinking, 'This is it!'"

A robust instrumentalist, Ms. McVie played a variety of keyboards, often borrowing from the soulful tone of a Hammond B3 organ and the formality of a Yamaha grand piano.

He has earned five gold, one platinum and seven multi-platinum albums with Fleetwood Mac. The band's biggest hit, "Rumours," released in 1977, was one of the strongest engines in pop history, earning a double diamond certification, which equates to sales of over 20 million copies.

In 1998, Ms. McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with various Fleetwood Mac line-ups, reflecting the frequent (and dramatic) personnel changes the band has undergone throughout its labyrinthine history. Woman. McVie has served in incarnations since 1971, but has also had uncredited roles as keyboard player and as vocalist since the band's second album, released in 1968. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, she reached number 14 in the UK with blues band Chicken Shack on a cover of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind," on which he sang lead vocals.

Early taste for the blues

Christine Anne Perfect was born on July 12, 1943 in the English Lake District to Cyril Perfect, a classical violinist and university professor of music, and Beatrice (Reece) Perfect, a psychic.

Her father encouraged her to take classical piano lessons when she was 11. His approach changed radically four years later when he found some sheet music for Fats Domino songs. Back then, in 1984, he told Rolling Stone: "It was goodbye Chopin."

"I started playing boogie bass," he told Mojo. "The blues got me. Even today, the songs I write still use this left hand. It has its roots in the blues."

Woman. McVie studied sculpture at Birmingham Art College and for a time considered becoming an art teacher. At the same time he briefly played in a duetSpencer Davis, who later rose to fame in the Spencer Davis Group along with a teenager Steve Winwood. He helped form a band called Shades of Blue with several future members of Chicken Shack.

After graduating from high school in 1966, Ms McVie moved to London and became a window dresser in department stores. A year later he was invited to Chicken Shack as a keyboardist and occasional singer. He wrote two songs for the band's debut album, 40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve.

She was twice voted best female vocalist in a Melody Maker readers' poll, but left the band in 1969 after marrying Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, who graduated in 1967 and had already recorded three albums. That same year, she recorded a solo album, The Legendary Christine Perfect Album, which she later described to Rolling Stone as "so weak," adding, "I hate hearing it."

His disappointment with this record, combined with his reluctance to perform, caused McVie to put music aside for a while. But in 1970, as Fleetwood Mac's main attraction, guitaristPeter Verde, who suddenly left the band after a ruinous acid trip, Mick Fleetwood invited them to complete his ranks.

Initially, he found it "a nerve-wracking experience" being asked to join his favorite band, he told Rolling Stone. But he rose to the occasion by writing two of the catchiest songs on his first official release with the band, Future Games (1971). This release saw the band move from British blues to Southern California progressive folk rock, aided by the addition of an American musician, singer/songwriter/guitarist Bob Welch.

The band refined that sound on their 1972 set "Bare Trees," which sold better and contained one of McVie's most soulful songs."Save me some of your love."The band's 1973 release, "Penguin," went gold and produced an FM hit with the song "Mr. which."Hypnotized".The follow-up collection, Heroes Are Hard to Find, was the band's first to make the US Top 40. But only after Welch left and the team was hired by Nicks and Buckingham, who were romantically involved. , for the 1975 album simply titled "Fleetwood Mac", the band began to show all their commercial panache.

Mrs. McVie's song "Over My Head" started the wave by entering the Billboard Top 20; his Say You Love Me peaked at number 11. After a slow build-up, the Fleetwood Mac album eventually topped the Billboard charts.

A little over a year and a half later, the group released "Rumours," which generated widespread interest not only for its trio of Top 10 hits (two of them written by McVie) but also for several very dramatic backstories. Events in the band's ranks, broadcast in letters and openly discussed in the press.

During the making of the album, the band's two couples, Mrs. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham and the McVies, split. McVie's song "You Make Lovin' Fun" celebrated an affair she was having with the band's lighting director at the time. (He first told Mr. McVie that the song was about his dog.) The upbeat song "Don't Stop" was intended to hint at her ex-husband's new life without her.

"We wrote these songs in spite of ourselves," McVie told Mojo. “It was a therapeutic step. The only way to get this out was to say it, and it came out the hard way. Imagine trying to sing those songs on stage with the people you're singing about."

"We were all very high"

To ease the pain, he told Mojo, "We were all so high," adding, "I don't think there's ever been a sober day." And the album's smash hit transported the members into a different kind of Euphoria. “The rush when you realize you've written one of the best albums ever written; It was a phenomenal moment," McVie told Attitude magazine in 2019.

But the group longed to expand creatively. The result was the next less commercial-sounding double album, Tusk, released in 1979. While not a hit on the scale of "Rumours," it sold over two million copies and spawned three hits, including "Mrs. McVie"Remember me."

With the 1982 release, the group entered the new decade smoothly."Morgana girl,"which reached No. 1 with the help of Ms. McVie's "Hold Me," a Top 5 hit inspired by his tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys.Denis Wilson. Two years later, Mrs. McVie released a Top 30 solo album, while his strongest single,"He has me",Cracked the top 10.

In 1987, the reunited Fleetwood Mac released "Tango in the Night," which included two McVie-penned hits,"On all sides"and "Little Lies". ("Little Lies" was written with Portuguese musician-songwriter Eddie Quintela, whom she had married the previous year. They would divorce in 2003.) Mr. Buckingham left the group shortly thereafter, shaking off the dynamic that made their recordings so outstanding had made. 1990's album Behind the Mask barely went gold and produced just one Top 40 single ("I anoint"written by McVie), while Time, released five years later, was the band's first unsuccessful album in two decades.

Woman. McVie did not tour with the band in support of "Time". But in the early 1990s, his hit "Don't Stop" gained more attention when it became the theme song for Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaign. In 1993, Clinton convinced the five musicians who performed the hit to come together to play it at the inaugural ball.

They reunited in 1997 for a tour that spawned the live album The Dance, one of the best-selling concert recordings of all time. But the following year, a growing fear of flying and a desire to return to England from Los Angeles, the band's adopted home, inspired Mrs. McVie to retire to the English countryside.

Five years later he agreed to add some keyboard parts and backing vocals to a largely ignored Fleetwood Mac album, Say You Will, and in 2006 he produced and recorded a little-heard solo album, In the Meantime. and recorded. he wrote with his guitarist nephew Dan Perfect.

In 2014, fueled by boredom and a growing sense of isolation, she finally reunited with the main cast of Mac for their massive On With The Show tour. After that, McVie, like Buckingham, began writing a lot of new material, leading to a self-titled album and tour together in 2017. The entire band also played shows that year; Although Buckingham was sacked in 2018, McVie continued to tour with the group in a line-up that included Neil Finn and Tom Petty of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers. In 2021, Ms. McVie sold the publishing rights to his entire back catalog of 115 songs for an undisclosed sum.

Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

Throughout her career, Ms McVie has prided herself on never having been categorized by her gender. "I became one of the boys," he told British newspaper The Independent in 2019. "I have always been treated with great respect."

While he always recognized the special chemistry of Fleetwood Mac's most successful cast, he believed his role transcended him.

"Band members leave and other people take their seats," he told Rolling Stone, "but there was always this room where the piano should have been."

die PositionFleetwood Mac hitmaker Christine McVie dies aged 79first appeared inNew York Times.