I was saddened to hear of the death of Christine McVie last week, on November 30. As most of my contemporaries know, Christine sang, played keyboards, and wrote songs with the pop group Fleetwood Mac, a band that enjoyed immense popularity during the mid-70s. I was a junior at the Pennsylvania State University when their popularity peaked. Suddenly, their music was everywhere.
Christine was one of the band’s three lead vocalists, each of whom had distinctive, immediately recognizable styles. Stevie Nicks’s unusual, raspy alto/tenor and big vibrato had an otherworldly quality, like the voice of some mystical, be-hooded creature singing from underneath an ancient stone bridge. Lindsey Buckingham’s vocals anticipated the anxious, yelpy style that David Byrne and Ric Ocasek later popularized the punk/new wave era. But it was Christine’s singing that was and is most attractive to me: her rich, textured alto projected yearning and vulnerability, and I found it irresistible, a voice that you could fall in love with. I imagine that many of us did.
Christine also had a knack for writing irresistible pop melodies, often built on a driving piano riff. “Don’t Stop,” “You Make Loving Fun,” “Say You Love Me,” and “Songbird” are some of the better known examples. On stage with the band, she seemed modest and self-contained, in contrast to the flamboyance of Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
Sadly, I know little of Christine’s story apart from the way-too-public breakup of her marriage with John McVie, the band’s bassist. I hope that her end was as peaceful and painless as possible and that her family, friends and former bandmates will be able to cherish the time they spent with her.
