Christine McVie, her success and sadness

By: Helen Barrett / The Financial Times
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Christine McVie described the creation of the song Songbird – a pure piano ballad that closes the first side of the album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, which sold millions of copies in 1977 – as a kind of spiritual visitation. "I woke up in the middle of the night and the song just came to my mind," she said. Paul McCartney described a similar phenomenon when he said that Yesterday it had come to him fully formed in a dream; David Bowie said that Life on Mars? appeared to him while he was on a bus.

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Perhaps the avoidance of innate talent reflects a kind of ambivalence toward the success that talent can bring. with Fleetwood Mac – the British blues group that McVie joined in 1970 – she co-wrote and recorded gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums, selling over 120 million copies worldwide. The group's success depended largely on McVie's quiet and confident talent: she created songs that resonated for decades, from the epic Don't Stop to the flowing and delicate song Everywhere, while he co-wrote many others. McVie may be less well-known than her male counterparts, but her achievements were on par.

McVie's success, and the years of addiction, hedonism and failed relationships it cost her, are recounted in detail in the biography written by Lesley-Ann Jones [book Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie] for the English musician and singer-songwriter, who was born Christine Perfect and who passed away in 2022 at the age of 79.

The band's early career Fleetwood Mac it was fruitless; the composition of the group and the complexities of romance were always changing. But, as one of the Anglo-American "Five" of the album Rumours – along with Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham – McVie hit the big time in her mid-thirties. With introspective tendencies, she was, according to Jones, often lonely and self-destructive.

Jones, a music star biographer and journalist, former columnist for Daily Mail and The Sun, usually features music stars she's gotten to know through her work; McVie joins the likes of Bowie, Marc Bolan and Freddie Mercury – who were some of her subjects. (Jones's publisher describes her as a friend of the McVies.)

During the peak period of Fleetwood Mac-ut, McVie chose to stay in the shadows, as a counterbalance to Nicks' amazing voice and her center stage performance with extravagant moves and styles that included multiple scarves. As a result, McVie experienced several misfortunes. In 1994, Nicks told Jones that Mick Fleetwood had forced her to have four abortions because, as Jones put it, "he couldn't stand the idea of ​​a bloated pregnant woman on stage."

But McVie's withdrawal didn't completely protect him. Jones highlights her professional triumphs, but also explores her many relationships, two failed marriages (including one to bassist John McVie) and the pivotal relationship that nearly cost her her mind – that with the band's Dennis Wilson Beach Boys, a man often described in music history as "dangerously handsome." Their story is worth telling because it illustrates McVie's resilience and illuminates her musical creativity. The romance is often presented as a story of true cursed love. Jones describes it as a nightmare.

McVie met Wilson in 1978, a decade after his heyday Beach Boys and his involvement with the Manson group. Wilson had recorded a critically acclaimed solo album (Pacific Ocean Blue, 1977), had been married four times, had four children and lived precariously.

Jones suggests that Wilson was paranoid about his fading fame and wanted to get closer to the world's most successful band. McVie, frail and addicted to cocaine after her divorce from John McVie, described their meeting as "absolute love at first sight." She hoped to marry Wilson. But he was fickle, careless with her money and incapable of monogamy. Describing him as "incorrigible", she insisted they separate in 1982; he drowned in an accident the following year. McVie wrote endlessly about Wilson, and the most famous song is the 1982 one, Only Over You, with which, as Jones puts it, "she seemed to be trying to root him out."

Jones may be sensationalist, having invited a psychiatrist – whom McVie has probably never met – to comment on her behaviour. She quotes him at length in a way that seems irrelevant.

But as one of the tabloids' most popular authors, Jones has a powerful formula. Her straightforward tone avoids sentimentality. Above all, it cares about documenting McVie's life and achievements as a major musical force, although her subject was a modest woman who claimed her innate talent was simply due to the fact that she was "good at pathos". /Telegraph/