"It didn't seem as if it had been that long, in fact...to get all five of us...breathing the same oxygen is quite unusual, and...yet when it happened, ...it seemed as though just that whole period of time had gelled into this period, it was like no time had passed at all." 


It was in a musical family that Christine was born on July 12, 1943 in the English town of Grenodd, Lancashire (near Birmingham) to Cyril, a concert violinist and college professor, and Beatrice Perfect, a frustrated musician, faith healer and psychic. Christine never quite understood her mother's occupation as a psychic and healer. Here was a woman who had the ability to heal life threatening diseases by wearing white kid gloves, and went ghost hunting with the psychic research society, which would often leave Chris asking "Why can't you be an ordinary mum?" Christine's father, instilling in his family that music was an inescapable form of entertaiment, made sure that every given opportunity was provided for his daughter and son (Christine's brother, John, an entomologist for the English Government, is four years older). As Christine says, "There was always a piano in my home when I was growing up, and my father wanted me to become a concert pianist..." As a four year old enrolled in piano lessons, Chris didn't enjoy them the least. Her parents made the decision to pull her out of the piano lessons and allow her to pick up on her own when she was ready.

As a teenager, Chris was surrounded by the frantic pace of the music scene in England. By age sixteen, she and a friend had secretly gone down to London with their guitars on hand and the desire to break into a singing career. The two stormed through talent agencies singing Everly Brothers tunes until they were finally given the golden opportunity of performing one song, backed up by the Shadows, in a small pub. Shortly after they finished their song, they were discovered by their parents and forced to come back home. Within this time period was when Chris followed the footsteps of many others and went to Art College in Birmingham. The college music scene in Birmingham was where she was introduced to some of the best musicians of the era, including Spencer Davis, a German literature scholar from Birmingham University, and Stevie Winwood, a fifteen year old student, who according to Mick Fleetwood, "Nobody could believe this kid could rasp out the blues this way. His gravel voice gave Chris gooseflesh the first time she heard it...Chris would trail around after them religiously, but soon wanted to play with a band of her own." It was at this point (in 1964) that Chris joined her first band, Shades of Blue, as the keyboardist. It was here she would be teamed up with her future bandmates Andy Sylvester, Stan Webb. After the band closed up in a year, Chris travelled to London, where she worked as a window dresser at Dickens and Jones. This experience was not at all a highlight, as she described it as working with "a lot of bitchy people." The following year, she was asked to join the band of her former bandmates Andy Sylvester and Stan Webb, Chicken Shack-- "At which point I said yes...I said yes, I will. I'll do it, anything to get out of this." However, Christine faced one small problem-- she had no idea where to begin as a blues keyboardist: "I didn't know how to play blues piano very well, so on Andy's recommendation I rushed out and bought a whole bunch of Freddy King records. I listened hard to his piano player, Sonny Thompson, and learned to copy his licks. That's where my style comes from." Christine was an immediate success with the crowds to whom Chicken Shack was playing. Fans really took a notice to her, being that she was one of few women within the British blues scene that seemed to bring a deep and true interpretation of the blues. Chicken Shack became tourmates with Fleetwood Mac in 1967, and it was during this period that Chris would meet her future husband, Fleetwood Mac's bassist John McVie. Mick Fleetwood recalls that they met first time when they played at a Windsor Jazz gig-- "A few months later, in 1968, Chris came to a Fleetwood Mac studio session and played piano on Mr. Wonderful. One night she was at one of our gigs, with her eye sort of on Pete [Peter Green], when John asked her to go for a drink. She knew John had a girlfriend, but they had some laughs together. After the show, John invited her to dinner and Chris said she thought that John was engaged. 'Nah, 'sall over,' John said. And that was it. They went out for awhile, and then John disappeared to America with Fleetwood Mac. Chris went to Germany with Chicken Shack for a ten-day stint at the Blow-Up Club in Munich. A crazy German DJ asked her to marry him...She turned him down and, as she says, wrote a long letter to John McVie. When we came back to England, John proposed. Chris was quite mad about John and said yes. They were married ten days later, in August 1968, amid mighty celebration. They probably would have waited a bit longer, but Chris' mother was dying, and the wedding was really for her." After the wedding, the bride and groom split off to their respective bands for touring, until 1969, when Christine left Chicken Shack to bask in her role as a housewife, as well as to share in the wealth that Fleetwood Mac was enjoying.. As she said, "It was extremely romantic...A little bit of the glamour of what Fleetwood Mac was in those days rubbed off. It was almost like someone marrying a Beatle. You married one of the links in the chain, and you were part of them." As much as she was enjoying her new life, the music business kept calling on her. In 1969, Chris was convinced to record a solo album, Christine Perfect, an album which to this day she does not really care for, as she feels that it isn't very representative of her writing (she considered her writing on this album weak). Ultimately winning the Best Female Vocalist award from the Melody Maker's reader's poll for the year 1969 (as well as for the previous year), it was around this time when Christine officially announced that she was retiring from her music career to take on the role of housewife. This action shocked the music scene; however, when Peter Green suddenly departed from Fleetwood Mac, Chris was added into the group. It was only fair that it became official, as she had been an uncredited guest keyboardist and background vocalist, as well as painting the Kiln House album cover. So, late one evening in July, Mick asked Christine to join the band; shortly after she joined, she went on her first gig wtih Fleetwood Mac in New Orleans on August 8, 1970. British music press had already noted that Christine had become a part of the band, as well as Christine's request to be known under her new married name, Christine McVie.

From the point of Peter Green's departure from Fleetwood Mac, the band seemed destined for struggle. In 1971, Jeremy Spencer, newly arrived with the band in Los Angeles for a gig, went out one day to look at a corner book store and never turned came back (He was later found to have joined the Children of God). In late-winter of the same year, after a plagued history and grueling schedule, Christine told NME "Over the past year, it seems as if we have just been battered and beaten about the head with a giant club." The morale of the band would continue to be challenged with the departure of Danny Kirwan. Several personnal changes later, the decision was made to add Bob Welch to the lineup. This decision prompted the band to move over to America to jumpstart their idle career. Christine was not very happy about this decision-- her mother had died a few years back, she had made a home for her and John in England, and she didn't want to upheave from such a comfort zone. Convinced that the situation was for the best, she and the rest of Fleetwood Mac moved out to California in 1974.

With the songwriting talents of both herself and Bob Welch, Fleetwood Mac put out some of their best work. However, Bob Welch grew tiresome of the constant upheavals within the band and decided to quit. It was at this point where the band was ultimately left with two options-- to search for a new guitarist, or to abandon what music career they had left and go back to England. And so Mick Fleetwood, in 1975, stumbled across the duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Mick made sure that Christine was going to be okay with the possible addition of a new female member. Christine had been the only female member of the band for so long that Mick knew that she would naturally have some observations. Ultimately, the decision was up to Chris. As Mick said, "The crucial vote, as always, was Christine's; only she could decide whether she could work with another woman in the band. Chemistry was esential, or it couldn't happen. After it was clear that the two ladies were getting along-- Chris slipped Mick a wink and a nod." It was then that Stevie and Lindsey were both asked to join the band. 

Fleetwood Mac was released in 1975 with much success. However, with the constant touring in support of their album, and the pressure to create a followup album that was just as successful as Fleetwood Mac, Christine and John's marriage began to hit rock bottom. They had aready had their share of problems a few years back, but suddenly the two found that things just weren't working out anymore. In 1976, John and Christine were separated, and by the time Fleetwood Mac moved out to Sausalito to record Rumours, Christine (and Stevie) arrived to the recording sessions as newly single women. Being such a tumultuous time period, Chris (and the other two songwriters) pulled their current situations as inspiration for their songs. She wrote "Don't Stop" for John as words of inspiration for him. John recalls this particular time as "...very clumsy sometimes...I'd be sitting there in the studio while they were mixing 'Don't Stop,' and I'd listen to the words which were mostly about me, and I'd get a lump in my throat. I'd turn around and the writer's sitting right there.' " Incidentally, during this time, Christine, John, and Mick suffered a scare when they were almost deported back to England, as they didn't have green cards. They had been coming to America for years under tourist visas. Fortunately, a friend of the band happened to know a Senator Birch Bayh, a powerful Democratic senator, and as Mick Fleetwood recalls, "...John and Chris and I attended a nine AM meeting in Senator Bayh's chambers in the Old Senate Office Building in Washington. We were still in our stage clothes, having not been to bed from the previous night. We were ushered into the office and introduced to a brace of nervous and awestruck senior immigration officials. And not long afterward, the green cards came through." By 1977, Rumours was released with monstrous success. Now the band was faced with the unfair task of creating a "Rumours II," as Lindsey Buckingham said. Fleetwood Mac began work on Tusk in 1979; this was the time when Christine was introduced to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. This relationship was one that inspired Christine to write some of her best songs; however, it took quite a toll on her emotionally. By the time Mirage debuted in 1982, Christine and Dennis' relationship had ended. 

During this time, many of the members of Fleetwood Mac had been working on their own solo careers. In 1984, Christine released a self-titled album, Christine McVie, which included the talents of two old friends from the 60s British blues scene, Stevie Winwood and Eric Clapton (both of whom she met up with again around the time of this album at a party given by Jimmy Page), Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood. It also featured keyboardist Eddy Quintela, who Christine married in 1986 after working on her solo album with him. (Interestingly enough, Christine once said in an interview that her 1984 solo album was a happy album, but she wasn't in love while working on the album; it wasn't until afterwards that she was in love.)

Within the Fleetwood Mac compound, Tango In the Night was released in 1987. It also marked the departure of Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac continued on with the addition of Billy Burnette and Rick Vito and released Behind the Mask (1990). Christine wasn't very keen on touring for Behind the Mask, as her father had died and she wanted to be closed to her family. She left the band shortly after the tour, joining back up with them in 1992 at President Clinton's Inaugural Gala to peform his campaign song "Don't Stop." (An interesting sidenote, in an interview, Christine said that she always imagined "Don't Stop" being used for a commercial for an insurance company, rather than for a political campaign). She returned back to Fleetwood Mac for Time (1995), but after this album was released, she officially left the band, and Fleetwood Mac broke up after almost thirty years in music. In 1997, much to the surprise of Fleetwood Mac fans, the Rumours lineup of Fleetwood Mac reunited for the release of their live album The Dance, and a tour. After a successful tour around North America, the tour ended when Christine decided against touring any further. In 1998, Fleetwood Mac was honored as inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were also awarded with a lifetime achievement award at the Brit Awards, and received several Grammy nominations for The Dance.

Christine has always had the most beautiful way of striking chords with her fans. She may not package her lyrics and meanings into cryptic packages of poetry, but she has the amazing ability to tell her stories as a mother sings her baby to sleep. As simplistic as Christine's lyrics may seem at times, fans of her work are able to see through her words and identify her hidden meaning. Fans are fans of Christine for the reason that she brings a distinguished musicality to their lives that enlightens and encircles their own private aspirations. She doesn't pretend to be anyone other than herself. She doesn't pretend to know about any of life's experiences other than the ones she's lived through. She is one of us- whether we see her as the mother figure we wish we had, or the sister we wished was around to comfort us whenever we've been in situations that reflect the same ones she's lived through, or even the friend who brushed the hair from our eyes to tell us that life goes on from the mistakes we make. So, to our songbird Christine, happy birthday from all of her fans-- "...and the songbirds keep singing like they know the score..."