Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie

by Lesley-Ann Jones, Lucy Tregear (Narrator)

Christine McVie - born Christine Perfect - was the quintessentially English rock star, as both the backbone and the beating heart of Fleetwood Mac. Straddling the band's incarnations to achieve global fame alongside Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham and John McVie, the classic line-up, she wrote and performed many of their greatest hits. As famous for their occasionally life-threateningly decadent lifestyles as for their musical brilliance, they were held together by this strong, constant figure whom they dubbed 'the mother' of the band. It was Christine who contained the flock, regrouped them when they went AWOL, focused and blended their talents and always got them back on track. And yet, as the 'engine' of the band during their Rumours era - an album which charted the complete romantic disintegration within the band - Christine's personal life was every bit as tempestuous as those of her bandmates, weathering affairs, divorce, addiction and fiery passion, all of which bled into her now iconic song-writing. Told by an author who herself was friends with Christine, and with new contributions from those who knew her best, Songbird offers a true insider's view, and deep psychological insight into Christine as a both a woman and a musician - the first, the only, the ultimate picture of a rock legend and a national treasure.

Genres: Biography, Music, Nonfiction, Audiobook, History, Memoir, Biography Memoir

Audiobook

Published November 14, 2024

About the author

Lesley-Ann Jones is a British biographer, novelist, broadcaster and keynote speaker.
She honed her craft on Fleet Street, where she worked as a newspaper columnist and feature writer for more than twenty years. She has also worked extensively in radio and television, appears regularly in music documentaries in the UK, USA and Australia, and is the writer and co-producer of ‘The Last Lennon Interview’, a film about the final encounter, in New York, between the former Beatle and BBC Radio One presenter Andy Peebles.

Her debut memoir ‘Tumbling Dice’ is out now.
NB: the cover of TUMBLING DICE displayed here is NOT the current, correct one, but is of an edition that was never published! It appears to be impossible to change it! The ISBN for the CORRECT, CURRENT VERSION is 978109175

First serialisation rights for TUMBLING DICE were acquired by the Mail on Sunday UK, published across four pages on 7th April 2019. Second serial went to The Times, UK, featured as a double-page spread on 10th April.

The author’s interview with US ABC Radio network is syndicated to 2,000 stations across the United States. She has discussed the book on most BBC local stations, including BBC York, Northampton, Guernsey, Cornwall, Solent, Hereford & Worcester, Derby and Oxford. Live radio exposure continues over the coming weeks, with BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms Show, Wandsworth Radio, Express FM’s The Soft Rock Show, K107FM Scotland, Wycombe Sound, Camglen Radio (Scotland), the Sticks Radio Show & podcast, BBC Radio Kent, Radio Caroline, Talk Radio’s The Paul Ross Show and Talk Radio Europe’s Bill Padley Show.
Lesley-Ann Jones’s agents are currently negotiating with two independent production majors on a screen adaptation of TUMBLING DICE.

Other recent works include ‘Hero: David Bowie’, ‘Imagine’, and ‘Ride a White Swan: The Lives and Death of Marc Bolan’. Her globally-acclaimed definitive biography of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, re-issued in 2019 as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, is a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. The book accompanies the band’s long-awaited eponymous feature film, the highest-grossing music biopic of all time.

The author is currently working on two further titles, for publication in 2020.

She is a mother of three, and lives in London.

Reviews

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a huge Fleetwood Mac fan, but remember the throbbing "Dreams" pulsating out of car windows walking home from high school in the late seventies, and watching their excellent live concert "The Dance" in August 1997 the night that Princess Diana died. I even own their iconic CD "Rumours" and some greatest hits compilations. I've read biographies about Stevie Nicks in the past, and she's so prominent and out front while Christine is demure and functional in the background most of the time. However, I love Christine's pure voice and a lot of her tunes that are breezy and easy like her voice. I also remember that she had an intense romance with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson decades ago before he died. She was a subject rife for a biography of her own.

I've read a biography in the past from this author on John Lennon and liked it, so approached this one with positivity. I'm not sure why I felt a bit detached while reading this one. I asked myself, "Is it because Christine was such a private and elusive figure that she was just hard to know?" There was a lot of background at the beginning about where she grew up in England and the end of World War II (that I found a bit boring), her first band "Chicken Shack", the many lineups of Fleetwood Mac that would make your head spin keeping track, homes that she purchased, husbands and boyfriends, etc. This was chock full of information not only on Christine, but Fleetwood Mac the band as a whole. The author moves in these circles and knew Christine, not only encountering her at parties but at one point having lunch with her at one of her beloved mansions in England. I feel a bit guilty saying that I only just enjoyed this book at a "Good" level of reading joy. It might be down to writing style- going off on tangents here and there to psychoanalyze things (I experienced this in her John Lennon bio). However, I'm still glad I read this to learn about a very talented musician who gave most of herself to Fleetwood Mac while the happiness of true love- alas- always eluded the former Anne Christine Perfect.

Thank you to the publisher Hachette Books for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christine McVie, keyboard player, vocalist, and songwriter for Fleetwood Mac, led an interesting life. From her childhood in England, to playing the blues, to joining Fleetwood Mac, she became an integral part of the band, even if some of the members let her down, as did, sadly, many of the men in her life. I thought this account of her career was extremely well done, and recommend it to fans of music biographies.

[Elizabeth Ulrich · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so excited when I heard that a biography was going to be written about Christine McVie because I have been a fan of Christine McVie's for over 40 years, and she was my favorite member of Fleetwood Mac. Unfortunately, this book was a disappointment. Yes, Christine was a very private person, and in life, she let people know what she wanted them to know about her, but this book did not have the cooperation of her family, and the book was filled with speculation that cannot be defended or confirmed by Christine. This book was very borring in many places, and some people are meant to rest in peace, and Christine is someone who needs to rest in peace. If someone wishes to read this book, I highly recommend checking it out of the library and reading it for free because it is not worth the money that would be spent.

[Rachel McDonald · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not buy if your interest is in Christine McVie specifically. I am so disappointed and irritated by this book. I understand why the family wanted no part in it. I read to the end to give the author the benefit of the doubt but wish I hadn't.

At a basic level, the book is in desperate need of proof reading. There are sentences that don't actually make sense. It is particularly bad in the chapter on "Christine's early life" (which has no real reference to Christine's early experience at all). On the flip side are the mammoth sentences that run on too long. I lost track multiple times.

The use of a psychoanalyst to guess at Christine's motivations seems unprofessional, particularly given some parts of her life he references Christine never spoke about publicly. So where is the information coming from? If he had spoken to her, then it's worse.

Instead of a gentle handling of one of the greatest songwriters of all time, this reads like a weird mix of a tabloid gossip and a rerun episode of television.

If you don't know Fleetwood Mac's history, this might be interesting (if the writing is to your taste). There are better books on the band though.

This reads, to me, like a cash grab.

[Savannah Belle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious, verbose, and full of filler material. An honestly painful read.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this biography interesting and a look at her life through Fleetwood mac

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not old enough to have known Fleetwood Mac at their apex. (Make a joke, I dare you.) As such, I am not the perfect demographic for Lesley-ann Jones' Songbird about Mac member, Christine McVie. Jones was actually a friend of McVie's and wrote this book as a celebration of her.

The book requires signficant efforts Jones clearly put tremendous work in doing her friend justice. Simply, McVie was a private person and even sequestered herself in the English countryside. Jones starts the narrative there and it inadvertently sets the tone for the book. McVie is a bit of a recluse and uncomfortable with reliving the old days that she misses. Where Stevie Nicks could fill out a few books with her thoughts, McVie is not nearly as open. It leaves Jones to do some very heavy lifting to keep the biography interesting. This means she ends up spending a lot of page space on people around McVie instead of McVie herself. I think Jones did everything she could to write an interesting book about her friend, but I think McVie didn't give her much to work with.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by the publisher.)

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this revealing portrait readers receive an exclusive glimpse into the "mother figure" of Fleetwood Mac.
Christine McVie is a keyboardist, lyricist and vocalist. This English rock star wrote and performed many of their greatest hits.
A very detailed read that had me feeling nostalgic throughout.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Lesley-Ann Jones says she was your friend and writes a book about you after you're dead, good luck because LAWS, this was not good.

I really don't need to see the provenance of every building in England when I'm reading a book about a PERSON.

I think a comment on a YouTube video is the best summation of Christine I can find, and better than anything in this book. "Her voice was from the sad part of heaven."

There you go. Rest in peace, queen. I'm sorry I read this.

[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore Fleetwood Mac and their tumultuous history was the focal point for this biography for one of its members, Christine McVie. Details of her life outside of the band are light but when much of your life revolves around one of the greatest bands to ever exist then I guess your posthumous biography will follow suite.

[Tammy O · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because rock fans are the most nostalgic people on this planet. They always crave what they had before.”

I have loved Fleetwood Mac music since I was a kid in the 70’s, and yes—I felt nostalgic throughout the book. I knew relatively little about the band or their members, other than the fact that Stevie Nicks was usually the center of attention. In the book “Songbird”, Lesley-Ann Jones introduced Christine McVie and her life with Fleetwood Mac. I found the first five chapters extremely dull, filled with a lot of miscellaneous information that loosely revolved around Christine. In Chapter 6, the story of Fleetwood Mac really began, and I was hooked.

I liked how each of the songs from the Rumours album (and from later albums too) were explained….who wrote them and what were the stories behind them. Their romances, breakups, wild partying and drug addictions made me sad. I was happy to learn Stevie and Christine were good friends. And by the end, the extent of talent and magic the “RumoursFive” made together blew me away.

I searched online for pictures of the group after I finished the book. Christine was the only one smiling in most photos—which sort of sums up the role she played in their “family”, and her hope for better tomorrows.

I thought this was one of the most poignant lines in the whole book:
“As for “Songbird,” the side one closer and the all-time favorite of millions of Mac fans, has there ever been a piano ballad more sublime? How are we supposed to listen to it now that she’s gone?”

Thank you to the publishers at NetGalley for the advanced reader copy to review.

[Emilie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning a little more about Christine McVie - who I have always admired. The writing I felt was not very good - with loads of mistakes and over-use of cliche. The book covered a lot of topics related but strayed from the main topic - Ms McVie. I wanted to know her better and to understand her process of writing and performing music. That was provided in a limited sense. Early Fleetwood Mac which is my favorite of their music was barely mentioned.

[Kate Romey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will update this review when I finish as I’m just over halfway through. This is a tough read. I am a HUGE FM fan and generally devour anything written by or about its members. This, however, has been extremely difficult to get into. Some reasons below:

1. I struggle to believe the author had anything beyond an acquaintance-like relationship with Christine. There is really no indication of a close personal relationship
2. There is so much fluff, and by so much, I mean take out all the unnecessary anecdotes and crap about the war, the UK, other musicians, musings from the psychotherapist about Chris’ relationship with her mother (wtf WAS that) and you’ve got a 50 page book at best
3. Christine was an incredibly private person so I think for anyone it would be a tall order to write a compelling book about her life. The author would have been better off interviewing family and friends to provide a detailed account of her life from the people who knew her best, instead we got an incredibly detailed Wikipedia page with little to no insight into who Christine was.
4. We spent less than a chapter on Rumours? I’m so confused - Ken Caillat wrote an ENTIRE book about the recording of that album, so perhaps quoting some of his recollections would have been more interesting than the authors interpretation of each of the songs on the album

The good bits:
1. The author has obviously done a great deal of research, I’ll give her that

If you’re looking for something a bit more interesting to read, I’d recommend Ken Caillat’s books, Mick Fleetwood’s books, Storms by Carol Ann Harris and various Rolling Stone articles over the years.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring, slow, the reading equivalent of watching paint dry. Half the book is full of footnotes and obituary tributes and a neverending index. Doesn't give you much info. Most of it could've been copied from the Internet. And why is the author constantly slating Stevie Nicks throughout? She seems to really hate her and constantly mentions how many people she slept with. Yet the men in this book who did the same thing don't get this treatment. That really p***** me off, especially from a female author.

[Stephen Howell · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.
I was really looking forward to this book as a huge Christine McVie fan, and even though I had read lots of bad reviews about it, I wanted to give it a try.
The author does a lot of assuming "what Christine may have done," but it seems like facts are few and far between. There is so much that I read that was distantly far away from the subject of Christine. Did the author really know her at all? Obviously not well enough.

[Martin Maenza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hachette Books provided an early galley for review.

As a kid of the 70's and teen of the 80's, McVie's music (much via Fleetwood Mac) was part of the soundtrack of my growing up. Her passing in November 2022 at age 79 marked the loss of another music legend. Not knowing much about her life, this was one I wanted to check out.

The author makes note at the end of Chapter 2 that McVie did not talk much about where she grew up, preferring to keep it to herself or to share only with her loved ones. This kind of guardedness is important for someone in a public eye, to allow them to have things that aren't up for public mass consumption. But then it does require a biographer to be someone close to the subject like Jones indicates she was in order to give the readers more details (especially when the subject has passed and cannot be consulted further). Interestingly enough, in chapter 6, Jones indicates that her line was the intrusion of private lives; her story is focused on McVie's career and fame.

Jones certainly has done her research as shown by the copious amounts of facts and details throughout, presented in an almost documentary-style narrative. But, for me, the first quarter of the book comes across as a bit of a distance from the subject herself. We learn a lot about the world through which McVie walked but not through her eyes or her thoughts and feelings. It all came across as "arm's length" for me. Only when she starts performing music with bands in the 60's does the narrative start to spark. Even then, I felt like I got a lot of everyone else's business and not as much of Christine's. If one were to cut the parts about all the other lives in her orbit, this would be a much much smaller book.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

What initially seems like it’s about to be an exhaustive study of Christine’s life quickly turns out to be just exhausting.

Written as if the author is desperate to hit a word count minimum. I’ve read worse but the main crime of this book ends up being that it’s pretty pointless. Just read transcripts of interviews instead.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Songbird is a biography of Christine McVie. 

I am a big Fleetwood Mac fan, so I knew I had to read this. It was so good! If you are a Fleetwood Mac fan I would highly suggest this one. 

Thank you so much Hachette Books for the ARC of this book. 

[tortoise dreams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christine McVie wasn't a culture changing musician, but she had a lovely, soulful voice, wrote some lovely, heartfelt songs, and deserved better than this half-baked and padded effort.

[Beth Lint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about the history of Fleetwood Mac. Nice nuggets of other musicians and bands sprinkled throughout that I hadn’t known. Christine was an original member that certainly left her mark and will be forever missed ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Jenna Wootton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this biography. I loved how the author wrote about Christine’s life. Great book!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks were the rare female members one of the most successful musical groups of their time. I was therefore thrilled to pick up this biography of McVie, which ultimately turned out to be a disappointment. It's not entirely the author's fault, as members of McVie's family declined to participate and McVie herself passed away several years ago. However, what's presented is mostly a rehash of available information.

I also bristled at the depiction of McVie's retirement as sad and lonely because none of her marriages lasted and she never had children. Perhaps, after a lifetime in the spotlight, she simply wanted peace and quiet. She obviously had the means to remain active had she chosen to do so. I don't know, but feel like she deserves better than this. 2.5 stars rounded up.

[Patti · Rating 2 out of 5]

When you have a situation where the subject of your book was a fairly private person and is now deceased, and her friends, relatives, and coworkers all refuse to talk to you, perhaps it’s time to rethink whether or not you should really be writing about them in the first place. Christine McVie was just such a person, and this is a book that probably shouldn’t have been written.

Christine McVie (born Christine Anne Perfect) was the keyboardist, vocalist, and one of the songwriters behind many of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits. However, she was fine standing behind her keyboards while Stevie Nicks took center stage. She gave some interviews, but not many, and rarely talked badly about anyone, which means a lot of what went on in her life was not discussed in those interviews.

With Christie’s death in 2022, the only testimonies straight out of her mouth are those scant interviews left behind. The author also had a bit of a personal relationship with her, but even that seems to be one where Christie kept her at a distance, as she seemed to do with most people. There are many things about her the author doesn’t know, and many situations are described with words like “suggested” or “likely”. In other words, the author has no clue what actually happened and is taking an (educated?) guess.

To read my full review, please go to Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones – Is ‘Songbird’ a Fitting Tribute to Christine McVie?

[Steven Gripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

When women become obsolete in 2025, society will want to look back at where major contributions heralded the feminine perspective. They’ll either do it to eradicate those attitudes entirely, like in 1984, or learn from them and abuse them, like in Brave New World. When they do get to looking at famous female musicians, I hope they take a moment to learn from Christine McVie’s history - not just with her musical contributions to one of the most famous rock bands of all time, but how she traversed as a woman in a densely male-populated industry. She anchored major players’ personal relationships inculcating a civility amid a maelstrom of in-fighting and partying, and from them produce ineffable rock music for years to come.

McVie’s major influences with Fleetwood Mac comes much later in the band’s erstwhile staff changes. With her proper English countryside upbringing, Christine Anne Perfect basked in her father’s austere musicology as a concert violinist and music lecturer. After intense piano lessons as a child, she accidentally found a Fats Domino Record, one of the earlier rock and roll records distributed in England. She was immediately hooked. Later, as her ineluctable joy for the blues grew, her creative acuity brought her to the Moseley School of Art. What’s so fascinating is that most of the British bands you are still in love with attended art school; most of the Stones, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd - all art school nerds. This wild pack of miscreants migrated to the local clubs in Manchester, barging in on the early blues-driven influences to start careers in music. Christine was 19 when she purportedly saw the Rolling Stones at their first gig. What persevered throughout was the deep-rooted love of the blues, empowering her to follow her passion for playing the American blues, now codified by British guitarists such as John Mayall and Peter Green. She enjoyed hearing and playing the blues, yet had little interest in wanting to build a career singing and playing the blues in front of people. She thoroughly enjoyed watching musicians playing: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and the Windwood brothers, who were her admitted favorites. Name dropping aside, she inevitably hooked up with Fleetwood Mac in 1968 after a short residence with her original band Chicken Shack (a band she permitted to play with since they enjoyed her unique voice and classical piano conversance.) This began her serious immersion in the ubiquitous British blues, becoming seriously influenced by some of the greatest rock and roll guitarists in the industry.

During this transition, she met John McVie, whom she fell in love with and eventually married. She was convinced that she couldn’t be with him and in separate bands, affecting her reasoning for her joining Fleetwood Mac. It was tumultuous from the start: drinking, drinking, and more drinking. It’s unfortunate she witnessed the Mr. Hyde form more than the Dr. Jekyll during their marriage. John was a brilliant bassist, but just fell in love with the rock life more than the marriage, and only lasted 8 years. Throughout all this, her debut album Chrstine Perfect was released. It exemplified her superior talent in songwriting, keyboard playing, and musical acumen. Sure, it didn’t receive well, but it paved the way for her pivotal role in Fleetwood Mac

I would love to dig into more of FM between 70-75; the wild rollercoaster they rode threw off members, brought on new ones. They had multiple producers come and go, locations change, tours across the world, and built themselves as a staple underground blues band. It wasn’t until Fleetwood Mac’s first self-titled album in 1975 that brought them the attention they desired. This album was the first album involving Lindsay Buckingham, and having Christine’s input influence Buckingham positively welcomed a paradigm shift in the band’s image from dark blues to radio pop, along with intense friction with the other members of the band, John McVie leading the charge. Their follow up album with this lineup, adding Stevie Nicks, was Rumors, which I’m assuming you’d be able to recognize if you heard it. This multi-platinum album solidified Christine’s vital role - keeping tension at bay,, and representing the maternal role in the band.

If you ever end up doing a Fleetwood Mac deep dive, notice the strange blues-refracted heaviness on their early albums. Great bands can evolve, and Fleetwood Mac can be considered the underwhelming augmentation - they loved the blues, so their reluctance to change covered their image as they soared through the pop stratosphere. Christine became the fulcrum, and kept this band together not just relationally, but with revelatory passion. She pushed through an alcoholic husband, a rifting band, and a sound change to engender one of the biggest rock bands in history. She continuosly took criticism for being a female in a rock and roll band with Stevie Nicks causing personal strife, while conversely, her public relationship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys brought an insurmountable, yet malfunctioning desire for affection. This love/talent juxtaposition continued throughout her illustrious career until her death in 2022.

Ironic remarks aside, with all these radical changes in our country, and perspectives gleaning onto a near-dystopian future, I’m proud to have read this book on Christine McVie. She aspired to be a great woman: a great wife, a great friend, and a great band member, who also happened to be extremely talented musically. Even with her tempestuous presense, she will still always be remembered as the great Mother of Fleetwood Mac.

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

I saw it at the library when I was grabbing other books and I thought, yes, I like Fleetwood Mac and wanted to read about Christine. I should have read the reviews first and I would have skipped it.

The book was full of grammar issues, did not flow at all, got really boring at times and sadly didn't really focus too much on her, but what was happening with the band. It wasn't really a biography, but more like a bunch of stories taken from other books and/or her articles she wrote in the past and packaged together.

[Sara Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christine has been my idol my entire life, my number one person and musician that I admire. I was hoping someone would write a biography and was excited to read this, but ended up being incredibly disappointed. There is so much speculation in the book, about what she might have thought, or might have done, and not actual fact. Also a lot of filler material about things that have nothing to do with her. This book in no way does her extreme genius and beautiful character justice.

[Nick Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less a biography of Christine more a history of Fleetwood Mac and social commentary of the period.

[MB KARAPCIK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fleetwood Mac is a band that I grew up with in the early years of MTV and the radio, and it always seemed like a very egalitarian band in that two women held their own among men. Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks made a positive impression on me, and their talents spoke for themselves in the many songs they performed on and created. After reading a book about Stevie a few years ago, I was delighted to get Songbird by Lesley-Ann Jones. Christine seemed like such a bad-ass rock woman, especially after I read in another book how she welcomed Stevie into the Mac, as some refer to the band. You see a softer side in this biography aside of the hard grit that she embodied to hold her own around an army of men.

You start off from the most logical points with some background about her family and then her birth and childhood. When Christine Perfect was younger, she had a weight problem. As she grew, she shed the pounds and primarily started as a sculptor. Along the way, she moved toward music, joining bands of varying success. Once she met John McVie, her destiny was set, and, eventually, they put together an earlier version of Fleetwood Mac with John's friend Mick Fleetwood. When they welcomed Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks into the band after various members passed through, the chemistry between the Rumors Five became palpable and the hits started rolling out.

Christine was considered a somewhat mysterious person in that she kept her feelings close to the vest. She was on the constant quest to find love that lasted. She and John started off well but fame and the pressures of being in the same band and always together wore them down. She considered Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys (RIP Brian Wilson) the love of her life, but he wasn't stable enough to stick with her and couldn't stay faithful. To combat her feelings of loneliness and erase the hurt she felt after Dennis passed away, she married Eddy Quintela. Unfortunately, that marriage didn't last either. You could feel sorry for her, but she surmised that she was really married to the band.

I liked hearing about how the songs were recorded and who was involved. It's incredible that many of the most popular hits were from Christine. She simply had a knack for writing about love from various perspectives despite her own struggles with it. When you read about her love life, you can understand where all those feelings bled into the songs she wrote.

I also loved hearing about the dynamics between all the band members and how that basically helped to decide how the band would operate for better or worse. Despite the troubles between them all, they always seemed to gravitate back to each other. Of course, it was lucrative when they could stay civil enough with each other to tour, but some force kept bringing them together. "The Chain" definitely describes the connection they had even when some members couldn't stand the sight of each other.

Since the author was a personal friend of Christine, I liked how the book was more conversational and sounded personal. The author acknowledged that Christine didn't always divulge all of her feelings, but she felt she knew her. I felt that it showed in the writing. The only thing I didn't like is that some stories weren't touched on and, sometimes, the stories were not told in a necessarily chronological or linear order. The last few chapters felt a little sped up. Also, I had heard how much of a tough lady that she was but found her much more vulnerable and gentle than I expected.

Weirdly, after her death a few years ago, there wasn't an apparent grave marker for where she was buried. The author brought up that she would have liked to end the book at the site. She instead went to her former home that was supposed to be her forever home. That was strange but fitting that Christine McVie would continue to remain a mystery even after her death although the Songbird appears in every familiar song that you hear.

Thank you, Hachette Books | Da Capo, for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! It was a pleasure!

[Jeremy Blank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came up as a recommendation, probably because of my interest in particular musicians. My experience with Fleetwood Mac was very early on with Albatross and Green Manalishi, as a very young radio listener where their haunting and interesting sounds overwhelmed me. By the time I was buying records their music had changed and as indicated in this book Fleetwood Mac were very uncool by that time. They were more aligned to the wife swapping, drug taking, house parties of the aspirational neo-con adults driving Ford Capri's, Jaguars, or Cortina's, rather than any rebellion or relevant message for youth. The book did nothing to alter that aspect of the Mac's followers or their histrionics. Their earlier blues roots were interesting and I did learn about Peter Green, which was good. So, I guess that while this is a book on Christine McVie (ne Perfect) it does cover the history of Fleetwood Mac as well. In that sense Christine McVie = Fleetwood Mac, that is what is being hammered home throughout the book; that she was the rock, the reliable musical core, the talented songwriter and from good English middle class stock.

I disliked the roll call of stars and the comparisons made throughout the book. It smacked of the worst of celebrity adulation of the 60s-70s that was wiped away by punk for a while until the next wave of egoists took to the stage. there is too much about the contextual side of life. Keith Richards' writing was more engaging than this recounting of C McVie's life and he didn't have to justify as much. The book indicates that the justification is because C McVie was a woman in what was then a mans world, but there were some very iconic female artists throughout the 1960s & 70s. I would need to see what and how Suzi Quatro handles her story to get a better view of that.

As a callow youth my recollection of many of the female artists and females attending rock venues as not all being shrinking violets, they were tough, confident, assured and equal or more showy as their male escorts or partners. I saw plenty of floaty cheesecloth tops or dresses dominating the English festival scene in the 1970s. Sure, we have all been fed the stereotypical stories of groupies, drugs, hotel destructions, orgiastic lifestyles yah dee yah. Certain aspects of the subject's life appear to have been sanitised, in comparison to others in the band.

I finished the book more engaged than I started, so that's a good thing. It didn't steal my life, but it tested my memory and a couple of Mac tracks drifted through my event horizon as I read. In short, it's a good book to get an overview of a very indulgent and over the top period in popular (super group) music. The vague outlines of Stevie Nicks' demands for pink coloured hotel rooms give some indication of the excesses. There could have been a lot more given the repetition of other aspects eg; Lindsey Buckingham's self aggrandisement. Phew, glad it's over and no I will Never Look Back :)

[Under Milkwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a curious biography in many aspects. When I first started reading it I was concerned that the author was getting too carried away with historical and medical facts that had little to do with the subject of the biography viz. Christine McVie. But as I continued I realised that Ms Jones was systematically creating an engrossing 'wider picture' of an entertainer who pretty much kept her private life to herself and never gave much away. Having said that it became quite clear that Christine and Lesley-Ann Jones had become reasonably close friends.
It's true that Christine McVie gifted some truly memorable songs to Fleetwood Mac after the band became the Americanised version in the mid-seventies. And of course, Christine was at the tail end of Fleetwood Mac's British Blues version prior to the 'Atlantic Crossing'.
My personal interest was piqued when the emphasis was on the Peter Green era of the band and the author's expansive deep dive into the multitude of British rock musicians of the mid to late sixties when the Americans were watching with envy. Given Christine's undoubted musical talent and her integral role in Chicken Shack at the time, she was definitely well connected to that amazing scene.
Christine 'lost the Perfect and adopted the McVie' when she married John McVie who apart from being the bass Mac in the original Fleetwood Mac was already riding high in the mid- sixties as part of the legendary John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Problem was, and maybe still is, John was an arsehole!
As Stevie Nicks became the focal (and aural) point of Fleetwood Mac, Christine hung in there quietly but solidly. She found new love with the only surfin' Beach Boy, but devilish Dennis was a force to be reckoned with.
And so the Christine story kept rolling along through the eighties and nineties and beyond. New songs, new loves, leaving and returning to the Mac in good times and desperate times. Until she'd finally had enough.
All in all, this is a somewhat enjoyable read. With all the crazy, out of control members of the Rock Music fraternity, the 'songbird in the background' put in a pretty impressive innings in retrospect.