Inside Stevie Nicks’ and Christine McVie’s decades-long friendship

CNN
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All through the assorted private turmoils for which the members of Fleetwood Mac are identified, one relationship buoyed the band for many years: the friendship between its two frontwomen, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.

McVie joined the band in 1970 throughout one in every of its early lineup adjustments and for years was its solely girl. When Nicks was added to the lineup in 1975, the 2 grew to become quick pals.

Theirs was not a aggressive relationship, however a sisterly one – each ladies have been gifted songwriters chargeable for crafting most of the band’s best-known tunes. Although the 2 grew aside within the Nineteen Eighties amid Nicks’ worsening drug habit and the band’s rising inside rigidity, they got here again collectively when McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac in 2014.

At a live performance in London, shortly earlier than McVie formally rejoined the band, Nicks devoted the tune “Landslide” to her “mentor. Huge sister. Finest good friend.” And on the present’s finish, McVie was there, accompanying her bandmates for “Don’t Cease.”

“I by no means need her to ever exit of my life once more, and that has nothing to do with music and all the pieces to do together with her and I as pals,” Nicks instructed the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2015.

On Wednesday, McVie, the band’s “songbird,” died after a quick sickness at age 79. Under, revisit McVie’s and Nicks’ years-long relationship as bandmates, finest pals and “sisters.”

The story of Nicks becoming a member of Fleetwood Mac is legend now: Band founder and drummer Mick Fleetwood needed to recruit guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who stipulated that he would solely be a part of if his girlfriend and musician Nicks might be a part of, too. McVie solid the deciding vote, and the remaining is historical past.

“It was vital that I obtained on together with her as a result of I’d by no means performed with one other woman,” McVie instructed the Guardian in 2013. “However I favored her immediately. She was humorous and good but in addition there was no competitors. We have been fully totally different on the stage to one another and we wrote otherwise too.”

All through the band’s many private issues – McVie married and divorced Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie and had an affair with the band’s lighting director, whereas Nicks had rollercoaster romances with Buckingham and Fleetwood – they have been one another’s heart.

“To be in a band with one other woman who was this superb musician – (McVie) form of immediately grew to become my finest good friend,” Nicks instructed the New Yorker earlier this yr. “Christine was an entire different ballgame. She favored hanging out with the fellows. She was simply extra comfy with males than I had ever been.”

The 2 protected one another, Nicks stated, in a male-dominated trade: “We made a pact, within the very starting, that we’d by no means be handled with disrespect by all of the male musicians locally.

“I might say to her, ‘Collectively, we’re a critical pressure of nature, and it’ll give us the energy to maneuver the waters which can be forward of us,’” Nicks instructed the New Yorker.

“Rumours” was the band’s best success up to now when it was launched in 1977. However the band’s relationships with one another have been deteriorating, save for the one between McVie and Nicks. Whereas the pair have been enduring breakups with their important others, Nicks and McVie spent their time offstage collectively.

The Guardian requested McVie if she was attempting to offset the band’s tumult together with her songs on “Rumours,” together with the lighthearted “You Make Lovin’ Enjoyable” and optimistic “Don’t Cease.” She stated she doubtless had been.

As a number of members’ drug use intensified, the band’s dynamic grew tense. McVie distanced herself from the group in 1984 amid her bandmates’ addictions, telling the Guardian she was “simply sick of it.” Nicks, in the meantime, was changing into depending on cocaine.

McVie instructed Rolling Stone that yr that she’d grown other than Nicks: “She appears to have developed her personal fantasy world, one way or the other, which I’m not a part of. We don’t socialize a lot.”

In 1986, Nicks checked into the Betty Ford Heart to deal with her habit, although she later grew to become hooked on Klonopin, which she stated claimed years of her life. She stop the prescription drug within the Nineties.

After recording some solo works, McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac for his or her 1987 album “Tango within the Evening,” and two of her songs on that report – “Little Lies” and “In every single place” – grew to become main hits. However Nicks departed the band quickly after, and the band’s best-known lineup wouldn’t formally reunite till 1997 for “The Dance” tour and subsequent stay album.

The reunion was short-lived: After the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 1998, McVie formally stop Fleetwood Mac, citing a worry of flying and exhaustion of life on the street.

Within the 2010s, after greater than a decade of retirement, McVie toyed with returning to performing. She formally rejoined Fleetwood Mac after calling Fleetwood himself and gauging what her return would imply for the group.

“Fortuitously Stevie was dying for me to return again, as have been the remainder of the band,” she instructed the Arts Desk.

In 2015, a yr after she’d rejoined Fleetwood Mac, McVie hit the street together with her bandmates. Touring with the group was tiring however enjoyable, the primary time they’d carried out collectively in years.

“I’m solely right here for Stevie,” she instructed the New Yorker that yr.

Nicks concurred: “After we went on the street, I noticed what a tremendous good friend she’d been of mine that I had misplaced and didn’t understand the entire penalties of it until now,” she instructed the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2015.

Throughout that tour, McVie wore a silver chain that Nicks had given her – a “metaphor,” McVie instructed the New Yorker, “that the chain of the band won’t ever be damaged. Not by me, anyhow. Not once more by me.”

McVie instructed the Arts Desk in 2016 that she and Nicks have been “higher pals now than (they) have been 16 years in the past.”

Touring with Buckingham and Fleetwood might rapidly get tumultuous for Nicks, McVie stated, as a consequence of their shared historical past. “However with me in there, it gave Stevie the prospect to get her breath again and never have this fixed factor occurring with Lindsey: her sister was again,” she stated.

Their mutual reward continued: In 2019, McVie stated Nicks was “simply unbelievable” onstage: “The extra I see her carry out on stage the higher I believe she is. She holds the fort.”

When their 2018-2019 tour ended, although – with out Buckingham, who was fired – the band “form of broke up,” McVie instructed Rolling Stone earlier this yr. She added that she didn’t converse with Nicks as usually as she did once they toured collectively.

As for a reunion, McVie instructed Rolling Stone that whereas it wasn’t off the desk, she wasn’t feeling “bodily up for it.”

“I’m getting a bit lengthy within the tooth right here,” she stated. “I’m fairly completely satisfied being at residence. I don’t know if I ever need to tour once more. It’s bloody exhausting work.”

Information of McVie’s loss of life rattled Nicks, who wrote that she had solely discovered McVie was sick days earlier. She referred to as McVie her “finest good friend in the entire world for the reason that first day of 1975.”

On her social media accounts, Nicks shared a handwritten notice containing lyrics from the Haim tune “Hallelujah,” a few of which discusses grief and the lack of a finest good friend.

“See you on the opposite aspect, my love,” Nicks wrote. “Don’t neglect me – All the time, Stevie.”