By Ann Friedman
Elle Magazine
Christine McVie looks into the camera and asks, “How does it feel being a sex symbol in rock ’n’ roll?” Hanging out backstage on Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 world tour, McVie, the band’s keyboardist, looks as if she’s had a few vodka tonics (and if this night was like most on the Rumours tour, probably a fair amount of
cocaine, too). She pauses for the perfect comedic beat, then delivers: “I don’t know; ask Stevie Nicks.” Her blond shag and shiny caftan shake as she emits a husky laugh. “Oh, listen, Stevie’s gonna know I’m kidding,” she says in her proper English accent. The two women of Fleetwood Mac have always been friends. There’s no need for competition when their roles are so clear: Nicks in front, twirling seductively in her shawls; McVie in back, stealthily ruling the keyboards. If Nicks is the band’s witchy goddess, McVie is its warrior queen, strong and steady. She’s also one of its key creative forces, having written half the songs on the band’s Greatest Hits album.
And so in 1998, McVie sent Fleetwood Mac into a midlife crisis of sorts when she announced she was quitting the band. After 28 years of late nights, she was done living out of a suitcase, finished with recording studios and sold-out arenas. She was also increasingly scared to fly. A few years earlier, she’d bought a rambling old manor in the English countryside, and, at age 54, the quiet life beckoned. “I did my last show, got everything shipped out from the house in L.A., went to catch my last flight back to London,” she says, “and didn’t look back.”
Until now. At age 71, after almost 20 years out of the spotlight, McVie has returned. She’ll crisscross North America with Fleetwood Mac on a 40-city megatour this fall, playing Katy Perry–size venues from Boston to Portland. “Serendipity is the only word I can think of to describe it,” she tells me over coffee and salmon-and-cream-cheese sandwiches at her London pied-à-terre. It’s in a modern building overlooking the Thames but made cozy with an overstuffed sofa, a leather chair, lots of Persian rugs, and keyboards pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows. McVie looks decades younger than her years and exudes well-earned rocker cool. She wears a simple tank top and jeans with a silver-plate belt and a tangle of bracelets. Her
shaggy blond hair is almost identical to her Rumours-era cut, her skin so tan it’s as if she never left California.
“Since she’s been back, I’m already feeling the steadying effect of her presence,” says Mick Fleetwood, Fleetwood Mac’s drummer and jovial father figure. “There is no doubt that there was a void in the chemistry of the band. The band rose successfully to the creative withdrawal, but emotionally…the balance was challenged.”
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