Christine McVie Revealed How Stevie Nicks Reacted to Her Rejoining Fleetwood Mac After 15 Years
Christine McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac after a 15-year hiatus, but how did her only other female bandmate, Stevie Nicks, feel about the keyboardist returning to the classic rock band? Here’s why McVie went back to the group and what Nicks said about it.
Christine McVie took a 15-year hiatus from Fleetwood Mac due to her fear of flying
Singer, songwriter, and keyboardist Christine McVie dropped out of Fleetwood Mac in 1998, shortly after the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
McVie has spoken about why she left the group, citing panic attacks and her flying phobia as some of the main reasons. “I did have a phobia about flying. And I had the phobia when I left Fleetwood Mac,” she told CBS News (via Express). “It was a multiple of different reasons that led me to leave – my father had died in England, and I wanted to be close to my own family there. So I bought a house.”
After years of only traveling by car, boat, or train, the musician worked with a therapist to overcome her fear of flying. The therapist asked McVie where she would go if she could fly anywhere in the world. Her first thought was to connect with her former bandmate, drummer Mick Fleetwood.
“I said Maui because that’s where Mick [Fleetwood] was living at the time,” McVie told Harper’s Bazaar in March 2019. “So, the therapist said, ‘Why don’t you just buy a ticket. You don’t have to get on the plane, just buy the ticket.’”
She continued, “Then as irony would have it, Mick called me just after and said, ‘Look, I’m coming to London, are you around?’ I told him that I’d just bought a ticket to see him and he said, ‘Well I’ll meet you in London then and we’ll fly back together.’ So that’s what I did.”
Christine McVie revealed how Stevie Nicks responded when she rejoined Fleetwood Mac
Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie were best friends during their Fleetwood Mac years. As the only women in the classic rock group, a genre dominated by men, they even made a pact promising they’d never allow themselves to be disrespected in the music scene.
Nicks said she understood why McVie decided to leave the band in 1998.
Stevie was supportive of Christine McVie quitting Fleetwood Mac in 1998. “I understood why. I understood that in her heart of hearts, she could not do it anymore,” Nicks told Vulture in October 2014. “There were reasons … she was having panic attacks. She was getting to be afraid to fly. There’s nothing worse than being afraid to fly. I understood that she needed to go home. I love Chris, and she was my best friend for 30 years. So when your best friend looks at you, in your eyes, and says, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ you just have to let her go. And I did.”
But when McVie was ready to return to Fleetwood Mac about 15 years later, Nicks welcomed her with open arms.
“I called Stevie, who was then in Paris, and said, ‘What would you think, hypothetically, if I was to come back to the band?’” McVie told CBS News in September 2014. “And she just jumped for joy and said, ‘Are you kidding? Absolutely.’”
Stevie Nicks gave the ‘Songbird’ singer one warning about returning to the band
Although Stevie Nicks was delighted that Christine McVie was returning to Fleetwood Mac after a 15-year hiatus, she had one warning for her friend.
“Stevie told me I had to get in shape, because the road was grueling,” McVie told The New Yorker in January 2015. “And I said, ‘Stevie, you must recall that I was in the band before you were. I know how hard the road is.’”
And in her September 2014 conversation with CBS News about rejoining the band, McVie revealed that another Fleetwood Mac bandmate, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, gave her a warning. “I had a conference call with Lindsey and Mick. John was absolutely fine with everything,” McVie said. “And Lindsey said, ‘What are you doing now, if you’re coming back? You can’t be coming and going. You’ve gotta, like, commit, you know?’ And I said, ‘I commit. I commit. I do. I do.’”
