Christine McVie Once Said Stevie Nicks’ ‘Fantasy World’ Damaged Their Friendship: ‘We Don’t Socialize Much’

As the only two women in Fleetwood Mac and many other spaces in the world of 1970s rock and roll, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie stuck together. The pair grew close while touring and recording. In the 1980s, however, their friendship became strained. McVie, who has always been considered the most level-headed member of Fleetwood Mac, explained that some of Nicks’ behavior impacted their relationship.

Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks formed a fast friendship in Fleetwood Mac

McVie joined Fleetwood Mac several years before Nicks and had the deciding vote on whether or not she could join.

“It was critical that I got on with her because I’d never played with another girl,” McVie told The Guardian. “But I liked her instantly. She was funny and nice but also there was no competition. We were completely different on the stage to each other and we wrote differently too.”

Both women went through breakups around the same time and, together, they weathered the constant storm of fighting, drug use, and long nights.

“We felt like, together, we were a force of nature,” Nicks explained. “And we made a pact, probably in our first rehearsal, that we would never accept being treated as second-class citizens in the music business. That when we walked into a room we would be so fantastic and so strong and so smart that none of the uber-rockstar group of men would look through us. And they never did.”

The Fleetwood Mac bandmates reached a point where they grew distant

After several massively successful Fleetwood Mac albums, both women grew accustomed to fame. Through all of this, McVie remained level-headed.

“I was kind of the good girl in the group. That’s who I was,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “Stevie used to call me Mother Earth because I was always pretty grounded.”

According to McVie, though, Nicks was less grounded. Some of her behavior, including an ill-fated wedding in 1983, was “very, very bizarre” to McVie. It appeared that fame had changed Nicks.

“Ten years ago, she really had her feet on the ground, along with a tremendous sense of humor, which she still has,” McVie told Rolling Stone in 1984. “But she seems to have developed her own fantasy world, somehow, which I’m not part of. We don’t socialize much.”

Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks have repaired their relationship

Since 1984, Nicks and McVie have improved their relationship. They went for a while without seeing each other when McVie retired in 1998. Now, though, they see their friendship as better than ever. When McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac after 16 years, they grew closer.

“Stevie and I are really good friends, in fact I think we’re better friends now than we were 16 years ago,” McVie told theartsdesk. “And it’s a fact, when it’s the Buckingham/Nicks show backed by John and Mick, that’s going to cause a lot of tension and stress. But with me in there, it gave Stevie the chance to get her breath back and not have this constant thing going on with Lindsey: her sister was back.”

Nicks agreed that their relationship had improved. After McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac, Nicks realized just how much she’d missed her friend.

“She brings the funny back into Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks told the Star Tribune. “Before, it was just a boys’ club. With her back, there’s more of a feminine touch to the whole thing. I never want her to ever go out of my life again, and that has nothing to do with music and everything to do with her and I as friends.”