Fleetwood Mac Almost Didn’t Ask Christine McVie to Join the Band
Fleetwood Mac almost didn’t ask Christine McVie to join the band. After Peter Green left, the group planned on becoming a four-piece. However, they went ahead and asked McVie. She was their biggest fan, after all.
The singer-songwriter was a big fan of the band before she joined
Fleetwood Mac was one of McVie’s favorite bands years before she joined.
In art college, McVie played in a band called Sounds of Blue with friends Stan Webb and Andy Silvester. However, the group eventually split up. After she graduated, McVie discovered her former bandmates were starting a blues band, Chicken Shack. She wrote to them and asked if she could join. They agreed.
Chicken Shack crossed paths with Fleetwood Mac, which McVie and the others loved. In May 2022, McVie told Uncut, “When I was in Chicken Shack, if Fleetwood Mac were playing when we weren’t, we’d always trail around after them. We were huge fans.”
McVie also said Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green was a commanding figure. “During those early Fleetwood Mac shows, you couldn’t take your eyes off them,” she said. “The whole room throbbed. To me, they were like a bluesy Beatles. Each one had amazing charisma, but Peter stood out. He was a really commanding figure.”
McVie had no idea she’d soon join the band.
Fleetwood Mac almost didn’t ask Christine McVie to join the band
In 1968, McVie married into her favorite band. She left Chicken Shack after marrying Fleetwood Mac’s bassist, John McVie. She felt she’d hardly see her husband if they worked in separate bands. She had no idea they’d soon be in the same group.
In 1970, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green left the band. Over six months, they regrouped at Kiln House with their families and recorded their first album without Green, named after their converted oast house. McVie was present and contributed to the album, although she wasn’t an official member yet.
McVie told Uncut that she didn’t presume Fleetwood Mac would ask her to join, and they almost didn’t. She said they considered keeping the band a four-piece after Green’s departure.
“I didn’t presume,” she said. “I was quite happy being a housewife, actually. I had given up my music to be with John, because otherwise we would never have seen each other. But without Peter, they were struggling, for sure. They wanted to carry on as a four-piece and not replace him. But they realised they needed another band member.”
Fleetwood Mac asked McVie to join, and she was thrust into it very quickly
Eventually, Fleetwood Mac “suddenly felt they needed another instrument to fill out the sound,” McVie told the BBC. “And there I was – sitting around doing next to nothing, and knowing all the songs back to front because I’d been watching them rehearsing for the past three months.”
The band knew they had to invite McVie to join. She’d been their biggest fan and had been there, supporting them, while they regrouped during one of their most challenging periods. They asked McVie to join as they were “walking out of the door” to embark on a U.S. tour.
“Then one day Mick came out, followed by John and the other guys, and we all sat around a table,” McVie told Uncut. “They said, ‘I know it’s short notice, but how would you feel about joining?’ I said, ‘You don’t have to ask me twice.’ Ten days after that I was in New Orleans with them. It happened that quickly. Gosh that was a moment, playing with my favourite band in New Orleans!”
McVie officially joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and quickly started writing songs for the band. She helped change the group’s sound.
“Mick had a chat with me one day and said, ‘You know, you’re so gifted, you should launch out and do something a bit commercial.’ So I came up with something that was not just the 12 bar blues, which had been my main diet up to that point. I co-wrote with Bob Welch a few times before Stevie and Lindsey joined.”
McVie wrote “Morning Rain” on Future Games and never looked back.
