Stevie Nicks Admitted She Was ‘Angry’ She Didn’t ‘Say Goodbye’ to Christine McVie
Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie were friends and bandmates for decades. As the only two women in Fleetwood Mac, they weathered the storm of broken relationships, drugs, and tense recording sessions together. When Nicks heard that McVie was ill, she wanted to rush to her side immediately. She shared why this wasn’t possible.
Stevie Nicks did not get to see Christine McVie before she died
In 2022, Nicks learned that McVie was ill. She wanted to fly to England to be with her, but McVie’s family told her to wait.
“We got a phone call from someone. He told us that she was ill,” she told Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘OK. We’re going to rent a plane right now, and we’re going to come over there.’ And then we got a call back. Her family said, ‘Don’t come until we see how things go here.’ Her family is super funny, as was she.”
Within a few hours, they called back to inform her McVie had died. Nicks said she felt devastated and angry.
“So anyway, a few hours later they called and said that she’d died. So I did not get to say goodbye to her,” Nicks said. “My plan was to go and sit on her bed and sing ‘Touched By an Angel’ to her, like I did with my dad, for two or three hours or however long it took to either bring her back or send her off. I didn’t get to do that, and I was angry. Because this was a different kind of friend. This was my music soulmate, my best girlfriend.”
Stevie Nicks said she felt in awe of Christine McVie from the moment they met
Nicks first met McVie at a dinner with the existing members of Fleetwood Mac. Nicks and her then-boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham, were about to join the group, but they wanted to see if Nicks and McVie would get along as the group’s only women. As it turned out, nobody had anything to worry about.
“Well, this is what happened,” she told The Face. “When I met Chris — this sounds like a movie, right? When I met Christine McVie … she’s five years older than me, so we were like 28 and 33. And Christine is a full on, you know, trained concert pianist person and an amazing artist painter. So there was so much more to Christine than just music, and when I met her that night at the Mexican food dinner, I was just like, I was awestruck with her.”
By the end of the dinner, Nicks felt confident that McVie would be an important figure in her life.
“I mean, I thought, I have just met my new best friend, for sure,” she said. “I had no doubt that she was gonna say, absolutely, when we drove away that night.”
She said she let her go during a concert
In the years since McVie died, Nicks has dedicated “Landslide” to her during her concerts.
“Since the day she died, we made that montage and we have done that every single night,” she said. “And I cry every single night.”
During one show, she said she realized she had to let her friend go.
“I had her from 1975 until she died, and I miss her every day,” she said. “And I just finally realized being onstage, the night before last, in the rain in front of 30,000 people, that it was time for us to let her go. And stop being so sad, because I cried every single night. It’s like, ‘Fly. We’re not holding you down anymore.’”
