Stevie Nicks Said Christine McVie Is a ‘Whole Other Ballgame’ of Woman
After decades of traveling, performing, and recording together, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie have grown close. The two women have spent enough time together to know each other exceptionally well. Nicks explained that she has always looked up to McVie. She shared that she was impressed when they first met because McVie was different from anyone she’d met before.
Christine McVie had the final say on whether Stevie Nicks could join Fleetwood Mac
Before Nicks and then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham were officially part of Fleetwood Mac, they met the rest of the band for dinner. While they thought it was just a getting-to-know-each-other dinner, the rest of the band knew that it served as a trial run. If Nicks and McVie didn’t get along, they wouldn’t be a part of the band.
“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.”
Nicks said the two women instantly became close
Off-stage, the two musicians were also different in real life. Nicks explained that McVie was unlike any woman she’d met.
“First of all, to be in a band with another girl who was this amazing musician — she kind of instantly became my best friend, even though I already had Robin [Snyder],” Nicks told The New Yorker. “Christine was a whole other ballgame. She liked hanging out with the guys. She was just more comfortable with men than I had ever been. But she’s been playing in bands since she was, like, thirteen and had, like, famous people carrying her books home for her.”
She shared that their differing natures bolstered their friendship.
“Sometimes opposites really attract,” she said. “She’d go, like, ‘You’re like such a girly girl.’ And I’d be, like, ‘Well, I guess I am, but at the same time, I think I’m pretty hardcore too, Christine.’ We met in the middle, and we were very protective of each other.”
By sticking together, Nicks and McVie could ward off any disrespect that came from male musicians.
“We made a pact, in the very beginning, that we would never be treated with disrespect by all the male musicians in the community,” Nicks explained. “And we really stuck to it. I think we did the pinky swear thing that, if we ever feel like we’re being treated like that, we would just get up and walk out — and we did. We would just say, ‘Well, this party is over for us.’”
Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are happy to be working together
Despite their friendship, Nicks and McVie were not immune to the turbulent group dynamic. 10 years after Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, McVie revealed that their friendship was troubled.
“Ten years ago, she really had her feet on the ground, along with a tremendous sense of humor, which she still has,” she 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.”
In 2014, McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac after a 16-year hiatus. The time apart, and the reunion, made both women realize how much they valued their friendship.
“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.”
