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Stevie Nicks once said she would give Christine McVie $5 million to rejoin Fleetwood Mac. Here’s why the keyboardist took a 15-year hiatus from the band and what Nicks said about it.

Stevie Nicks, who once said she would give Christine McVie $5 million to return to Fleetwood Mac, performing on stage.
Stevie Nicks | Erika Goldring/WireImage

Christine McVie took a 15-year hiatus from Fleetwood Mac

Keyboardist, vocalist, and songwriter Christine McVie quit Fleetwood Mac in 1998, shortly after the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

McVie has cited her flying phobia and panic attacks as the main reasons she left the band. “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.”

Her bandmate, Stevie Nicks, said she understood why McVie decided to leave the group. “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.”

She continued, “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.”

Stevie Nicks said she would give Christine McVie $5 million ‘in cash’ to rejoin Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie was sorely missed after she left Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks compared her departure to a breakup. “We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of it,” Nicks told The Guardian in January 2013. “But you look in someone’s eyes and you can tell they’re finished. It’s like when somebody breaks up with you and says: ‘We’re done.’”

She continued, “As Taylor Swift would say: ‘We are never ever getting back together ever!’ That’s what Chris was saying… But I’d beg, borrow and scrape together $5m and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That’s how much I miss her.”

The “Dreams” singer added, “I miss her like flowers need the rain.” Fortunately, McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac in 2014, about a year after Nicks’ interview. 

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Stevie Nicks gave the keyboardist a special gift when she returned to the band

When Christine McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac after her 15-year hiatus, Stevie Nicks gave her a very special gift. 

“Stevie gave me this chain,” McVie told The New Yorker in 2015 while fiddling with a silver chain link bracelet on her wrist. “It used to have a diamond feather on it. It’s a metaphor, you know. That the chain of the band will never be broken. Not by me, anyways. Not again by me.”

The bracelet illustrates the lyrics of “The Chain,” one of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular songs from the 1977 album Rumours. Nicks originally wrote the track about her relationship with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, but over time it came to represent the resilience of the band and their powerful connection. 

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