Christine McVie, John McVie. Getty Images(2)
While Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie and John McVie were a dynamic duo on stage during their marriage, the two could barely stand each other before eventually calling it quits.
Christine’s life and career were explored in Lesley-Ann Jones’ new biography, Songbird, released Tuesday, November 19. The book dives into Christine’s relationship with John, now 78, in the band’s early days — and the drama that unfolded before the couple went their separate ways.
Following the pair’s 1968 wedding, Jones writes that Christine “wanted to get off the road, stay at home and be the model housewife.” She eventually became an official — and integral — member of Fleetwood Mac, which may have played a role in the couple’s eventual downfall.
“I sometimes wonder whether I would have been happier if I’d stuck to the plan. Become a mum. Supported John in his career, and kept in the background. Would our marriage have survived? I signed up for the duration. I think he did too,” Christine said, per Songbird. “Divorce, in those days, was a dirty word.”
Fleetwood Mac singer Christine McVie learned a lot about love and loss before her death. The keyboardist got her start in the blues band Chicken Shack before beginning to work with Fleetwood Mac as a session musician in 1968. She married the band’s bass player, John McVie, that same year and later became an official […]
John’s “boozing” also played a role in the demise of their marriage, and Christine once felt so “infuriated” by her now-ex’s behavior that she had an affair with Fleetwood Mac’s “loyal” sound engineer Martin Birth. John and Mick Fleetwood “ruthlessly ejected” Birth, who was married at the time.
“I didn’t like myself during that whole period. I sank very low. I loved John, too, of course I did, though part of me really loathed him,” Christine admitted.
She continued, “I disliked my husband intensely for what he’d become, for what he was doing to me and to our marriage. We should have had kids by then. At least one, maybe. But in a way, thank God we didn’t. I couldn’t understand completely how things had got so bad. We hated the sight of each other. … Fleetwood Mac had become the mistress of us all.”
The drama with Birth took place before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham officially joined the Fleetwood Mac ranks in 1974, leading to some of the band’s most famous work, including 1977’s Rumours and 1987’s Tango in the Night. Christine and John finally pulled the plug on their marriage in 1976 but continued to work together. She eventually remarried, exchanging vows with Portuguese musician Eddy Quintela in 1986.
The stuff of legend. Fleetwood Mac’s history of breakups, affairs and lineup changes is so famous that their name is now synonymous with rock ‘n’ roll drama. Founded in 1967 by Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Mick Fleetwood, the group initially started as a blues band before pivoting to a rock-forward sound in the early […]
“Conspicuous by their absence at the ceremony and reception were Christine’s bandmates, whom Quintela allegedly neither liked nor trusted,” Jones writes. “He was keen for his bride to quit the band, and concentrate instead on writing and recording with him. He was adamant that she should refrain from going on the road with them again. … Her insistence on making her own decisions and doing as she pleased was the source of mounting conflict between the two.”
The former couple called it quits in 2003, and Quintela died in 2020. Two years later, Christine died at age 79.
Reflecting on her relationship highs and lows prior to her death, Christine told Jones, “Being in the same band as your partner kills a relationship. Being in a different band from your partner would kill it just as surely. … Which is worse? I couldn’t say. All I know is that John and I were in each other’s faces 24/7. In the end, you get to a point when you want to murder them, if they don’t try to kill you first.”
