Q Magazine
Issue 138
March 2008
Who shagged who?
John McVie (bass) and Christine Perfect (keyboards, vocals)
How did they get together?
Perfect met McVie in 1969 and was already his wife when she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970.
"One minute I was a housewife,
next minute I was on stage with the Mac in New Orleans," she recalls. Their relationship didn't survive in the band. In the early '70s she had an affair with the band's sound engineer Martin Birch but the McVies didn't "officially" break up until 1976 when they started divorce proceedings.
What did the rest of the band think?
Nicks: "John drinks too much. And that's why Chris and John aren't together. Period."
What was the fallout?
They broke up in 1973 on the band's aborted American tour. "We had no problems prior to me joining the band," says Perfect. "I think that we were actually really happy.
But I think it's the kiss of death to be in the same band as your husband, it really is difficult for a relationship. You're in each other's pockets just too much. To have to travel everywhere together, think about the same things. We felt as if we were Siamese twins, without an individual personality of our own." John McVie endured unrequited lust for Linda Ronstadt for some time and married Julie Reubens in 1978. Christine Perfect spent three years with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and later married Portuguese composer Eduardo Quintela de Mendonca in London in 1986.
Who shagged who?
Lindsey Buckingham (guitars, vocals) and Stevie Nicks (vocals).
How did they get together?
They met at High School in Arizona, joined West Coast act Fritz, recorded a solo album, titled Buckingham/ Nick, in 1973 and joined Fleetwood Mac a year later.
What did the rest of the band think?
Their relationship was strained by the mid-'70s and effectively fell apart during the making of the Rumours albums when Nicks walked out. According to Christine McVie, the break-up of the Nicks/Buckingham axis partly inspired the album. "The outcome of the various separations and emotional upheavals in the band that caused so many rumours are in the songs."
What was the fallout?
Buckingham wrote Go Your Own Way on Rumours with Nicks adding backing vocals: "I very, very much resented him telling the world that 'packing up, shacking up' with different men was all I wanted to do," she argues. "He knew it wasn't true. Every time those words would come out onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. It was like, I'll make you suffer for leaving me. And I did. For years."Nicks and Christine McVie shared a condo after Rumours: "All we had was each other." "We lads had our thing too," says John McVie, "with parties going all over the house. Amazing. Terrifying. Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards of the wretched stuff." In 1976, a month after leaving Buckingham, Nicks began a relationship with Don Henley of The Eagles. Buckingham allowed himself a recovery period: "It was important that I met a lot of beautiful women who I like a lot."
Who shagged who?
Mick Fleetwood (drums) and Stevie Nicks (vocals)
How did they get together?
Fleetwood made an immediate impression on Nicks when she first joined the band in 1974. "The first time Mick walked into the room I thought I was witnessing the entrance of an English king, because that's how he looked to me," says Nicks. "He was wearing a burgundy-coloured, water silk vest with a watch chain and a very long jacket that was really nipped in at the waist and beautifully made pants. I was awestruck and still am to this day of Mick's presence. The whole air around him is power." Fleetwood and Nicks got together in autumn 1977 on the Pacific leg of the Rumours to Fleetwood described his own on-the-road dalliances as an "attack of veal viper".
What did the rest of the band think?
Initially a one knew and then it became a taboo subject Nicks: "Mick and I were absolutely horrified that this happened. We didn't tell anybody until the very end and then it blew up and was over. And you know, Lindsey and I have never, never talked about Mick. Ever."
What was the fallout?
Nicks wrote a song. Beauty And The Beast, for her album, Timespace, about her affair with Mick in the late '70s. However she insists her ex-lover is not the Beast.
And now?
Fleetwood Mac recently released a new album, The Dance, and followed it with a 43-date tour of America. Nicks and Buckingham save all their emotions for their songs. "When we're up there singing songs to each other, we probably say more to each other than we would ever in real life," says Nicks. "If you offer me a passionate love affair and you offered me a high priestess role in a fabulous castle above a cliff where I can just, like, live a very spiritual kind of religious-library-communing-with-the-stars learning kind of existence, I'm going to go for the high priestess."
"I'm hoping that we're now going to be as good for each other." states Christine. "Wouldn't that be a nice way for things to turn out?"
