Reserved, intelligent singer and songwriter for Fleetwood Mac whose album Rumours was one of the biggest-selling of all time

Under normal circumstances, when Christine and John McVie divorced, they would have gone their separate ways. There were no children to consider and nothing to keep them together — except that they were trapped in the same band, forced to see each other each day and share a stage together every night as they toured the world with Fleetwood Mac.

To rub salt into the wounds, after separating from her husband, Christine had started an affair with the group’s lighting director while at the same time two other members of the band, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, were also breaking up and Nicks began an affair with the fifth member of the group, drummer Mick Fleetwood.

If one had been writing a rock’n’roll soap opera, the emotional maelstrom of this torrid plot would surely have been rejected as too preposterous. Yet for the participants it was all too real and they dealt with the fallout in the only way they knew how. They wrote songs to each other about their collective trauma.

The songs became the 1977 album Rumours, which went on to sell more than 40 million copies worldwide and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.

Christine’s compositions for the album included You Make Loving Fun, addressed to her new lover, and Don’t Stop, a message to her husband, which was later famously adopted by President Bill Clinton as his campaign theme tune. On both of them, the jilted ex-husband played bass without missing a beat. Continue reading Christine McVie obituary | The Times (UK) →