Christine McVie. Desiree Navarro/WireImage
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 member of Fleetwood Mac, contributing to some of the group’s biggest hits.
According to the 2024 biography Songbird, writer Lesley-Ann Jones recalled having a candid conversation with Christine about her past marriages.
“Being in the same band as your partner kills a relationship,” Christine said. “Being in a different band from your partner would kill it just as surely. Because the road takes you in different directions, and the temptations of the road are too great. 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.”
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 […]
The couple faced their fair share of challenges while working and touring together, including John’s drinking. Before ending their marriage, Christine and John were “joined at the hip.” Per Songbird, “Their inability to spend sufficient time apart was the primary killer of their relationship.”
Christine was married once more following her split from John — and like other members of Fleetwood Mac, she had a few now-infamous affairs. The songwriter died at age 79 in November 2022 after suffering a stroke.
Scroll down for a look back at Christine’s love life:
John McVie
“John and Christine were married on Saturday, 3, August 1968 at the register office in Oldbury near Birmingham. There was no coverage in the press, neither bride nor groom having yet hit the big time. … [Fleetwood Mac founder] Peter Green was the couple’s best man,” Jones wrote in Songbird. “Awks. Because Chris had had a crush on McVie’s bandmate for as long as she could remember.”
According to Jones’ biography, Green called Christine one night before the ceremony and told her not to go through with the wedding. The warning didn’t take, and Christine attempted to be “the model housewife” to John before becoming the rock star fans know and love. The pair never welcomed children and eventually divorced in 1976.
Martin Birth
In the early ’70s — ahead of her split from John — Christine sparked an affair with Birth, Fleetwood Mac’s sound engineer who was also married at the time.
“She convinced herself that she had fallen in love with him, and made her feelings known. … Although loyal servant Birch had engineered five albums for the band, Mick and John ruthlessly ejected him. What was that about? None of the males in this set-up was any angel,” Jones wrote in Songbird.
Speaking to Jones about the affair years later, Christine said the romance felt “really seedy” and “dented my self-respect.” She added, “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.”
Curry Grant
While producing 1977’s Rumours, Christine found herself involved with Grant, a lighting engineer. Their relationship inspired Christine to write “You Make Loving Fun.”
“This is an aural, choral flirtation with her new lover, Curry Grant, and the meaning is obvious. She’s getting lighthearted, no-strings passion from this gorgeous guy, and it’s as much as she wants,” Jones wrote in her 2024 book. “To avoid recrimination and blood-letting, she told her outgoing spouse [John] that she had penned it about her dog. Sweet, wonderful you.”
Dennis Wilson
Christine fell head over heels for the Beach Boys drummer post-divorce and post-Rumours. “Just like every other female who had fallen for Dennis before her, [Christine] was smitten and she didn’t care who knew it,” Jones wrote.
The pair’s romance reached its peak when Fleetwood Mac was recording Tusk. “In a beat, the pair had become rock’s ultimate power couple, the industry’s greatest love affair,” per Songbird.
Christine was briefly engaged to Wilson, but the twosome went their separate ways in 1982 after Wilson had an affair. Wilson accidentally drowned one year later and died at age 39.
Steve Nicks and Christine McVie instantly connected when they joined Fleetwood Mac. “To be in a band with another girl who was this amazing musician – [McVie] kind of instantly became my best friend,” Nicks said in a February 2022 interview with the New Yorker. “Christine was a whole other ballgame. She liked hanging out […]
Eddy Quintela
While working on her eponymous solo album, Christine met Quintela, a keyboardist and composer from Portugal. “He got under her skin, paradoxically, in a way that may not have occurred had she not still been pining for Dennis,” Jones wrote, noting that Christine was “acutely conscious of her motherless status” after turning 40 in 1983.
Christine and Quintela tied the knot in October 1986. None of Christine’s Fleetwood Mac bandmates were present for the ceremony, and according to Songbird, Quintela hoped Christine would leave the group for good. “Her insistence on making her own decisions and doing as she pleased was the source of mounting conflict between the two,” Jones wrote.
The former couple divorced in 2003, and Quintela died in 2020.