Ode to Christine McVie

Youngsters today are not burdened by history when enjoying music. They don't seem to regret the lack of a historical perspective. They discover tunes mostly via YouTube. They like something, they watch the clip. That's it.

I used to listen to full vinyl albums, and each LP was characterized vertically - within the performer's repertoire - and horizontally - with similar bands. So Sticky Fingers is sandwhiched between Let it Bleed and Exile on Main Street, which was, in retrospect, the Stones at their very finest, within a time phase when the nature of rock music was utterly, utterly changing . Not knowing this perspective made me feel uneasy. I just could'n 'place' The Beatles Again, of which I didn't know at the time that it was a collection of non-released material (at least not on LP).

These thoughts came to me when I had planned to write an ode to Christine McVie. Why listen to Madonna or Lady Gaga when Christine's songs are widely available? I guess she doesn't do concerts anymore, but her music is everywhere.
I was riding in my car with my kids, listening to Fleetwood Mac's Bare Trees album from 1973, just before their great commercial breakthrough.

"This doesn't sound like Fleetwood Mac at all," said my oldest son.

He knows this peculiar band from Rumours and Tusk, mainly, when they had transformed from a folky-bluesy very British band in the mid sixties and early seventies to megastars in the later seventies and eighties. Christine McVie sang like the cover of Bare Trees depicted: airy, lofty, sensuous, mysterious and rather aloof. What a voice! Listen to her harmonizing on Sentimental Lady, taking the back seat to (I guess) Bob Welch. Or even better: Spare Me a Little of Your Love. Songbird, of course, but a tad too mellow to my taste. You Make Loving Fun. Over and Over. Everywhere. Etcetera.

When Stevie Nicks and Lidsey Buckingham joined the troupe around 1977, Fleetwood Mac became a different band, scoring monster hits, taken from their album Rumours in 1977. Nicks and Christine McVie were strange bedfollows - Stevie earthy, raspy, at times verging on vocal vulgarity yet not without emotional appeal, and then Christine, with her warm, classy alto. She added a rare touch of class to the rather mundane business of rock music, which affected the band's members personal lives, not the least for the two lady singers.

When Christine sings in the later version of the band, the old Fleetwood Mac is recognisable, taking a back seat to the superstardom. It lends it a sense of innocence, of days lost, apparently forever.

What youngsters miss when they listen to music in their YouTube ways is beyond fathom. But anyhow, they and we can still enjoy Christine McVie.

Just take this sample: Everywhere, from The Dance, 1997.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miwHh9X9sCc&feature=related