CHRISTINE: "Stevie and I are two very different women, but somehow we jell. She is kinda like the sister that I never had. I guess you could say we have grown to love each other." ~ The Daily News, Britian, 1978
STEVIE: "She used to call me the 'Mad Songwriter.' Chris sits up all night and writes, she's so inspired." ~ People Magazine, 1979
STEVIE: "I was like Christine's baby sister. She'd never had a little sister before. In the beginning it was truly just Chris and me. No wardrobe mistresses, no make-up artists, no hairdressers, no nobody. It was just me and her. Lots of times we even shared a room. So we got to know each other real quickly and became good friends because we didn't have anybody else."
CHRISTINE: "Stevie's a show woman and she loves it. I'm the keyboard player, which keeps me out of the limelight. I enjoy it because I'm not an extrovert. Nobody contrived for Stevie to be a foxy chick. It just emerged. She moves and dances purely because she likes dancing. But she has a split personality. Onstage she's the goddess of whatever, but offstage she's very often lke a little old lady with a cold or a sore throat. Yet she's amazing ~ she can feel like shit before she goes onstage but then she goes out there and pulls out all the stops." ~ Crawdaddy Magazine, 1976
STEVIE: "I was aware of a band called Fleetwood Mac that had a lady singer in it named Christine McVie, except I always thought her name - everybody always referred to her as Christy, right, Christy McVie. So ~ I didn't know her name was Christine, but I was aware that there ~ there was this rock and roll band with a girl singer ~ in it, and I was very interested in that, due to the fact that there just really weren't that many bands with women singers that were...up front, you know. I was very aware that they didn't need another girl...especially another girl that was not behind a piano, and that was going to stand right out front in the middle. And I mean, I understood that, I mean it was like, if I had been Christine, I would have said, 'Well I'm not too crazy about that idea myself, actually,' but ~ you know, I've been in this band for a hundred years and ~ so there's this little, you know, twenty-seven year old girl that's gonna walk ~ come walking out ~ and be the lead singer, basically, because that's where she stands...and but Christine is a very, mature and very unjealous person ~ and so ~ if she ever did feel any jealousy, she never let me know it." ~ Off The Record, 1998
CHRISTINE: "Mick and John said to me 'If you don't like the girl then we can't have either of them, because they are a duo.' The last thing I was thinking about at that point was to have another girl be in the band. I had been so used to being the only girl! We met them both. We all got on really well together. Stevie was a bright, very humorous, very direct, tough little thing. I liked her instantly."
CHRISTINE: "All we had was each other, really. We certainly weren't getting on with our respective husbands or boyfriends."
STEVIE: "You never want to say it's better without her because, of course, it's not better without her. She is my best friend. From the day I joined Fleetwood Mac, she has been there and all of a sudden, she's gone. So that has not been good for me. There is a feminine power that I really miss." ~ The Courier-Mail, September 2003
STEVIE: "They made me feel wonderful. I fell madly in love with all of them immediately, and even though I knew in my heart that they didn't really need me, I would try to be really good and maybe I would find a way to be needed there. I didn't know what else to do. I liked them all so much that I was willing to realize that logically I was lucky to get asked to join the band at all, so I would have to be so helpful in everything, right? At least I could be a secretary or something, anything, because I wanted to be part of it. And they knew it. They understood I felt this way. And they were real careful and never made me feel unwanted. Christine very willingly gave me the stage, which I thought was very cool of a woman to say, 'Oh she's five years younger than me, and I've worked for 10 years on the road, killed myself, and her she is, our new frontwoman!' It was incredibly big of Christine to just move out of the way--because I do tend to kind of animate around. I drive Chris nuts. Crazy! Chris will tell you that there were times in the last six or seven years when she was a little jealous. And I swear to God I never knew. She never let me know. Never one comment to the effect of 'I could really have done without you.' And I'm sure there were times when I'm flying around the stage in my gossamer chiffon where she had to think to herself, 'Wow, what's this? Fairy school?' And never once did she make me feel like that. Because she knew from the beginning that I was real sensitive and that I love her so much that anything she'd say to me would cut like a knife. So she was always very careful. Fleetwood Mac couldn't go onstage without me or Chris. We've fought hard to be anything but background singers. I think we would rather quit and do something else than be a background singer." ~ Creem, 1982
STEVIE: "Christine and I, you know, we really realized that because there were two of us that we really were a force of nature and that we were never going to be treated like second-class citizens in the rock-and-roll business. So if we walked into the room, we were going to be just as respected as Eric Clapton or Robert Plant or any of those guys, and that we were never, ever going to let anybody treat us any less. And we didn't. That was the great thing about being in Fleetwood Mac especially for that first 15 years because after that everybody respected us and we didn't have to call out for that respect anymore. But in the beginning it was like we really had to make a statement. That's why when Chris left it was very hard for me, because as the two of us we were so strong. When she left it was a little bit sort of became the boys' club which was not near as cool as when she was there. And I missed her terribly because of that. We set down rules. If you walk in the room with that kind of an attitude, a good attitude but a strong attitude, of sort of a don't mess with me attitude but in a good way, you can get so far. If you even bow your head one little bit and people see it, then you're toast." ~ ChicagoPride.com, 2011
STEVIE: "And she said, 'Because I wanna go back to England. I don't wanna fly anymore. And I don't wanna live in hotels anymore. And I don't wanna do this anymore.' And there was something in her eyes that was so serious that it really is like somebody breaking up with you, when they say, 'I'm leaving you.' And you don't even go, like, 'Why.' She was done.
And so the fact that she made the phone call last year, right before we got to Europe to do the the last leg of tour that we did last year, and said, 'How would you feel if I came back to the band?' I'm like, 'Are you serious?' Because I never would've thought she would. I really believed her from the very beginning. And 16 years slowly went by. And there was never a phone call saying, 'I'm thinking about it.'
And I said, 'I think it would be amazing. But you should come and see us play. It's a three-hour show. It's very physical. And you should hire a trainer.' So she did come to see us play. She hired a trainer. And she is now stronger than any of us. She's been working out solid since then. I've never even had a trainer in my life. So she's, like, left us in the dust. (laughs) So she's totally, really strong. And she's ready to go. So she slipped right back into the band as if she never left.
I mean, I look over, and I think, 'I don't think she ever left. I think that was a dream, a bad dream that wasn't true. And she's really never been gone. She's actually been here all this time,' or we left. And it's the 'Twilight Zone.' (laughs)
So it's really wonderful to have her back. And she brings the funny. And the funny is very, very important. And that is what is really, to me, besides her beautiful songs and her beautiful presence, the fact that she's such a comedienne, and she just makes us all laugh is, to me, the most precious part of the whole thing. What you do notice is how much you missed that. Without her, it was a much more serious band. With her, it's it's much more lighthearted. So that right there makes the whole thing easier."
~ cbsnews.com, 2014
STEVIE: "When I finish [performing] Silver Springs [with Lindsey Buckingham], Christine [McVie, Fleetwood Mac's keyboardist and vocalist] waits for me and takes my hand. We walk off and we never let go of each other until we get to our tent. In that 30 seconds, it's like my heart just comes out of my body."
~ macleans.ca, 2015
CHRISTINE: "A lot of people think there's competition between us because we're women in the same band. There isn't at all. We are fantastically close. Because we're so unalike we're not competitive in the slightest. She is Stevie, the brand, the whole package. I'm what you would describe as a performer and she's an artist. We differentiate between that, we respect each other for that and we have a terrific laugh together."
~ couriermail.com.au, 2015
STEVIE: "I do adore being back with Christine. She's had a 16-year rest. She's like, ready to rock. I had forgotten how wonderful that was. I had forgotten how close we were."
~ macleans.ca, 2016