The not-so-secret ingredients that made Christine McVie “perform better”
Aside from being one of the most successful pop-rock groups of all time, Fleetwood Mac was also quite messy during its peak years, which late keyboardist and singer Christine McVie once explained in her own words.
Just from listening to their music, it’s tough to tell just how dysfunctional the group really was at their very pinnacle, and yet, despite it all, they produced some of their best work amid all the behind-the-scenes drama that would later become central to their identity. In addition to the romantic crossovers that disturbed the band’s harmony for years, the most famous and successful lineup also became notorious for their excessive substance abuse.
McVie, along with ex-husband John, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood were all moving further up in the industry while simultaneously developing alcohol and drug habits, as is the burden of the rockstar life. While this ultimately worked against most of the group members, McVie maintained that she never went too far and was actually able to use it to her advantage.
While addressing the band’s fabled dependencies during a 2022 interview with The Guardian, she claimed that those habits never affected her memory or functionality as a musician and performer; contrarily, they actually made her better. McVie attributed her ability to work while drunk and high on moderation, which she claimed even Nicks was quite adept at.
“The boys used to get provided with cocaine in Heineken bottle tops onstage, but Stevie and I only did the tiny little spoons,” she admitted, musing, “I suppose sometimes we got a bit out-there, but we were quite restrained, really. I always took fairly good care of myself. My drug of choice was cocaine and champagne. I didn’t use any other drugs at all. It’s easy for me to say, but I think it made me perform better. Maybe somebody could tell me different.”
While McVie’s claims of pacing herself responsibly on this miracle diet do align with her public persona, crediting Nicks with the same self-control doesn’t quite add up. The legendary singer negotiated a well-documented struggle with drug addiction in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with her issues worsening when Fleetwood Mac took a break in 1982, to the point where, when they regrouped to work on Tango in the Night, she was still repeatedly blacking out, even inches away from dying at one point.
During an interview with the Oprah Winfrey Network, she recalled alarmingly of her cocaine habits, “It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning, and the last thing I thought of before I went to bed”.
Looking back at how she went from dabbling in small amounts to buying it and always having a gram on her, she also remembered getting caught in a never-ending cycle of trying to find a balance between cocaine and alcohol. Of course, her fellow band members were on a similar wavelength, so the group’s overall dynamic was an entirely unhealthy one.
Nicks even visited a doctor in 1986 and was told that she had a life-threatening hole in her nose, and that doing any more coke could potentially kill her, which fortunately led to her being able to clean up her act in rehab soon after and resume what turned out to be a very successful second chapter in her career.
McVie, on the other hand, never had as dramatic an arc in her cocaine use; in fact, her story with the drug isn’t nearly as public, most likely because things never got that bad, and as such, none of Fleetwood Mac’s core members succumbed to drug-related issues since they all managed to pull back before things spiraled out of control, more than they already had that is.
