The song Christine McVie called a “gift from the angels”
Throughout every era of Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie never claimed to be a songwriting genius by any stretch.
She was certainly willing to go with the flow and make the best records she could, but looking through her track record, it’s hard to think of a single outright dud that she gave the band during her time at the front. There was an outspoken sense of quality control, but even she had to admit when she was visited by some divine musical force when she put her hands to the keys.
Then again, it’s hard to think of musical divine intervention with a band that seemed as cursed as ‘The Mac’ was. They each had the ability to make brilliant material on their own, but judging by every single time they tried to settle on a lineup in their early days, it felt like something was designed to go wrong. Either Peter Green would leave, or the band would have a fall out, or someone would join a religious cult, but the last thing that anyone was going to do was throw in the towel.
Each of them wanted to keep the band moving, but even when they reached the big time, every one of them would have preferred to keep their emotional sanity intact when they began work on Rumours. Every single session seemed like an endurance test to see how far one of the spurned band members could push things until one of them snapped, and considering Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham would get into shouting matches during recording, it’s not like that was an infrequent occurrence.
But by the time Christine reached Rumours, a lot of the bitterness had fallen away. She had known that the differences between her and John McVie weren’t going to work out, and while that did sting a little bit, it was better to wish him peace than continue griping. Although she didn’t know how to put that into words, it turned out her music could do a lot of the talking for her when she played ‘Songbird’.
From front to back, this is one of the most beautiful songs that Christine would ever write. It’s clear that she had a lot of baggage to unpack when writing the tune, but compared to artists who spend their time crying their way through every tune they write, the pianist admitted that what was channelled through her was practically a fully-formed song arriving at her fingertips.
Despite being one of the greatest songs in their catalogue, Christine couldn’t even begin to take ownership of it, saying, “Stevie and I were in a condominium block, and the boys were all in the Sausalito Record Plant house raving with girls and booze and everything. I had a little transistorized electric piano next to my bed, and I woke up one night at about 3:30 am and started playing it. I had it all: words, melody, chords in about 30 minutes. It was like a gift from the angels, but I had no way to record it.”
Once they found time to lay the track down properly, though, they couldn’t have picked a better place. The band had already had access to the best studios in the country, but hearing Christine’s voice glide over a massive empty concert hall is what gives the song its signature flavour. She was already singing her heart out, but a lot of it came down to the way that she sounds like a spirit wishing her other half the best in the world.
Given the circumstances, though, there’s a good chance that the band wouldn’t have survived had they played this in a traditional studio. This is a weapons-grade level emotional bomb, and if they had all been in that tight-knit room playing the whole song straight through, it would have been enough to leave anyone in pieces.
