Book Review: Songbird

Christine McVie (born Christine Perfect) was the quintessentially English rock star, as both the backbone and the beating heart of Fleetwood Mac. She wrote and performed many of their greatest hits, and was dubbed 'the mother' of the band. It was Christine who contained the flock, regrouped them when they went AWOL, and always got them back on track. And yet, as the "engine" of the band during their Rumours era, an album which charted the romantic disintegration within the band, Christine's personal life was every bit as tempestuous as those of her bandmates.

Told by an author who herself was friends with Christine, and with new contributions from those who knew her best, Songbird offers a true insider's view and psychological insight into Christine as a both a woman and a musician.

Songbird by Lesley-Ann Jones will be published November 19, 2024. Hachette Books provided an early galley for review.

As a kid of the 70's and teen of the 80's, McVie's music (much via Fleetwood Mac) was part of the soundtrack of my growing up. Her passing in November 2022 at age 79 marked the loss of another music legend. Not knowing much about her life, this was one I wanted to check out.

The author makes note at the end of Chapter 2 that McVie did not talk much about where she grew up, preferring to keep it to herself or to share only with her loved ones. This kind of guardedness is important for someone in a public eye, to allow them to have things that aren't up for public mass consumption. But then it does require a biographer to be someone close to the subject like Jones indicates she was in order to give the readers more details (especially when the subject has passed and cannot be consulted further). Interestingly enough, in chapter 6, Jones indicates that her line was the intrusion of private lives; her story is focused on McVie's career and fame.

Jones certainly has done her research as shown by the copious amounts of facts and details throughout, presented in an almost documentary-style narrative. But, for me, the first quarter of the book comes across as a bit of a distance from the subject herself. We learn a lot about the world through which McVie walked but not through her eyes or her thoughts and feelings. It all came across as "arm's length" for me. Only when she starts performing music with bands in the 60's does the narrative start to spark. Even then, I felt like I got a lot of everyone else's business and not as much of Christine's. If one were to cut the parts about all the other lives in her orbit, this would be a much much smaller book.