Christine McVie died this week. No cause of death as been given beyond "a brief illness." This is somewhat shocking, as she always struck me at the one who would outlive all the other members of Fleetwood Mac.
Growing up in rural Texas, we listened to both kinds of music--country *and* western. When I reached junior high and high school and realized most of my peers were listening to other kinds of music (what is pop? what is rock? what is R&B?) I kinda flailed for a while. But then one day in 1984 I was watching Showtime (we didn't get HBO) and back then they used to have a "Take 5" segment filling dead air between movies where they'd run music videos (we didn't get MTV then, either). And what came on by the video to McVie's second solo single, "Love Will Show Us How." I was immediately captivated by the exceptionally silly video, which poked a lot of fun at the cliches of all those other videos, most of which I'd never seen. But what stayed with me was the velvety texture of her voice. I've never really heard any other singer who sounded like her. That led me to our local record store (we did have record stores in those days) and I came away with her album on cassette. It was melodic. It was lyrically engaging. It shared much in common with McVie's Fleetwood Mac work, except that it didn't have that creative tension to take it to the next level. But still, solid music. From there, I discovered Fleetwood Mac (naturally), Billy Joel, Sheena Easton, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd and my music obsession was born.
But Christine McVie was my gateway drug, and for that I'll always be grateful.
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