Fleetwood Mac is officially over, because “you can’t replace” Christine McVie, says Stevie Nicks. “Without her, what is it? You know what I mean?” the legendary rock star questions in a new interview with Vulture. McVie had left the band for more than a decade starting in 1998, and “we became much more of a hard-rock band,” Nicks recalled, saying McVie “wrote all those really super pop hits” that no one else in the band could recreate.
“She was like my soul mate, my musical soul mate, and my best friend that I spent more time with than any of my other best friends outside of Fleetwood Mac. Christine was my best friend,” Nicks says. “When I think about Taylor Swift’s song ‘You’re on Your Own, Kid’ and the line ‘you always have been,’ it was like, that was Christine and I. We were on our own in that band. We always were. We protected each other.”
Nicks’ previous song choice to dedicate to McVie was Haim’s “Hallelujah,” which includes a verse dedicated to a deceased friend of Alana Haim’s. After McVie’s death, Nicks posted on social media, “[Since] Saturday, one song has been swirling around in my head, over and over and over. I thought I might possibly get to sing it to her, and so, I’m singing it to her now. I always knew I would need these words one day. (Written by the Ladies Haim). It’s all I can do now…”
To Vulture, Nicks says, “Who am I going to look over to on the right and have them not be there behind that Hammond organ? When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this. There’s no reason to.”
Mick Fleetwood said something similar in an interview with The Los Angeles Times: “I think right now, I truly think the line in the sand has been drawn with the loss of Chris,” he shared. “I’d say we’re done, but then we’ve all said that before. It’s sort of unthinkable right now.”