For John McVie,
From the first until this, the brother I never had you have been to me. My God, I swear we deserve each other.
I love you very much,
Mick
(from "My Twenty-Five years in Fleetwood Mac")
| Born in Ealing, West London on November 26, 1945, as son of Reg and Dorothy, you might say John Graham McVie was a born musician. He played trumpet as a child and then, in his teenage years, took up the guitar. |  |
Although he loved the guitar, lead guitarists were a dime a dozen in those days. So John decided to be different and take up the bass. Reg, his father, saw his son's potential and took it upon himself to buy young John a pink Fender bass. "I started out as a bass player on guitar, playing Shadows songs, because everyone else was strumming or playing lead. Nobody wanted to play bass. Who wants to be a bass player?" Well John did, and did it brilliantly.
Next to Jet Harris, the Shadows' bass player, John's other musical influences include John Mayall, Willie Dixon, Charles Mingus, and later Paul McCartney.
After spending his formative years at Walpole Grammar School, John decided to undertake civil service training to become a tax inspector. While still at school, he joined a band called the Krewsaders, made up of some boyhood friends from Ealing. This was John McVie's first job as a bass player. "We had jackets, a logo, the whole deal. We played weddings and parties, those kinds of things." A fellow named Cliff Barton (bass player with Cyril Davis) gave McVie his first big break. John Mayall had asked him to join the Bluesbreakers. Barton recalls how he declined the offer: "No, I won't do it because I already play for Cyril Davis. But I know this boy; give him a chance". That boy was seventeen year old John McVie who became The Bluesbreakers bassist in January 1963. "My first show was in Acton - they paid me 10 shilling - in a pub at the Uxbridge Road". Two years later in 1965 he played on the band's first album "John Mayall Plays John Mayall".
Mayall went on to become somewhat of a father figure to McVie. Some have even called McVie the son of "The Father of British Blues." A tax inspector by day, and a jammin' bass player with Mayall's Bluesbreakers by night, John McVie was overworked and underpaid. As with most struggling musicians, his day job was never a priority. Caught several times for on-the-job drunkenness, John McVie's reputation for boozing through the years is engraved on stone tablets and remains an endearing part of British Blues mythology. Yet the fact that Mayall re-hired him more times than firing him speaks volumes about his bass playing. As McVie himself remembers;
"When I joined Mayall the drinking was a part of the scene. I never drank for pleasure, it was more an environment thing in the Bluesbreakers that started it off. I met a lot of people who drank and it snowballed until I'd be drinking half a bottle of spirits a gig."
But Mayall was loathe to let him go because "His playing was simple, not a front-line Jack Bruce thing; He had a good tone and could really swing, which what blues-playing is all about really." What's more, the tale that ruthless disciplinarian Mayall once, when returning from a gig, left a loaded McVie on a roadside in the middle of the night to make his own way back, is somewhat exaggerated: "I left him on the Old Kent Road by a bus-stop. He was just totally out of control", Mayall laughs, "So we had to do something drastic before he threw up!"
McVie eventually turned his attention to music and only music. But, after 4 1/2 years with Mayall gigging til all hours of the night, a change was about to come.
Eric Clapton, the defacto "star" of the Bluesbreakers, felt it was time to make a break from the band and go it alone. In 1967, he did just that. How do you replace Eric Clapton? Well, with the man who idolized Eric, none other than the Green God himself, Peter Green. The sweeping changes had just begun. A new drummer was added. His name was Mick Fleetwood. It was clear from the start. This foursome was enormously talented. Mayall, McVie, Green, and Fleetwood…the earliest incarnation of Fleetwood Mac was born.
Green's newfound leadership role in the band didn't last for long. Out of nowhere, Clapton decided that he wanted to rejoin the band. Frustrated, a newly confident Peter Green decided that now was the time to make his own move, out on his own. But he needed co-conspirators. And he got them in Mick and John...eventually.
Mick was easy. He had just been fired from the band for drunkenness. But John's departure took some work. He hesitated for several reasons. In his mind, even though he got along famously with Peter and Mick, this new band was unproven, and therefore a risk. Mayall's Bluesbreakers had paid the bills for John and he was loyal to them. Plus, John hated Clifford Davies, Green's manager. Peter Green decided to hire Bob Brunning as the temp bassist until John made up his mind.
Then Peter made the most brilliant move of all, deciding to name his new band Fleetwood Mac in honor of his favorite rhythm section, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie...with or without John. John did eventually left Mayall and join Peter in September 1967. Mayall simply had gotten too jazzy for John's tastes and John thought it best to leave at that point. It ultimately proved to be one of the best decisions John ever made. Mick recalls: "as soon as John McVie joined, Fleetwood Mac changed from a good band to a fire-breathing blues dragon."
At a stop at the Windsor Jazz Festival, John met the lead singer of a local band named Chicken Shack. She was a beautiful blonde and her name was Christine Perfect. After that initial meeting, it would be three months before they met again. She had decided to stop by the Mac's recording studio during the "Mr. Wonderful" sessions. It wasn't long before she wrote a long letter to John telling him how she felt about him. Smitten as well, John popped the question to Christine at a club called 'The Bag O' Nails'. They married two weeks later in August of 1968 with Peter Green serving as John's best man. They probably would have waited a bit longer but Christine's mom was dying at the time.
Never comfortable in the spotlight, Peter Green, already began looking for new guitar blood to detract from all of the attention that he was being given on stage. They recruited 18 year old Jeremy Spencer and were already being heralded in the British press as the "champions of pure Chicago blues in England". They gigged the English blues circuit with abandon.
| John and Christine lived together on Dorchester Street in London, but rarely saw each other due to their grueling touring schedules. Something had to give. Christine decided to take a break from touring with Chicken Shack and join John on the road. Her exile from the stage only lasted two months. By 1970, she was a member of Fleetwood Mac. By all accounts, John was a happy man. Always the whimsical prankster, he celebrated, albeit in a drunken state, by having his favorite animal tattooed on his arm. It was a penguin. |  |
Four new albums followed in 1969 -- "English Rose", "Fleetwood Mac In Chicago", "The Pious Bird Of Good Omen", and "Then Play On". When Green left the band in 1970, the four remaining members (and a guest: soon-to-be Mac-mate Christine McVie) adjourned to an English country estate name "Kiln House" to record their next album. One might expect that after such as loss as Green's departure, any subsequent record would disappoint. Not so the case of Kiln House. This first Green-less album is a classic with Danny and Jeremy's fiery guitar playing, Mick's maddening drums, John's smooth bass, and their new friend Chrstine helping out on piano and background vocals. By all accounts, the Green void had been filled.
Unfortunately things were about to change for John personally, and not for the better. His drinking was getting progressively worse, affecting his relationship with Christine in particular. Mick recalls Christine's prophetic words… "Jesus what am I going to do? I love this guy, but when he starts drinking now it can get pretty scary. It's not really him at all, is it? It would get worse before it got better.
There were signs of hope however. John's gentle photograph that graced the cover of the 1972 "Bare Trees" album comes to mind. One might see in this photograph John's vision of the serenity that all too often alluded him. The U.S. pressing's jacket initially had this photo framed in a thin brown line and printed on glossy, coated paper. Later versions removed this line, "whitened-up" the contrast on the photo, and printed it on flat, unfinished paper.
Going through several dizzying line-up changes, the Mac recorded several albums in the years to come ; "Penguin" (1973), "Mystery To Me" (1973), and "Heroes Are Hard To Find" (1974). After the bogus Fleetwood Mac debacle in 1974, the name Fleetwood Mac eventually got assigned to the rightful owners; John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. At that point the two of them decided to form their own management company, Seedy Management.
As we all know, despite these interpersonal struggles --or in some way possibly feeding off of them-- Fleetwood Mac the band did eventually find enormous success.
It was Mick Fleetwood who orchestrated the move that brought about the cataclysmic rise of the band to the arena rock stratosphere. In 1975, Mick recruited Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, whilst the McVie marriage was in a tailspin, mainly because of John's drinking habits. "I drink too much, period," confessed John back then "but when I've drunk too much, a personality comes out. It's not very pleasant to be around."
Christine had begun an affair with Curry Grant, the band's lighting director. At the end of the tour she moved out of the house she shared with John in Topanga. When they split up, John took up company with another woman named Sandra in the house that he and Christine had shared. That relationship didn't last. John sold the house and lived at Marina Del Rey for two years on his boat "Adelie" (named after a species of penguin), which he had purchased with his share of the proceeds from the sale of the house.
In May 1976, John McVie rejoined his old employer, John Mayall, on his album "A Banquet In Blues" , playing bass on "Sunshine" along with Rick Vito on guitar who recently joined the Bluesbreakers.
And then came the recording that changed everything -- Rumours. No doubt an emotional rollercoaster for all involved, especially for the McVies. McVie has recounted in interviews where he "had to pull himself back from the edge of suicide". Always the troupers, all five band mates made a conscious decision to keep their raw emotions to themselves. The result is, well we all know the result…one of the greatest albums of all time.
It wasn't long before John remarried….to Julie Anne Rubens, his former secretary that same year. They bought a new boat for themselves and dubbed it "The Challenge" (not coincidentally a title of a track on Christine's 1984 solo album). John and his family did and still do spend most of their spare time on their boat.
And then, in 1981, there was the run-in with the law. John and his wife were arrested at their home in Hawaii after a package containing 4.5 grams of cocaine was found addressed to the couple. A small quantity of marijuana was also found in the McVie home plus there were firearms charges brought against him. He had a rifle without a permit but fortunately able to convince authorities that he wasn't aware of the restrictive gun permit regulations in America. Regardless, John, a Brit, faced deportation proceedings if he were convicted if any of the charges. Thankfully, all charges were dropped after the couple underwent a lie detector test. John went on to become a U.S. citizen on July 24th, 1986.
In 1982 John was a guest on the Bob Welch and Friends show , where he played together with several of his current and past band mates.
The same year John Mayall, motivated by nostalgia and fond memories, contacted Mick Taylor and John McVie. They decided to re-form the original Bluesbreakers for a couple of tours and a video concert film entitled "Blues Alive", which featured Albert King, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Etta James, Sippie Wallace, and others. A whole new generation of followers could get a taste of how it all sounded live two decades before at the birth of the British Blues explosion. After this reunion everyone returned to their respective careers. John McVie, for his part, returned to the studio to record Fleetwood Mac's "Mirage" album.
In 1984, during the making of Chris' solo album, John made it a point to meet up with her in Switzerland to kick some bass riffs on "Love Will Show Us How".
But his struggles didn't end there. In 1987, John suffered an alcohol induced seizure which emotionally brought him to his knees. With the help of psychiatric professionals, he quit drinking cold turkey. John's thoughts…"It was time to stop-- plus it was destroying everything. There's nothing constructive comes out of being an alcoholic." For John there was a light at the end of tunnel, the light of his life. Her name was Molly Elizabeth, his daughter, born February 28,1989.
1990 saw the band embark on their biggest tour ever, the Behind The Mask tour, to support their new album. In almost nine months time they travelled from Australia to the States to Europe and then back to the States.
Newly confident and sober for the first time, John McVie embarked on a solo project. The result, 1992's "John McVie's Gotta Band with Lola Thomas" John wore many hats on this project including executive producer and playing bass (of course). He even lent some background vocals to the project. Billy Burnette made a guest appearance on the album from which "Now I Know" / "One More Time With Feeling" was released as a single but never charted.
Fleetwood Mac carried on, though not quite as successful as before, But nonetheless John was always there, alongside his friend Mick. The rather unsuccessful "Time" album and tour was the signal to go on a hiatus in 1995.
It would not be until their 1992 performance at the President Clinton's inauguration ball that the rest of the world would get to see what we've known already...that the magic was still there. It didn't end there. The Rumours line-up Mac went on to record an MTV Special in the summer of 1997, record a best-selling album, "The Dance", and embark on a massive sold-out tour. Everything old was new again. The Mac was back! "The Dance" was a long-awaited gift for Mac fans everywhere...a collection of newly adapted classics and new songs, accompanied by a video of the concert. Better then before, yesterday's gone yesterday's gone...
One thing has become clear throughout all of the personnel and style changes that the band had endured/experienced over the years. John McVie and Mick Fleetwood are the backbone of this band. When asked about the secret of his harmony with Mick on stage, John stated in an interview a few years ago;
"I try to direct at Christine's keyboard, the part of the left hand. I try to play at the same time as Mick's bassdrum, quite an experience! Mick is no technical drummer, he's a feel-drummer. It's interesting to try to play along with his foot, because at the front of the stage they do different things all the time, each song is different. He's always slightly ahead of the beat and I'm a bit behind of it, what creates a kind of "torn apart" rhythmic effect. Can you follow me? What I mean is that we meet in the middle. We come out at the same. It's not a perfect one-and-two,one-and-two; it's not symphonic".
John McVie, along with his legendary Mac band mates, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 12, 1998.
Then, in 2003, John got back together with his Fleetwood Mac bandmates (sans his former wife Christine McVie) and recorded 2003's Say You Will. That wonderful album gave fans an exhaustive 18-month World Tour which finally came to a bittersweet end on September 14, 2004. Fans take note that there are rumours that a new Mac studio album and tour will happen in 2007.
The thing about John is this. He's modest, honest. and warm. No big ego, no pretension and no air... just a boy from Ealing with a bass guitar in his hand...still...
Research: Dirk Faes & Jan Freedland
Written by: Jan Freedland
If you have any interesting facts or insights that you'd like to add to John's bio, please drop us a line.
Sources:
One Together
"The First 30 Years" by Bob Brunning
"My Life And Adventures In Fleetwood Mac" by Mick Fleetwood
"My Twenty-Five Years In Fleetwood Mac" by Mick Fleetwood