[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Fannymac

One of Christine's best friends is Steve Winwood....they go WAY back. At the time of TIME, there was still some major bad blood between Steve and Dave (don't know if it ever got cleared up)....she was just taking Steve's side. Plus, she didn't think he added anything to the band, that Mick had only asked him to join the group out of sympathy (I guess he was in a pretty bad way at the time....homeless, no record deal, maybe still using, etc.).

Makes me think of Christine's comments about her early years. Cameron Crowe got her to remember the pre-FM days and it's a shame that more interviews didn't focus on that, because she had a lot of history -- even before Chicken Shack -- and we don't get to hear those stories.

By the time she made friends with the group, Christine Perfect was already a journeywoman blues-circuit rocker herself. As a “real tubby” teenager – she weighed 160 pounds at 16 – Christine and a girlfriend/singing partner snuck away from their strict parents in Birmingham and visited every talent agency they could find in London. Their act consisted of strumming guitars and warbling Everly Brothers hits. Their career, which was highlighted by a obe-song pub appearance backed by the Shadows, was cut short when their parents found them out. Christine was sent to art college in Birmingham where she joined a folk club. “We’d meet every Tuesday night, above a pub somewhere, and drink cheap beer. Whoever could, would play a folk song or violin, whatever they could do. Anyway, one night in strolls this devastatingly handsome man, who was from Birmingham University. It was Spencer Davis. I just fell in love with Spence. I swore I would get thin and go out with him.

“And I did.”

Christine and Spencer began singing together, fronting the university’s jazz band, but, she says, their relationship proved more musical than illicit. “Stevie Winwood was about 14, still in school and playing at a jazz club called the ChappelPub at lunchtime,” Christine says. “He met Spencer Davis Group.”

“I used to trail around religiously. Boy, they were so hot. Nothing was like that. Stevie Winwood played like I’d never heard anybody play before. It just gave me goose bumps. They were just a blues band, but a really, really great blues band. He [Winwood] could yell the blues. A 15-year-old boy. No one could believe it. The 19-20-year-old girls would have the hots for him.”