Dude who bought one of Christine’s pianos
 

Kind of bizarre…

https://youtu.be/OrTFsCCDsj0

Oh wow. I really enjoyed this. I am so glad the piano landed in the hands of someone that appreciates it and is not just some random collector. He was friends and business associates of Chris. How freaking incredible that the piano has Chris's playing built into the hard drive. You can have Chris playing the piano at your house anytime you want. To see those keys move with her left hand proves its Chris. So cool and so amazing that he shared his story with us. I am so happy he has this beautiful piece from Chris.

I don’t know if I could handle that.

This is exactly why I was completely fine with Christine, Mick, and John auctioning off these items. Not only did a percentage of the money go to a cause they’ve supported for years, but because it insured that many of the items would be preserved for many many years to come by folks who truly appreciated them. And in some cases, may be available for viewing by fans, such as in this video.

When he told of how much Chris traveled the world recently (while not touring) really interested me. Its almost like Chris had a premonition 10 years ago that told her she had 10 years to live. What she accomplished at her age during the last 10 years is nothing short of amazing. Few conqueror their fear of flying let alone at her age. She grabbed life and said, I am going to see and do as much as I can these last 10 years. She goes back to Fleetwood Mac for 2 world tours, makes an album with Lindsey and tours with him. Then we hear about all these business dealings and her flying the globe. It really something. At times she struggled singing and even playing yet NOTHING stopped her. She is an inspiration to US ALL.
We miss you Chris. We hear your music you left us even on your grand piano.

very well said. I completely agree. she was such a strong, amazing lady. i am grateful every day that she was able to get out of that isolated, agoraphobic funk and get back into life, doing things she loved.

--Lis

Great video! The blues number was a treat, possibly a basic improv that she used to test the hard drive’s recording capacity? Nothing terribly original but indicative of her style of blues playing. Notice, too, that she didn’t rush the tempo at all, which is tempting to do with a twelve bar blues piece on piano.

I loved the back half of the video where Brian discussed his personal experiences of working with Christine, loved that she remember the child’s name (after hearing it only once), that she took bull**** from no one, and that she traveled extensively in the last few years of her life once she’d conquered flying.

What a treasure of a person, what a fulfilling existence.

It’s sad she was isolated. I had this romantic image that she owned a small village tavern with a piano and she’s occasionally go in and sing things like “Mean Old World” and “Get Like You Used To Be.” Instead, she was all about her dogs.

She did what she wanted and needed to do at the time and felt her English roots calling her home. Her house was a huge project that turned out really stellar. Thankfully we got a solo album during that time which sort of came out of nowhere. But she admitted she developed a pain pill addiction after a fall at her home and she was prescribed pain meds. But Chris was too smart to let that take control of her. She got help and conquered that really fast. Then I think her darkness started to recede. Suddenly she missed what she loved best. To think she gave up touring in her 50s for touring in her 70s. But we are SO blessed she came back!

Thanks for finding this! It’s great to know that the piano ended up with someone who had a personal connection with Chris and will actually play it. So incredible that he found that song saved in the hard drive!

I actually purchased one of her keyboards from the auction - the smallest one that went for around $2k - and the first thing I did when I got it home was to check if there were any recordings or even saved presets she’d left behind. I didn’t find anything, but will check again - maybe I didn’t look everywhere I could have (I’ve never had a Yamaha before so I’m still learning all the controls and features). Either way, it’s such a surreal, awe inspiring feeling to play an instrument that belonged to my musical hero, my favorite person.

Anyway, I’m curious about the projects that this guy mentioned he had worked on with her or that she was an investor in. Anyone know what they were?

Color me VERY JEALOUS!

Depending on the age of the instrument.... if it's newer, I'd doubt she programmed or saved anything herself. At the BuckVie tour stop in Nashville, they had to stop a song they'd already started, and restart, apparently because she was playing the wrong sound. She didn't know(?) how to change it, and her tech had to come out and hit the button for the right sound, then they restarted the song.

Wow, what a treat. This was hard to watch once the music started to play. Hearing her style one more time brought tears to my eyes.

Brian sharing these stories and this video and her music. Christine ****ing McVie! Gift from heaven!

Did this piano actually say Christine F***ing McVie when Christine owned it? Or did the buyer add that? If that was added by the buyer, I find it very disrespectful.

Chris did own that cover with those words on it. It's in the photo the guy put up...I don't think he was trying to be disrespectful. Chris did have a bit of truck driver mouth at times. :)

--Lis

She was interviewed on BBC (2 I think?) a few years back, and she was asked a question along the lines of what advice would she want to go back and give to her younger self. And she said she would tell her younger self to (I'm paraphrasing) have more confidence and to remember that (and this is a quote) "you are CHRISTINE ****ING MCVIE"... So I took it that it was something either she came to realize after coming out of her countryside funk, or maybe someone close to her told her, ... not clear. But it was a message she had to remind herself of at one point in her time off. Clearly it stuck, and must have been something she shared with others because that piano cover would have been there for several tours after her return....

yes and it was a thing and a sign of respect for Chris on BuckVie tour. that she was a badass. i think the whole band had the shirts made saying that too, and at one of the shows either Chris or someone else wore it and either Brett or Jimmy made sure everyone in audience saw it.

It was definitely a sign of respect. During the tour, the cover she made, her quote in the interview.

I think he(interviewer) said, "What would you say to Christine Perfect?"

Or, just look at my signature.

Yes! One of those T-shirts was in the auction (the text was bedazzled onto it), as well as a few other things that said that - I recall that her water bottles from the 2018-19 tour did. What an absolute legend. She was Christine F***ing McVie, and no one will ever forget it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/23486154944...Bk9SR5rQuJG3YQ

Does anyone know what this item went for in the auction? It totally pisses me off that someone is trying to get 19k for it. People suck.

Sold for $1920.00
Seller is way crazy and greedy

https://www.julienslive.com/lot-deta...443%3Fpage%3D7

Yeah, that is totally a Dick move. I mean Mick move.

I almost bid on that! Then I remembered the cats would destroy it.

The buyer had a good eye. Its one of the few items that sold for considerably less than its approximate value. The item I was interested in had its value of about a hundred but it sold for a few thousand :eek: You could have almost bought one of her pianos for $19k. I doubt the seller will fetch so much.

It would be really cool if the photos that were sold somehow made their way into the public eye eventually....i had done an early online bid on a set that went for like over $6000. argh they looked so beautiful. for about a week i thought they might be mine!!

--Lis

Hmm. Interesting. To me this feels like a bit of excessive ego, not really like Christine. She could have written: "I'm Christine McVie, and you're not."

Anyway, I don't have to like it, and I don't. But I still love Christine as much as ever.

Its possible that someone else came up with it and she just accepted it. That happens with nicknames too. They get assigned to you and you just accept your fate. Someone could have said it, they all laughed and everyone including her kept it around.
Personally I love it. After all those drunken and crazed antics from the guys she was around on the road with......she needed a phrase to keep them in line :)

I think it works rather well

Stevie: I should be on backing vocals on Everywhere. I am going to tell Rolling Stone that I had nothing to do with this album.
Chris: I wanted you on backing vocals but you were not around. I'm Christine F*******McVie. Now sit down, shut up and take another tranquilizer darling. I've had just about enough of your Whatsa matta babies to last me a bloody lifetime *****lighting up a smoke*****

I agree, it's just her sass and humor. I love that about Christine.
I heard a story about how she out drank some of the Russian men. Or, was the last one standing if I remember correctly.

It’s precisely because she wasn’t the big ego, “F*CK YOU, PAY ATTENTION TO ME,” type of person that the nickname works - it totally fits with her ironic sense of humor. And yet she also actually earned that kind of reverence and respect by simply being the best at what she did.

His name certainly rang a bell in my old brain. Was this the Brian Larsen who, years ago, had a sinister — or at least dubious — reputation in the fan community?

http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=23709

Thanks for the vid, Doug. Amazing to watch and hear that blues. I also think that Lindsey introduced her as “Christine F**ing McVie” after they played “You Make Loving Fun” or “Hold Me” on the 1982 tour or maybe the 1980 tour. I vaguely recall hearing it on an old audience tape.

I can't post pics on here but, if you go to this link

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisonc...h=5c4fc31b22ec

and look at the pic of the Brian Larsen they show and pull up the video link at the beginning of this thread, they actually DO seem to show the same person....

Also, going down the rabbit hole of the earlier thread posted on here where a guy by this name was being discussed, I couldn't get over how unaware people were/still are? about how Wikipedia works. So many comments on there "are you saying Wikipedia is wrong?" For those still unaware, ANYONE can edit/add/remove info to any Wikipedia page... including people telling "untruths"

I really hope people know better by now, but maybe not......Buyer beware.

Hi David, I'm Brian (the guy who posted the piano video). Someone told me there was a thread on here about the piano, so I read the comments. I had forgotten that I had an account on here because it's been several years since I've posted, but I was able to sign in, so here we are.

I glanced through the comments on the post you linked to and am trying to piece together the best that I can of that. Here's what I can tell you: when I was a kid (as in, literally from when I was 11-14 years old or so), I recorded and self-released a few (in retrospect, hilariously crappy) albums that represented the exact kind of musicianship you would expect from a little kid. I even created a Fleetwood Mac fan site in 1997 -- with handcrafted HTML, which was just as rudimentary as you would expect for a Tripod-hosted site in the early days of the internet -- and a lot of the "songs" I wrote as a little kid were inspired by Fleetwood Mac.

One of the songs for one of those albums I made as a kid, which came out when I was 14, used the melody for "The Ledge" as the basis for the song, which had different lyrics, etc. When I published the song through ASCAP (the performing rights society), as would be customary for a song that is not a cover but uses elements of another artist's work, the song was published at that time as a co-write, which included Lindsey as the creator of the melody. This is the same kind of thing that has happened in recent years when successful artists have been later named as co-writers on songs that they weren't involved in writing, because it was determined that a famous song written prior to the new work must have inspired/infringed on the original work. Hell, even one of the most famous songs of all time, "Stairway to Heaven," almost resulted in a co-writing credit for the band Spirit a few years ago.

Anyway, the fact that this song showed as if it was a jointly written song with Lindsey is what I assume started confusion, which is represented in some of those comments from that thread you shared. Remember, I was literally 14 years old at that time, and this was more than 22 years ago. Obviously, I had no relationship with Lindsey Buckingham or any member of Fleetwood Mac. Hell, I was just a freshman in high school. I was recording songs on a 4-track Tascam Portastudio in my parentsÂ’ basement. Ambitious? Yeah, I guess. Good? No.

I assume that some hilarious bastardization of that fact is what sparked claims that I wrote a bunch of songs with Lindsey, but that was not me writing or claiming that. I read that it says that this was for “Gift of Screws,” but that’s obviously someone being a troll on some site. I would have been something like 7 years old when he started recording that album. Obviously, that’s not only not true, but also nonsensical. I didn’t even meet Lindsey for the first time until I was 25.

I am now 36 years old, married, and a father, but alas, I still have not written a song with Lindsey Buckingham, nor do I ever expect to. I have gotten the chance to meet Lindsey on several occasions and have had (non alcoholic, by Lindsey’s choice) drinks on multiple occasions with him and often at least one member of his touring band (either Brett or Neale). These are pretty well documented experiences, but they do not make me a special person, just a lucky guy who was in the right place in the right time. I think there are a handful of us fans who have been in the right place at the right time enough to be a known entity to Lindsey. He knows me on a first name basis but we are not “friends.”
With Christine, I did genuinely have the opportunity to get to know her on a personal level. But when her piano up for sale, what did I have to do? Bid, just like everybody else. With that said, Chris is the only member of Fleetwood Mac whose personal cell number and email address I had. I readily and fairly frequently communicated with Chris and she seemed to genuinely enjoy the opportunity to connect. We even traded Christmas presents, etc., but do I believe I was somebody super special to Chris? No, of course not. But she was such a warm person that if you crossed paths with her on any kind of a regular basis and she felt that you were a genuine person, she took a liking to you. I was very lucky, nothing more than that. The same with Lindsey in recent years.

I donÂ’t know if this does anything to settle whatever beliefs or concerns you or anybody else might have about me, but it is what it is. Best wishes to you.

OK, last reply since I just wrote a long reply to David's message.

Yes, I am the guy in the link you referenced. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of a pet company. As a teenager, I was a musician, but it has been well over 10 years since I have done anything whatsoever in music (and I never did anything substantial as a musician). Through a lot of hard work and discipline (and a few degrees along the way), I have been fortunate to have achieved success in my professional life, which is something I'm very grateful for. Again, I'm not anybody special.

Thank you for posting the video with the piano and telling the stories. I've watched it several times and hope you put that piece {Christine input on the player piano} to a separate youtube. I love her sensibilities and the sound of that particular piano.

It was like a gift from the heavens.

That’s OK, I understand. A few people used to think I was the CEO of Obie’s Lighting.

Congratulations on your auction win of Christine’s Yamaha! Enjoy it in good health.

I still sniff a bit of revisionist history here...but it is what it is :eek:

How is your dad?

Not sure what you mean by revisionist history. That it’s revisionist in the sense that 14 year old me thought my music was good, and now I recognize that it was pretty awful? As young children, all of us want to think we are special, but the reality is far more sobering.

Thank you for the suggestion. Will do that as soon as I get a chance.

What you shared was absolutely amazing, and getting to hear Christine's hidden piece and watch the keys brought me so much joy and a pause to my grief. You have no idea how wonderful that was for me. Thank you.