Songbird - Lesley Ann Jones

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by dougl

Book Review – Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones – Is ‘Songbird’ a Fitting Tribute to Christine McVie?
Patti AliventiDecember 9, 2024

Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Books, and author Lesley-Ann Jones for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

When you have a situation where the subject of your book was a fairly private person and is now deceased, and her friends, relatives, and coworkers all refuse to talk to you, perhaps it’s time to rethink whether or not you should really be writing about them in the first place. Christine McVie was just such a person, and this is a book that probably shouldn’t have been written.

Christine McVie (born Christine Anne Perfect) was the keyboardist, vocalist, and one of the songwriters behind many of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits. However, she was fine standing behind her keyboards while Stevie Nicks took center stage. She gave some interviews, but not many, and rarely talked badly about anyone, which means a lot of what went on in her life was not discussed in those interviews.

With Christine’s death in 2022, the only testimonies straight out of her mouth are those scant interviews left behind. The author also had a bit of a personal relationship with her, but even that seems to be one where Christine kept her at a distance, as she seemed to do with most people. There are many things about her the author doesn’t know, and many situations are described with words like “suggested” or “likely”. In other words, the author has no clue what actually happened and is taking an (educated?) guess.

To make matters worse, throughout a good part of the book, Jones uses feedback from a clinical psychologist who never worked with McVie to describe what things “must have been like” for her or how she “must have felt.” I found myself disgusted at these parts for two reasons. One is that he never talked with McVie so he is analyzing her without her consent or permission (nor that of her family) based on videos and interviews. I thought psychologists were prohibited from doing this. The other is that he assigns feelings to her that she may or may not have had based on statements she makes. For instance, her mother was thought to have been a medium and was also a ghost hunter in Christine’s younger days, at a time when that was not the subject of numerous television shows. Based on one line in an interview, the psychologist has decided that Christine resented her mother’s absence and just wanted a “normal” childhood. There’s no way to ask her what she meant by that line, but his interpretation is presented as the truth throughout the book.

Without conversations with McVie herself or any of the members of Fleetwood Mac or any of her family, what is left to write about? The author manages to fill 353 pages with a whole lot of filler. Pages and pages are filled with tangents that have nothing to do with McVie’s life, except having occurred while she was alive. I learned more about the British Blues scene in the 1960s and 1970s than I ever thought I wanted to know. However, seeing how the author came to conclusions about a lot of things in this book, I have to wonder how accurate it all is. Many of the people who did talk to her seemed to be self-serving, as in they think that the mention in this book might help their credibility in the music business, or what’s left of it.

Overall, Songbird was too much speculation and too much filler. Two stars almost seem too generous, but there was good information about the music business and the many incarnations of Fleetwood Mac. I still maintain that it was a book that probably shouldn’t have been written. If I weren’t reading it for a review, I probably would not have finished it.

Thank you for posting this. Its exactly what I have been saying since the book was released. None of us have interviewed Chris yet we all could have written this book. Nothing new is revealed. It is full of speculation that any reasonable person would make. Yes affairs do impact your well being and make you depressed. Chris was not thrilled about another woman in the band. Death of parents have impact on you.
This is why I was puzzled by some of the pearl clutching about it. Stevie also has had books similarly written about her. Nothing new revealed either. She was mad at Lindsey and never got over the relationship. Drugs are bad, blah blah blah.
All of it is what we already know i.e. Stevie slept with everyone