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The Story Behind The Songs

The Story Behind The Songs

The Story Behind The Songs

“Don’t Stop” Fleetwood Mac – The Story Behind The Song

Author Donielle Flynn
Photo by Ken Settle

Leave the past behind… Look forward to tomorrow.  “Don’t Stop” is a positive love letter to a lover that needs to move on.  Christine McVie wrote this song about John McVie when they were separated.  One would think this was still hard for John, who then had to perform a song about him, but the song isn’t spiteful.  The song was just another song in an album chuck full of songs that the band wrote about one another.  Rumors took years to make, and most of it was recorded in separate pieces because the band was so pissed at each other and/or breaking up with each other and/or sleeping with each other despite being in relationships.  The album really did end up with the perfect name.

The album, Rumors, originally was called Yesterday’s Gone after a line in “Don’t Stop.”  Since most of Southern California was talking about Fleetwood Mac’s business during this time, John McVie suggested Rumors instead.

Every member of Fleetwood Mac was going through a breakup.  John and Christine McVie were divorcing.  Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were breaking up, and Mick Fleetwood was also in the middle of a divorce.  Everyone was a hot mess and there was Christine McVie in the middle of it all with words of positivity.

“Don’t Stop” Lyrics

Why not think about times to come?
And not about the things that you’ve done
If your life was bad to you
We’ll just do what tomorrow will do

Christine said in The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumours and Lies, “It might have, I guess, been directed more toward John, but I’m just definitely not a pessimist.”  John and Christine were married for nearly 10 years.  When they married in 1968, Peter Green was their best man.

Christine broke up with John and filed for divorce while Fleetwood Mac was on the road. “I broke up with John in the middle of a tour.”  Christine continued, “I was aware of it being rather irresponsible,” – (Rolling Stone interview 1977). “I had to do it for my sanity. It was either that or me ending up in a lunatic asylum.”

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’: 5 Best Lyrical Burns about Relationships

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 09: (L-R) John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac  (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Time and Perspective

In a 1997 interview, Christine spoke of her breakup with John again. “I dare say, if I hadn’t joined Fleetwood Mac, we might still be together. I just think it’s impossible to work in the band with your spouse. Imagine the tension of living with someone 24 hours a day, on the road, in an already stressful situation, with the added negativity of too much alcohol. It just blew apart.” – cheatsheet.com

Despite the song being used in political campaigns decades after is was written, “Don’t Stop” wasn’t written to be a political song.  It was about Christine’s relationship with John McVie, but maybe he wasn’t bothered by playing it so much.  In a 2015 interview, he said, “I never put that together. I’ve been playing it for years and it wasn’t until somebody told me, ‘Chris wrote that about you.’ Oh really?”  I personally, have to think he was being campy in his answer.  There’s no way he could be that dense, but who knows?

“Don’t Stop” is one of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful songs, second only to “Dreams.”

5 Great Fleetwood Mac Songs Written by Christine McVie

When Fleetwood Mac is mentioned, many immediately think of the contributions of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. However, Christine McVie is responsible for writing some of the band’s best songs.

That’s something Mick Fleetwood recognized in a sweet tribute to McVie in honor of what would have been her 81st birthday. He wrote, “For Christine McVie… First, you are missed by me and your band, Fleetwood Mac. This being your birthday serves as a reminder for SO many … that our blessing is your music lives on!! You are our forever ‘Song Bird!’ Happy Birthday, Christine.”

In honor of her birthday on July 12, here are just five classic Fleetwood Mac songs that McVie wrote/co-wrote.

But First, Watch Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks Effortlessly Handle a Sexist Question in a Video From 1977

Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks undoubtedly dealt with a lot of sexism in the ’70s, as evident by this interview clip from 1977. However, they had no problem shutting down a journalist’s incredibly sexist question.

In the clip below, an off-screen reporter asks Lindsey Buckingham, “It must have been one of the first bands to incorporate ladies and use them as such. Any problems as far as credibility of ladies in rock ’n’ roll when the band first hit the road with the girls?”

Buckingham responded awkwardly, “I don’t think so,” while looking over at McVie and Nicks. McVie drolly says, while Nicks giggles, “Well, I’d already been in the band for a good while, as a lady, and as a musician. I’d been primarily a musician rather than a backup singer, in any case. And then, when Stevie joined the band, she was also a frontline singer and writer.”

McVie continued, “And I think in that way, I guess, we were the innovators of that kind of thing because it was more or less to my knowledge prior to us girls would be in rock bands, but would be backup singers and…”

“Pretty faces,” interjects the journalist.

This then caused Nicks to jump in and say, “I think it comes down to the fact that Fleetwood Mac would not go on without Chris and me, if we were sick or something. Whereas in most bands with a girl in it, [they] could go ahead and would go on and play. But they’d have trouble without us.”

The exchange is rather cringe, but it’s amazing watching McVie and Nicks put this reporter in his place.

  • 'Don't Stop'

    “Don’t Stop” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and would famously serve as the theme to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The band was even persuaded to reunite for the first time since 1982 to perform “Don’t Stop” at the inaugural ball in 1993.

  • 'You Make Loving Fun'

    Fun fact: While “You Make Loving Fun” was written by Christine McVie about her affair with Fleetwood Mac’s lighting director, she told then-husband/bassist John McVie it was about her dog.

  • 'Songbird'

    Christine McVie said of the moving piano ballad in a June 2017 interview with People, “For some peculiar reason I wrote ‘Songbird’ in half an hour. I’ve never been able to figure out how I did that. I woke up in the middle of the night and the song was there in my brain, chords lyrics melody, everything. I played it in my bedroom and didn’t have anything to tape it on. So I had to stay awake all night so I wouldn’t forget it and I came in the next morning to the studio and had [producer] Ken Callait put it on a 2-track. That was how the song ended up being. I don’t know where that came from. I wished it would happen more often, but it hasn’t.”

  • 'Oh Daddy'

    “Oh Daddy” was inspired by Mick Fleetwood, who was the only father in the band at that time, even though some allege the track was another track about McVie’s affair with Fleetwood Mac’s lighting director. According to Setlist.fm, the last time the band played the track live was on November 30, 1997 at the USAir Arena in Landover, MD. 

  • 'Say You Love Me'

    The last single released from 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, “Say You Love Me” would peak on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at #11.

Donielle Flynn has two kids, two cats, two dogs, and a love of all things rock. She’s been in radio decades and held down top-rated day parts at Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington DC radio stations throughout her tenure. She enjoys writing about rock news, the Detroit community, and she has a series called “The Story Behind” where she researches the history of classic rock songs.

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