The Legendary Christine Perfect Album
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Album Summary
The Legendary Christine Perfect Album was laid down in 1969 and sent out into the world in 1970 — first on Blue Horizon in the UK under the title 'Christine Perfect,' and later reissued on Sire Records for American ears hungry for the real thing. Produced by the great Mike Vernon, a man who knew his way around a blues session better than just about anybody in Britain at the time, the album captured Christine Perfect — not yet McVie, still carrying her maiden name before her union with Fleetwood Mac's own John McVie — at a moment of pure, uncut artistic truth. She was backed by her brothers and sisters in Chicken Shack and fellow travelers from the British blues-rock community, and what they created together was something warm, aching, and deeply soulful. Christine's voice and piano were front and center, and Mike Vernon's production gave the whole thing the kind of intimate, lived-in feel that only comes when everybody in the room is playing from the heart.
Reception
- Blues and rock critics of the era embraced the album with genuine warmth, recognizing Christine's commanding vocal authority and elegant piano work as something special — a rare female voice cutting through the heart of a scene that needed her badly.
- Commercially, the album moved with the modest grace of a true blues record, finding its people slowly and surely rather than storming the charts — but it built a devoted following that only grew louder as Christine's star rose with Fleetwood Mac.
- The Sire Records reissue brought the album to American audiences and gave US fans of British blues and soul a chance to discover where so much of Christine McVie's musical soul had been born and raised.
Significance
- This album stands as one of the finest documents of the late 1960s British blues revival, and it holds a special place in that story because Christine Perfect was a rare and powerful female presence at the very forefront of a genre that was almost entirely defined by men.
- It is an essential artifact for anyone who wants to truly understand Christine McVie the artist — here is the blues and soul bedrock, the emotional vocabulary, the piano eloquence that she carried with her into Fleetwood Mac and onto stages all over the world.
- Decades on, the record endures as a cult classic of the highest order, a testament to the depth and richness of the UK blues scene and proof that some music, made with enough honesty and feeling, never stops being relevant.
Tracklist
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A1 Crazy 'Bout You Baby 130
3:01
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A2 I'm On My Way 153
3:08
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A3 Let Me Go (Leave Me Alone) 115
3:33
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A4 Wait And See 101
3:12
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A5 Close To Me 82
2:39
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A6 I'd Rather Go Blind 157
3:14
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B1 When You Say 86
3:14
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B2 And That's Saying A Lot 111
2:57
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B3 No Road Is The Right Road 119
2:48
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B4 For You 108
2:44
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B5 I'm Too Far Gone (To Turn Around) 140
3:25
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B6 I Want You 92
2:22
Artist Details
Christine McVie, born Christine Perfect in Birmingham, England, was one of the sweetest souls to ever lay her hands on a piano, rising to fame as a founding member of the British rock outfit Fleetwood Mac and bringing that deep, smoky warmth to some of the greatest recordings of the late '60s and '70s. Her voice and songwriting — responsible for timeless gems like "Songbird," "Say You Love Me," and "You Make Loving Fun" — carried a blues-soaked tenderness that helped transform Fleetwood Mac from a British blues band into one of the biggest-selling rock acts in history. Christine McVie wasn't just a musician; she was the heart and the hearth of that whole sound, and the world of rock and roll lost one of its true treasures when she passed in November of 2022.
