Some sort of cosmic rock ‘n’ roll magic was shimmering in the air when British blues band Fleetwood Mac crossed paths with California folk-rockers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and according to Nicks, Christine McVie’s clairvoyant mother predicted the whole thing. The story adds another layer of fateful mysticism to the band’s intriguing and tumultuous lore, like another shawl of black lace worn by a spinning, tambourine-wielding Nicks.
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While McVie took her mother’s psychic powers very seriously, she initially misunderstood the message. Once she learned where Nicks and Buckingham were living in Los Angeles, the message suddenly made perfect sense.
Christine McVie’s Mother Had A Peculiar Profession
Christine McVie’s mother, Beatrice Edith Maud, was a clairvoyant and faith healer by trade. Despite the unusual profession, McVie was confident in her mother’s powers. “I believe they were real,” she told The Guardian in 2016. “She was a healer. I just wanted her to be an ordinary mum, so the less I knew of that side, the better. But here’s a story. There was an old friend of my dad’s in Newcastle—this rich old lady who lived in a run-down castle. She had terminal cancer. She sent a pair of her kid gloves to my mother, who wore one during the night, and a couple of weeks later, there was a phone call. The doctors were amazed that all the cancer was completely gone.”
Although McVie might have wished for a more “stereotypical” upbringing, she certainly held an immense amount of respect for her mother’s abilities. Maud died before McVie would reach the apex of her fame with Fleetwood Mac, but fascinatingly, the clairvoyant woman seemed to predict this professional upswing before she passed. “Christine’s mother was very psychic,” Nicks recalled in a 1986 interview with ABC Australia. “The last thing that Chris’ mom said to her before she died was, ‘You will find it on orange grove.’”
“Of course, Christine, with her dry English humor, is sure she’s going to be picking oranges somewhere in an orange grove in California,” Nicks continued. Little did McVie know how relevant “orange grove” would become in the years that followed.
How The Clairvoyant Woman Predicted The Fate Of Fleetwood Mac
A parting message about a mysterious orange grove might sound like the delusional ramblings of a woman on her deathbed. But casting skepticism aside, Christine McVie’s mother did seem to predict the imminent arrival of California folk-rockers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to Fleetwood Mac. Beatrice Edith Maud wasn’t referencing a farm that grows citrus trees. Orange Grove Avenue is a street in Los Angeles. And on the corner of that street and Fairfax, a young Nicks and Buckingham lived in a tiny apartment.
“They found us on Orange Grove,” Nicks told ABC Australia. “From the day that we all met at a Mexican restaurant, and they drove up in these two wild Cadillacs, white, like with the fins, clunked up! Lindsey and I are going, ‘These people are strange.’ They get out, and it was really like love at first sight. How could you not love these people?”
“So, we had dinner,” the “Lighthouse” singer continued. “It was never like, ‘Do you want to join the band?’ It was like, ‘Well, rehearsal’s tomorrow at 5 pm in the basement, and you’ll get paid $200 a week in cash for each of you, and I’m going, ‘We’re rich! We’re rich!’ It was instant, and I went out and bought all the Fleetwood Mac albums with my last pennies and listened to every side, back to front, back to front, to see if I could find any thematic thing in this band that I felt was something I could do, and I did.”
Photo By Rick Diamond/Getty Images
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