Christine McVie has died. You all know that by now. Almost every post on my Facebook feed has her picture. I suppose if I ever looked at my Twitter page I would see the same thing. Maybe TikTok not so much…wrong generation.

To me, Ms. McVie’s passing is linked to the death of two other musicians, Walter Becker in 2017 and Glenn Frey in 2016.

Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and the Eagles–certainly, this was my soundtrack of the ’70s.

I’ve never quite understood my fascination with Steely Dan–Becker and his buddy Donald Fagen spinning yarns of drugs, death, and deliverance. But I loved their rock-jazz fusion and wore out my copy of Citizen, the 4 CD compilation set encompassing their first 7 studio albums. I was fortunate to see them twice before Becker’s death, first at a rain-soaked outdoor performance in Tinley Park, sharing the bill with their former backup singer Michael McDonald, and lastly in the more intimate setting of the Chicago Theater in 2009. When Becker died, I listened to Aja for days.

With the Eagles, did you take it easy, or take it to the limit. Did you want to live your life in the fast lane, or out on the range with a desperado? Billions of records sold, Hotel California playing non-stop around the world, and lots of reunion tours. We caught them live once, at Allstate Arena three years before Frey’s death. The band sounded great, even when Joe Walsh stole the second half of the show.

But Fleetwood Mac—there was nothing like Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac and Rumours were the two albums that will forever be the music of my first two years of medical school. Over My Head, Go Your Own Way, Don’t Stop… I may not have known of the trials and tribulations of the band at the time, of the broken romances and the cocaine–I just knew it was the music to which I learned my physiology, my anatomy, and my pharmacology.

By the time I saw Fleetwood Mac live in 2015 the band members were no longer young and spry and gorgeous. Rumor was that a full set of musicians was playing just behind the curtain. But at least the Big 5 (Fleetwood, McVie, McVie, Buckingham, Nicks) were all together. That will never happen again.

So long, Walter. Adios Glenn. And most of all, goodbye, Christine.