Early Life
John Graham McVie was born in Ealing, west London, to Reg and Dorothy McVie and attended Walpole Grammar School. At age 14 he began playing the guitar in local bands, covering songs by The Shadows. He soon realised that his friends were learning lead guitar so he decided to play the bass guitar instead. Initially he just removed the top two (E and B) strings from his guitar to play the bass parts until his father bought him a pink Fender bass guitar, the same as that used by McVie's major early musical influence Jet Harris, The Shadows' bass player. John was in 3J class with Roger Warwick, a baritone sax player who had studied under Don Rendell and was to emerge in the London rock-jazz scene. Their teacher, Mr Howell (a pianist), although not really appreciating this "funny" music, was intelligent and open-minded enough to give pupils space and time to use school facilities to practise and listen to the new wave.
Soon after leaving school at 17, John trained for nine months to be a tax inspector and this also coincided with the start of his musical career.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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