Few rock’n’roll stories are as downright weird as the strange tale of Fleetwood Mac: a 50-plus-year saga involving drug-induced madness, bitter in-fighting, a ‘fake’ band that stole their name, a bizarre on-tour disappearance, two broken marriages, at least one ruinous coke habit and the kind of bed-hopping normally seen in an old-fashioned West End farce. Oh, and also involving some of the best rock music of the 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond.
Fleetwood Mac formed in London in 1967 at the height of the British blues-rock explosion. The band was named after drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – partly as a ploy to persuade the latter to join – but the real star of the original band was guitarist/vocalist Peter Green. Green was so good that he’d been picked to replace Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (where he was later joined, albeit briefly, by Fleetwood and McVie), and his innovative style would inspire future generations of rock guitarists, from Tony Iommi and Gary Moore to Noel Gallagher.
Green quit the band in May 1970, his mental health damaged by drug use. A second guitarist, Jeremy Spencer, also afflicted by drug-related trauma, vanished 10 months later in the middle of a US tour, after saying he was popping out to get a magazine. He later resurfaced as a member of American religious cult The Children Of God. And a third guitarist, Danny Kirwan, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital after being fired in 1972. A fourth, Bob Weston, was also fired after he had an affair with Fleetwood’s wife.
In the early 70s, Fleetwood Mac were in disarray. But in 1975 everything changed. Having relocated to Los Angeles, Fleetwood, McVie and his wife Christine (née Perfect, a singer and keyboard player who’d joined the band in 1970) brought in a new Californian guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, plus his girlfriend, singer Stevie Nicks. Within two years, Fleetwood Mac were one of the biggest groups in the world, their new sound (far removed from the blues rock of old) defined by 1977’s blockbuster Rumours, the archetypal Californian soft-rock album.
Over 50 years and more than 120 million album sales later, Fleetwood Mac are winding down. Buckingham departed the band for the second time in 2018, under a suitably dramatic cloud of cross-words and lawsuits, and the remaining members – with the addition of Crowded House's Neil Finn and Heatbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell – enjoyed a lengthy tour which wrapped up in late 2019.
But after 17 studio albums and 15 different line-ups – in which, aptly enough, Fleetwood and McVie have been the only constants – the death of Christine McVie in November 2022 may have seen the curtain finally fall. "When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this," said Nicks. "There’s no reason to."
...and one to avoid
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