Fleetwood Mac

The Complete Illustrated History

Richie Unterberger

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781627889759
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Rock Music

This is the first-ever complete, illustrated history of Fleetwood Mac, the legendary band that has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Required reading for fans.

From this British-American band's blues origins in the 1960s to its pop superstardom in the 1970s and 1980s to its 2015 reunion, Fleetwood Mac has endeared itself to audiences worldwide. Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History covers the band's illustrious career, highlighting details that will surprise even the most loyal fans. With a career that began fifty years ago and yielded seventeen studio albums, Fleetwood Mac has had a rollercoaster career, detailed here through a carefully researched text and myriad photographs and memorabilia, including some rare and little-seen items.

The band's most popular lineup includes drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, and singer Stevie Nicks, but its members have shifted over the years since Fleetwood Mac began in 1967. And although the band's superstar phase in the 1970s is most familiar to the public, Fleetwood Mac's roots were in the blues, and the band evolved in fits and starts before finding popular success. Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History documents their entire story, including the troubled circumstances that led to the 1970 withdrawal of the band's original guitarist, Peter Green, as well as the broken marriage of John and Christine McVie and the romantic breakup of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham that threatened to split the group even as they were recording one of the biggest albums of all time, Rumours. This is the whole story of one of rock and roll's greatest bands.

Chapter 1
THE ROOTS OF FLEETWOOD MAC
1963–1966

It might seem odd that the musician regarded as the leader of Fleetwood Mac has written and sung little of their material. Nonetheless, it’s a title that drummer Mick Fleetwood has earned, and not only because he’s the only member who’s been in the band every step of the way. More than anyone else, he’s been the force responsible for keeping them going in the face of what must have seemed insurmountable obstacles. He’s also often taken a great deal of responsibility for the band’s management, artistic direction, and business affairs, which in time would be as much of a tangle as their romantic ones.

When Mick Fleetwood grew up, however, it seemed doubtful that he’d even make a living, let alone make (and lose) millions. Born on June 24, 1947, in Redruth in northern Cornwall, England, he spent some of his early years in both Egypt and Norway as his father was transferred to different posts in the military. Sent to boarding school while his family was abroad, he had such learning difficulties that he ran away from several institutions in frustration. After trying several alternatives, his family gave up on the idea of Mick qualifying for college, and he left school for good at the age of fifteen and a half.

Although Fleetwood Mac was formed by guitarist Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood has been the band’s leader since Green left at the beginning of the 1970s. Getty Images

His true enthusiasm was not for studying, but for music, especially drumming. With no educational credentials, no experience in a proper band, and no conventional job waiting for him at the other end, he moved to live with his older sister, Sally, and her husband in London. A stint as a grunt in a department store didn’t last long, as Mick was more interested in practicing drums in his relatives’ garage. Fortunately organist Peter Bardens, who lived just a few houses away, invited Fleetwood to join his band, the Cheynes, in the summer of 1963 after hearing him bashing away. It is likely Bardens would have eventually noticed Fleetwood around the neighborhood without having heard his drumming, as he was already well over six feet tall; his adult height of six and a half feet would make him stand out as one of the most towering musicians in all of rock.

While the Rolling Stones had only just released their first single, they’d already inspired scores of rhythm-and-blues-oriented London bands to follow in their footsteps. Fleetwood would play in, and occasionally record with, several of them over the next four years, serving a gritty apprenticeship in the numerous clubs that were starting to feature young bluesy rock acts as the Stones took off. The Cheynes got to open for some of the biggest of these rising stars, including the Yardbirds (featuring Eric Clapton on guitar) and, on a January 1964 British tour, the Rolling Stones themselves.

At the end of 1963, Fleetwood also made his recording debut on the first Cheynes single, a cover of the Isley Brothers’ “Respectable.” Just a couple more non-hit forty-fives followed, however (one of them, “Stop Running Around,” written and co-produced by Stones bassist Bill Wyman), before the Cheynes split and Bardens joined Van Morrison’s band Them. Fleetwood quickly hooked up with another R & B outfit, the Bo Street Runners, by answering an ad in Melody Maker, and his accomplished jazzy blues-rock drumming was well to the fore on their 1965 single “Baby Never Say Goodbye.” That was the only record he made with them, however, before moving on again in early 1966, reteaming with Bardens in the all-instrumental Peter B’s Looners. By this time he’d taken up with Jenny Boyd, younger sister of Pattie Boyd, who’d married George Harrison in January 1966.

Modeled on American instrumental soul band Booker T. & the MGs, Peter B’s Looners would issue just one single, “If You Wanna Be Happy,” which fared as poorly as the discs Mick Fleetwood had cut with his previous two bands. It was here, however, that Fleetwood made an alliance that would lead to the formation of a much more successful group than the also-rans with whom he’d honed his chops. The guitarist in Peter B’s Looners was Peter Green, the musician with whom Fleetwood would form Fleetwood Mac, although that band’s formation was still more than a year in the future.

Peter Green in 1968, when he was the undisputed figurehead of Fleetwood Mac as their lead guitarist and most celebrated singer and songwriter. Getty Images

Born only about half a year earlier than Fleetwood in London on October 29, 1946, Green’s background was in some ways quite similar to Fleetwood’s. Born Peter Greenbaum, he grew up as Peter Green after his postman father shortened the Jewish family’s name in 1948. Like Fleetwood, he left school at the age of fifteen, working for a couple years as a butcher’s apprentice, and then for a while as a furniture polisher. Also like Fleetwood, his real enthusiasm was music, and he did his real apprenticeship in a handful of local bands, initially playing more bass than guitar.

By late 1965, Green was getting more interested in both guitar and the blues, setting his sights on the top London blues band of the mid-1960s, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. The Bluesbreakers already had a good guitarist, Eric Clapton, who’d signed on with Mayall after leaving the Yardbirds in early 1965. When Clapton took a surprise three-month break from the Bluesbreakers in late 1965 to travel to Greece, however, Green spied his chance.

Mayall had been limping along with a series of unsatisfactory replacements. During the weeks Clapton was away, the final hired gun joined the lineup. As Mayall told Rock Family Trees author Pete Frame, “This other bloke kept coming up saying ‘I’m much better than him—why don’t you use me?’… and that was Peter Green. In the end, he got quite vicious about it, so I got him in—and he was better… but three days later Eric came back and Peter was out again, which didn’t make him too happy.”

As it turned out, Green wouldn’t have long to wait for another chance and a permanent slot in the Bluesbreakers. In the meantime, he auditioned for Peter B’s Looners, Fleetwood later admitting in Martin Celmins’ Peter Green: The Biography (1995), “I just felt that he was too restricted as a guitar player, which is my biggest screw-up probably of all time. And to be perfectly honest if it wasn’t for Peter Bardens he certainly wouldn’t have joined that band [Peter B’s Looners]. He had a great sound and repeated certain phrases which were pretty cool: but then I thought ‘What else can he do?’

“So I took the cheap way out and said, ‘Well, he’s not good enough.’ I remember Peter Bardens came straight back saying, ‘[You and Looners bassist Dave Ambrose are] both wrong. This guy’s got a great talent. He’s going to be great.’ I was into John McLaughlin at the time and I just didn’t think Peter had enough fire. Of course, that misjudgment has been a great lesson in life for me: Peter remains my favorite guitar player, so when I listen to anyone now I tend not to be so hasty.”

Replacing Mick Parker (who’d only been in the band a month) at the end of 1965, Green wouldn’t have much opportunity to showcase his licks with Peter B’s Looners, although his solo on their lone single’s B-side, “Jodrell Blues,” is stinging and assured. The Looners had by May 1966 evolved into Shotgun Express, ditching the all-instrumental format for vocals, which were shared by Beryl Marsden and a pre-fame Rod Stewart. Green was gone, however, by the time the first of their pair of flop singles came out in late 1966. Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers again that summer, this time for good, leaping to superstardom with Cream. And when a replacement was needed, Mayall knew whom to call, Green making his debut as the band’s official lead guitarist on July 18, 1966. On bass was the same fellow with whom Green had played on his previous brief stint with the group, John McVie.

This didn’t quite mark McVie’s intro to the Fleetwood Mac saga. He’d become friendly with Fleetwood even before Green played his handful of Bluesbreakers shows in fall 1965, as Mayall and the Cheynes shared the same booking agent. This would, however, inaugurate the first period in which Green and McVie closely collaborated. As a consequence, McVie would be Green’s first choice for the bass slot when Green formed a band of his own, even if McVie didn’t join Fleetwood Mac right away when that time arrived.

Although he would be the least colorful component of the quintet that comprised Fleetwood Mac’s most famous lineup, McVie’s contributions to the band were considerable, as he brought more recording and performing experience to the group than any of the other original members. Born in London on November 26, 1945, McVie stuck it out in school a bit longer than his future bandmates. Like them, he did a bit of time in the straight world, training as a tax inspector for nine months after leaving school at the age of seventeen. “I was useless at math,” he admitted in MOJO. “I guess some people got some really screwed up tax returns.”

But music was as much in his blood as it was in Fleetwood’s and Green’s. He was still seventeen when he joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in early 1963 after getting recommended for the position by Cliff Barton, bassist in another emerging London blues ensemble, the Cyril Davies All-Stars. More than ten years McVie’s senior, Mayall ran the Bluesbreakers with a firm hand, changing the band’s personnel about ten times during McVie’s four and a half years in the outfit.

It says much for McVie’s skills and reliability, however, that McVie was the only guy besides Mayall to stay in the Bluesbreakers for that entire period. In fact, he was the only Bluesbreaker besides Mayall to stay for as long as four years in the 1960s (though McVie was fired for a few weeks in September 1966). It must have seemed an unlikely long-term occupancy when McVie first met Mayall, who had to explain to the youngster what a 12-bar blues was, McVie having been weaned on the sounds of the instrumental rock of the Shadows, the most popular British rock group before the Beatles.

John McVie on July 19, 1968, just a couple weeks before he married Christine Perfect, the future Christine McVie. Getty Images

Mayall stuck with the teenager, however, giving him “a pile of records,” as McVie later recalled (as quoted in Fleetwood Mac: Rumours n’ Fax [1978]), asking the bassist “to listen to them and try to grasp the style and feeling.” By the end of 1963, McVie had given up tax inspection to become a full-time Bluesbreaker, making his recording debut the following spring on Mayall’s first single. In December 1964, the band recorded their first LP live in London’s Klooks Kleek Club. In spring 1965, they jumped to an entirely different level when Clapton joined, quickly establishing the Bluesbreakers as a top attraction on the British circuit.

With the mid-1966 album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, McVie became the first member of Fleetwood Mac to experience commercial success, the LP breaking into the Top 10 of the UK charts. Of at least equal significance, it was an artistic groundbreaker as well, Clapton in particular playing with a high-wattage fire that put a distinctly British spin on Chicago-style electric blues. While McVie’s contributions were more subtle, they were important to the music’s foundation. His pumping, muscular style drove one of the record’s highlights, “Parchman Farm”—a cut on which Clapton doesn’t play, leaving McVie to carry much of the instrumental load.

As “Clapton is God” had become a slogan among the London in-crowd by the time the guitarist left the Bluesbreakers, Green understandably met with some resistance from fans of his new band, and fans of Clapton in particular. Reports vary as to whether Green was heckled at his first gigs as Clapton’s replacement, but attendance did dip for a while as he eased his way into the Bluesbreakers lineup. In a way he had to compete with Clapton on stage and on the turntable, as Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton wasn’t released until just after Green joined.

Yet Green quickly established himself as his own man with his own style, playing at a lower volume and with less flash than Clapton had, at least at first. By the time he recorded his first single with the band at the end of September, he’d developed his own following. The album he’d record with the group in October and November, A Hard Road, established Green as one of Britain’s hottest rising guitarists, reaching the Top 10 in March of the following year.

In hindsight, Green’s assets were rather ...