Fleetwood Mac

• 1. Introduction

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  Fleetwood Mac were a British and American rock band whose name was itself a gambit. Peter Green, the guitarist who formed the group in London in 1967, chose those two words specifically to lure a bassist into the fold. John McVie, the man whose surname gave the band half its name, initially refused to join, preferring the steady income of his existing gig over the risk of a new venture. The band he eventually joined would go on to sell more than 120 million records worldwide. That tension between security and ambition, between the known and the unknown, would define Fleetwood Mac for the next five decades. How does a British blues outfit from the late 1960s become one of the most commercially successful rock acts in history? What happens when the personal lives of five people become inseparable from their music? And what does it mean for a band to survive the departure of virtually every member who made it famous?

• 2. Peter Green's Band

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  Peter Green had previously replaced Eric Clapton as guitarist in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, no small feat given Clapton's reputation. Green received critical acclaim for his playing on the Bluesbreakers album A Hard Road, and when John Mayall gave him free recording time as a gift, Green used the sessions to record an instrumental he simply named after his rhythm section: "Fleetwood Mac". The song named the band before the band existed.

  The group made its debut on Sunday the 13th of August 1967 at the National Jazz and Blues Festival, billed as "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer". Their self-titled debut album reached number four in the UK in February 1968, and later that year an instrumental called "Albatross" gave them their first UK number-one single. Green later credited his young guitarist Danny Kirwan with the song's success, saying: "If it wasn't for Danny, I would never have had a number one hit record."

  At Chess Records Studio in Chicago in January 1969, the band recorded alongside blues legends including Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, and Otis Spann. These sessions, released as Fleetwood Mac in Chicago, proved to be the band's final all-blues recordings. A journey away from the genre had already begun. Green himself was moving in a difficult direction. During a European tour in late 1969, he attended a party in Munich where, according to German author Rainer Langhans, drinks were spiked with acid. Clifford Davis, the band's manager, later called that night in Germany the crucial turning point in Green's mental decline. Green's last recording with the band, "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)", was cut at Warner-Reprise's Hollywood studios in April 1970. His last show was on the 20th of May 1970.

• 3. The Transitional Years

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  In February 1971, while the band was on a US tour, Jeremy Spencer told his bandmates he was stepping out to buy a magazine and never came back. After several days of searching, they discovered he had joined a religious group called the Children of God. The band, legally responsible for the remaining shows, called Peter Green to fill in. Green agreed but insisted on playing only new material, none of his own compositions.

  That summer, the band held auditions for a replacement guitarist at their country house, Benifold, which they had jointly purchased with their manager Davis for 23,000 pounds. A friend of the band, Judy Wong, recommended her high school friend Bob Welch, who was then living in Paris. The band hired him without actually playing with him, based solely on a tape of his songs.

  Christine Perfect, who had played keyboards on the band's second album as a session musician and been voted female artist of the year by Melody Maker in 1969 and 1970, became Christine McVie upon marrying John McVie. Her first gig as an official member of the band was on the 1st of August 1970 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She had already contributed uncredited backup vocals and keyboards to the Kiln House album, and had even drawn its cover.

  By 1972, guitarist Danny Kirwan had developed an alcohol dependency. Before a concert on a US tour, he smashed his Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar and refused to take the stage. The band played without him, after which Kirwan criticised their performance and was fired. His replacement, slide guitarist Bob Weston, lasted until 1973, when Fleetwood discovered Weston had been having an affair with his wife, Jenny Boyd. Fleetwood cancelled the remaining 26 dates of the US tour. After a show in Lincoln, Nebraska, on the 20th of October 1973, the band told their sound engineer the tour was over and Fleetwood Mac was splitting up.

• 4. The Name Dispute

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  Clifford Davis, the band's manager, found himself holding major touring commitments and no band. He sent a letter to the members saying he had not "slaved for years to be brought down by the whims of irresponsible musicians", then recruited members of a group called Legs to tour the United States under the name "The New Fleetwood Mac". The lineup included Elmer Gantry, Kirby Gregory, Paul Martinez, John Wilkinson, and Australian drummer Craig Collinge. Members of this group were told that Mick Fleetwood would join them to legitimise the tour. Fleetwood later said he had agreed to no such thing.

  The fake Fleetwood Mac launched their tour on the 16th of January 1974 at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Early shows drew positive responses, but word spread that this was not the real band. Audiences turned hostile, promoters pulled shows, and after a concert in Edmonton where bottles were thrown at the stage, the tour collapsed entirely.

  The resulting lawsuit put the real Fleetwood Mac on hiatus for nearly a year. When Warner Bros. was asked who owned the name, they said they did not know. The case was eventually settled out of court. Two members of the fake touring lineup, Elmer Gantry and Kirby Gregory, went on to form Stretch, whose 1975 UK hit single "Why Did You Do It?" was written about the entire debacle. Fleetwood later said he was ultimately grateful to Davis, because the lawsuit was the reason the band relocated to California.

• 5. Buckingham, Nicks, and Rumours

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  Whilst checking out Sound City Studios in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1974, Fleetwood heard a track called "Frozen Love" played by the studio's house engineer, Keith Olsen. The song came from an album by a duo called Buckingham Nicks. Fleetwood asked guitarist Lindsey Buckingham to join the band that day. Buckingham agreed on the condition that his partner Stevie Nicks came too. The pair joined on New Year's Eve 1974.

  Their first album together, released in 1975, reached number one in the United States and sold over 7 million copies. Among its hit singles were Christine McVie's "Over My Head" and "Say You Love Me", as well as Nicks' "Rhiannon". Success arrived at a price. By 1976, John and Christine McVie's marriage had ended, Buckingham and Nicks had broken up, and Fleetwood was in the middle of divorce proceedings and conducting an affair with Nicks.

  Rumours, released in February 1977, translated all of that turmoil into music. The album generated four top-ten singles: Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way", Nicks' US number-one "Dreams", and Christine McVie's "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun". "The Chain", the only song co-written by all five members, also received significant radio play. The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978 and by 2003 had sold over 19 million copies in the United States alone, earning a diamond certification from the RIAA and a total of 40 million copies worldwide.

  The follow-up, Tusk, released in 1979, took a sharply different path. Buckingham convinced Fleetwood to let him work on tracks at home before bringing them to the rest of the band. The result was a 20-track double album featuring, among other things, the USC Trojan Marching Band on its title single. Tusk sold four million copies worldwide, a figure Fleetwood partly blamed on the RKO radio chain playing the album in full before its release, enabling mass home taping. In a 2019 interview, Fleetwood called Tusk his "personal favourite".

• 6. Fractures and Reunions

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  A group meeting at Christine McVie's house on the 7th of August 1987 ended with Buckingham leaving the band. Fleetwood wrote in his autobiography that a physical altercation had occurred between Buckingham and Nicks. Two new guitarists, Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, were added without auditions. Burnette was the son of Dorsey Burnette and the nephew of Johnny Burnette, both of the Rock and Roll Trio, and had already backed Buckingham on Saturday Night Live.

  In 1993, the classic 1974-1987 lineup reunited at the request of President Bill Clinton for his first Inaugural Ball. Clinton had used Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" as his campaign theme song. The reunion was a one-off. Four years later, a full reunion produced The Dance, a live album that returned the band to the top of the US album charts for the first time in a decade. It was certified five million units by the RIAA.

  In 1998, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the ceremony, original guitarist Peter Green chose not to perform with his former bandmates, instead taking the stage with Santana to play his own composition "Black Magic Woman". Neither Jeremy Spencer nor Danny Kirwan attended. Christine McVie officially left the band shortly after.

  On Fox in May 2011, an episode of Glee built around the Rumours album sent the 1977 record back into the Billboard 200 at number eleven. Sales of the album that week represented an increase of 1,951 percent over the previous week, with music downloads accounting for 91 percent of those sales. Rumours entered the top 10 of the Billboard 200 again in October 2020, driven by a renewed viral moment around "Dreams".

• 7. Final Chapter

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  Christine McVie confirmed her return to Fleetwood Mac on the 11th of January 2014. The On with the Show tour launched on the 30th of September 2014 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, her first full-show appearance with the group since 1997. UK arena dates scheduled for May-June 2015 sold out within minutes.

  In April 2018, Buckingham departed the group a second time, described in reports as a dismissal linked to disagreements over tour planning. In October 2018, he filed a lawsuit against the band; the case ended in a settlement on undisclosed terms. His replacements were former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House.

  On the 8th of June 2018, original guitarist Danny Kirwan died at the age of 68 in London after contracting pneumonia. Founding member Peter Green died on the 25th of July 2020 at the age of 73. On the 30th of November 2022, Christine McVie died at the age of 79. Mick Fleetwood said in February 2023 that he believed the band was effectively finished. Nicks said she saw no reason to continue without McVie, a position she repeated in 2024 interviews. In September 2024, Fleetwood said he remained open to reassembling the group, leaving the question of Fleetwood Mac's future, as it had always been, with the drummer whose name began it all.