The many lives of Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac started as a blues band in 1967. Over the years, 19 different people have been band members. Within the first eight years, the band evolved to become the contemporary hit machine we all recognize today.

Author Mark Blake took it upon himself to chronicle the band’s history in his latest book, “Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac.” WPR’s “BETA” was curious to find out the story of this remarkable band, so we sat down with Blake to get the story.

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Steve Gotcher: In 1967, Fleetwood Mac started as a British blues band. What’s their origin story?

Mark Blake: They met through a group called John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Eric Clapton went through that group with all sorts of people. Mayall pioneered black American blues in the U.K. in the 1960s. And his band was like a finishing school for all these musicians.

A lot of great musicians came through the ranks, including John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green. And that’s where they met Mick Fleetwood, who was fired from the Bluesbreakers because Mayall said he couldn’t play the drums properly and was drinking too much at a gig. Peter Green left of his own accord.

Mick Fleetwood was going to get a job as a window cleaner here in the U.K. But he couldn’t even get a job as a window cleaner. No one would hire him. Peter Green phoned him and said, “I want to start a band with you, and I want you to be the drummer.” And that’s how it began. Eventually, they got John McVie in. So the three of them went on their merry way.

SG: Peter Green founded the band but named it Fleetwood Mac for Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. What was his vision for the band’s sound?

MB: Well, his vision for the sound was he wanted his own kind of blues. The first Fleetwood Mac album — “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac” — is known here as Dog and Dustbin because it has a dog and a trash can, as you would call it, on the cover. That’s a straight blues album. By the time they did the second album, “Mr. Wonderful,” a few months later, they were expanding the sound. They were bringing horn players in.

It was more than just a straightforward copy of American blues, and I think Peter’s idea was to expand. He recruited two other guitar players in a matter of a year. Even though he was seen as a guitar hero, he insisted on sharing with two different players. He never wanted to be a bandleader. He didn’t want to be a superstar. However, his ideas and writing progressed so quickly. In a matter of months, he was writing songs that were not straight blues. And they were taking it somewhere else entirely.

SG: He left the band in 1970. What happened to him?

MB: Well, he experimented with LSD, as most of the group had done, but it seemed to have more of a profound effect on him. There’s a popular story. They were touring in Germany. They went to a hippie commune. He was given LSD. The story is that he was never the same again when he came out.

But I interviewed Peter Green in 2012. He talked very lucidly about that. He said that it wasn’t the one event that caused it. He felt that it was a cumulative effect over some time of too many acid trips, as they were called at the time. And he felt he never came back. He said to me, “I never came back properly.”

SG: He was a driving force in the band. What was the impact of his leaving?

MB: It was profound. They didn’t know what on Earth to do. Most of the critics, and even some of the fan base, had written them off. But I think this is where Mick Fleetwood’s determination comes in. His drive and tenacity kept them going forward, bringing in other musicians and touring doggedly, constantly traveling, you know, to keep themselves afloat.

SG: In 1970, Christine Perfect, who became Christine McVie, joined the band. How did that series of events come about?

MB: She had had some success as a keyboard player and singer here in the U.K. She sang in a blues band called Chicken Shack and made a solo album. She was highly thought of, but did some solo gigs and hated it. She had stage fright and ran off stage in tears at a club gig in the U.K.

She married John McVie. They were constantly touring, and she decided to stay home and look after him. The band lived in a communal house in the countryside in the U.K. She was cooking dinners, rolling joints, doing their washing, cleaning the house up. When they had an American tour to go on, they realized that they were missing a piano player, and they asked her if she would join the band, and she reluctantly agreed. And that was the beginning of a massive success for her.

SG: Bob Welch joined Fleetwood Mac and became another impactful band member.

MB: He brought a completely different sensibility to it. He was influenced by jazz. He’s American and came to live with them in that communal house in the U.K. countryside. He said that he felt like he had joined the royal family. He didn’t know who these people were. He had grown up in Hollywood. His parents were both in the film industry. Suddenly, he was transplanted to the U.K. in the mid-’70s with these strange English people who were arguing, married and so on.

He had to find his way. And it was extremely tough for him. But he was a writer and a singer. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie did not write songs for the most part. So he was the first guy to come in after Peter Green and had a significant impact.

SG: In 1974, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were discovered by Mick Fleetwood and became band members. Tell me how they got discovered and brought into the band.

MB: They were in high school together in California, and both played in a little cover band in that part of the world. They supported many artists — Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and anyone that came through town — and a producer called Keith Olsen saw them and said, “Look, I don’t like the band, but I like you two. I think you’ve got something going on here.”

They made a lovely little record together called “Buckingham Nicks,” which didn’t sell. Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio to record the next Fleetwood Mac album, so he checked out the studio with the producer Keith Olsen. While there, Ellison played him a couple of “Buckingham Nicks” songs, and he was very impressed by what he heard.

Then, he discovered a day or so later that Bob Welch was leaving the band. He desperately needed to find someone else, so he phoned Keith Ellison and asked if he could find him the guitar player Lindsey Buckingham. He was only really interested in Lindsey Buckingham. This is something that Stevie Nicks has never tired of telling people over the last 50 years — that Fleetwood Mac never wanted her. They just wanted Lindsey. But he refused to join the band unless she came as well.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle of that. But it’s another one of those lucky, happy accidents. And that’s how they ended up finding those two.

SG: They recorded “Rumours,” which was a wild success, sold millions of copies. And then four years later, they released “Tusk,” a very different record that wasn’t well-received at first. What was going on with that record?

MB: By that point, Lindsey Buckingham had established himself as the musical director of Fleetwood Mac. He wanted to make a more leftfield album. He was significantly influenced by what was going on in music at the time. In the U.K., we had punk bands, the Clash and Sex Pistols. You had interesting stuff happening in America with bands like Talking Heads. You had a new genre of music coming through, and he was impressed by that, and he wanted to bring some of that edge into Fleetwood Mac. 

Mick Fleetwood was terrified of losing Lindsey Buckingham. He’d lost Bob Welch. He’d lost Peter Green. All the other guitarists disappeared. He didn’t want to lose Lindsey Buckingham, so he was indulged.

“Tusk” was a double album that cost an enormous amount of money. The studio bills were astronomical. But in it, you’ve got songs by Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. Some Buckingham songs are more challenging and much edgier than the songs on “Rumours” or the white album, “Fleetwood Mac,” so it confused many of the audience that discovered them through “Rumours.”

SG: Fleetwood Mac broke up and got back together several times over the years. What brought them to their final end?

MB: Two things. Christine McVie died. That really had drawn a line under it. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks fell out again. Stevie Nicks announced she wouldn’t tour if Lindsey Buckingham remained in the band.

As a result, the last Fleetwood Mac tour did excellent business. They played stadiums in the U.K., but it was a different band. Without Lindsey Buckingham, it didn’t quite work as well. Having seen the original classic band together again, it was a big ask for people to accept them without him.

As Lindsey Buckingham noted when I interviewed him the last time, he said the only person they care about is Stevie Nicks: “Just as long as Stevie Nicks is at the front, much of that audience doesn’t know I’m not there.” Which was very honest of him, and true. But looking at the outside, it wasn’t quite the same for me. So, I think that Christine McVie’s death and Lindsey’s departure meant it’s finally done.