About Fleetwood Mac
Jermale Kunstler
Fleetwood Mac were a British-American rock band formed in London in 1967 by guitarist and singer Peter Green.[6] Green recruited drummer Mick Fleetwood, guitarist and singer Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning, with John McVie replacing Brunning a few weeks after the band's first public appearance at the 1967 National Jazz & Blues Festival in Windsor. Guitarist and singer Danny Kirwan joined in 1968. Christine Perfect, who initially contributed as a session musician, married McVie and became an official member in July 1970 on vocals and keyboards, two months after Green left; she became known as Christine McVie.
Primarily a British blues band in their early years, Fleetwood Mac achieved a UK number-one single in 1968 with the instrumental "Albatross",[7] and had other UK top ten hits with "Man of the World", "Oh Well" (both 1969), and "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" (1970). After Green's departure, Spencer and Kirwan also left in 1971 and 1972 respectively, with Bob Welch replacing Spencer, and Bob Weston and Dave Walker replacing Kirwan. By the end of 1974, Weston and Walker had been dismissed and Welch had left, leaving the band without a guitarist or male vocalist. While Fleetwood was scouting studios in Los Angeles, he heard the American folk-rock duo Buckingham Nicks, consisting of guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks. In December 1974, he asked Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham agreed on the condition that Nicks could also join.
The addition of Buckingham and Nicks gave the band a more pop rock sound and their 1975 album Fleetwood Mac topped the Billboard 200 chart in the United States. Their album Rumours (1977) produced four U.S. Top 10 singles and remained at number one on the Billboard 200 for 31 weeks. It also reached the top spot in countries around the world and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. Rumours has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums in history. Although each member of the band went through a breakup (John and Christine McVie, Buckingham and Nicks, and Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd) while recording the album, they continued to write and record together.
Fleetwood Mac have sold more than 120 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands. In 1979, they were honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1998, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[9] and received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.[10] In 2018, Fleetwood Mac received the MusiCares Person of the Year award from the Recording Academy in recognition of their artistic achievement in the music industry and dedication to philanthropy.
Fleetwood Mac were formed in July 1967 in London, England, by Peter Green after he left the British blues band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Green had previously replaced guitarist Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers[11] and had received critical acclaim for his work on their album A Hard Road. Green had been in two bands with Mick Fleetwood, Peter B's Looners and the subsequent Shotgun Express (which featured a young Rod Stewart as vocalist),[12] and suggested Fleetwood as a replacement for drummer Aynsley Dunbar when Dunbar left the Bluesbreakers to join the Jeff Beck Group.[13] John Mayall agreed and Fleetwood joined the Bluesbreakers.
The Bluesbreakers then consisted of Green, Fleetwood, John McVie and Mayall. Mayall gave Green free recording time as a gift, which Fleetwood, McVie and Green used to record five songs. The fifth song was an instrumental that Green named after the rhythm section, "Fleetwood Mac" ("Mac" being short for McVie).
Soon after this, Green suggested to Fleetwood that they form a new band. The pair wanted McVie on bass guitar and named the band "Fleetwood Mac" to entice him, but McVie opted to keep his steady income with Mayall rather than take a risk with a new band. In the meantime, Green and Fleetwood teamed up with slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning. Brunning was in the band on the understanding that he would leave if McVie agreed to join. The band made its debut on Sunday 13 August 1967 at the National Jazz and Blues Festival (a forerunner of the Reading Festival), billed as "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer". Brunning played only a few gigs with Fleetwood Mac.[14] Within a few weeks of their first show, John McVie agreed to join the band as permanent bassist.[15][16]
Fleetwood Mac's self-titled debut album was released by the Blue Horizon label in February 1968.[17] The song "Long Grey Mare" was recorded earlier with Brunning on bass, while the rest of the album was recorded with McVie. The album was successful in the UK and reached no. 4, although no tracks were released as singles. Later in the year, the singles "Black Magic Woman" (later a big hit when covered by Santana) and "Need Your Love So Bad" were released, both going top-forty in the UK.[18]
The band's second studio album, Mr. Wonderful, was released in August 1968. The album was recorded live in the studio with miked amplifiers and a PA system, rather than being plugged into the board.[19] The sessions featured a horn section as well as friend of the band, Christine Perfect of Chicken Shack, on keyboards.[20] Later that year, Chicken Shack would score a British hit with a cover of the Etta James classic "I'd Rather Go Blind", with Perfect on lead vocal. Perfect would also be twice voted female artist of the year in England.
Shortly after the release of Mr. Wonderful, 18-year-old guitarist Danny Kirwan joined the band, making Fleetwood Mac a five-piece band with three guitarists. Kirwan was in the South London blues trio Boilerhouse with Trevor Stevens (bass) and Dave Terrey (drums).[21] Green and Fleetwood had watched Boilerhouse rehearse in a basement boiler-room, and Green had been so impressed that he invited the band to play support slots for Fleetwood Mac. Green wanted Boilerhouse to become a professional band, but Stevens and Terrey were not prepared to turn professional, so Green tried to find another rhythm section for Kirwan by placing an ad in Melody Maker. There were over 300 applicants, but when Green and Fleetwood ran auditions at the Nag's Head in Battersea (home of the Mike Vernon Blue Horizon Club) the hard-to-please Green could not find anyone good enough. Fleetwood invited Kirwan to join Fleetwood Mac as a third guitarist.[13]
Green was frustrated that Jeremy Spencer did not contribute to his songs. Kirwan, a talented self-taught guitarist, had a signature vibrato and a unique style that added a new dimension to the band's sound. In November 1968, with Kirwan in the band, they released their first number-one single in Europe, "Albatross", an instrumental with lead guitar by both Green and Kirwan. Green said later that the success of "Albatross" was thanks to Kirwan: "If it wasn't for Danny, I would never have had a number one hit record."[22] In January 1969, they released their first compilation album English Rose, which contained half of Mr. Wonderful plus new songs from Kirwan. Their next and more successful compilation album The Pious Bird of Good Omen was released in August and contained various singles, B-sides and tracks the band had recorded as back-up for Eddie Boyd.
On tour in the US in January 1969, the band recorded Fleetwood Mac in Chicago (released in December as a double album) at the soon-to-close Chess Records Studio with some of the blues legends of Chicago, including Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy and Otis Spann. These were Fleetwood Mac's last all-blues recordings, with the band moving more towards rock. Along with the change of style, the band was also going through label changes. Until that point, they had been on the Blue Horizon label, but with Kirwan in the band the musical possibilities had become too diverse for a blues-only label. The band signed with Immediate Records and released the single "Man of the World", which became another British and European hit. For the B-side, Spencer fronted Fleetwood Mac as "Earl Vince and the Valiants" and recorded "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite", typifying the more raucous rock 'n' roll side of the band. Immediate Records was in bad shape however, so the band shopped around for a new deal. The Beatles wanted the band on Apple Records (Mick Fleetwood and George Harrison were brothers-in-law), but the band's manager Clifford Davis decided to go with Warner Bros. Records (through Reprise Records, a Frank Sinatra-founded label), the label they have stayed with ever since.
Under the wing of Reprise, Fleetwood Mac released their third studio album, Then Play On, in September 1969. Although the initial pressing of the American release of this album was the same as the British version, it was altered to contain the song "Oh Well", which featured consistently in live performances from the time of its release through 1997 and again starting in 2009. Then Play On, which saw the band broaden their style away from straight blues, was written by Kirwan and Green, plus a track each by Fleetwood and McVie. Jeremy Spencer, meanwhile, had recorded a solo album of 1950s-style rock and roll songs, backed by the rest of the band except Green.[23]
By 1969, Green was using LSD. During a European tour towards the end of that year, he experienced a bad acid trip at a hippie commune in Munich. Clifford Davis, the band's manager, singled out this incident as the crucial point in Green's mental decline.[24] He said: "The truth about Peter Green and how he ended up how he did is very simple. We were touring Europe in late 1969. When we were in Germany, Peter told me he had been invited to a party. I knew there were going to be a lot of drugs around and I suggested that he didn't go. But he went anyway and I understand from him that he took what turned out to be very bad, impure LSD. He was never the same again."[25] German author and filmmaker Rainer Langhans stated in his autobiography that he and his then-girlfriend, model Uschi Obermaier, met Green in Munich and invited him to their Highfisch-Kommune, where the drinks were spiked with acid.[26][27] Langhans and Obermaier were planning to organise an open-air "Bavarian Woodstock", for which they wanted Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones to be the main acts. Already in contact with Hendrix, they hoped Green would help them to get in contact with The Rolling Stones.[26]
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