Fleetwood Mac
Before the Buckingham/Nicks duo teamed up with Fleetwood Mac in 1975, the group released several accomplished blues albums in the late 1960's. The band went through several "phases," including making the transition from a pure blues oriented rock band to more a pop-rock sound, band members coming and going and then becoming world famous with their distinctive melodic rock and pop. Let's explore the five main "phases" of Fleetwood Mac in detail:
Phase One
After deciding to break off of the legendary British Blues band John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, drummer Mick Fleetwood (he played very briefly with the band in 1967), Bluesbreaker charter member Jon McVie and Eric Clapton's replacement in the group, Peter Green was inspired by the success of bands such as Cream and the Yardbirds to form their own band in 1967. Adding guitarist Jimmy Spencer, the band made their debut at the British Jazz and Blues Festival and soon thereafter secured a recording contract.
The 1968 album, called "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac" was an enormous hit in the UK and fueled by Peter Green's constantly inventive, inspired guitar work and distinctive song writing abilities produced intoxicating blues rockers such as "Looking For Somebody" and "Long Grey Mare" and the Latin-blues fusion of the tune "If I Loved Another Woman"and Spencer's Elmore James-influenced songs like "Share Your Moneymaker" and "Got To Move," the album spent over a year on the UK charts.
In 1968 guitarist Danny Kirwan joined the group for the album "English Rose" (1969) which was another Peter Green-influenced collage of bare bones blues classics and contained the hit songs "Black Magic Woman" (later a huge hit for Santana), and the instrumental called "Albatross." Another LP (and a milestone in progressive blues rock) called "Then Play On" (1969) was the most accomplished release to date, with Green's blues-driven originals and extraordinary arrangements, the lp produced the British hit single "Oh Well"; cementing the band as one of the UK's finest blues rockers.
But Green left the group in May of 1970, due to his problematic ingestion of LSD which only fueled his mental illness (schizophrenia) and he left the music business (although he did return briefly for a tour and has released solo work, both in the seventies and nineties).
Phase Two
This is the "post Peter Green phase," in which the band carried on with the remaining members: Fleetwood, McVie, Spencer and Kirwan. They were joined by McVie's wife, Christine and they tried to maintain the band's distinctive blues edge, but with the genius of Peter Green missing, and songwriter Christine McVie's input, they were slowly moving toward an easy-going rock and roll ensemble with the lp "Kiln House."
In 1971, Spencer left the band-literally and was later discovered to have joined a religious cult and sent the band into disarray. But the third phase helped bail them out and sustain them until bigger and better things were to come.
Phase Three
The band added California guitarist Bob Welch to the mix (the group's first American member) and under his and Kirwan's influences, Fleetwood Mac took yet another musical turn and it sounded nothing like Peter Green's group. Gone was the quintessential blues quality that listeners' were accustomed to, replaced by a more folk-rock and pop sound, more so than the previous release and one that did not fare too well in Brittan. The album called "Future Games" (1971) sold better than the band's first three albums in the U.S., but was not well received in the UK. In 1972, the band released the Welch and McVie dominated "Bare Trees," a marvelous classic pop release highlighted by Welch's melodic "Sentimental Lady" and Movie's "Spare Me A Little Of Your Love." In 1972, Kirwan was asked to leave the band and was replaced by Dave Walker and Bob Weston for the album "Penguin," complete with Welch's hypnotic melodies and McVie's romantic up tempo pop, and it became the group's best U.S. effort to date. The band released two more albums "Mystery To Me"(1974) and "Heroes Are Hard To Find" later that same year. But it is the forth phase of Fleetwood Mac that caught the ears of the world and thrust the group to new heights.
Phase Four
By 1975, Bob Welch had left the band to form the trio Paris and record producer Keith Olson played an album by Buckingham/Nicks for the band and they not only hired him to produce their next release, but the song writing duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks as well. This gave the group three distinctive song writers and voices as well as a skilled musician and arranger in Buckingham, the sexy-gypsy like Nicks and Movie's penchant for tight pop melodies and in 1975 the band released a new album, simply named Fleetwood Mac. The song produced several top singles such as "Over My head," "Rhiannon" and "Say That You Love Me." The album went on to sell more than five million copies and a supergroup was in its infancy.
But, behind the scenes the band again was in turmoil. The McVie's divorced in 1976 and the Buckingham and Nicks romance ended shortly thereafter. But it seemed that all these internal tensions and the pressure to produce another hit album, fueled the creative fires and in the spring of 1977 the band released the album "Rumors."
"Rumors" dominated rock and pop radio (selling well more than 17 million copies in the U.S. alone) as the album seemed to chronicle these painful human moments in song with hits such as Buckingham's scornful "Go Your Own Way," Nicks' "Gold Dust Woman," McVie's anthem-like pop masterpiece "Don't Stop," the happy-go-lucky feel of "You Make Loving Fun" and the melancholy tune "Songbird" as well as the thumping anthem "Chain," which was a melodic representation of the strife within the band and in retrospect, a testament to their survival at the time. The band supported this release with an exhausting but very lucrative tour.
But, the follow-up album, "Tusk" an experimental double album released in 1979, couldn't duplicate the success of "Rumours," although it did go multi platinum and scored the band Top Ten hits such as "Sara" and the title song.
Between 1980 and 1982, Fleetwood, Buckingham and Nicks all released solo efforts (with Nicks going on to super stardom) and the band released a double live album. In 1982, the group released the lp "Mirage"-a fine collection of accessible pop/rock with the hit singles "Hold me" and "Gypsy."
Again, solo projects, tension and then drug addiction slowed the band down until the next release in 1987 called "Tango In The Night," which produced the hits "Little Lies," "Seven Wonders" and "Everywhere." Buckingham left the group after this album (he did not tour with the group in support of this release) and was replaced by Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, who toured with the rest of the band to support the album.
Phase Five
In 1990, the newly formed line up released the album "Behind The Mask" (it was the first studio album not to go platinum since 1975) and then both Nicks and McVie announced that they would stay with the band, but no longer go out on tour.
In 1991, Vito left the band, followed by Burnette in 1993. In January 1993, the original members of the group (Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood and the McVie's) got together for Bill Clinton's Presidential Campaign and sang the anthem "Don't Stop" at the Presidential inaugural party. The next month, Nicks departed.
In 1993, two new members, Dave Mason and Bekka Bramlett joined the band and released the album "Time" in 1995, but after a disappointing response, the group dissolved.
The band reformed in 1997, with Nicks and Buckingham joining the McVie' and Fleetwood to record a live documentary and a live lp called "The Dance" and the released coincided with a worldwide tour as it marked the twentieth anniversary of the "Rumours" lp. The band has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and will go down in rock and roll history as one of the most successful pop/rock bands of all time, with worldwide sales well over 100 million.
Author Robert Benson writes about rock/pop music, vinyl record collecting and operates www.collectingvinylrecords.com, where you can secure your copy of his ebook called "The Fascinating Hobby Of Vinyl Record Collecting." Robert can be contacted at robert@collectingvinylrecords.com.