The Fleetwood Mac album Mick Fleetwood wants to delete from history: “It was nonexistent”
A consistent theme throughout Fleetwood Mac‘s career is the unfolding of drama. They allowed their personal lives to play out in public for all to see in their songwriting, which was a gripping source of entertainment while also producing music of the highest calibre.
For a time, Fleetwood Mac were on a hot streak that seemed like it could last forever. However, the 1980s proved to be a challenging decade for the group as they embarked upon solo ventures and tested themselves in new surroundings. While Tango In The Night was a resounding success that spawned classics such as ‘Little Lies’ and ‘Everywhere’, Fleetwood Mac’s line-up changed dramatically shortly after.
Guitarist Lindsay Buckingham, who had been a vital component of their sound for over a decade, abruptly left Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham was hesitant to return on the road for various reasons, including his proximity to Stevie Nicks. Following Buckingham’s exit, Fleetwood Mac continued business as usual and released the chart-topping Behind the Mask in 1990. However, the group was then dealt another significant blow, one that they couldn’t recover from—Nicks leaving the band in 1991.
There was renewed interest in Fleetwood Mac following their reunion for Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, a performance that included Nicks and Buckingham. However, the singer had no interest in returning to the group full-time, and they headed to the studio without her. Of course, replacing Nicks was impossible, and anybody recruited as her successor would have failed to meet expectations. Fleetwood Mac opted to bring in Brekka Bramlett when they should have left the band on the shelf instead.
Bramlett only contributed to one Fleetwood Mac album, 1995’s Time, which was recorded over two years. However, much to Fleetwood Mac’s frustration, Time was met to little fanfare as the world wasn’t interested in listening to an album without Nicks or Buckingham.
Despite being one of the most-loved bands on the planet, Time garnered very little interest. Astonishingly, it didn’t make a dent in the Billboard 200 in the United States and only managed to peak at 47 in the United Kingdom.
In the eyes of Fleetwood, Time was a gamble that would either have been an enormous success or an abject failure. Unfortunately for him, it proved to be the latter, and as a result, it’s a record that the drummer would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. “It was a long shot, and it was totally reliant on whether the music was accepted,” Mick Fleetwood later admitted about the failed release. “It wasn’t. We may as well not have made that album. It took its course, or didn’t take its course, and it was nonexistent.”
Furthermore, during a conversation with Rolling Stone in 2023, Bramlett said of her role with the band: “I knew my job was to get Stevie back. I wasn’t a moron. I also knew this was a dangerous job when I took it. I knew I was facing tomatoes. But I didn’t want to wear a top hat. I didn’t want to twirl around. I wanted to be me. I even dyed my hair brown just so people in the cheap seats would know that Stevie wasn’t going to be here. I didn’t want anyone to be discouraged or let down.”
Although Bramlett knew it would likely end in tears, the opportunity to make her mark on Fleetwood Mac’s history was too tempting to resist, and she holds no regrets about joining the band.
While they split up after Time, they were back in fashion two years later when Buckingham and Nicks rejoined the group for a new chapter. The Rumours line-up reunited for a live album recorded at Warner Bros studios in California, titled The Dance, a project which went to number one in the United States and led to a huge tour.
This period taught Fleetwood a pivotal lesson: Nicks needed to be involved with Fleetwood Mac if they wanted to be an arena-filling band. In the past, they had successfully changed members and increased in popularity, but the people demanded her inclusion.
