Fleetwood Mac members’ favourite Fleetwood Mac songs
When you release an album as iconic as Rumours, it shouldn’t be seen as a surprise that people everywhere continue to talk about it. However, there was a lot more to Fleetwood Mac than that.
Because Rumours was such a monster hit, loved the world over, loads of Fleetwood Mac’s other work tends to slip under the radar, which feels a bit of a shame, really. The band have always been steady at turning out great music, even if some of the earlier stuff doesn’t quite line up with what most people think of when they hear the name.
Die hard Fleetwood Mac fans are always great for recommendations, but if there aren’t any of them around, then the next best people to ask are the band members themselves. Artists who have been in and out of the band for various stints all have songs that they connect with more than others, and these tracks span the band’s entire discography as opposed to just one album.
While there have been a plethora of members gracing instruments in Fleetwood Mac, the power five responsible for Rumours were Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, Jon McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
Some of their favourite songs exist on that album, but they don’t restrict their gaze to just that single record. Their taste expands to other corners of Fleetwood Mac’s career, young and old, commercially successful and… less so. Here, we will look at each member’s favourite song by the band they played in and assess exactly what it was about the track that appealed to them so much.
Fleetwood Mac members’ favourite Fleetwood Mac songs:
Mick Fleetwood – ‘Go Your Own Way’
Mick Fleetwood has never been afraid to make it clear how much of a fan he is of his namesake band. When asked for his favourite songs by the group, a plethora of offerings spill from his excited lips that span multiple periods. Some of his personal highlights include the likes of ‘Dreams’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Love That Burns’.
However, one song that stands out is the band’s 1977 hit ‘Go Your Own Way’, which he admitted wasn’t just a good song, but his favourite to play live, as he can really unleash his drumming capabilities with it.
“I love playing this song,” he admitted, “It’s one of my favourites because I get to kick the hell out of my drums, and it’s got that wonderfully primal part. It’s a great ‘let loose’ stage song, in which I can revert to my old animal ways and not be quite so polite. Lindsey is a full-on rock ‘n’ roller on this song, and that I love.”
Lindsey Buckingham – ‘Tusk’
Tusk was an incredibly interesting album for the band. Following the success of Rumours, each member had different ideas about the best direction they could move in. For Buckingham, that meant going down a more experimental, punk route like bands such as Talking Heads. He loved the way both the song and the album, Tusk, came out as he felt as though it started pushing him further down the path of more innovative music.
“I was very interested in confounding external expectations, not bowing to those expectations and starting to paint ourselves into a corner creatively by continuing to try to make Rumours 2 or 3,” he said.
“For that reason, not just the song ‘Tusk,’ but the album Tusk is probably my favourite album. Not necessarily for the music, but for why we did it — and it set me off on this alternative path that was a tightrope to walk between the big machine of Fleetwood Mac and the small machine of solo work that followed.”
Christine McVie – ‘Man of the World’
McVie came on board with Fleetwood Mac in 1970, by which time the band had already been through a fair few line-ups and plenty of graft. Peter Green was still steering a lot of the music then, and while it wasn’t exactly the band’s most famous spell, it did throw up one of Christine McVie’s personal favourites: ‘Man of the World’.
She described the feeling of being “awestruck” when she heard that song, adding that everyone had an appreciation for his ongoing contribution to music. “Everybody was awestruck by Peter,” she said, “Except for Eric [Clapton], there was only Peter […] We all thought he was a superlative genius […] I just loved that song.”
Stevie Nicks – ‘Gypsy’
When you have eclectic taste like Stevie Nicks, how on earth do you ever begin to zero in on one Fleetwood Mac song that stands above the rest?
Nicks has always been someone who likes to write about her life, what’s happening, and the people in it. As such, her favourite song was one that took her back to a time when the problems with Fleetwood Mac were yet to arrive, and she was just a carefree hippy spending her time at clothes shops.
“That’s the words: ‘So I’m back to the velvet underground’ – which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff,” said Nicks, reflecting on her song ‘Gypsy’ and the time it takes her back to.
“‘Back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was’. So that’s what ‘Gypsy’ means: It’s just a search for before this all happened.”
John McVie – ‘The Chain’
John McVie is the only member of the band on this list who hasn’t specifically named which song by Fleetwood Mac is his favourite. While we can all speculate, there is no doubt that one of the greatest numbers he’s contributed towards was the band’s classic ‘The Chain’. There were a few members who helped with this track, but McVie was responsible for the iconic bassline that we all recognise the minute it plays.
The bassline was originally supposed to be used on a different song, but ended up getting cut onto ‘The Chain’. It works incredibly well, and the fact listeners have to hold off for three minutes before it plays only adds to the anticipation. While we aren’t certain this is Jon McVie’s favourite song by the band, it will no doubt be one that he is proud of.
