“Where I learnt”: Mick Fleetwood on the most important Fleetwood Mac lineup
Not every rock and roll band is destined to stay together. Although it would be nice to have everyone get along and be the equivalent of the Three Musketeers of music, it doesn’t come together that quickly, and it takes a few tries before everyone settles on a lineup that works. While Fleetwood Mac seemed to change lineups faster than most bands change management, Mick Fleetwood still felt that one lineup was one of the most integral pieces of their musical development.
At the same time, it’s hard to think of Fleetwood Mac without looking at the snow-covered hills that were painted in our minds by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The group had been together for years at this point, but there was a certain magic to how they interacted with Fleetwood and the McVies that made for magic whenever they made tracks on Rumours or Tusk.
That said, Nicks and Buckingham weren’t like some guardian angels that turned them into a chart-topping band. Bob Welch had been steering the group for a good while, and even if his songs aren’t as fondly remembered as ‘Go Your Own Way’ or ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Sentimental Lady’ should be considered one of the band’s all-time greatest songs, alongside every one of Christine McVie’s immaculate tunes for the group.
Considering how each of those tunes sounds, though, it’s easy to forget that the band started out as a bluesy act. Since the whole band started as a part of the British blues boom, their formation with Peter Green still has some of the most overlooked blues gems of the late 1960s, whether that’s ‘Shake Your Moneymaker’ or ‘Oh Well’.
It also takes a lot to match what Green did in the studio and onstage. Although he did end up having his own struggles with substances, his ability to give Eric Clapton a run for his money in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and then manage to make tunes like ‘The Green Manalishi’ and ‘Black Magic Woman’ should put him in the same conversation as the other music legends of the post-psychedelic era.
The money wouldn’t be rolling in until much later, but Fleetwood knew there was some magic with the first lineup, saying, “ I love all the stuff we’ve done. But if you really put me in the corner and said: ‘You have to make your mind up – what was most important to you?’ I would have to say that it was the period with Peter Green. And the reason for that is that’s where I learnt to do my shit.”
And it’s not like they were one-note in that respect, either. As much as the band may have been able to play blues until the sun burned out of the sky, there were much more interesting avenues they went down as well, from the atmosphere of ‘Albatross’, which The Beatles ended up knicking for the song ‘Sun King’.
The later period may have been far more lucrative, but Fleetwood knew that he would never have arrived there if he hadn’t been able to learn his chops first here. It wasn’t easy to go through, but no one ever forgets those moments when they first cut their teeth with their bandmates.
