“We didn’t plan that”: The Fleetwood Mac song Mick Fleetwood called a national anthem
Fleetwood Mac have always been a tale of contradictions throughout their career. Even though the band started life as a blues outfit, hearing them go from hard-rock jams to soft-rock highlights to some of the biggest hits of all time is still one of the strangest journeys any mainstream rock band has ever gone on. Although Mick Fleetwood could justifiably call any number of their songs an essential part of history, he felt that one particular hit could have replaced ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ in the US.
Then again, Fleetwood Mac didn’t fully immerse themselves in American music until they started working with people like Bob Welch. Despite being one of the only Americans in the band, Welch’s knack for hooks and his affinity for genres like jazz made him the perfect counterpoint to Christine McVie when working on tracks like ‘Sentimental Lady’. Then again, this was the calm before the storm once Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were brought in.
Aside from being one of the most unique guitarists in the world, Buckingham’s knack for hooks was far more indebted to people like The Everly Brothers than the traditional blues artists Fleetwood associated with. Even though Rumours wasn’t going to give Muddy Waters a run for his money in the blues department, they still managed to strike solid gold, making songs that operated as love letters to each other and massive sing-alongs for anyone with a working stereo.
At the same time, McVie may have been the unsung hero of this era of the group. Despite everyone focusing on the relationship between Nicks and Buckingham, hearing Christine sing beautiful lines on tracks like ‘You Make Loving Fun’ and ‘Songbird’ made people’s hearts ache after they got done shouting along with ‘The Chain’.
But while ‘Don’t Stop’ was a nice bouncy tune for the radio, it didn’t get its due until Bill Clinton came into the picture. Around the time the band were thinking of reuniting for their run of shows for the live album The Dance, the would-be President used the track as a campaign song, turning himself into one of the most likeable candidates at the time and giving Fleetwood Mac a new lease on life.
Despite being years removed from the election process, Fleetwood still felt that the tune encapsulated everything that he thought of as America, saying, “We liked him, and it took a natural course and became a national anthem. Still is. But we didn’t plan that. We had nothing to do with it at all. But we didn’t want to end up suing them or something.”
And when looking at the US, it’s not hard to see where Fleetwood gets that idea. As much as the US might face setbacks time and time again, ‘Don’t Stop’ is the perfect way of looking at the spirit of its people, encouraging everyone not to look back and try their best to keep things rolling no matter how dire things seem.
That was far from what Christine was getting at when first writing the song, but that’s the beauty of what music is about. It could mean something totally different to the listener, but once anyone hears a song, they don’t just hear someone singing a tune. They’re listening to someone’s take on life, and it’s up to the listener what those words mean.
