The Fleetwood Mac song Mick Fleetwood wishes he wrote: “A frustrated harmonic musician”
Wanting to write the best songs is a part of many musicians’ thought process when they start out in a band or as an artist. It might not feel right in our souls, but music is as competitive as any other art form. It doesn’t matter if you are a successful songwriter; you still want more. As an icon of classic rock’s most memorable band, Mick Fleetwood has been behind some of the greatest songs to come out of the genre, but even he wishes he wrote other classic tracks.
The drummer and co-founder has been Fleetwood Mac’s literal beating heart since the band’s inception and through its meteoric rise with the 1977 record Rumours. Even soured relationships and cocaine abuse couldn’t stop them from churning out chart-topping gold, and, as recently as 2022, ‘Dreams’ continued in that tradition after spending four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Fleetwood Mac’s enduring cachet as one of soft-rock’s most prolific bands had seen them release handfuls of tracks like that. Mick Fleetwood has often reflected on the life-changing songs of his career, citing the likes of ‘Albatross’ and ‘Love That Burns’, and was just as quick to name the songs so good he wished he had a hand in their writing.
Fleetwood sees himself as a “frustrated harmonic musician”, telling MusicRadar that because he doesn’t play the guitar or the piano, he had a “huge interest in the people that I play with, and the songs that they have written”.
Fleetwood’s admiration for great songwriting extended beyond his own bandmates. He frequently spoke about the profound effect other artists had on him, often citing his envy at the simplicity and emotional weight of certain compositions. “I didn’t really know what it was I was really contributing,” Fleetwood once told The Guardian, describing his role in the band. His humility about his own contributions speaks volumes about his deep reverence for the craft.
Reflecting on the band’s work, Fleetwood named ‘Walk A Thin Line’ as the song so good that he wished he had come up with it. The Lindsey Buckingham number from 1979’s Tusk built on Charlie Watts’ drums featured on ‘Sway’, which Buckingham seized on in multi-layered drum rolls played by him – not Fleetwood. While Fleetwood treasured the song, he was said to have been appalled by the idea people would think it was his playing.
However, Fleetwood rectified that in good time by covering it. “I redid it for The Visitor, the album I recorded in Africa, and the reason I did so was because I really loved the song and wished that I’d written it,” he said. “I approached it with a whole ensemble of African musicians, so as a percussion player, during these recordings, I was, as we say in England, ‘like a pig in shit.'”
The African sessions provided both Fleetwood with a new platform to honour a song he loved and also allowed the gifted performer to expand his musical vocabulary. He wasn’t the first to benefit from being immersed in Ghana’s rhythmic traditions and recording culture, and it allowed the percussionist to truly excel.
When he tackled the track on his 1981 solo album, Fleetwood was joined in Ghana by the African music group Adjo, who played percussion and provided vocals on the track. “I had the greatest time playing with these musicians on this rendition of this particular song,” he recalled. “The most important thing to me was, I knew I was taking this song to Africa to reinterpret, and what you hear on the whole of The Visitor is an extension of what you hear on ‘Walk A Thin Line’.”
As well as Fleetwood’s own stamp of approval on the Buckingham written number, George Harrison, Fleetwood’s ex-brother-in-law, came into the studio back in London to lay down some “beautiful” slide guitar on it. Musing on more material he wished he had written, Fleetwood said: “I adore him and his music, and he is sorely missed.”
