The music video that almost split Fleetwood Mac: “They didn’t want to be there”
The soap opera drama at the heart of Fleetwood Mac‘s long and storied history can sometimes eclipse the music itself. Any overview of their career will invariably discuss the messy, entangled web of mutual divorces, affairs, and lingering heartache that gnawed away at the band across their cocaine-blitzed late-1970s.
While fuelling blockbuster hit Rumours‘ emotionally charged pop rock, by the time of 1982’s Mirage, the internal grievances that afforded Fleetwood Mac their special spark threatened to implode the band for good.
Following Tusk‘s more experimental approach, the group decided on ‘Hold Me’ as Mirage‘s lead single. Inspired by Christine McVie’s relationship with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson following her breakup with Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, the McVie and Robbie Patton penned ‘Hold Me’ sought to entice the pop back into their sound while still maintaining the prickle of tension that coloured prior records.
A lot had changed since Tusk. Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, and Mick Fleetwood had all pursued solo careers, Nicks having scored the number one success Bella Donna, and the uneasy cohesion that produced chart-toppers like ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Dreams’ was in a more fraught place.
Speaking to BAM in 1981, Nicks gave insight into the frisson that charged the group: “Fleetwood Mac couldn’t stay together if we didn’t want to, because we’re all far too volatile and passionate that it would be unbearable if we didn’t want to be together. Fleetwood Mac is never boring. If it ever becomes boring, we would stop it.”
‘Hold Me’ is a fine enough song, beloved by the fans and reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100, but it’s its promotional video and the turbulence behind the scenes which marks ‘Hold On’ as particularly memorable.
Inspired by the Belgian painter René Magritte and shot in California’s Mojave Desert, the band play out the album’s title and navigates the shifting sands in surrealist pursuit of each other. Surrounded by paintings and using a telescope to find her bandmates, McVie spots Buckingham painting Nicks as she’s lying on a chaise lounge and Mick Fleetwood and John McVie larking about in khaki shorts and pith helmets. It’s a perfect snapshot of MTV’s early infancy when you really didn’t need any ideas except tip-up and hit record.
The on-screen japery didn’t reflect the mood on set. The band’s already sour dispositions were amplified by the scorching temperatures, the video’s producer Simon Fields revealed in 2012’s I Want My MTV: “John McVie was drunk and tried to punch me. Stevie Nicks didn’t want to walk on the sand with her platforms. Christine McVie was fed up with all of them. They were a fractious bunch.”
The director, Steve Barron, confirmed the ugly atmosphere: “Four of them, I can’t recall which four, couldn’t be together in the same room for very long. They didn’t want to be there.”
A nightmare shoot yielded an average video, but the fledgling MTV network didn’t care, eager for as much promotional content as possible for their 24-hour channel. Leading Mirage‘s release prior to their testy hiatus before the mammoth Tango in the Night LP, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Hold Me’ video is an intriguing snapshot of a band still extracting success from crisis.
What makes the ‘Hold Me’ video so emblematic is how neatly it mirrors the wider Fleetwood Mac paradox. On screen, the band appear whimsical and loosely connected, wandering through surreal imagery with a kind of detached cool. Off screen, the fractures were deep enough to threaten the group’s survival. The contrast only reinforces how much of their magic relied on tension that was barely being contained.
In hindsight, Mirage feels like a moment of fragile equilibrium. The band were no longer operating at the combustible peak of Rumours, yet they were still able to channel discord into commercial triumph. ‘Hold Me’ stands as proof that Fleetwood Mac’s most compelling trait was not harmony, but resilience, the ability to convert personal strain into polished pop even when the foundations were visibly cracking.
