Fleetwood Mac and the Art of Selling Out

Founding members John McVie and Peter Green in 1969, long before the legacy of the band was distorted. Photo by Michael Putland

Everybody knows Fleetwood Mac. Well, more accurately, everybody thinks they know Fleetwood Mac. 

Typically, people can only name the most prominent members–Stevie Nicks is always first in line, usually followed up by Lindsey Buckingham and, very rarely and only if you’re lucky, people will mention Christine McVie afterward. Not a sin in its own right if this had been how the band started out, but when Fleetwood Mac started in the late 1960s, Stevie Nicks wasn’t even a thought in anybody’s mind. 

It is not uncommon for bands to be reduced to whomever their most well-known member is–The Police get simplified to Sting, T. Rex gets simplified to Marc Bolan, The Flying Burrito Brothers get simplified to Gram Parsons. And Stevie Nicks emerged on the music scene at the perfect moment to seize her opportunity and diminish an entire band into her own legacy. 

But unlike the figures mentioned above, who were all founding members of their bands, Fleetwood Mac existed a long seven years before Nicks and Buckingham came out of the woodwork, and in many varying incarnations. 

Though it seems hard to believe now, Fleetwood Mac started out in England, with the blues being their preferred genre of choice, after guitarist Peter Green left John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers to pursue his own interests. 

Blues purists Fleetwood Mac would remain for their first two albums, foraying into other, more experimental genres on 1969’s Then Play On and 1970’s Kiln House before dropping Peter Green and the blues altogether. 

Though their leader was gone, Fleetwood Mac continued with an uninterrupted string of releases for four more years until the white witch and her sepulchral-looking boyfriend were brought in to try and salvage what was left after 1974’s Heroes Are Hard to Find, which marked the band’s move to dreaded Los Angeles and the departure of one of their most underappreciated members, guitarist Bob Welch. 

It’s no secret that, even though Fleetwood Mac slogged through those seven years and worked their asses of to build up a solid enough repetorie and reputation, they just couldn’t seem to succeed. The plethora of line-up changes and managerial issues were taking their toll on the band. So they brought in the new blood. 

But Stevie Nicks wasn’t even supposed to join the band. Originally, they only wanted Lindsey Buckingham on for his guitar work, but the man just had to bring his girlfriend along with him. And so, the Fleetwood Mac that we got stuck with today was born. 

Of course, the one time Fleetwood Mac were granted the privilege of succeeding was after every last piece of soul had been ripped clean from their music. Gone were the days of “Black Magic Woman”, “Blood on the Floor”, and “Silver Heels”. Out with the old and in with the new, they say, and unfortunately, the new were fucking over each other and anybody else they could get their hands on. 

Fleetwood Mac managed to pull off the biggest sell-out in the recording industry history that is hitherto unparalleled. They abandoned all aspects of their music that were genuine and instead pushed the focus onto commerce and somehow convinced over forty million people that it was the best thing since sliced bread. They turned what would be any other band’s lowest, most soulless point of their careers into two of the best-known albums in music history. Fleetwood Mac turned their sell-out into art. 

To give minimal credit where minimal credit is due, it certainly takes a lot of work (cocaine and payola) to convince practically all of the record buying public that your sell-out records are something that people should actually be spending their time with. And to give Stevie Nick’s credit where credit is due, it doesn’t take anything to convince all of the women in America that you’re something special. 

Stevie Nicks had her success handed to her on a silver platter. She was a hanger-on who has been living off one mistake Mick Fleetwood made for fifty goddamned years. 

As much as she would like you to believe she really, truly is somebody who rose above the rest, Stevie Nicks would’ve had just as good a chance at succeeding as a snowflake does in hell if Lindsey Buckingham hadn’t brought her into the band. 

The debut album the pair had released in 1973 went practically unnoticed, having no promotion and not even being able to be found in record stores, according to dialogue featured in Mark Blake’s The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac. Without Fleetwood Mac to carry her to superstardom and beyond, Stevie Nicks would instead have spent the seventies squandering in grimy back-allies, trying to make ends meet between failed record releases and cocaine binges. 

Even in Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks seemed to be playing a minimal role. Her vocals feature on a mere two out of eleven cuts on Fleetwood Mac and four of the eleven cuts on Rumors, and she has a total of seven writing credits shared between those two albums. She was doing absolutely none of the heavy lifting and getting all the credit for it. 

In the fifty odd years it has been since those earth-shattering personnel changes occurred in some musty Los Angeles recording studio, nearly every “rock-loving” woman from the age of twenty to fifty-five has made it their entire personalities to fawn over Stevie Nicks. It is as if they are pinpoint focused on her, like she is the one true god come down to earth to sanctify those who follow her and destroy the curséd sinners who dare refuse to buy into her brand. An interesting trend this is, as I cannot find any other woman in rock and roll who has such a dedicated, detatched and rabid fanbase. 

If you dare try and speak a word of the Fleetwood Mac that existed before 1975, more often then not people will have no clue who or what you are talking about. A real and true shame it is to see the actual efforts of members such as Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer and Bob Welch be reduced into nothing in favor of a free-loading bum. 

Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, with Stevie Nicks’ abysmal solo career following in 2019. Any classic rock radio station you tune into is bound to play one of the few cuts Nicks features on within the first ten minutes of your listening. T-shirts with the cover of Rumors on it can be found in any chain store any given day of the week, and Nicks continues to tour with nothing but her legacy to support her while the other members of Fleetwood Mac are relegated to the shadows. 

The act of selling out is Fleetwood Mac’s masterpiece.