The Story of Fleetwood Mac - review of BBC music documentary

Fleetwood Mac - it's some story!

After arriving home from a busy overnight stay in London yesterday and unpacking my holdall I caught the final hour of the documentary the Story of Fleetwood Mac which was shown on BBC 2 late on Saturday February 6th.

Before watching I knew many of the tunes. Albatross, one of their finest songs is of course pure tune..

I knew some of the words of  their other songs.. I was familiar with Dreams, composed by the female lead singer, Stevie Nicks., I also knew the tune and pretty much all the words of Go Your Own Way, composed not long after by the male lead singer and lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. I knew that the songs were from their best known album Rumours.

I had no idea that their painful break-up inspired their songs and fuelled the power of their performance onstage. Stevie said that she was hurt and offended by Lindsey's nasty phrase 'all you do is shack up,' Lindsey says he wrote the truth as he saw it. Stevie says the relationship was becoming too dark and intense and she wanted escape as she needed 'a breath of spring air'. John and Christine Mcvie, also in the band were also undergoing a painful relationship break-

. Christine also feels her relationship with  her husband John is now 'too dark'. She shags the band's lighting engineer and writes a line about 'you make loving fun' 

John McVie at this point has a relationship that is always there for him no matter what,John is in a relationship with booze. Very loving  man, our John.  Christine his now ex-missus barely notices as she has a seven year fling with cocaine. Stevie is also at this  time a coke-head and then gets prescribed a medical coke substitute which makes her drowsy and prone to absenteeism during the making of Tusk the follow up to Rumours The best known song on Tusk is 'Tell me lies'(tell me lies tell me sweet little lies)

 Mick Fleetwood the drummer,and also the manager by group  consent. has a bit of everything that's going, Booze and coke  well this is standard Rock-et fuel. He helps himself to bit of Christine and a bit of Stevie, When he gets to know Stevies' best pal Sarah yes of course - well the gals all want it as much as he does so where's the harm haha .Stevie is gutted as she has now 'lost her lover and her best friend in one fell swoop' This break up trauma inspires Sarah, another track on Tusk.

Cor blow me! Lindsey is in fact the only one who does not 'shack up' willy-nilly.

The whole lot of them deserved one another. They stuck together in the band most of the time because The Show Must Go on. Utterly ruthless and  piggishly selfish,  the individual band members of Fleetwood Mac at  this stage of their career embodied the worst excesses of hedonistic Hippiedom.  And they also embodied the finest strengths of the Hippy dream. Their dedication to creativity, Art, Rock and Roll/Folk Rock/ Acid Rock (though cocaine was their poison and Steve went into rehab after 7 years of drug dependency because she did not want cocaine to kill her aand said she didn't know when the rest of the band stopped using) - well to get to the point the dedication of each and every one of these spoilt selfish littlie sods to being Fleetwood Mac won the day. Three cheers for Fleetwood Mac! And an extra cheer for Mick Fleetwood who, at their height of the Mac's fame became the band's manager by group consensus and who had the sense and balance to encourage everyone's  formidable individual talents and to skipper the ship.

Lindsey and Stevie. They met in High School in California.. He was 16, she was 17. Interesting. They were both musical and strongwilled. Boys mature later than girls. So I would guess that at an emotional level Stevie enjoyed being the leader. Proud young Lindsey  -phwooar! Here was sex on a plate and Stevie liked a good plateful. Lindsey had to have his fill and he fought to gain mastery over her.. Between them, and I borrow from the words of Hugh Lofting in his book Dr Doolittle, they created the strange creature called a Push-me / Pull-you. They are now both over seventy. Both are alive and strong and creative.  Emotiionally they have stayed in exactly the same place as when they were High School Californian Hippy kids. The musical teens are now musical septugenarians. Pure Rock and Roll. A tale of endurance, and hard work - yes my friends when hippies want to work they damn well work and they are able to give it their all. Survival - here's to them!

(And let;us also cry real tears for Peter Green the talented early band member who could not handle the pressures of fame and the drug scene and departed from the band in 1980. Peter then underwent too many years of extreme poverty and mental health struggles. He recovered very slowly and died in 2020 at the age of 73.)

Mick Fleetwood, the only founder member still alive and still part of the band is now 78. He has had a working life with Fleetwood Mac since he left school at the age of 15 in order to play more blues guitar. 53 years a bandsman!

The song where. I knew the tune and not the words is Rhiannon. Stevie said she knew Rhiannon was Welsh and she didn't know Wales so she made it sort of dreamy. The words of the song fit the legend of Rhiannon and her three singing Black Birds, who appear very close by and also are far away 'across the water' The legend belongs to Celtic myth both Irish  and Welsh.. Rhiannon is a princess in the early Welsh legend the Mabinogion

Apparently 'Stevie has denied on frequent occasions that she is a witch' Stevie is not a witch and Lindsey is not a warlock. The other band members and their supporting cast including the lighting engineer are not fairies hobgoblins, witches ,warlocks, elves or ghosts and neither am I. Fleetwood Mac and their story is earthly magic, 

--------------------------------

 Tuesday Feb 8

If you watch the 1978 music video available on You Tube of 'Go your own way' paying  close attention to all the visuals, you can learn a lot.Stevie and Lindsey play their instruments with passion. Watch their hands. Then watch where they go  when they move their feet.

If you have any energy left then please watch 'Dreams' Women they will come and they will go I'll drink to that but Stevie looks exhausted.

Tuesday 15 Feb

It is now 7 days after. I plan to do less today.

Rock on!