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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/WarmKitten on 2024-03-17 05:30:30.

Original Title: [Classic rock] Bad trips, Christian cults, multiple brawls, multiple lawsuits, blown out nasal cavities and more infidelity than a daytime soap opera - a brief history of the world’s most fractious rock band

CW: A lot. Drugs, infidelity and intergender violence among them.

You’ve almost certainly heard of the band Fleetwood Mac. If you haven’t, you live under a rock and get your internet by siphoning it from elsewhere with an underground DSL cable. To those people, I will summarise in brief;

Founded in 1967 and active until fairly recently, Fleetwood Mac are a commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock institution. It’s likely that the average reader knows them from their period of activity from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, with their iconic lineup of the titular Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, as well as songstress Christine McVie and the singer-songwriter pair of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. But FM are unique in that, throughout their run, they’ve been jammy British blues, psychedelic pop, countrypolitan, stadium pop rock, balladeering AOR and just about anything else you could reasonably fit into the remit of ‘pop rock’.

They’re similarly unique for being an exceptionally rare classic rock act with lead vocals rotating between men and women, as well as for their crossover appeal with the authentic rockers and the radio pop crowd alike. One of these things indirectly fuelled the other, but I get ahead of myself.

Here’s a brief-as-possible rundown of the many trials and tribulations of those guys who recorded the best songs you hear at the supermarket. The full story of these incidents could fill a quite-large book, so this will really just be the bullet points.

• In 1970, founding guitarist and the band’s biggest star, Peter Green, already mentally declining, takes some bad LSD at a commune in Munich and spirals until he exits the band.
• The second of their original guitarists, Jeremy Spencer, leaves their hotel room before a show in 1971 to ‘get some magazines’ and never returns. He is found by manager Clifford Davis days later at a latter-day-Christian commune and refuses to return.
• Danny Kirwan, the last of their founding guitarists, succumbs to alcoholism and becomes sullen, reclusive and paranoid. He fights regularly with Spencer’s replacement, Bob Welch, and it culminates in his termination after a blowup before a show in 1972.
• Kirwan’s replacement, Bob Weston, has an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s then-wife Jenny Boyd, while touring to promote Mystery to Me in 1973. When Mick finds out, he fires Weston, cancels the tour and briefly disbands Fleetwood Mac.
• Recently fired manager Clifford Davis attempts to assert intellectual ownership over the name ‘Fleetwood Mac’, resulting in litigious response from Mick Fleetwood, Christine & John McVie and Bob Welch.
• With the lawsuit ongoing, in 1974 Fleetwood Mac become the only major rock band to not be represented by a manager. Mick Fleetwood assumes de-facto managerial duties.
• The same year, Fleetwood approaches American folk singer Lindsey Buckingham to join FM. Buckingham agrees only on the condition that his then-girlfriend and performing partner Stevie Nicks is also invited. This alone is not drama, but it is the first domino.
• Following the success of the band’s second (and more well known) self-titled album, the McVies divorce and Nicks & Buckingham split up. Tensions flare as suspicions of infidelity, towards all present members of the band, emerge. These tensions would comprise the substrate of the lyrics on their next album.
• The band considers crediting their drug dealer in the liner notes for their soon-to-be smash success Rumours, but renege on the plan when said drug dealer winds up murdered.
• While touring for Rumours, Nicks and Buckingham get in regular on-stage fights, no doubt exacerbated by the former’s cocaine addiction.
• Nicks’ cocaine habit blows out her nasal cavity. No, seriously.
• Mick Fleetwood reconciles with Jenny Boyd just long enough to remarry her before promptly cheating on her with Stevie Nicks.
• In 1978, Mick Fleetwood cheats on Stevie Nicks with her married friend Sara Recor, obliterating the relationship between all three.
• While touring for Tusk in New Zealand in 1980, Nicks and Buckingham get into an onstage fight which spills backstage. Buckingham throws his guitar at Nicks, Christine responds by bull-rushing the fuck out of him.
• In 1984, Mick Fleetwood files for bankruptcy. Drugs are blamed.
• Stevie Nicks checks into rehab at Betty Ford to corral her worsening cocaine habit in 1986.
• Following the release of Tango in the Night in 1987 (ed; their best album, don’t deny it) Buckingham, agitated to breaking point with Nicks, quits the band, thus ending their most iconic and lucrative period.
• In late 1990, Stevie Nicks’ frustrations over song placement culminates in her departure. That same year, Christine quits touring with the band, fully burnt out on the road life.
• Their 1995 album Time, featuring Buckingham-Nicks replacements Bekka Bramlett, Billy Burnette and Dave Mason is critically mauled and performs dismally commercially. It fails to chart in the U.S. and only sells 32,000 copies in its first year. Personally, I thought it was okay.
• Lindsey Buckingham returns in 1997. His second stint with the band would produce only one studio album, 2003’s Say You Will.
• Christine McVie leaves the band in every capacity in 1998. She would return many years later.
• In 2018, the now solely-touring Fleetwood Mac lose Buckingham again. This time, it’s a dispute over touring commitments. Buckingham would pick up where he left off in the 1980s by sueing his former co-workers for breach-of-contract. Somewhere in the world, Clifford Davis cracks open a cold beer and laughs.
• In 2022, Christine McVie, the longest tenured member after the two namesakes, passes away. With her goes any hope for reconciliation with Buckingham and any motivation to continue the band. Though not yet made official as of writing, the group is, for all intents and purposes, defunct.

So there we go. Fleetwood Mac. A band made great not in spite of their decades of turbulence and interpersonal animosity, but in large part because of it.

EDIT: No matter how much you proof, goofs get through the net.