What is Happening in Fleetwood Mac-land?
Friday is about music, so there’s playlists and links. Bear with me today as I revisit a favourite subject — there's murmurs afoot and "Rumours" galore in the world of one of my favourite bands…
What is going on in Fleetwood Mac land? The band has an Instagram page? But it’s private?? There’s a brand new official website where you can sign up for tour news? But John McVie has ruled out touring ever again and says the band is finished as far as he’s concerned. (Just saying, he did try that several times up to 2015, then still toured the world with the band in 2018). Stevie and Lindsey have done full career retrospectives of their respective solo careers in the last year.
Last I heard, Christine McVie is dead.
The Chain is Finally Broken… R.I.P. Christine McVie
But all of this was enough to make me check.
Last week, Lindsey Buckingham’s social media lit up as “he” remembered the time he was on SNL — choosing to remember that completely in time with when Stevie Nicks was due to be the musical guest on the show and not on the actual anniversary of his event or anything eh. Seemed like a message to the show’s producers to not forget about him when casting future musical guests, right? Well, in the land of the Fleetwood Mac Fan it meant only one thing: FULL BAND REUNION RIGHT THERE ON THAT STAGE. Well, actually one of two things. The other: STEVIE AND LINDSEY TOGETHER SINGING SONGS FROM THEIR BUCKINGHAM/NICKS ALBUM.
Neither of those things eventuated. It was all just, um “Rumours”…
Stevie went on the show, creeping towards 80, like everyone from that era is. And she slayed, queen.
I’m a card-carrying member of the Fleetwood Mac club. Have been since I was a kid. I sometimes think there’s no better band ever, certainly no wilder set of stories associated with a musical group — those forces that drive a group to splinter, implode or combust have actually been the elements that play into this group’s longevity. You won’t get that ever again nor anywhere else.
Every now and then I think about how one day I’ll write a book about Fleetwood Mac. The world doesn’t need that, which is exactly what is prompting such a desire. Or I make the wish at night when I cannot sleep, that the show Mastermind is returning, and hope my, um “Dreams” will have me winning the title with The Music and Soap Opera of Fleetwood Mac as my specialist subject.
For I love both. The stories. And the music. And I love all of both — the fights and wild speculation. And every single incarnation of the band and basically every single song from every single album. I’m there for the tunes. But who could deny all that wonderful back-story too?
Anyway, it’s an interesting time in Mac-land right now.
It’s basically the 50th anniversary of Buckingham and Nicks joining the band. The 50th of their album, Buckingham/Nicks has been and gone.
You can’t find the album on CD, nor to stream on the most likely platforms — there are ways of hearing it, and old vinyl copies still circulate, but it’s never been given the proper Deluxe Treatment the way so many albums of its era have — and boy does it deserve it.
This means that next year is the 50th anniversary of the Fleetwood Mac album, the start of the band starting over one final time really; the Stadium Era of the band, the Fleetwood Mac of FM Radio that I grew up with; the version of the band that spawned a million young women named “Rhiannon” and 10 million young women with no ‘H’ in the name “Sara”.
I had to make sense of all of this. So I did what any “normal” Fleetwood Mac obsessive would do. I signed up to follow r/FleetwoodMac aka the Fleetwood Mac subreddit. Here I would find the truth.
No.
I would instead find the person that paid over $500 US to own the lamp that Christine McVie used on stage atop her piano. And a bunch of people that are so triggered by the question What’s The Best Fleetwood Mac song? that I suddenly appear almost completely normal. Well, in the scheme of stretches, me saying that is suddenly not much at all. Not when you’ve read r/FleetwoodMac for any small amount of time.
Lindsey coughs and it’s cancer. Stevie twirls and there’s a reunion gathering under her skirts. Christine is definitely not coming back. That’s about the only thing that’s clear. And if the ghost of Christine McVie did want to join the band, good luck finding her way to the stage now Karen from Poughkeepsie has her new favourite keepsake. (EDIT: I was going to insert a You Make Lighting Fun pun, but thought better of it. I’ve been told the Student Job Search writer that puts all my Substack work together will definitely be removing this. Not a trace of it).
It’s good to, ahem, feel normal though. And the Fleetwood Mac subreddit gives me hope. In a Groucho Marx, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member” kind of way. You know, when you’ve found your people, but instead you just run to the car.
The Mirage Tour from 1982 has been released as audio — the VHS tape of this was a favourite when I was in high school. (Which might be why I was not a favourite when I was in high school).
And just today, first thing, Bill Callahan, who used to record as SMOG, released his nearly 25-year-old cover version of Beautiful Child:
More interesting than that — and trust me, that is interesting, it’s just one song only is all — the duo of Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird released Cunningham Bird which is their song-by-song cover of the album Buckingham Nicks.
Talk about burying the lede. I should have started with that. That should be the subject and sole content of today’s newsletter. This version of this album had me staying up just to hear it through once before retiring late in the night. It’s that sort of music news. But yeah, linked mysteriously to all this Fleetwood Mac “News” too eh…Cue Twilight Zone music…
And, erm, Mick Fleetwood has a brand new album out too. It’s a set of covers of classic blues-rock and adjacent songs featuring that ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro that every musical instrument store employee was falling over a stack of Ibanez guitars as they tried to be first to tell you about him last decade.
In the scheme of Mick Fleetwood Blues Band-y album releases, this is definitely not shit. But yeah, it’s no Cunningham Bird.
It’s possible that Fleetwood Mac could tour without Christine — they did for many years, including a version of the band that was just Lindsey, Stevie, John, and Mick, ie, everyone that’s now left. And it was good too. I saw that version of the band. They’ve toured without Lindsey, they’ve toured without Stevie, it’s only John and Mick that have never missed a tour. And I guess it’s very possible for Mick to authorise a version of the band that is just him, Lindsey and Stevie. No John. The r/FleetwoodMac will be angry for precisely 17 minutes, then will start building 87 permutations of The Perfect Setlist.
I don’t need to see Fleetwood Mac live one more time. I saw two versions of the band. Both excellent and worth it, and enough to make the Fleetwood Mac fan in me feel satiated. But if anyone is a Fleetwood Mac fan solely for their music I’ve yet to meet such a person.
Fleetwood Mac reforming right now, after years of re-ratcheted tension between Stevie and Lindsey, with John not at all interested, with Christine dead, well, it’s about The Most Fleetwood Mac Thing That Could Happen now isn’t it? So I’m here for the news. And the views. And meanwhile there’s still (and always) all of that fabulous music.
The Best Guitarist in The World: # 11 – Lindsey Buckingham
Drummers You Just Can’t Beat: # 12 – Mick Fleetwood
In Praise of Reading About Fleetwood Mac
Okay we made it all the way down here away from ALL OF THIS FLEETWOOD MAC now give us our weekly playlist section:
It's almost a little hard to imagine them live if they didn't have both John and Christine... AND, would Stevie and Lindsey do their usual onstage schtick of "we're old lovers who still love each other" like they've done for years after all of the loud breakup they did the other year?
I'd probably still go and see them again, to be fair...