The Sunday Times
18th Aug 2013
Matt Munday

Mick Fleetwood has survived nearly 50 years in rock’s most dysfunctional band, Fleetwood Mac. Now they’re back on the road

Mick Fleetwood looks like a bohemian Santa with his bushy white beard, pastel shirt, black waistcoat and flat cap. Not all his tales from the rock’n’roll frontline are as jolly as his appearance, though. At one point he has to choke back tears of regret. He has lived a life of such abandon that he admits he is lucky to still be here. “I’ve inherited some good genes,” he explains.

It is often reported that Fleetwood put $8m of cocaine up his nose, and though this is an exaggeration, he says, if he hadn’t stopped consuming the drug so vigorously “the next stop would have been a wooden box”. His former bandmate in Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie, had earlier told me that the men in the band used to rack out lines of coke like “blooming great rails” – whereas she and Stevie Nicks, the female contingent, would restrict themselves to “ladylike” portions, carried around their necks in jeweled buckles that had dainty silver spoons inside. “It was the 1970s,” she shrugged. “There was a lot going around.”

“I’m not advocating cocaine at all, but the truth is, I had a good time,” says Fleetwood. “But then, without realising it, you’re getting too out of it. You’re sleeping for three days, or you’re up for nine days or whatever. And eventually you don’t feel good at any time.” Continue reading Mick Fleetwood: Excess all areas →