“I remember not working for two years. I can’t even remember what I did”
Mick Fleetwood (Picture: Getty)
Fleetwood Mac‘s Mick Fleetwood has revealed that he can’t remember two years of his life, after previously battling a heavy cocaine habit.
The drummer explained that there was a period “way after” making the iconic 1977 album ‘Rumours’ when he didn’t work for two years and has no recollection of his life during the period.
He told Classic Rock magazine: “There’s no doubt we were well equipped with the marching powder. That’s a well-worn fairytale that gets more like a war story, that gets more and more aggrandised.
I’m not minimalising the fact that we were definitely partaking in that lifestyle.
“But these weren’t a bunch of people crawling across the floor with green froth coming out of their mouths, we were working, you know?
Once upon a time – from around 2008 to around 2015 – BMG was arguably the most acquisitive company in the music rights space.
That’s all changed in recent years, with BMG largely retreating from an M&A marketplace that has seen heavily-funded entrants such Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Round Hill, and Primary Wave keep on raising big money… and keep on spending it.
Indeed, MBW understands that it’s been nearly three years since BMG made a large-scale full acquisition in music rights. Instead, the company has switched its focus to organic growth, with positive results: after years of consecutive double-digit increases, BMG half-year revenues rose again to $308m in the first six months of the pandemic-hit 2020.
Today, though, BMG has announced its return to the acquisition table – and shown the music industry that it still has the resources to make serious music buyouts now and again.
Bertelsmann-owned BMG has confirmed that it has outright acquired Mick Fleetwood’s royalty interest in over 300 recordings, including all of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits.
An important distinction: this doesn’t mean BMG has acquired the underlying master rights to classic catalog albums like Rumours and Tango In The Night, which are owned by Warner Music Group.
However, it does mean that, from now on, whenever certain records by Fleetwood Mac make money, then BMG makes money. (The BMG acquisition includes Mick Fleetwood’s interest in all of Fleetwood Mac’s recorded works, apart from their first two albums.)
As a result, BMG will participate in the aftermath of the global viral success of Dreamson TikTok, which generated over 3.2 billion views/streams globally during an eight-week period in the second half of 2020.
Other Fleetwood Mac hits covered by the deal include recordings such as The Chain, Go Your Own Way, and Landslide from albums including Fleetwood Mac (1975), Rumours (1977) and Tango In The Night (1987).
Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood has spoken about playing with former lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, calling the possibility a pipe dream.
The band’s de facto leader has said it’s unlikely that Lindsey Buckingham will return. (Picture: Getty Images)
Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood has spoken about playing with former lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, calling the possibility a pipe dream.
Fleetwood, who founded the band in 1967, has acted as the de facto leader of the band since its inception. In a new interview, he talked about the messy breakup with Buckingham in 2018, saying that reunion will be unlikely.
Buckingham was notoriously fired from the group for a disagreement on the direction and scope of a tour, while a spat with band member Stevie Nicks has also been cited as reason for the departure.
The guitarist and singer then sued the band for a breach of oral contract, with the case eventually settled out of court.
By Andy Greene
Oct 15, 2020
Rolling Stone Interview Series
This article only contains the Fleetwood Mac centric material, for the complete article, please click this link
THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 10: Musician Brett Tuggle performs onstage during the ‘Music Strong’ benefit concert at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on February 10, 2019 in Thousand Oaks, California. (Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)
Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features keyboardist Brett Tuggle.
Keyboardist Brett Tuggle was travelling through Europe on a 1997 tour with Toto’s Steve Lukather when he heard that Mick Fleetwood was trying to get in touch with him. “I called him from the airport and he said, ‘Brett, we’re putting the Big Five [members of Fleetwood Mac] back together,’” says Tuggle. “‘We’re going to augment the band with a couple of great musicians and you’d be great with Christine [McVie]. Are you in?’”
“Let me check my calendar,” he joked. “Of course, I’m in.”
The single television special that resulted kicked off a two-decade stint for Tuggle as the go-to keyboardist for all Fleetwood Mac tours along with solo treks by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in addition to the Buckingham McVie side project.
How did you first enter the world of Fleetwood Mac?
It was because of Mick Fleetwood, his majesty. I was in a band with Mick called the Zoo. We did an album in the Nineties. David Lee Roth wasn’t doing much. I think that was already over. I had gotten a call that Mick was looking for a keyboard player for his band the Zoo, which I had heard of. I didn’t know much about them, but I thought it could be interesting. It had a pretty good lineup of people. It was Bekka Bramlett on lead vocals. She’s Delaney and Bonnie’s daughter. There was also Billy Thorpe from Down Under. He was a big star in Australia. Continue reading Veteran Sideman Brett Tuggle on His Years With Fleetwood Mac | Rolling Stone→
On the eve of her new concert film, the Fleetwood Mac singer talks new solo material, Trump’s response to COVID-19 and the chances of a ‘Rumours’-era reunion
SACRAMENTO, CA – DECEMBER 13: Stevie Nicks performs during her “24 Karat Gold Tour” at Golden 1 Center on December 13, 2016, in Sacramento, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down. When Fleetwood Mac concluded their year-long world tour at the end of 2019, the 72-year-old singer songwriter decamped to her Santa Monica home with the intention of taking the year off from touring. Like the rest of us, she didn’t expect to be holed-up for quite so long. “I’ve been quarantined solid since March,” Nicks tells NME. “I figured that I’d probably do about ten gigs and then I was just going to work on a miniseries for Rhiannon but then the door slams and we have a pandemic.”
Out of these dark days, Nicks has kept a busy schedule. ‘Show Them The Way’, worked upon remotely with the help of Dave Grohl, is her first single in six years. She has also helped produce 24 Karat Gold The Concert, a spellbinding concert film from the 2016/7 tour of the same name, which in cinemas for two nights later this month featuring staples such as ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ alongside unreleased gems and deep cuts.
Whilst a viral TikTok video may have drawn headlines and pushed her song ‘Dreams’ back into the charts recently, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had other things on her mind when we caught up with her, including her issues with Trump, the lost ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album and why she is fatalistic if ‘Rumours’–era Fleetwood Mac are to never play together again.
Your first single for six years and the 24 Karat Gold The Concert film – this is turning into a very busy time for you…
“In a million years, I never thought I’d have two projects coming out within two weeks of each other. It’s been a lot of work over the last two months, let me tell you. I’m pretty excited and really proud of everything. I think the film is the closest anyone is going to get to a real, serious concert until the pandemic is over. And I think the song is ‘right now’ with what’s going on in our country. Our country is so divisive. We have gone back so far. It is very sad and very scary.” Continue reading Stevie Nicks: “In Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie and I were a force of nature” | NME→
FLEETWOOD MAC founder Mick Fleetwood has spoken out on the possibility of Lindsey Buckingham returning to the band.
Fleetwood Mac: Mick Fleetwood speaks on possible Lindsey Buckingham RETURN – ‘Time heals’ (Image: GETTY)
Two years ago, Lindsey Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac and was replaced by Mike Campbell and Neil Finn. Ever since, fans have wondered if the 71-year-old will be allowed back. After all, he left the band for a decade between 1987 and 1997, before returning for over 20 years.
And now drummer Mick Fleetwood has spoken out on the possibility of Buckingham rejoining Fleetwood Mac.
Speaking with Page Six, the 73-year-old said he has no idea if the guitarist and singer will be allowed to return.
Mick explained: “I think the reality is without going into huge detail, one of the things I always say is that the disconnect happened and there were emotions that were somewhat not removable and there are personal things within the band and Lindsey’s world.
“All I can say is really openly is that Lindsey Buckingham and the work he has done with the band is never going to go away and we have a functioning band with the changes that we made.”
Mick added: “You know time heals and it was lovely to be able to talk with him.”
The drummer spoke with Buckingham in the summer following the death of Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green.
Lindsey said: “I know you’re really sad”, which Mick admits he was.
At 72, the singer is still looking for adventure. She talks about her years with Fleetwood Mac, the abortion that made them possible, and her friendship with Harry Styles
Stevie Nicks: ‘I’m an independent woman, and that is not attractive to men.’ Photograph: Randee St Nicholas
Stevie Nicks has been taking the pandemic even more seriously than most. She has barely left her home in Los Angeles this year. “My assistant, God bless her, she puts on her hazmat suit and goes to get food, otherwise we’d starve to death,” she says. She fell seriously ill in March 2019, ending up in intensive care with double pneumonia; after that shock, she fears contracting Covid-19 could end her singing career: “My mom was on a ventilator for three weeks when she had open-heart surgery and she was hoarse for the rest of her life.”
What would it mean to her to stop singing? “It would kill me,” she says. “It isn’t just singing; it’s that I would never perform again, that I would never dance across the stages of the world again.” She pauses and sighs. “I’m not, at 72 years old, willing to give up my career.”
It is nearly midnight in LA when we speak on the phone; not a problem for Nicks, who is “totally nocturnal”. The night she fell ill last year, she had just become the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice – an honour that reflects her wild success as one of the lead singers of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, as a writer and singer of raw, magical songs about love and freedom, including Dreams, Rhiannon, Gold Dust Woman, Landslide and Edge of Seventeen. Nicks is unabashedly funny, dry as a bone, often sidling into sarcasm.
I ask about her approach to spirituality. She says that, for all her fears about her career, “some people are really afraid of dying, but I’m not. I’ve always believed in spiritual forces. I absolutely know that my mom is around all the time.” Just after her mother died, in 2012, Nicks was standing in her kitchen with “really bad acid reflux”. “And I felt something almost tap my shoulder and this voice go: ‘It’s that Gatorade you’re drinking,’” she says. “I’d been sick and chugging down the Hawaiian Punch. Now, that’s not some romantic, gothic story of your mother coming back to you. It’s your real mother, walking into your kitchen and saying” – she puts on a rasp – “‘Don’t drink any more of that shit.’” She pauses, waiting for me to laugh, then cackles. Continue reading Stevie Nicks on art, ageing and attraction: ‘Botox makes it look like you’re in a satanic cult!’ | The Guardian→
Two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stevie Nicks chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about her “24 Karat Gold” concert film, her live album, upcoming single on October 9, and she shared the key to longevity in the music industry.
Track and field legend Wilma Rudolph once said: “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” Stevie Nicks is a woman that embodies this wise quotation.
Nicks has been hailed by this music aficionado as the perennial “Empress of Rock and Roll,” and rightfully so. She possesses one of the most significant and powerful voices in the music business; moreover, she has had an illustrious music career that has spanned well over five decades. She scored six Top 10 albums, eight Grammy nominations for her solo work, and she has sold in excess of 140 million albums collectively as a solo recording artist and as part of the iconic rock group Fleetwood Mac.
She earned several Grammy Awards as a member of the Fleetwood Mac: their seminal studio album Rumours won the Grammy for “Album of the Year” in 1978, and two Fleetwood Mac albums have been inducted into the coveted Grammy Hall of Fame: Rumours in 2003 and Fleetwood Mac in 2016 respectively. Last year, she made music history because she was the first woman inducted into the coveted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.
Influential blues rock guitarist who co-founded Fleetwood Mac but quit the band as he struggled with drugs and mental illness
Fleetwood Mac in 1969, the year before Peter Green walked out after suffering a disturbing dream: from top left to right, John McVie, Danny Kirwan, Green, Jeremy Spencer, Mick Fleetwood GETTY IMAGES
One night in 1970 after taking LSD, Peter Green had a demonic dream in which he was visited by a green hellhound that barked menacingly at him.
“It scared me because I knew the dog had been dead a long time,” he recalled later. “It was a stray and I was looking after it. But I was dead and had to fight to get back into my body.”
When he awoke Green concluded that the beast was the Devil and the dream had been telling him that money was the root of all evil. His first reaction was to write a song about his demons. The result was The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown) in which he described a satanic creature “Sneakin’ around,trying to drive me mad/ Bustin’ in on my dreams/ Making me see things I don’t want to see.”
The song was both brilliant and harrowing; its sinister riff, eerie howling and tormented lyrics made it one of the most disturbing hit singles to infiltrate the generally sunny terrain of the Top Ten. It was also the last song Green recorded with his band Fleetwood Mac, for his second reaction to his dream was to leave the group and give all his money away. He allegedly threatened to shoot his accountant unless he stopped sending him royalty cheques.
“It was a freedom thing,” he told The Times in 1997, when after long years away from music he was attempting a comeback. “I wanted to go and live on a commune. In the end I never did but I had to get away from the group. Acid had a lot to do with it.” Continue reading Peter Green obituary | The Times→
He was the musician who encouraged a generation of teenagers to pick up the guitar but Peter Green’s own career was marred by psychedelic drugs and mental illness.
To some music fans, Green was the best of the British blues guitarists GEORGE WILKES/HULTON ARCHIVE
Last night, the world of rock and blues was in mourning after the death of the Fleetwood Mac co-founder at the age of 73. Green, nicknamed the Green God by fans, formed the band with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass guitarist John McVie in London in 1967. He was so instrumental in the band’s early years that its original name was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.
Their greatest hits included Albatross, Man of the World, Oh Well and The Green Manalishi. After he left the band, he missed out on their biggest success, the 1977 Rumours album.
Fleetwood Mac enjoyed staggering success, with four hit albums. In 1969, the band sold more records than The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, combined, and Green became one of the most famous musicians in Europe. But he left the band at the height of its fame after a final performance in 1970. He said he was leaving the music business “for my freedom” but was also suffering from mental health issues, and was hearing voices. He later had schizophrenia diagnosed.
He had gone off the rails after taking LSD. In 1996, he admitted that the drug had left a lasting impression on him. “I’m still there. . . I never did come back off the trip. I guess I took one trip too many,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
While on tour in Munich, Germany, to promote their third album, Then Play On, matters came to a head. “Peter took some more drugs,” said Mick Fleetwood in the 2012 BBC documentary Man of the World, “and never really came back from that.”
Peter Green, far left, with other members of Fleetwood Mac ARALDO DI CROLLALANZA/COURTESY OF ORANGE AMPS
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