Saturday June 09 2012, 1.01am
The Times

Guitarist with Fleetwood Mac during the band’s transition from hard-driving blues to mainstream rock

Bob Welch played a key role in the transition of Fleetwood Mac from gritty British blues band to multimillion-selling American soft-rock heroes. As a guitarist, singer and songwriter, he performed on five albums by the band in the early 1970s, including Heroes Are Hard to Find (1974), which gave Fleetwood Mac its first American Top 40 hit.

Welch was widely credited with keeping the group going through several difficult years. Under his influence Fleetwood Mac swapped its early hard-driving blues sound in favour of a more melodic and radio-friendly style, heard to fine effect on compositions such as Sentimental Lady and Hypnotise. The first American member of the British-based group, he was also instrumental in persuading Fleetwood Mac to relocate to his home town of Los Angeles, a move which was pivotal in their subsequent success.

He left the group in late 1974 and was replaced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The new line-up went on to record Rumours, one of the biggest-selling albums of all time and a record which, in many ways, was the logical outcome of the musical direction in which Welch had taken the band.

Initially there was no bitterness on his part at having missed out on the group’s greatest commercial success. He remained close friends with former bandmates Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie, both of whom played on his 1977 million-selling album French Kiss, which also gave him three hit singles with the title track (which he had previously recorded with Fleetwood Mac), Ebony Eyes and Hot Love, Cold World.

But his solo career subsequently petered out, in part due to heroin addiction, and relations with his old bandmates also turned sour. He sued for underpayment of royalties. Although the case was settled in 1996, the resentment lingered. Two years later, when Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, he was not among the former members invited to participate. “My era was the bridge era,” an angry Welch complained at the time. “It was a transition, but it was an important period in the history of the band. Mick Fleetwood credited me with ‘saving Fleetwood Mac’. Now they want to write me out of the history of the group. It hurts.” Continue reading Bob Welch obituary | The Times →