The drummer talks about the soap opera that has been Fleetwood Mac since 1967 — and the all-star tribute to bandmate Peter Green

For the past 54 years Mick Fleetwood, 73, has kept Fleetwood Mac going in the face of insurmountable odds. When the guitarist Lindsey Buckingham was fired from the band in 2018, in part linked to his former girlfriend Stevie Nicks announcing that she could not bear to share a stage with him again, it was just the latest hurdle for the soft-rock stadium fillers who have faced everything from divorces to affairs to drug-induced breakdowns.

The problems began when Peter Green, the band’s founder and one of the greatest guitarists, took LSD at a commune in Munich in March 1970 and never recovered. He left Fleetwood Mac a few months later.

“He was a lot of fun, right up until the day he walked out of the band,” says Fleetwood down the line from his home in Hawaii. “He had a real sense of ambition about what he wanted to do. You can listen to Man of the World now and hear the signs [in 1977 Green was diagnosed with schizophrenia], but I thought Peter had just written a sad song about a feeling.”

Perhaps that hindsight helped to spur Fleetwood on to put together a remarkable concert, which took place at the London Palladium on February 25, 2020 — just before the pandemic hit the UK — in honour of Green. Everyone from Fleetwood Mac’s keyboardist and singer Christine McVie to Pete Townshend to David Gilmour joined in, alongside some rather surprising Peter Green fans. Continue reading Mick Fleetwood: ‘You’re talking to the dude who never gives up. We’re still a band’ | The Times (UK) →