Category Archives: Books

Books, Christine McVie

Christine McVie: ‘The affairs dented my self-respect. There was something seedy about them’ | Daily Telegraph

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An extract from the biography of the Fleetwood Mac legend reveals how drugs, booze and illicit sex took a toll on the band’s relationships

A fascinating dynamic: John and Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac | Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

By Lesley-Ann Jones
12 Nov 2024 – 07:15PM GMT

One of the great misconceptions about Fleetwood Mac is how Rumours came about. The band’s 11th album was designed, you often hear, to chronicle the breakdowns between three couples: Mick Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and John and Christine McVie. As such, it’s often referred to as a “journey album”, even a “concept album”. There was no pre-planned structure. Drugs, booze, illicit sex and affairs simply took their toll, and as their relationships fell apart, Christine, Stevie and Lindsey all separately brought to the table cathartic pieces that laid bare their own pain, anger, despair – and a little hope.

As they began recording Rumours at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in February 1976, the band’s producer Ken Caillat soon got the measure of those five distinct personalities. Mick, for instance, was the leader, and a control freak: he would go all night if he could, and sod the home life. Stevie was “the new girl”, she and boyfriend Lindsey having joined the band only in January 1975, who was infuriatingly precious about “her words”. Woe betide anyone who suggested an alteration.

Continue reading Christine McVie: ‘The affairs dented my self-respect. There was something seedy about them’ | Daily Telegraph →
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Book Review: Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks

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Enjoyed this book and completed it in a few days over the Christmas / New Year period whilst free from work duties.

The book was thorough and covered Stevie Nicks’ life in detail up to the year 2017 and covered a few items that I was not aware of, however, the author as an experienced writer that has written books on other members of Fleetwood Mac and other musical figures the fact-checking here was not very good, which makes me wonder if anything that I did not already know about Stevie’s life is actually accurate.

It is a shame as this book had the potential to be the definitive biography of Stevie Nicks (until she decides to write her own autobiography) but the fact-checking and errors really let this down, so near yet so far Mr Davis, please review with your editors in more detail before completing your next book as these errors really let you and the book down.

As a recommendation, I would say this book is good and thorough, but for a recent book on the life of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac I would refer anyone to Mick Fleetwood’s recent memoir ‘Play On‘ that was released in 2014, at least you know that much of the content is accurate, or as accurate as Mick remembers, and of course he was there!

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Books, Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Book review: Rock biographer Stephen Davis chronicles Stevie Nicks in new book

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The Hutchinson News
By Jody Feinberg
Posted Oct 25, 2017 at 10:38 AM

“Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks” by Stephen Davis. St. Martin’s Press, 2017. 352 pages. $18.29 / £20.61

Stephen Davis has an unusual wish for a man prior to the release of his 18th rock book — a biography of Fleetwood Mac singer and solo artist and songwriter Stevie Nicks.

“The main thing is I want to be in the next issue of AARP,” said Davis, who wrote “Gold Dust Woman” out of his Milton, Massachusetts, home. “She’s almost 70 and I’m 70, and they send out something like 25 million copies (actually the magazine claims more than 47 million readers).”

Davis said he is fascinated by Nicks, who found stardom relatively late (for a rock star) in her 20′s and still fills an arena both solo and with Fleetwood Mac. She recently announced an 18-month tour starting in mid-2018 with Fleetwood Mac. Her 40 top-50 hits include “Don’t Stop,” the signature song of former President Bill Clinton’s campaign.

“The arc of the story is that initially she wasn’t really wanted in Fleetwood Mac and eventually she went out on her own and became a bigger star than Fleetwood Mac,” said Davis, who began researching “Gold Dust Woman” in 2012 and finished it in 2016. “When I started writing, I thought the book would be a valedictory thing about someone whose career is winding now. Now, I’m just trying to keep up with her and will need to update the book when the paperback comes out in a year.”

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Continue reading Book review: Rock biographer Stephen Davis chronicles Stevie Nicks in new book →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, UK Articles

Mick Fleetwood on the early days of Fleetwood Mac and why he’s a terrible drummer | BBC News

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By Mark Savage
BBC Music reporter
15 October 2017

Mick Fleetwood is the backbone of the band that bears his name; the man who kept Fleetwood Mac rolling through the best and hardest of times.

In the early days he was their manager, hiring and firing musicians like a soft rock Alan Sugar.

By the late 70s, he was the bandage that stopped them falling apart amidst drug abuse, infidelity and betrayal.

And sitting behind his “back to front” drum kit, Fleetwood is the band’s beating heart, constructing dozens of unforgettable rhythms – from the syncopated shuffle of Go Your Own Way, to the fidgety cowbell riff of Oh Well.

But surprisingly, the 70-year-old doesn’t rate his own drumming.

“There’s no discipline,” he says. “I can’t do the same thing every night.”

Anyone who’s listened to the deluxe edition of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk will know otherwise. There, you can hear multiple outtakes from the title track, with Fleetwood sitting doggedly on the song’s distinctive groove for more than 25 minutes.

Still, he insists: “I am very not conformed, I change all the time.”

The confession is prompted by a discussion about Fleetwood’s lavish new picture book, Love That Burns, which chronicles his early career and the first incarnations of Fleetwood Mac. Continue reading Mick Fleetwood on the early days of Fleetwood Mac and why he’s a terrible drummer | BBC News →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Reviews

Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History Book

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Live In Limbo Literature
Mark Milner
September 6, 2016

image

Few bands, if any, can lay claim to as colourful a history as Fleetwood Mac. Their founding guitarist went off the deep end, another quit to join a cult. Marriages splintered and relationships crumbled. And, just at the band looked to bottoming out, they literally stumbled on two performers who’d send them to their biggest successes.

Really, you’d think there’d be a Fleetwood Mac movie by now.

There’s about 50 years of Fleetwood Mac history to cover and in his new large-format book, Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History, writer and music critic Richie Unterberger (Allmusic, Mojo, Uncut) tackles their long, twisting career.

There’s a lot to cover, both stylistically and historically. For example, you could argue Fleetwood Mac is something closer to three bands. They started as a straight up blues band, playing Chicago-style electric blues in mid-60s England. Later, as the band’s personnel became a revolving door, they turned into a fairly standard classic rock band. And finally, with the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975, they became a commercial juggernaut whose infighting could fill another book. Each period has it’s own merits and drawbacks; each is really only tied to the other by the band’s rhythm section. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History Book →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Tour Info, UK Articles

Sunday Express Review: Return of the Mac

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By: Clair Woodward
Published:  Tue, November 18, 2014
Sunday Express (UK)

THE father of the Mac Mick Fleetwood tells our reporter how his bohemian childhood still inspires him and the band

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Mick Fleetwood and I are taking tea in a stylish hotel overlooking London’s Hyde Park. We are talking about his father Mike, who died in 1978 aged 62. Suddenly, Mick spots something out of the window.

“See the horses?” he says, looking out of the window and leaping out of his chair to point them out to me.

“It’s so cool, talking about Daddy and there he is!” Knowing the somewhat colourful background of Fleetwood and his eponymous band (past issues with cocaine and alcohol, for example), you could be forgiven for thinking the drummer had flipped.

But no. What we are looking at is the Household Cavalry crossing the park in the autumn sunshine, breastplates gleaming.

“He was a Royal Horse Guard and he used to make that same ride. Mummy (his mother Biddy, now 97) used to sit in the building that’s now the Mandarin Oriental Hotel over there when she was a young woman,” he points, “and she watched those men on the horses crossing the park and she ended up being with my dad. So cool.” Continue reading Sunday Express Review: Return of the Mac →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Tour Info

Mick Fleetwood on “Rumours”-era excess: “I’m damn lucky I never killed anyone!” | Salon

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EXCLUSIVE: Fleetwood Mac drummer tells Salon new “Rumours” stories, reflects on Stevie Nicks affair, shares regrets

Salon Online

Mick Fleetwood
Mick Fleetwood (Credit: AP/Chris Pizzello)

The Mick Fleetwood pictured on the back of his new memoir, “Play On: Now, Then and Fleetwood Mac,” looks fabulously content. This is the rock star as elegant dandy, stylish in tails, draped in an accent of gold jewelry, a trim white beard. It’s an advertisement for the good life, if not living right.

Crazy, isn’t it? Because the Fleetwood on the cover has a wicked gleam in his eye, as he peers out from under a rakish hat, hair down around his shoulders. This is the Fleetwood of the mid-t0-late ’70s, the drummer whose band was re-energized by the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who recorded 1975′s “Fleetwood Mac” with “white powder peeling off the walls of every room” in the studio.

But the madness was only beginning: The relationships of Buckingham and Nicks, along with John and Christine McVie, were unraveling amidst angst, affairs and mountains of cocaine. “Rumours” chronicled the dissolution of it all, selling tens of millions of albums worldwide. They were among the biggest bands in the world, and they lived every moment of it to the extreme. “The drugs of course were plentiful,” Fleetwood writes, “and we partook of the finest Peruvian flake quite a bit, both to numb the pain and to find the energy to persevere.” Continue reading Mick Fleetwood on “Rumours”-era excess: “I’m damn lucky I never killed anyone!” | Salon →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Tour Info, UK Articles, Video Clip

Mick Fleetwood: The star who snorted a line of cocaine 7 miles long! | Daily Mail (UK)

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Tom Leonard for the Daily Mail
Published: 20:19 EST, 6 November 2014

The rock star who snorted a line of cocaine SEVEN MILES long! In an eye-popping new memoir, Fleetwood Mac’s leader reveals the true epic scale of their debauchery…

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Fleetwood Mac were sitting around stoned in the studio one night with one of their engineers when they set about solving an arithmetic problem that had been niggling at them.

How much cocaine, they wondered, had drummer Mick Fleetwood put up his nose? Working on the premise he had taken an eighth of an ounce every day for 20 years, the sound engineer calculated that if you laid out the drug in a single snortable line, it would stretch for seven miles.

Rock ’n’ roll is full of such apocryphal stories, but as Fleetwood admits in a candid new memoir, this one is completely true. But then, this is the band that in 1977 gave the world Rumours, one of the best-selling albums ever, and almost died in the process.


Love free-for all: The band in the Seventies (from left), Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham Continue reading Mick Fleetwood: The star who snorted a line of cocaine 7 miles long! | Daily Mail (UK) →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, UK Articles

Mick Fleetwood – The MOJO Interview | Oct 28th 2014

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MOJO Magazine
Oct 28th 2014
Interview by DAVE DIMARTINO
Portrait by PIPER FERGUSON

The venerable sticksman and rhythm commander for nearly 50 years with Fleetwood Mac opens up on blues, booze, change, constants. “My nature is to keep it all together,” says “I have the template.”

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THERE IS A WORD THAT POPS UP MORE than once in conversation with Mick Fleetwood, a word that does not usually surface in conversations with other rock’n’roll stars. That word is “intact” — defined by at least one source as “not damaged or impaired in any way”.

It is a word that has special relevance when your band is a few years scant of celebrating its 50th anniversary, when it has sold more records than nearly anyone, when its colourful cast of characters comprises the most visible ongoing soap opera in the annals of rock, and time, as always, takes its inevitable toll.

To cut to the chase: everything in Mick Fleetwood’s world this August morning appears to be intact. He is, as always, tall, lanky, polite, happy to do whatever is required of him as a photo shoot takes place on the premises of this lovely large, hilariously photogenic Santa Monica estate, and in fine spirits. His is very popular band is rehearsing for their first tour with celebrated member Christine McVle in 16 years, and that is no small thing: This core group of five Fleetwood Mac members Fleetwood, McVle and her ex-husband John, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks got together in 1975, recorded a series of famous albums that sold billions, took rock’n’roll from the cover of Rolling Stone and plopped it onto People, influenced an entire generation of future white-winged doves enraptured by Ms Nicks, and then seemed to putter out in a strangely non-elegant manner in the mid ’90s when Dave Mason walked in. Continue reading Mick Fleetwood – The MOJO Interview | Oct 28th 2014 →

Books, Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, UK Articles

Mick Fleetwood: ‘We were cloaked in this crazy world’ | Telegraph (UK)

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The Telegraph

Sunday 26th Oct 2015

Cocaine, affairs, reckless spending – Mick Fleetwood was the epitome of the rock ’n’ roll egomaniac. How did he, and his band, survive?

 mick_telegraph
I am waiting for Mick Fleetwood in a mansion that he has rented in Malibu. It is the size of a stately home. I am sitting in the kitchen, which is painted in ice-cream colours: pistachio, strawberry and vanilla. He arrives shower fresh. He is as long and thin as you imagine him.

In his new autobiography, Play On, Fleetwood says that he’s 6ft 6in. He looks even taller, languid in navy chinos, a blue striped shirt with epaulettes, a gold medallion, a perfectly trimmed beard and a burnt copper tan.

The medallion is a scarab made by a goldsmith in Canterbury, and, Fleetwood tells me, a symbol of immortality because Ancient Egyptian scarabs, which are still being dug up by archaeologists, “survive against hopeless odds”. You could say the same about his band, Fleetwood Mac.

Continue reading Mick Fleetwood: ‘We were cloaked in this crazy world’ | Telegraph (UK) →