Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac is really several different bands wearing the same name. It started in London in 1967 as a blues outfit built around guitarist Peter Green, with the two men the band is named for holding down the bottom end: drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. That version made its reputation in British blues clubs. It is not the version most people picture.

The band most people picture arrived in 1975, when Fleetwood, already through a string of lineups and departures, recruited an American duo he had heard on a record: guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks. Christine McVie, John’s wife, was already aboard on keyboards. That five-piece, two British rhythm players, one British keyboardist, two Californians, is the Fleetwood Mac of the radio, of the harmonies, of the long shadow.

What makes them unusual is how much of their best work runs on their own wreckage. By the mid-seventies all three couples and pairings inside the band were strained or breaking, and they kept recording anyway, writing songs at and about each other and singing them in the same room. The blues band became one of the biggest acts in the world. The tension never fully left, and neither did the music it produced.