Fleetwood Mac: Messy tendrils and fascinating side quests help illuminate band’s enduring allure

Fleetwood Mac’s legacy is often considered in broad strokes. The turbulent romantic relationship (and subsequent breakup) of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The timeless music on (and tawdry intra-band drama associated with) 1977’s blockbuster LP “Rumours.” The group’s many moments of debauchery and complex romantic entanglements. The ambitious 1979 double LP “Tusk.” How the group weathered many lineup changes, including a tour with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell after Buckingham was asked to leave the band.

In other words, Fleetwood Mac is often considered synonymous with drama. And while there’s no denying that the band’s history possesses as many twists, turns, and curveballs as a soap opera, the group wouldn’t be such an object of enduring fascination without its songs — and the songwriters behind them. 

Of course, the band’s music also thrived because of their interpersonal challenges. Take Nicks’ discussion about the demo of “Sara,” which was 16 minutes long. “It was about myself, Sara, Mick and what all of us in Fleetwood Mac were going through at the time,” she said. “It was a saga, with many verses people haven’t heard.” (In other words, consider this their version of Taylor Swift’s cathartic 10-minute epic “All Too Well.”) 

An emphasis on the latter two things distinguishes Mark Blake’s excellent new book “Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac.” The secret is that Blake, who’s also written books about Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant, treats Fleetwood Mac like any other band: He includes interesting facts that casual or new fans might not know — for example, that Buckingham refined a unique approach to guitar while stuck in bed with glandular fever—and peels back the mythology and attempts to find the truth behind tabloid stories and rumored tall tales. For example, one chapter asks, “Did Mick Fleetwood attend a fancy-dress party dressed as Jesus?” (Answer: Yes, Stevie Nicks’ October 1988 Halloween party.)

Blake doesn’t ignore the debauchery that’s at the heart of the band’s existence, particularly the activities during their late 1970s and early 1980s heyday. But unlike other Fleetwood Mac books, he doesn’t let these outlandish details overshadow the band’s creative output. In some cases, Blake demonstrates that these outrageous antics actually pushed Fleetwood Mac’s career forward. 

Take the time on the “Tusk” tour that Mick Fleetwood had 50 chickens sent to a hotel room as a prank. Unsurprisingly, the birds trashed the room, leaving tour manager John Courage to remove them posthaste. (Another reason for the urgency? Dennis Wilson happened to be drunk in the bathtub with lit cigarettes, which wouldn’t exactly mesh well with the dry straw in the room.) The cleaning costs were huge, as were the “Tusk” tour expenses, which is what led to the group’s 1980 “Live” double album.

Given these mind-boggling, strange-but-true anecdotes, Blake wisely doesn’t try and structure the book like a conventional narrative. “‘Dreams’ is what publishers call a ‘mosaic biography,’” he writes on his website, “meaning it’s a mixture of short chapters, longer chapters, mini-essays, observations and anecdotes, rather than one big unwieldy slog through the band’s complicated story.” 

That format suits Fleetwood Mac’s story well, since messy tendrils and fascinating side quests abound, encompassing things like the commercially ignored (but criminally underrated) Buckingham Nicks project from 1973, several years before the duo joined Fleetwood Mac; why the band’s iconography includes so many penguins; and the various members’ solo careers. And then there was that time in 1974 when the band’s then-manager, Clifford Davis, put together a band of fill-in musicians under the name Fleetwood Mac when the actual band had some internal issues to work through. (Spoiler alert: People noticed, and this experiment only lasted a few shows.)

“Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac” is also distinguished by Blake including original interviews he conducted with Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and the late Christine McVie, Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green, as well as other collaborators. The musicians are clearly at ease with Blake, giving him candid insights that feel fresh and illustrate their senses of humor and savvy perspectives. Nicks in particular is her usual candid self; for example, when speaking on Buckingham: “I loved him before he was a millionaire. I washed his jeans and embroidered stupid moons and stars on them.”

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The book starts by giving Green, who navigated mental health challenges after leaving Fleetwood Mac, his due as the band’s founder. This leads to comprehensive look at the group before Buckingham and Nicks joined — a fascinating (and also lesser-known) era that boasts its own ups and downs. At the same time, Blake also addresses the last few years of the band with the same meticulous eye, leading up to Christine McVie’s unexpected 2022 death and the subsequent end of the group. He softens this blow, however, with a brief but lighthearted chapter about Nicks’ wildly popular Barbie doll. And, fittingly, the book ends with a chapter on Christine, summarizing her life and accomplishments — and ending by noting her jubilant appearance at a 2020 Peter Green tribute concert.

“Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac” illuminates the fact that our enduring fascination with Fleetwood Mac has a lot to do with their complexity — and the collision between perfection and messiness. That’s not a knock on the band; if anything, their immense self-awareness about their strengths and flaws drove them to greatness. 

And in the end, Fleetwood Mac are savvy about using drama to their advantage. As Buckingham noted to the New York Times about his dripping-with-tension onstage interactions with Nicks: “We are aware that’s part of the appeal, and we’re playing off it. But it’s also real. Who’s to say where the line is, where the show stops and reality starts? We always brought out the voyeur in everyone.”