VH1 has recently been running a behind-the-scenes special on the making of Fleetwood Mac’s eagerly anticipated 2003 studio album, Say You Will. The album itself was generally well received, though that’s not much of a surprise given the veteran rock group’s enormous fan base. Many of those fans were overjoyed to see the reunion of the group with Lindsey Buckingham, the creative powerhouse whose departure after the 1987 album Tango In The Night left them wondering if there could be a Fleetwood Mac without him. What seems to have been forgotten in the interim is that there was, in fact, a Fleetwood Mac without Lindsey Buckingham. And there had been before.
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac several years into the band’s life. Stinging from the departure of moody guitar genius Peter Green, the core members – Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie – took on the California duo who had created something of an underground hit with their self-titled Buckingham Nicks album (and maybe that catchy combination of their surnames to create their identity found some resonance with Fleetwood and the McVies as well). Buckingham and Nicks were a couple at the time, and their addition to Fleetwood Mac propelled the band’s self-titled 1976 album to acclaim and, more importantly, airplay. But in the wake of that album, Buckingham and Nicks’ relationship deteriorated (as did the marriage between John and Christine McVie), and the resulting hard feelings informed 1977’s Rumours, still considered by many to be Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus. And it’s the success of that album that has created, in the minds of many, the picture of the Buckingham/Nicks/McVie/Fleetwood/McVie lineup as the definitive Fleetwood Mac.
Buckingham was eager to avoid doing, as he frequently put it, “Rumours II,”and spent the group’s next two studio albums carving out an increasingly experimental niche in rock music. When Buckingham departed in 1987, the rest of the group auditioned for the best of the best, finally hiring two well-regarded sessions players who were both guitarists, vocalists and songwriters in their own right. The product of the new recruits was 1991’s Behind The Mask. Somehow, Mask – despite ample airplay and curiosity from even casual fans about how Fleetwood Mac sounded minus Buckingham – didn’t soar to the best-selling heights of its predecessors. Then Bill Clinton adopted “Don’t Stop” (from Rumours) as the theme for his 1992 Presidential campaign, and when he won the vote, asked Fleetwood Mac – with Buckingham – to perform at his Inaugural Ball. (Money, it seems, couldn’t keep the band together, but a Presidential decree could.) With Buckingham, and without Behind The Mask recruits Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, the Mac was back, and a major tour (and, consequently, a best-selling live album) ensued. Read the remainder of this entry »