The Editors of LIFE - LIFE Fleetwood Mac: 40 Years Later: John, Christine, Stevie, Mick, and Lindsey—Together Again

FLEETWOOD MAC

By J.I. Baker and the Editors of LIFE

Stevie, in trademark whirling-dervish mode, performing at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California, 1977.

Photograph by Richard McCaffrey/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

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Vol. 15, No. 5 May 1, 2015

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CONTENTS

FRONT COVER: (from left) John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham in Los Angeles, September 1976.

Photograph by Sam Emerson/Polaris

ABOVE: (from left) Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green, 1969.

Photograph from LFI/Photoshot

BRITAIN (TOTALLY) GETS THE BLUES

GLOBE/ZUMA

SUNDAY IN THE PARK John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer and founder Peter Green: Fleetwood Macs first full lineup.

Once upon a time in the U.K.in 1963, to be exacta little-known band called the Beatles topped the charts with their first record, Love Me Do, as another, the Rolling Stones, regularly packed Eel Pie Islands ballroom. The perverse politicos of the Profumo scandal were dominating the news, and miniskirts and Minis would soon fill the sidewalks and the streets. Swinging Londona youthful melange of rock n roll, fashion and sexwas about to explode.

Into this Mod, Mod world stepped a 15-year-old dropout from rural Cornwall named Mick Fleetwood. The son of an RAF officer, Mick was determined to become a drummer in the West End. But the young man struggled, as young men do. He worked a hated job in a swank department store and lived with his older sister. More happily, he fell in love with a girl named Jenny Boyd, who just happened to be the sister of the model Pattie Boyd, soon to be the girlfriend of a guitarist by the name of George Harrison. Pattie would marry George and, later, Georges friend Eric Clapton. The history of 1960s London is full of fun stuff like that: Musicians, their fans and others in the orbitPrincess Margaret! Twiggy!intermingled daily.

Through a series of chance encounters, plenty of practice, unerring instinct and some luck, Mick soon found gigs playing with bands like the Cheynes, the Bo Street Runners and Peter Bs Looners. In this last outfit, he met the man who would change his life.

Enter the Green God.

Born Peter Greenbaum in Londons East End in 1946, the guitarist later known as Peter Green played in a series of unremarkable pop bands before joining the Peter Bs and befriending Mick. Later morphing into Shotgun Express (featuring a singer named Rod Stewart), the Peter Bs disbanded in late 1966just about the time the graffito CLAPTON IS GOD began appearing in the city.

Clapton was, of course, the aforementioned Eric, otherwise called Slowhand, fast rising to fame as the foremost guitarist in a British revival of the distinctly American music known as blues.

Its hard to believe there was a time when few people in America were familiar with this musical art form. It took the Brits to embrace the collective genius that had emerged, in large part, from African Americans on southern plantations. The English had their hands on it first, maybe because it wasnt our tradition, says producer Mike Vernon, who helped form Fleetwood Mac (and who has, he says, given his final interview on this subject to LIFE). It wasnt on Americans doorsteps, so they ignored it. But to us it seemed very different, very exciting.

So while black acts like Sam Cooke were damping down their mojo for white audiences in America, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Clapton and John Mayall were cutting their teeth on the likes of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the U.K.intent on enlisting white British teens to the cause. Mayalls band, the Bluesbreakers, was the forms farm team, serving as a launching pad for the likes of Clapton, the Stones Mick Taylor, bass guitarist John McVie and Green, who in 1966 replaced a Cream-bound Clapton in the band.