Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography

by Mick Fleetwood

  We spent a while jamming at Benifold until we found our footing, then we booked a summer tour of small ballrooms and clubs around Britain to rebuild our audience and road-test the new songs. It was the first time Bob had ever played most of his originals for an audience, but he rose to the occasion.

  We recorded Future Games that summer at Advision Studios in London. Danny and Bob did not write together, so the record was a mix of their songs and a few of Chris’s. The album ended up as a blend of styles between Bob and Chris and Danny’s more progressive-leaning blues, but it worked. The cover of the album was a photograph shot by my sister Sally, but the back of it marked the birth of John McVie’s alter-ego and one of the band’s enduring symbols: the penguin.

  When John and Chris first got together, before we all moved into Kiln House and then Benifold, they lived near the London Zoo. John loved visiting the zoo and did so nearly every day, usually with his camera. That is where he became fascinated with penguins. He’d shoot photos of them for hours, reading up on the various species to the point that he could name them all on sight. We decided the back cover of Future Games should have individual shots of each of us as a way of introducing our line-up. John didn’t want to do that and insisted that the record company use one of his penguin portraits instead, such was his love of penguins. Around that time, after a night of drinking, he even went and got a penguin tattooed on his arm. Thus the penguin has been a mascot and an image in Fleetwood Mac’s visual legacy ever since.

  We spent the next eleven months on tour in America and Europe, through most of 1972. Our album did very well in the States, where we got top billings at venues like the Fillmore, where Van Morrison opened for us. Most of our shows were sold out and we were proud to break the house sales record at many of the venues we played across the country. After so much transition, we were back and that was a wonderful thing.

  It hadn’t been an easy road and I had to look no further than John and Chris to see the proof, because the stress of it all was tearing their marriage apart. When his nerves were shot and he’d reached the end of his rope, my emotionally-reserved friend would explode. Since they were so close in every single way, Chris bore the brunt of it.

  Jenny came on tour with us occasionally, though never for very long. I’d always beg her to come and I loved it when she did, but touring wasn’t for her. She did it to relieve her loneliness and because she missed me, but the long car rides with our baby daughter Amelia on her lap, hoping she wouldn’t cry and wake sleeping band members, were more stressful for her than being home alone at Benifold. She was never a night-owl like the rest of us and with the baby was even less so. Poor Jenny found more loneliness on the road, waking up early to push Amelia’s pram along the streets of Manhattan while I got some much-needed sleep.

  Jenny was on a different schedule, which furthered her separation from the group. She was a new mother, which she felt removed her from the rock-and-roll world. Being on tour with us only hammered the point home in her mind. She was always naturally shy, but she was more so on the road, talking to no one other than me most of the time. Inevitably she’d leave the tour earlier than we’d planned, which unintentionally hurt my feelings. She’s told me that she always felt as if she had no purpose there, no identity outside of being Mick’s wife, and it left her introverted and exhausted.

  During that touring marathon we did so much; we opened for Deep Purple, we played with Savoy Brown, Long John Baldry, and many others. We even made time to record an album called Bare Trees, our second studio effort in six months. The songs reflected the jaded road-weariness that had overcome us. Chris’s ‘Homeward Bound’ said it best–it was just a simple plaintive wish for a proper night’s rest in her own bed. We also scored an American chart hit with Bob Welch’s ‘Sentimental Lady’. The album and that song became an FM radio staple, whereas at home in England the press considered the album somewhat of a disgrace. It was seen as the inelegant end of a once great British blues band.

  Overall things seemed to be on the up, but that only meant there was trouble around the corner. As 1972 wound on, Danny Kirwan became more and more withdrawn from the band. He slowly alienated himself, growing ever more hostile toward each of us until I was the only one in the band who’d even talk to him. In my opinion alcoholism began to take hold of him. His consumption increased drastically during this period and his character transformed. He became contrary overall and he began to pick fights, mostly with Bob Welch, because that was easy. The two of them were very different as people and musicians. What saddened me most was that Danny had never been a negative guy, but he had quickly become one, which to me was a clear indication of a deeper issue in regard to his drinking.

  We did that tour in two station wagons with our gear in a trailer behind us, and by the end of it, I was the only person in our operation who would even agree to ride in a car with Danny. It wasn’t that he was oblivious either, he noticed everyone pulling away from him, which made things worse because he did nothing to change it. It seemed only to steel his perception that we were all united against him. This tangible tension came to a head that August at a show we did at a college, I can’t remember which one. Bob and Danny had been getting on each other’s nerves for weeks; we all felt a blow-up brewing, but we did not expect what happened.

  No one in Fleetwood Mac has ever been a sub-par musician and Danny, like the rest of us, was meticulous about his craft and having his instrument properly in tune. He had perfect pitch as a singer and was equally precise as a guitarist. However it began, Danny and Bob got into an argument over Bob’s guitar being supposedly out of tune. We were all sitting backstage getting ready to go on, when Danny went off on a rant about Bob never being in tune. Then he got up suddenly, went into the bathroom and smashed his head into the wall, splattering blood everywhere. Danny wasn’t the kind of man to do that, in fact I’d never seen him do anything that violent in all the years I’d known him. The rest of us were paralysed, in complete shock, as he came out of the bathroom bleeding, walked over to his Les Paul guitar and smashed it to bits. He then set about demolishing everything in the dressing room that wasn’t nailed down as we all sat and watched.

  When there was nothing left to throw at the wall or overturn, Danny calmed down. Then he looked at us.

  ‘There is no way in hell that I’m playing with you all tonight,’ he said. ‘There is no way.’

  We tried everything but it was no use. And we had no time; we were already late to the stage and we could hear the crowd chanting for us. So we went out there without our lead guitarist. Bob did his best to cover Danny’s parts but there was no way he could make do.

  We apologised to the audience and told them that Danny had fallen ill. Throughout the set I stole looks at the side of the stage hoping to see Danny with a new guitar, ready to join us. In my heart I believed that the sound of his band limping through its paces without him would bring him to his senses. That didn’t happen, which made it clear to me that Danny was truly distraught and that I’d need to have a heart-to-heart talk with him back at the hotel. The last thing I expected when we got offstage was to find him sitting in the dressing room waiting for us.

  ‘Danny? What are you doing here? You didn’t go back to the hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I sat out at the sound board,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I stayed to watch. Yeah, not bad, really.’

  That was it for me; I felt betrayed and angry. Throwing a temper tantrum and refusing to play was one thing, it was quite another to then stay to watch us floundering without him. Danny didn’t stop there, he turned the knife in the wound.

  ‘There was room for improvement,’ he said. ‘Especially you could have played a lot better, Mick. You missed some cues and you should have picked up the tempo on a number of occasions.’

  ‘Thanks, Danny, I’ll remember that.’

  I couldn’t believe he even had the nerve to critique our performance, but I held my tongue. My bandmates wanted to fire him immediately, right then an
d there, but I wouldn’t let them. Since our manager was in England, I was the de facto leader, so the decision fell to me. I weighed up the options; if we fired him, we’d have to cancel the rest of the tour. That night, over dinner, I sought the advice of Jon Lord of Deep Purple. Jon listened and then talked me through what had to be done, because there was no other option. Danny had to go. No one had ever been fired from Fleetwood Mac before. Danny was the first, but he wouldn’t be the last.

  I went to his room, knocked on the door, sat on the bed and fumbled my way through it. I told him that we all knew he wasn’t happy with us and that we weren’t happy either, and that the best thing would be for him to leave the band. Danny didn’t say a word, he just sat there silently. When I asked him if he understood, he nodded, and that was it, Danny was out. I then went upstairs to John and Christine’s room and was crying before I even got to the door.

  The next two and a half years were absolute chaos, there’s no other way to say it, and from where we were coming from, that is significant. Our fan base had moved across the Atlantic, because by the beginning of the mid-1970s there was far more of a demand for us in America, where the kind of blues-rock we were doing was in fashion. In England we had two things holding us back. The first was that our die-hard blues fans felt that we’d abandoned them. The second was that the glam-rock era of Marc Bolan and David Bowie had begun, so we really didn’t fit in anymore. We could still play pubs, of course, but we’d had a taste of life beyond that and we weren’t going back if we could help it.

  We needed a replacement for Danny and we found one in Bob Weston, whom we knew from touring when we met him in Long John Baldry’s band. We briefly added Dave Walker, lead singer of Savoy Brown, to the line-up, for one album, Penguin. Dave did a good job and sounded great alongside Weston’s slide-guitar playing, but it was a short-lived affair. When we returned to write new material, Dave was only interested in writing songs that sounded like Savoy Brown. Bob, on the other hand, was a great fit for us and eager to remain in the band. He brought a ton of much-needed energy to the proceedings.

  Bob Weston was charming and funny and a great player, too, so he fit right in. That charm also cost him his job and, for a time, our band, because he began an affair with my wife. Jenny first met Bob during one of her stints on tour in America with us. She’s told me that both she and Christine used to joke that Bob looked like Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy, and was just as amusing. All of us liked him because he was amiable, which Jenny saw too; according to her, Bob was the first of the bunch to pay attention to her. When we were recording at Benifold, he would stop by and spend time with her as she prepared food or fed our daughter, Amelia. She was pregnant with our second daughter and very much stayed in her own world. He used to drop in and have coffee with Jenny while the rest of us were up in the music room and they developed a platonic rapport that eventually grew into something more, after the birth of our second daughter.

  For one thing, Bob and Jenny discovered that they were born on the same day in the same year, which created a deeper connection in Jenny’s mind. Bob was a breath of fresh air in her world; he was the first band member with whom she felt she had a friendship, apart from her being married to me. The same thing would happen with Bob Welch, who also made an unrequited move toward her during his time in the band. It all stemmed from Jenny’s need to connect and not getting what she needed from me. She was such a beguiling, beautiful little creature that men were always smitten. In her mind, she valued the friendship and needed that connection, but it didn’t always mean she wanted to get her knickers off. In the case of Weston, however, it did.

  We continued to tour, and later that year Jenny gave birth to our second daughter, Lucy, while we were off in America. I didn’t see her until I returned six weeks later. My parents were at Jenny’s side and she spent the weeks until my return at their house in Salisbury. A few months after that, we gathered at Benifold in 1973 to record our next album, Mystery to Me, using the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio, as we had done for Penguin. We moved everything out of the two great rooms on the first floor of the house and, set up the instruments and microphones, all connected by thick cables running outside the front door to the truck. The sound in there was amazing, just massive, like a concert hall, resounding off the trees and all through the grounds.

  Those songs were my two daughters’ lullabies for those weeks and the title of the album came from Jenny. She’s told me since that the mystery was how she’d begun to feel for Bob Weston. The two of them would go on long walks or hang out together in the house. I didn’t see it at all, to me it looked as if Jenny had found a friend in the band. I was happy, actually. I figured that if she felt more comfortable, she’d come on tour more, allowing us to be together. When Clifford Davis booked our next set of dates, I suggested it to her. We had two daughters now, which meant twice the work for her, so I didn’t expect her to consent, but she did.

  I couldn’t have been happier. I had my wife and children on tour with me. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Jenny began to imbibe and stay up late with the rest of us. When she drank, her shyness melted away and the lovely, smart girl I knew so well emerged for everyone to see. Jenny was wonderful on that tour; she’d have fun with us at night after the show and still have the energy to get up early and take care of the girls.

  It was a whole new Jenny, which made me start to wonder what else was going on. I noticed how she blushed when Bob teased her and how they’d sit and chat on their own every chance they got.

  ‘Jenny,’ I said to her, when we were alone in our room one day, ‘I know how hard it is having me on the road so much. It’s not easy. So many people we know are breaking up. Let’s try to stick together.’

  When we talked about it all again recently she told me that she remembered that moment, but by then it was too late. My sentiment fell on deaf ears. She’d felt lonely for too long. I’d been too aloof, though I’d loved her so much. I’d contributed to her feeling that there was a barrier between my life with the band and my life with her. By the time I said those words the damage was done, her decision made. She’d craved attention for so long and needed to feel, and Bob Weston provided that excitement.

  Jenny remained on tour longer than she ever had, spending more and more time with Bob. It was clear to me and to everyone else what was going on. I remember having a few days off in Hermosa Beach and coming out to the hotel pool to find Bob and my wife playing with our children, having a wonderful time. That was too much for me to bear, so I sternly put an end to it. But the fact that I’d been in such denial for so long distresses me to think about it now. How could I have let that happen? I let Jenny get to the point of crying out so much for the attention she needed that she not only found a new boyfriend, he also happened to be my guitar player. It was almost as if I were condoning it, having it occur right there before me, as if we were on a commune where we shared lovers.

  I confronted Jenny later that day.

  ‘What exactly is going on between you, Jenny?’ I asked. ‘The two of you were playing with our daughters as if you are one big happy family.’

  ‘Mick,’ she said, shaking a bit. ‘I’m falling in love with Bob. I can’t be here anymore. I want to go home.’

  I was silent for a long time. I didn’t want to hear what I already knew to be true.

  ‘Well, Jenny, then you should go. I would never keep you here against your will.’

  When we talked about it all again recently, Jenny told me she couldn’t believe what she was doing. She was torn. As she saw it, she’d taken a stand, she’d asserted her independence, but she was terrified. She’d been in a daze, overwhelmed with her feelings and fuelled by brandy; she’d taken to drinking too much and eating too little and had lost a lot of weight. I was worried about her, but that didn’t outweigh my heartache.

  I gave her a bouquet of flowers when I said goodbye in the hotel lobby.

  ‘Be careful out there, Jenny,’ I said. I held her close and
gave her a kiss. Then I got into a car and left with the rest of my band, Bob Weston included.

  Jenny was on her own and didn’t know what to do. She stayed with Bob Welch’s girlfriend Nancy in LA for a few days then flew home to England with our daughters, one of them two and a half, the other just five months. When she got there, Ronnie Wood and his wife, Krissy, let her stay at their house in Richmond, as they were spending a lot of time at George Harrison and Pattie’s house in Oxfordshire. Ronnie and Krissy were very kind, even turning a blind eye when our daughter Amelia tipped over and broke one of their Tiffany lamps.

  Meanwhile back in the States, I tried my best to soldier on with the tour, knowing that my wife had fallen for Bob Weston. I wanted to honour my commitments and the band’s commitments and sort it out with Bob later. That was naive, because by the time we got to Lincoln, Nebraska, I couldn’t take it anymore. We had been getting through the shows, but not talking, and it was all too much. I was coming unglued emotionally. I didn’t want a resolution, I didn’t even want to confront him, I just wanted him gone.

  It was horrible because Bob and I were good friends and I think if one of us had initiated an open-hearted discussion, it all might have been all right, since essentially Bob shook up my relationship with Jenny, which was something that needed to happen. We didn’t have that conversation. Instead, I told our road manager John Courage to fire him and cancel the rest of the tour because I couldn’t handle it. Courage did it right; he sent the crew to Bob’s room to get him out and onto a plane the next morning before the rest of us had even woken up. Bob went back to England and he and Jenny shacked up together for three weeks. She’s told me that she was such a nervous wreck over what she’d done that she only felt fine when she was drinking. Nonetheless it didn’t take long for her to figure out that she didn’t love Bob, she loved the part of herself that he allowed her to get in touch with, the child-like part she could no longer access with me. She felt that I’d abandoned her for the band, so she had done the same.