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This Kula abode is where Mick Fleetwood unscrews up.
STORY BY PAUL WOOD | PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY NOVAK-CLIFFORD
Maui Magazine
“We’re going to ‘the boys’ house,’” says the six-foot-six drummer, namesake and driving force of that rock-music turbulence famously known as Fleetwood Mac. We have rendezvoused at the Kula Lodge Restaurant, and Mick is devouring a hamburger, talking all the while. Upcountry fog has piled against the mountain, and the windows of the restaurant show nothing but opaque silver-gray. Then rain begins pounding. Mick has just driven his middle-aged BMW all the way from Napili, where he spent the day on the telephone talking with “somebody” about creating a reality TV show.
He’s imagining something “fun and entertaining—a rock-and-roll version of John Cleese; you know, Fawlty Towers.” But he worries about the risks involved with television exposure. “If you’ve built a mystique over thirty years, you can kiss your ass goodbye in one show.” He takes another chomp out of the burger.
At age almost 64, Mick has outgrown some of his customary shagginess, his beard now white and neatly trimmed, his long hair reduced by time to an unobtrusive pigtail. Is this hyperactive Brit finally ready to let go and vegetate by the sea?
“I can’t think of anything worse than not doing anything,” he says. (Chomp.) He talks about wanting to start a new Front Street club that will reincarnate the old Blue Max, a Lahaina nightspot that he and other drop-in rockers (Elton John, David Bowie . . .) used to frequent in the 1970s. Besides occasional reunion gigs with heyday band mates such as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, he leads a couple of on-again/ off-again bands—the Island Rumours Band with a raft of Maui all-stars, and the Grammy-nominated Mick Fleetwood Blues Band. He’s a two-fisted tom-tom pounder, one of those drummers who hold both sticks like wrecking hammers. But most rock drummers are content to go bang-bang in the background. Mick has always had the drive to put his drum kit in front of the band, to produce and conceive and lead, to get things done. There’s no way that the allure of Napili sunsets and mai tais would ever lull this guy into anything like relaxation.
Read the full article at Maui Magazine
