Finnishing touch to Mac’s next chapter
by Cameron Adams
Courier Mail - Australia
The music industry is wondering whether Crowded House founder Neil Finn can bring some stability to one of rock’s rockiest bands – Fleetwood Mac
WHEN news that Fleetwood Mac had sacked Lindsey Buckingham and replaced him with Neil Finn broke this week, many music fans thought it was a tardy April fool’s joke.
It was only in January that Buckingham and his bandmates put on a united front in New York at an awards show. Buckingham even told the crowd: “What we are feeling even more now in our career is love. This has always been a group of chemistry.”
Once Buckingham’s surprise exit was confirmed, it became merely the latest chapter for the most dysfunctional band in rock history – it’s not even the first time Buckingham has left, jumping ship in 1987 before rejoining a decade later.
“Fleetwood Mac is rock’s greatest soap opera,” music journalist Jeff Jenkins says. “It’s the Little River Band – with sexual tension.”
The band’s biggest album, 1977’s Rumours, is literally the soundtrack to an on and off workplace romance between hard-living and hard-loving members Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood, as well as Christine and John McVie.
Buckingham and Nicks joined the already-established band in 1974 as a couple, and by the time of Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 album (home to Landslide,
Rhiannon and Say You Love Me), they had split and the McVies’ marriage was ending. Nicks would go on to briefly date Fleetwood, whose marriage also finished.
That Rumours line-up is the most successful, but the band’s revolving door means it has had 12 official former members, including the freshly booted Buckingham. That’s more than AC/DC, but not quite as many as Guns N’ Roses or Iron Maiden. When McVie rejoined the band in 2014, the iconic line-up was back on stage for the 2014-15 “On With the Show” tour, which netted them more than $250 million.
McVie knew it was what fans had been waiting for.
“It’s utter joy,” she said at the time. “You make eye contact with people who are almost crying because they can’t believe they’re seeing the Rumours five back again – they can’t believe their eyes.
“It’s almost like a family reunion on stage, there’s no angst, there’s no animosity, there’s just a tremendous amount of friendship.
“First and foremost, we are a family. Dysfunctional though we might have been, we’re not now. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company.”
Once McVie was back in the band, Nicks gave her friend a silver chain, a metaphorical gift that McVie said represented the fact “the chain of the band will never be broken”, then added “not by me anyway. Not again by me.” It wasn’t McVie who had broken ranks. She took one for the team with last year’s Lindsey Buckingham/ Christine McVie album. It was originally meant to be a Fleetwood Mac album – Mick Fleetwood and John McVie play on the record – but Nicks was notable by her absence.
Rather than work with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks launched an album of unreleased material and went on a solo tour that highlighted her friendship with Tom Petty and Prince, as well as her lengthy history with Buckingham.
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