Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from iHeart Radio. It's officially summer, and that
Speaker 1: means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing,
Speaker 1: where our staff shares their favorite episodes in our Summer
Speaker 1: Staff series. Next up is our engineer Frank Imperial.
Speaker 2: Thanks Alec. When trying to choose one of my favorite
Speaker 2: episodes from the archives, it didn't take long to land
Speaker 2: on Mick Fleetwood, the drummer of Fleetwood Mac. It's one
Speaker 2: of the most popular episodes in our history. With good reason.
Speaker 2: Here's Alex's twenty twenty one conversation with Mick Fleetwood.
Speaker 3: You say we want agree?
Speaker 1: That is, of course Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Thanks to
Speaker 1: a TikTok of some guy on a skateboard who goes
Speaker 1: by the name Dogface lip syncing to this song and
Speaker 1: his seventy two million views, Fleetwood Mac's album Rumors broke
Speaker 1: through Rolling Stone's top one hundred list again last year,
Speaker 1: more than forty years after its release. My guest today
Speaker 1: is Mick Fleetwood, a founding member of Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood
Speaker 1: Mac existed for nearly a decade before the lineup. We
Speaker 1: think of today with Mick Fleetwood, John mcvee, Lindsey Buckingham,
Speaker 1: Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. But when Fleetwood Mac formed
Speaker 1: in London in the late nineteen sixties, it was Peter
Speaker 1: Green's idea.
Speaker 4: Well, I would be remiss. Peter Green start at Fleetwood Mac,
Speaker 4: the original guitar player. I was at his right hand side,
Speaker 4: John McVie. All of us have played in the band
Speaker 4: called John Male's Blues Breakers, Eric McK taylor, Peter Green.
Speaker 4: And I'm saying that because they would represent great guitar
Speaker 4: players that came out of that band that have more
Speaker 4: than made their mark in my world. And so Peter
Speaker 4: asked me to play drums. Already had played with them
Speaker 4: in a funny band with Rod Stewart for a short while,
Speaker 4: so we won't go into that. So it was really
Speaker 4: a team of people that Peter John McVie especially came
Speaker 4: out of a pedigree which was absolute devotion to an
Speaker 4: art form, the blues. And really all our heroes were
Speaker 4: American blues artists. And you are well aware I can
Speaker 4: tell about the irony of a bunch of funny little
Speaker 4: white kids in England really preserving an art form that
Speaker 4: had long since been you know, I won't use the
Speaker 4: bad word, but you know, pooped on by the American
Speaker 4: sort of glossing over of something that was so evident.
Speaker 4: So we were all from that framework, and when we
Speaker 4: formed Fleetwood Mac, it was all about our lovely, semi
Speaker 4: innocent way of emulating our heroes. And if you listen
Speaker 4: to the first few albums that we before Peter especially
Speaker 4: started really writing, like when you look at early Rolling Stones,
Speaker 4: it's Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry and with anyone, you
Speaker 4: see the development into self expression, and that's what transpired afterward.
Speaker 4: But the original band was all about that and a
Speaker 4: little team of people sharing something and having a lot
Speaker 4: of fun with it, you know, creatively that turned into
Speaker 4: something a little bit more than we ever could have
Speaker 4: possibly have imagined.
Speaker 1: The year that you formed the band with Green, what
Speaker 1: year was that?
Speaker 4: Nineteen sixty seven Windsor Jazz Festival, and the band was
Speaker 4: called Fleetwood Mac by Peter Green, who could have very
Speaker 4: easily become the Jeff Beck or the Jimmy Page or
Speaker 4: the Eric Clapton gunslinger guitar player. That's a whole nother story,
Speaker 4: is a lovely story, and an attribute to Peter's generosity.
Speaker 4: We played the Windsor Jazz Festival intended as you can tell,
Speaker 4: with the name of Fleetwood Mac the name was my
Speaker 4: name and John McVie, which Peter chose, and John was
Speaker 4: still playing in John Mayle's Blues Breakers on the same show.
Speaker 4: Watched the band he's supposed to be in from from
Speaker 4: the side of the stage, and about three months later
Speaker 4: he joined. He's a Scotsman, so he's very thrifty with
Speaker 4: whatever amount of money he does have. So when we
Speaker 4: had enough gigs, he said, I'm ready to join, which.
Speaker 1: Was when you've made it worth my while.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it worth my way.
Speaker 1: I know there'll be no net loss in my income.
Speaker 1: I join you. I'll meet you there at the club.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And that's what happened.
Speaker 1: And when you say that Green could have been in
Speaker 1: this pantheon of great guitar players, was this something he
Speaker 1: didn't want, that he did not want that level of
Speaker 1: fame and that level of attention.
Speaker 4: No, it was very evident. And the end story, which
Speaker 4: of course went into a very changed person. He was
Speaker 4: my dearest of dearest of friends and my mentor. You know,
Speaker 4: he gave me so much encouragement as a player and
Speaker 4: super fun person, but unbelievably deep down, way more sensitive
Speaker 4: than a bunch of chaps, including himself, had ever realized.
Speaker 4: And he eventually became sick and so came to a
Speaker 4: sort of journey that was for a while was a
Speaker 4: living tragedy for me selfishly, but then you learned to
Speaker 4: accept him as he turned out. But back then everything
Speaker 4: he did was about being just really generous. And I
Speaker 4: read an article after you know, you think, well, what
Speaker 4: was the real story? And for instance would be that
Speaker 4: someone asked him why was the bank or fleet with
Speaker 4: Mac and he said, well, I figured at that point
Speaker 4: i'd broken up with my lovely girlfriend Jenny, who I
Speaker 4: later married, and I had played with Peter, and he
Speaker 4: had his eyes on another drummer as a turned out,
Speaker 4: and he said, why did you pick Mick? And of
Speaker 4: course my little less than self would have thought, well,
Speaker 4: maybe you thought I was a good drummer, you know.
Speaker 4: And what it was, he said, I wanted Mick to
Speaker 4: play the drums cause I got so fed up with
Speaker 4: seeing him so sad that I thought it would give
Speaker 4: him something to do. And I thought that was the
Speaker 4: greatest thing that you could ever hear from a lovely friend,
Speaker 4: and that really sums it up about how it was
Speaker 4: not about him, and he created a platform which served me.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: My father was an Air Force chap so the word
Speaker 4: to serve, to serve, well, that's what I think I
Speaker 4: learned to do with all of how the madness of
Speaker 4: this band and the incarnates of just are you kidding
Speaker 4: me that if you wrote this down, you say, it's
Speaker 4: not possible this bunch could possibly have survived with all
Speaker 4: of the ups and downs and character changes and changing
Speaker 4: the script as you go along, and yet there's still
Speaker 4: a story. Peter started that and handed that to me.
Speaker 4: I think when he welcomed everyone, including me, Danny Kerwin
Speaker 4: who joined the original band, Jeremy Spencer, they were all
Speaker 4: there so that Peter did not want to be king
Speaker 4: Tut in the front there taking all the limelight, and
Speaker 4: I think it was way more meaningful in sense of
Speaker 4: where he came from. It's just he wanted to be
Speaker 4: in a band, and he created that band and made
Speaker 4: sure the band was not called Peter Greens anything, because
Speaker 4: he could of very easily, and I always thank him
Speaker 4: for that. The name Fleetwood Mac he was asked and
Speaker 4: he said, well, I always thought that I would probably
Speaker 4: move on, which he did under very strange circumstances, unfortunately
Speaker 4: for us. And he said I wanted Mick and John
Speaker 4: to have something. And I saw and heard this interview
Speaker 4: years and years and years and years later, like finding
Speaker 4: out a family relative will tell you what the real
Speaker 4: story was, and sometimes it's mind blowing and sometimes it's
Speaker 4: hugely moving and gratifying to hear. And that was one
Speaker 4: of them.
Speaker 1: You didn't start drumming till you were thirteen, correct.
Speaker 4: Officially, but yeah, I would say I started hitting furniture
Speaker 4: when I was about eight.
Speaker 1: What changed when you were thirteen that you were like,
Speaker 1: I want a drum now? On a serious level, what changed?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I would think that first of all, being completely on
Speaker 4: some shape or form, completely dyslexic, and had not one
Speaker 4: iota of any academic prowess whatsoever at school. So there
Speaker 4: I was struggling with great parents. So I never felt
Speaker 4: threatened or less than that. I couldn't. I still don't
Speaker 4: know my alphabet or I mean, if my whole family
Speaker 4: was lined up, God forbid and said.
Speaker 1: You don't have to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I know, but a lot of people say
Speaker 4: you're kidding me. It's a lot of people say about
Speaker 4: what I do when I play drums. I said, actually,
Speaker 4: I sort of really don't know what I'm doing, to
Speaker 4: tell you the real truth, and they go, well, it's not.
Speaker 4: Then they start arguing with you, go, how can you
Speaker 4: do that? You're full of shit? You know, you know?
Speaker 4: I said, no, no, it just comes out. I have
Speaker 4: no idea, so I blundered into it. But I would
Speaker 4: think that the love and the one thing that I
Speaker 4: could grab onto was the fact that I for some reason,
Speaker 4: I used to play tapping on furniture, which I mentioned
Speaker 4: to back in Norway when I was much younger and
Speaker 4: we'd traveled to Egypt. So I remember these leather little
Speaker 4: funny we call them tufto's or something, things stuffed with
Speaker 4: newspaper that sound really cool their leather. They're the sort
Speaker 4: of Ottoman things. And I Mum would listen to the
Speaker 4: home service and do the cleaning and have a Dubonne
Speaker 4: and have a one cigarette of the day. This is
Speaker 4: when I was probably about six or seven in Norway,
Speaker 4: and I remember listening to the radio and tapping on
Speaker 4: I don't know why on furniture, but Daddy used to
Speaker 4: tap on coins and do military things in his pocket,
Speaker 4: and he would play bottles with water in them at parties.
Speaker 4: So I vaguely remember that. I don't think that's why
Speaker 4: I did it, but I think my quantum leap was
Speaker 4: a blessing and it was like a divine intervention of
Speaker 4: sorts that the one thing I loved doing. I had
Speaker 4: this obsession with collecting drum catalogs and fantasies of gold
Speaker 4: and sparkling instruments that you were in my dream. So
Speaker 4: at boarding school the last thing I did, I had
Speaker 4: this whole package filled with brushures that opened one to
Speaker 4: the other, and I think I saw my way out.
Speaker 4: And when Dad said do you want to go to college,
Speaker 4: and he didn't have any money, but he was obviously
Speaker 4: making it available for me, and with tears in our eyes,
Speaker 4: and I said, Daddy, I want to go to London
Speaker 4: and play drums. And by that time I had had
Speaker 4: my little drum kit, almost a toy drum kit, in
Speaker 4: the house. And I think it was my learning disability
Speaker 4: that drove me. By some happen sence, both my sisters
Speaker 4: went into the arts. One was a very fine actress,
Speaker 4: Susan with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and my elder sister
Speaker 4: was an art student at the Polytechnic, so we were
Speaker 4: all completely academically useless. So I had the blessing that
Speaker 4: Mom and dad said, then, my god, it's probably the
Speaker 4: only one thing he really thinks he can do. And
Speaker 4: that was he encouraged you absolutely just I had complete
Speaker 4: and utter, not one iota of any cynicism whatsoever, and
Speaker 4: they sent me off with a drum kit to London
Speaker 4: wrapped in a blanket. My father wrote a poem about.
Speaker 1: It, mckfleetwood. If you love conversations with iconic musicians who
Speaker 1: also happen to be members of long lasting bands, be
Speaker 1: sure to check out my conversation with The Who's legendary
Speaker 1: frontman Roger Daltrey from our archives. Daughtrey talked about the
Speaker 1: first time he swung a microphone around on stage. No
Speaker 1: one told me. I got used to myself once they.
Speaker 5: Went into the free form in the early days in
Speaker 5: the late sixties. It just came out of boredom I was.
Speaker 5: I couldn't stand there and be like Robert Plant. I
Speaker 5: wasn't cool enough. I just needed to dance, So I
Speaker 5: didn't want to dance like an ordinary dancer. So I
Speaker 5: just started to play with it and it just got
Speaker 5: bigger and energy and channel the energy. And then Pete
Speaker 5: started jumping and that legendary jump of him. He's like
Speaker 5: a kangaroo. And but the whole thing was kind of
Speaker 5: in with the music. It became like a ballet, didn't it.
Speaker 5: It was kind of extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Here the rest of my conversation with Roger Daltrey and
Speaker 1: here's the Thing dot Org. After the break we talk
Speaker 1: about the women who became essential to the group's sound.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: That's Christine mcvee performing the Songbird. Mcvee joined Fleetwood Mac
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy when Peter Green left. She'd married John
Speaker 1: mcvee a couple of years before. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie
Speaker 1: Nicks joined in nineteen seventy five. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: if when Christine joined there was any pressure to include
Speaker 1: a woman.
Speaker 4: Well, Christine, for sure, any lovely lady out that would
Speaker 4: not take it wrong. She was a musician, and she
Speaker 4: was a great piano player, and her experience was already
Speaker 4: integrated with being I'm a player and It was nothing
Speaker 4: of the sort that it was a woman or a man.
Speaker 4: It was just who you are and what you do. Truly,
Speaker 4: it was that and she cherishes that to this day
Speaker 4: because we call her the rock.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: She's like, she doesn't rely on anything other than no
Speaker 4: prissy stuff. I am who I am, and am I
Speaker 4: delivering what you need? And she has that respect. So
Speaker 4: she came into the band as a player, literally, and
Speaker 4: there was no thought she knew John, which had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with it.
Speaker 1: Is your name really perfect? Is it Christine perfect? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And John would say she was perfect before she married me.
Speaker 1: Well, Jack, So.
Speaker 4: That was really it. It was not about having a
Speaker 4: lady in the bout we need a girl, No, it
Speaker 4: was about really really great musician, bloody good piano player.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, let me interject this because it's true,
Speaker 1: which is that in that world there is nobody who
Speaker 1: casts on me like Christine mcne I mean, I love
Speaker 1: her singing beyond believe. I mean she does something to
Speaker 1: me that I can't even describe. She's her bir singing
Speaker 1: is so beautiful, you.
Speaker 4: Know, So I can second that, right right, right.
Speaker 1: So she's with you in the band, and then you
Speaker 1: decide to have another woman join the band. So Buckingham,
Speaker 1: you asked him to join the band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Bob Welch had left at rather short notice, and
Speaker 4: I knew Bob extremely well, really lovely, hugely interesting chap.
Speaker 4: So he left. But prior to that, I've been in
Speaker 4: the studio sound City to try and find a studio
Speaker 4: to record the next album with Fleetwood. Matt he leaves
Speaker 4: and I meet Stevie and Lindsay after the fact, having
Speaker 4: heard Keith played to demonstrate the studio part of the
Speaker 4: Buckham Nick Nick's album that he'd made with them, the album,
Speaker 4: and then Bob left. Then I made a phone call
Speaker 4: and I said, you know that music you were playing?
Speaker 4: Who What?
Speaker 6: How?
Speaker 4: And you're right, I was looking for a guitar player.
Speaker 4: So I forever have Stevie to this day in a
Speaker 4: comedic sense, but always with a knife in my back
Speaker 4: that it wasn't really me that you wanted, it was Lindsay,
Speaker 4: which was true, and in very short form, Lindsay made
Speaker 4: it very clear that if he was to join, which
Speaker 4: was not a slam dunk at the beginning, because he
Speaker 4: and Stevie were thinking about going forward in their own world,
Speaker 4: and she actually persuaded Lindsay to join the band pretty much.
Speaker 4: She got fed up with waiting tables and stuff, so
Speaker 4: she came somewhat originally by default, and yet not because
Speaker 4: the real story is it was very evident early on.
Speaker 4: Although Stevie said, you know, loves to dig at me,
Speaker 4: it was that, first of all, Lindsay was incredibly loyal
Speaker 4: to her and I'm not going to do this without her.
Speaker 4: Boom over. Then it didn't take a rocket scientist to
Speaker 4: realize these songs, these beautiful songs were co written by
Speaker 4: both Lindsay and Stevie. And then you listen to the
Speaker 4: vocal blend, which is none other than going like when
Speaker 4: you hear the Everly Brothers, you go like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: that this joined at the hip and they came in
Speaker 4: short form into the band as a duo, which was
Speaker 4: a merciful decision when I look back, that Lindsay did
Speaker 4: not desert her and said I'm here, but I'm here
Speaker 4: with my partner, and that's how that happened.
Speaker 1: I've asked other very successful artists, such as yourself in
Speaker 1: the music world, what does a producer do for you
Speaker 1: when you're in a studio, when you're making a record,
Speaker 1: who's the decider, who decides what take what track, this
Speaker 1: vocal track, this drum track, whatever. But when you had
Speaker 1: a collaboration with the producer that helped you, what did
Speaker 1: they do for you?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the simple form would be that we
Speaker 4: as a band no matter what, which is not always
Speaker 4: the case, and it's not always the magic formula. A
Speaker 4: lot of people just totally excel by being guided and
Speaker 4: permanently told what to do and have a mirror that's
Speaker 4: a reflection from another aspect, another interpretation of really who
Speaker 4: they truly are, And that's fine. That was so not
Speaker 4: how we grew up into and blustered into what we
Speaker 4: were doing. So I would say that anyone that's worked,
Speaker 4: including Keith Mike Vernon, the first record producer, was probably
Speaker 4: the most influential that he was a blues fanatic and
Speaker 4: he ran that little label we were on called Blue
Speaker 4: Horizon and after that, so he would be picking songs
Speaker 4: here and there with Peter and the band. After that,
Speaker 4: it's really about are you a band member meaning them?
Speaker 4: How's the aesthetic of your chemistry being able to not
Speaker 4: insist but integrate right into the fabric of being in
Speaker 4: a band. And that's what I would always look out for,
Speaker 4: and I think that's been our success has been absolute
Speaker 4: expression with a mirror of sorts, but someone who's really
Speaker 4: listening to and having an empathy with what am I
Speaker 4: dealing with here, especially later on when we became very
Speaker 4: much five separate, expressive people that whoever it was, you
Speaker 4: have to look back on and give them huge amounts
Speaker 4: of credit. Has been some form of a social director
Speaker 4: more than an artistic director. And I lost all my
Speaker 4: hair because I was both.
Speaker 1: But would you say, when you say five distinct beings,
Speaker 1: there was a period when they weren't there were a
Speaker 1: unit and they were a unit during what period? And
Speaker 1: what was that like and what changed that? Musically?
Speaker 4: Well, Fleetwood Mac was already a stage that existed, and
Speaker 4: Fleetwood Mac was always about change so that you were
Speaker 4: accepted for who you were. Anyone should express themselves. You know,
Speaker 4: when I look back on it, that's in a naive
Speaker 4: way what I must have understood, especially being a drama
Speaker 4: when you go, oh, what the hell am I going
Speaker 4: to do if I don't have a front line and
Speaker 4: people that are delivering the play. You know, not to
Speaker 4: diminish who I am and what I am, but that
Speaker 4: was my function probably more than anything. So they came
Speaker 4: as different characters walking on that stage, and if you
Speaker 4: see and hear the music, you go none of it
Speaker 4: makes any sense. None of them were clones of anyone.
Speaker 4: They were all completely their own entity. So what they
Speaker 4: had to learn.
Speaker 1: Was to be in a band.
Speaker 4: Everyone was extremely unhappy emotionally on the making of rumors
Speaker 4: and Lindsay's sitting on the floor and it's tough. You know,
Speaker 4: no one ever intended to leave or anything. But one
Speaker 4: time I remember sitting in the studio at the record
Speaker 4: plant with Lindsay and he just turned around and said,
Speaker 4: I don't know where I can do this, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just, you know, we're in transition here. And his
Speaker 4: interpretation was can I be in a band? Can I
Speaker 4: be in a band? Especially with the pressure of is
Speaker 4: this what it's like being in a band? You're emotionally exposed?
Speaker 4: And everyone was. We were all in you know, I'm
Speaker 4: drifting into the area where we promised we wouldn't go.
Speaker 4: But so I just sat with him and he was
Speaker 4: playing a setar I remember it distinctly, and I said,
Speaker 4: then you must go. If it's self preservation don't destroy that.
Speaker 4: Don't destroy us because of the play in essence, Peter Green. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And I said, I don't have any ultimate apart from
Speaker 4: if it's that bad, then you have to go. And
Speaker 4: then I segued and I said, this is what it is.
Speaker 4: Everything is a compromise. When you're walking on a stage
Speaker 4: and sharing that that stage and this is that stage,
Speaker 4: and I'm not forcing you. I'd extremely sad if halfway
Speaker 4: through an album you just can't finish it out. And
Speaker 4: he didn't say much. He just said I understand, and
Speaker 4: he stayed.
Speaker 1: A guy once said to me, and he was much
Speaker 1: younger than me, and this is maybe like ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I was in my early fifties. It was in the
Speaker 1: lines of advice to him for his career, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: do you really want like the cold, hard, unvarnished You
Speaker 1: want it with the bark On or the bark off? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I said, if you want it with the bark On,
Speaker 1: then don't get married till you're forty, don't have any
Speaker 1: kids to your forty, give yourself you're not just your
Speaker 1: twenties but your thirties. Give this everything thing you have.
Speaker 1: If you want to be an actor, with a real
Speaker 1: prime If you want to be Leo DiCaprio, you want
Speaker 1: to be a guy who's like at the top of
Speaker 1: the pile and making movies with the best directors, the
Speaker 1: best scripts. Everything's the best, the budgets, the release dates, everything.
Speaker 1: If you want to surf that wave all the way
Speaker 1: to the shore, then you have to make this the
Speaker 1: most important thing in your life. Do you find that
Speaker 1: that was true for you as well?
Speaker 4: I think in retrospect we didn't know because you're in it.
Speaker 4: But as a comment, I think it's entirely correct and
Speaker 4: proven out in no uncertain terms of time and time
Speaker 4: and time and time and time and time.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 4: Are the miracles that slip through and survive like a
Speaker 4: built in version of what you've just said. In terms
Speaker 4: of advice, yeah, few and far between. It really puts
Speaker 4: a wall that you don't even realize that you're putting up,
Speaker 4: where you're so into what you're doing that people get
Speaker 4: left out and feel pushed away. So ideally, I think
Speaker 4: your advice is entirely correct, but that advice is always
Speaker 4: almost in retrospect for anyone.
Speaker 1: It's but I'm wondering also with three men, I mean
Speaker 1: asleep with mac is most renowned for its three men
Speaker 1: and two women, and neither one of those women has children?
Speaker 4: Correct?
Speaker 1: Were they people that were going through life and they
Speaker 1: were like, well, we're going to get to that, and
Speaker 1: the next year they turned around they were like wow,
Speaker 1: twenty five years wait by like nothing.
Speaker 4: You know, I would say if either Chris or Stevie,
Speaker 4: I feel comfortable in this conversation saying there was no
Speaker 4: doubt that they made that decision to dedicate their lives
Speaker 4: to their careers with flashes of what if, But I
Speaker 4: think both of these ladies would have no problems saying
Speaker 4: that that was the order of the conscious choice. Yeah, yeah, interesting,
Speaker 4: very interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now when people ask me about my drug use, I
Speaker 1: say that I snorted a line of cocaine from here
Speaker 1: to Saturn. Then we did a line of cocaine on
Speaker 1: the rings of sat and then we took it home
Speaker 1: with another line.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've got your beat. I'm sure I think your
Speaker 4: description is that actually more far reaching than mine? A
Speaker 4: planetary version, But my version of that would be and
Speaker 4: I've never lived it down, but you know, I have
Speaker 4: no problem at all apart from don go there. And
Speaker 4: then you have the war stories which this is sort
Speaker 4: of tending to be. And I'll preface it by saying
Speaker 4: war stories are fine, but there's a time and place
Speaker 4: and what can you learn from them would be my
Speaker 4: little lesson for anyone listening. So having said that, my
Speaker 4: transgression was, which was some awful interview I did, and
Speaker 4: I said, well, I one time, you know, I was
Speaker 4: in the studio and I'm talking about my Well, how
Speaker 4: much coke do you think I've ever done? This was
Speaker 4: like in our private world, and we measured out a
Speaker 4: good semi fat line of cocaine and then duplicated it,
Speaker 4: and then X amount of years, so in the lasting
Speaker 4: something amount of years we actually worked it out instead
Speaker 4: of cutting tape and editing the song together. We got
Speaker 4: into a transgression of actually working out probably about how
Speaker 4: long would that line be? And it was seven miles long, apparently,
Speaker 4: And I never lived that down and years all, especially
Speaker 4: in England, whether they love all that terrible stuff. And
Speaker 4: I have to sit there not talking about if you'd
Speaker 4: be like someone talking about something in your life versus
Speaker 4: the play I'm in or the script I've just written
Speaker 4: or the book I've just you know, and you go
Speaker 4: you go like, well, live with it because you opened
Speaker 4: your mouth in the first place all those years ago,
Speaker 4: and mine would be one of probably quite a few
Speaker 4: transgressions in terms of that. But comedically, so I still
Speaker 4: get asked, you know, was it really seven miles long?
Speaker 4: And I looked down to my trouser and go, well,
Speaker 4: I wished.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thirty five years sober. I got sober
Speaker 1: a long time ago in la For you, did you
Speaker 1: feel that when that stopped? Because for me, when it stopped,
Speaker 1: there were good things, but there were also bad things
Speaker 1: because you're forced to confront everything. You know, if you
Speaker 1: are if you go out in the world and you
Speaker 1: don't drink and you don't take drugs and minim commenting
Speaker 1: on you, but speaking for myself, you are kind of unarmored,
Speaker 1: and you need to go out and face the world
Speaker 1: that you need to resolve all your problems. You can't
Speaker 1: sit in the problem anymore. You've got to dissolve things
Speaker 1: and confront things and clean up the masks and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering for you what happened to you musically
Speaker 1: once you stopped abusing yourself.
Speaker 4: Well, I still drink, but the marching powder was a
Speaker 4: massive part of my life for probably way over twenty years.
Speaker 1: God, it's a long time.
Speaker 4: I don't even know. It's a fucking miracle.
Speaker 1: So that's a long time to have that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I was known as the king of tout
Speaker 4: and everyone would always know that I wouldn't hold it,
Speaker 4: you know. And then I did hit a brick wall
Speaker 4: and it was like slow motion. And my mother Biddy
Speaker 4: would always say, because they're hugely supportive, almost blindly supported, Oh,
Speaker 4: it's no problem at all. Whenever he wants to stop,
Speaker 4: he can stop it, you know, all those catchphrases. And
Speaker 4: I always sort of thought that I could. And then
Speaker 4: I hit a brick wall literally, and someone that I
Speaker 4: shared my life with said, I'm I'm done. I can't
Speaker 4: be around this anymore. And I said, please don't go
Speaker 4: leave me alone for two days, and that's what I
Speaker 4: did and never touched the stuff since overnight. It's divine intervention,
Speaker 4: but it's also misplaced in terms of that. That's when
Speaker 4: I probably should have gone into a program and found
Speaker 4: out what you touched on, what were those reasons? And
Speaker 4: I've done that since a couple of times with drink
Speaker 4: and had a sort of a wake up call and
Speaker 4: I just thought it was fun. I was around people
Speaker 4: telling me literally countless horror stories of what had happened
Speaker 4: to them, especially when there were children and young and
Speaker 4: I had no support and all sorts of terrible things.
Speaker 4: And I just said, I feel so terrible because I
Speaker 4: just thought it was fun until it wasn't. And I
Speaker 4: still actually haven't found the key of what was that.
Speaker 4: My parents didn't drink unduly, had an incredible supportive childhood.
Speaker 4: But that brick wall.
Speaker 1: Was it insecurity about being in public? Maybe? Oh, I
Speaker 1: think out there and being famous. I mean Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 1: I mean this music was coming out of every clamshell
Speaker 1: on the beach for a while. Yeah, every horse in
Speaker 1: the park was singing you can go your own way.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like this music was everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 1: There were so many songs that were just washing over you.
Speaker 1: It was like in the air all the time. Was
Speaker 1: that unsettling for you? Fame and all that attention. Did
Speaker 1: you need to medicate yourself to get through that period?
Speaker 4: I would say immediately. Notice how quickly I went. No,
Speaker 4: But I do get nervous about performing. If someone said
Speaker 4: make a speech and read the speech to three thousand people,
Speaker 4: I would be really put upon, go out on stage
Speaker 4: and just talk to someone I love, not even a question.
Speaker 4: I know people around me that all of the trimmings
Speaker 4: of what you just mentioned would be. Was that something
Speaker 4: that freaked you out? I have to say no, because
Speaker 4: of the way I was brought up. It was just
Speaker 4: fantastic and fun. But actually performing and delivering certain aspects,
Speaker 4: I would have to say, did bring out a fundamental
Speaker 4: some form of academic calling out that you don't know
Speaker 4: quite what you're doing, and therefore you're shitting yourself. And
Speaker 4: therefore I know for a fact. For years, and I
Speaker 4: played sober for fifteen years, the real truth is I
Speaker 4: didn't enjoy it. So when I play now, I have
Speaker 4: one bottle of red wine and I'm fairly well behaved,
Speaker 4: and without it, I can't even breathe. And I've tried hypnosis,
Speaker 4: I've tried everything known to mankind to get over it
Speaker 4: and breathing, and I had a guy like meditating with
Speaker 4: me on the road when I really really really really
Speaker 4: really didn't drink. All I can say is that instead
Speaker 4: of enjoying myself, I had my road manager with a
Speaker 4: brown paper bag so I could breathe into it to
Speaker 4: stop myself getting high anxiety. I don't enjoy it, and
Speaker 4: it's because of the element, which has nothing to do
Speaker 4: with fame and fortune. It's actually who are you? What
Speaker 4: are you in the moment and being called out like
Speaker 4: being in the class that I didn't I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Mcfleetwood. Subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
Speaker 1: leave us a review. I really appreciate it. Few bands
Speaker 1: have managed to survive longer than Fleetwood Mac. When we
Speaker 1: return the surprising resurgence of interest in the band's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven album Rumors.
Speaker 6: Yes, the same kind of story.
Speaker 1: It seems to come down long ago. That's the song
Speaker 1: hypnotized recorded during the Bob Welch era of Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 1: Mick Fleetwood has been the drummer of Fleetwood Mac for
Speaker 1: more than fifty years. And as there's usually one person
Speaker 1: in every long lasting band that brings them back together,
Speaker 1: I asked who was that person for Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 4: It would be me and and that was and is
Speaker 4: and has been my function. I imaged it a while ago,
Speaker 4: not not any big deal, but I'm going like, you know,
Speaker 4: because I don't write, I don't sing, although I'm enjoying
Speaker 4: doing some of that now, which is interesting, really actually
Speaker 4: interesting to be able to make a private fool of
Speaker 4: yourself with no pressure. I said, I think my story
Speaker 4: would be and I'm really happy about it and quietly
Speaker 4: proud of it. That my function was that I drifted
Speaker 4: into it, I learnt it. And me and John always
Speaker 4: wanted to have a band to be in. Why wouldn't you?
Speaker 4: And I said, I think that story is my song.
Speaker 1: You're a musical catalory. You can see so many beautiful songs.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful music, and the poetry is beautiful, and the
Speaker 1: lyrics it still moves you to this day.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I take that as a lovely compliment on behalf
Speaker 4: of all of us in this crazy band, and thank you.
Speaker 4: And I think there is sometimes almost the lighthearted part
Speaker 4: of Fleetwood Mac or whatever word one wants to use,
Speaker 4: the sort of the poppy part of it was always
Speaker 4: balanced out by a form of rev a form of
Speaker 4: very often some romance of sadness and entertaining That type
Speaker 4: of dialogue would be for me, is is songbird, and
Speaker 4: there are, of course are others, But I remember when
Speaker 4: Chris wrote that, and I actually spoke very recently to
Speaker 4: her about it. We just drifted into a conversation and
Speaker 4: she totally remembered, and I went, Chris, this is like
Speaker 4: Edith Piaf on a stage alone and she was in
Speaker 4: the studio at the record plant, and I said, this
Speaker 4: needs to be lonely. We should record it in an
Speaker 4: empty theater, not in a shag carpet studio. Let's go
Speaker 4: and do that. And we did, and we went a
Speaker 4: college over in Berkeley and recorded that song. As the
Speaker 4: imaging of it was so devastating to me. I said,
Speaker 4: you are alone. You are alone playing this lovely, lovely song,
Speaker 4: and it should be all of that. And that's exactly
Speaker 4: what we did. It was the most pregnant suite moment
Speaker 4: around the song that I can tell in our short conversation.
Speaker 1: Some including Stevie Nix, And we've read about Dylan's going
Speaker 1: to sell his catalog and David Crosby's getting ready to
Speaker 1: sell his catalog. And I guess in this COVID era
Speaker 1: and beyond, in the age of streaming music, people are
Speaker 1: seeing sources of revenue dry up. Certainly some of these
Speaker 1: people are older. You know, they're not selling their catalog
Speaker 1: and they're in their thirties or whatever, But what do
Speaker 1: you think of them?
Speaker 4: I think it's great. I'm sure it's not for everyone
Speaker 4: or whatever, but I think the circumstances has triggered so
Speaker 4: many things. This would be one of them. I think
Speaker 4: those decisions may or may not have been made anyhow,
Speaker 4: who's to say why not? And a body of work
Speaker 4: that is to be quite frankly translated into all sorts
Speaker 4: of lovely things for these people, whatever that might be.
Speaker 4: Because the people you're talking about, they certainly don't need
Speaker 4: any money for the most part. But no, let's say
Speaker 4: we doubt it. So it becomes something that will grow
Speaker 4: into all sorts of other things. One would imagine. What
Speaker 4: they might be is their business, you know. And one
Speaker 4: of the things I think is family. I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people are handing down to family ahead of
Speaker 4: time versus you know, people picking through when your God forbid,
Speaker 4: whenever that moment comes. And to see family enjoying stuff
Speaker 4: that can be allocated before you do pop off.
Speaker 1: So, if I'm not mistaken, Rumors is a best selling
Speaker 1: album again now as the direct result of some guy
Speaker 1: on a skateboard swinging down cranberry juice. What did you think?
Speaker 1: What did you think of when you first came across
Speaker 1: the TikTok? Phenomenally right occurred.
Speaker 4: Well, I know him as Nathan. His online name is Dogface,
Speaker 4: and it is quite unbelieveable. And all hell was breaking
Speaker 4: loose because he made a decision one day to do
Speaker 4: his thing. It happened in the most charming way. And
Speaker 4: then someone said, well would you would you? I said, well,
Speaker 4: I can't get on a skateboard, so I hung myself
Speaker 4: off the back of a golf cart and did the thing.
Speaker 4: And the next thing I know, we're all on you know,
Speaker 4: halftime sports programs, and god knows what else. His whole
Speaker 4: life has changed. And I actually loved it because it
Speaker 4: was so not thought of. One of the lovely things
Speaker 4: I was able to say on a zoom call. He
Speaker 4: was doing an interview in England with some very upstanding
Speaker 4: BBC chap and he had no idea I was going
Speaker 4: to come on the zoom call. So that's when I
Speaker 4: first met him, you know, face to face, And then
Speaker 4: his family came on. They sang songs to me and stuff,
Speaker 4: and I said, let me tell you Nathan Fleetwood Mac
Speaker 4: os it's been a fantastic moment in time that when
Speaker 4: a wall and typical Fleetwood mac just when you think
Speaker 4: you know we've survived, we've been really lucky, you know,
Speaker 4: in so many some of the things we've touched on
Speaker 4: in our talk where against hopeless odds we've prevailed. And
Speaker 4: I always joke about, especially with Lindsay Buckingham years ago.
Speaker 4: I used to sit with him and go like, we
Speaker 4: are the most abused rock and roll franchise in the world,
Speaker 4: meaning we've never capitalized on anything. Really, we're all idiots.
Speaker 4: But it's sort of good and we're still here.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. I mean again, I say this because it's easy,
Speaker 1: and that is you're still here and people are picking
Speaker 1: songs of yours to soundtrack their kind of playfulness, TikTok
Speaker 1: and so forth, because the music is great. I mean
Speaker 1: you and you're going back to hypnotized and Welsh. I
Speaker 1: love Hypnotized, I love Mystery to Me, I love all
Speaker 1: I love those early records. I play them to death.
Speaker 1: I love everything guys, and then solo acts Christia, you know,
Speaker 1: with Stevie's solo albums, blah blah, blah. I love it all,
Speaker 1: but I mean you you live in people's hearts because
Speaker 1: the music is that good. You guys made some of
Speaker 1: the greatest music in the history of the music posiness.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: No, it's been an absolute pleasure. And I remember something
Speaker 4: my father said, and it seems to really apply to
Speaker 4: a lot of the storytelling about this funny life and
Speaker 4: certainly Fleetwood Mac and the fact that there have been
Speaker 4: all sorts of ups and downs and around the Marlbury
Speaker 4: Bush and pain and a lot of happiness as well.
Speaker 4: My dad would always say one thing, Nick, I can
Speaker 4: tell you it's all been worth a damn And hearing
Speaker 4: is say that about the music makes me feel that
Speaker 4: it's all been worth a diamond.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Lots of love to you, and my love to you.
Speaker 1: Mix Sleepwood, I've been.
Speaker 3: Such more board of gold like a car the end
Speaker 3: of the rain.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing from iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: I'm not leave then You're bad, No, not you, I'm
Speaker 3: I've got a bad sting of warm