The Racket: Hypnotized, Fleetwood Mac before the Rumours

Flowing gowns, mystic poetic lyricism and an ethereal stage presence, all backdropped by soft, twinkling pop-rock — this is how Stevie Nicks’ Fleetwood Mac is remembered. 

Despite joining the band as Lindsay Buckingham’s girlfriend, by the time Nicks left in 1990 she’d transformed the vibe so drastically that many new, casual listeners don’t know about Fleetwood Mac’s bluesier, grimier origins. 

Jam sessions on Chicago’s South Side, LSD trips in Germany and anti-material Buddhist/Christian hybrid spirituality is the aesthetic of this early period of Fleetwood Mac. 

Originally called “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac,” the group was formed in 1967 by former members of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers — Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Mick Fleetwood — and they would go on to be a top charting British blues band, outselling The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. 

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, a purist blues band, helped birth the British blues scene, and outside of the forming members of Fleetwood Mac, had members including Eric Clapton, before he formed Cream, and Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones.

Mayall gave these artists an education in American blues that developed in Chicago’s South Side, like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson. Despite never achieving success himself, Mayall’s love of blues shaped this early period of Fleetwood Mac. 

The band’s debut, 1968’s “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac,” was considered a seminal work of the British Blues movement, and it’s full of covers of artists that made up Mayall’s record collection. 

One of these covers, “Long Gray Mere,” is a fast-paced Blues record with lyrics that sound like Green put Mayall’s record collection in ChatGPT. Despite this, the bluesy ensemble foreshadows what Fleetwood Mac would become. 

My favorite song on this self-titled album is “I Loved Another Woman,” a Green original that was later reworked into “Black Magic Woman.” Within it, you can track Fleetwood Mac’s progress from a blues band that was sticking to source material, á la John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, into a more experimental sound that’s still decidedly a blues band. 

Another notable album, “Then Play On,” released in 1969, was the last album that Green worked on before what Mick Fleetwood called “the Munich LSD incident,” when after a party with a German commune, and alleged cult members, Green had a LSD-induced mental health crisis. 

In “Then Play On,” it’s clear why Fleetwood continues to remind the public —  in interviews and projects such as the concert film “Mick Fleetwood and Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green” — that Green was once the soul of the band. 

The album is an electric blues album that dips its toes into folk rock, psychedelic rock, art rock and hard rock, without ever feeling disjointed. 

At the time of the album’s release, the band’s lineup included Green and Danny Kirwin, both on guitar and vocals, Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass and Spencer on piano, but only during “Oh Well,” a song that, despite being the most popular from the project, is not on the original U.S. pressing. 

Half of the songs on “Then Play On” are written by Kirwin, including its powerhouse of an opener “Coming Your Way,” which includes Afro-Cuban rhythms and intense percussion with the more traditional blues sound. 

When the album was released, Rolling Stone’s John Morthland said the album was a sign that Fleetwood Mac had “fallen flat on their faces.” However, since then, critical opinion has turned around, and the Rolling Stone Record Guide called it the band’s second-best album, describing it as “cool blues-based stew.”

After spending my teenage years sleeping under a giant Stevie Nicks “Wild Heart” tour poster, the album that opened the door to pre-Nicks Fleetwood Mac was “Mystery to Me,” the band’s second-to-last-album without Buckingham and Nicks. 

With a brighter throughline and a soft rock adjacent sound, the album gestures to what the band’s sound would become by their 1975 “Fleetwood Mac” self-titled album. 

Though “Heroes Are Hard to Find” was the band’s last album before the Buckingham/Nicks duo, “Mystery to Me” is a better bridge between the two eras. It was the last album to feature two guitarists, a staple from the band’s genesis, and the last produced by Martin Birch, who had produced five of their studio albums beginning with “Then Play On.”

Most of the music was penned by Bob Welch, guitarist and vocalist in the band from 1971-74, and Christine McVie, who had joined the band in 1970 to replace Green. 

The two of them would pioneer the soft-rock sound that Fleetwood Mac would come to be known for. However, some of the Welch tracks retain some of the earlier bluesy qualities, despite having a Welchian smooth guitar and mellow California vibe, while the Christine McVie tracks give into the pop-rock stadium sound that would shoot the band into stardom.

The entire album feels as though there’s a baton being handed over. From whom to whom is unclear, but what is clear is that the once British blues band was becoming the Anglo-American pop-rock band that would dominate tabloids and the Billboard charts. 

A year later in late 1974, Nicks and Buckingham would join Fleetwood Mac after a producer played “Buckingham Nicks” for Fleetwood the duo’s album together that was originally commercially ignored but has become a cult classic.

He promptly decided he wanted Buckingham to replace Bob Welch who left in 1974 due to marital issues per Rolling Stone. However, Buckingham would only join if Nicks, his then girlfriend, was also signed. 

This choice would lead Fleetwood Mac from a successful, but middling, blues/rock/soft-rock band into a superstar group whose personal lives would capture public attention for the next 50 years. 

The “Rumours” era, with its relationship chaos later fictionalized in shows like “Daisy Jones & the Six,” overshadows most of Fleetwood Mac’s earlier albums. 

However, even though many fans of Fleetwood Mac may have never heard Green’s name, and even fewer may know there was a time that he was referred to as the “Green God” due to his guitar playing and being the protege of Eric Clapton, the band carries his legacy on their shoulders.  

Despite Green’s Fleetwood Mac not being the version of the band that gained commercial recognition, those who look for it know that even in the foggy and atmospheric “Dreams” it’s Green’s love of the blues that made it all possible.