Our list of the band’s 50 greatest songs pulls from all these eras. They began as a vehicle for the blues visions of tragic genius Peter Green, continued through fascinating, often overlooked, transitional records during the early Seventies with Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch, and hit an astonishing peak when songbird Christine McVie, mad drummer Mick Fleetwood and ultra-reliable bassman John McVie hooked up with the Southern California songwriting team of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Days and nights would just go on and on.”īut the soul of the Mac’s magic has always been their songs.
Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards and yards of this wretched stuff. “Parties going on all over the house,” John McVie told Rolling Stone in 1977, recalling the making of their classic Rumours LP. Through it all, there’s been brutal romantic blowups and historic levels of drug use. Fleetwood Mac have been rock’s greatest soap opera for five decades - from their Sixties origins in the English blues-rock scene to their Seventies reinvention as California rock superstars through their smooth Eighties hits and right up to today.
