Fleetwood Mac Best Songs

What is the result of a musical formula that incorporates the following personnel, hailing from both sides of the Atlantic: passionate and innovative guitar players, rich and compelling male and female vocals, behind-the-scenes romantic drama, and a steady dose of the same drummer over a four decade span of time? The answer would be Fleetwood Mac.

Originating as a quartet in London, in the late 1960s, Fleetwood Mac was so-named for its rock-solid rhythm section, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. The early Mac was essentially a vehicle for the group's first lead guitarist, the uber-bluesy Peter Green. The axman dominated the band's first three albums (Fleetwood Mac and Mr. Wonderful (1968), and Then Play On (1969)) -- all of which were Top Ten releases in England, but barely registered in the US. A lone charting single, the distinctive and herky-jerky "Oh Well", was Fleetwood Mac's sole American achievement of note during the Peter Green era.

After suffering a bad acid trip in Germany in late 1969, Green's state of mind fast deteriorated and resulted in his leaving the group in 1970. Rhythm guitarist Jeremy Spencer also left the band during that same year. Almost overnight, Fleetwood Mac went from being one of the most popular bands in the UK and Europe to being virtually invisible. The lone remaining guitarist, Danny Kirwan, was unable to sustain the group's momentum, and in 1971 he gave way to American frontman Bob Welch. Mac disappeared from the UK charts during the early 1970s, but managed to maintain a fledgling following in the US. Amid this transition, the band brought in McVie's wife, Christine, on keyboards -- a move that would ultimately pay large dividends down the road.

The band endured legal battles, record label turbulence and internal conflict throughout Welch's tenure. Again, no hit singles emerged, although the breathy "Hypnotized" (pulled from 1974's Mystery To Me) was an appropriately mysterious, popular rock radio track. By the end of 1974, Welch had left Fleetwood Mac and the group had decamped to Los Angeles, where it added a pair of Californians: guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend, vocalist Stevie Nicks.

In 1975 -- armed with two solid female vocalists and a fresh new male tenor vocalist -- Fleetwood Mac unleashed its second eponymous LP upon the world, and the world gobbled up this incarnation of the band to the tune of millions of albums and singles sold. The middling success of Christine McVie's bucolic, mild "Over My Head" was soon eclipsed by the haunting strains of newcomer Nicks's "Rhiannon". Christine headlined the last prominent single on the album, the up-tempo "Say You Love Me." Over time, Nicks's ballad "Landslide" would become a fan favorite as well. The band's new lineup was an immediate attention-grabber on multiple American radio formats, and its chemistry would be perfected on the group's 1977 follow-up effort.

Throughout 1976, as Fleetwood Mac's singles were dancing up and down the US pop charts, Fleetwood Mac were busy recording their eleventh album, whilst simultaneously driving each other nuts and breaking each other's hearts behind the scenes. This stressful dynamic was quintessentially expressed in what became the highest-selling pop album of 1977. Cryptically dubbed Rumours, nearly every song on the record would become a classic...

"The Chain" and "Gold Dust Woman" -- both brooding album tracks -- proved credible fodder for AOR radio. "Songbird", "Second Hand News" and "Never Going Back Again" were almost shockingly raw statements of relationships gone awry, and each could have been 7" releases in their own right. Among the singles, Nicks's mid-tempo "Riders On The Storm"-styled "Dreams" became the watershed, scoring the only chart-topping mark of the band's career. Buckingham's driving "Go Your Own Way" paralleled the role of HotelCalifornia's "Life In The Fast Lane" (charting at the same peak position, no less!), while Christine's grinning and positive "Don't Stop" would peak in popularity decades later as a campaign anthem for a certain presidential dress-soiler. Christine also contributed an optimistic statement on her love life in "You Make Loving Fun". Add it all up, and Rumours went on to become one of the highest-selling recordings in the history of music, selling over forty million copies worldwide to date.

Few bands have equalled such a monumental achievement with a subsequent release, and Fleetwood Mac proved subject to that rule. 1979's Tusk produced an odd, drum-laden hit in "Tusk", and yet another Top Ten Nicks offering in the very MOR "Sara", but only sold modestly compared to its predecessor. 1982's Mirage fared a bit better, yielding a Buckingham/Christine McVie Top Five pop hit in "Hold Me" as well as another madrigal Nicks track, "Gypsy." By this point in the 1980s, Nicks's solo career had taken flight, and the other band members had each produced solo efforts that enjoyed varying degrees of success as well.

This most successful roster of the group produced one more album together -- Tango In The Night (1987). The very 80s-sounding production meant that Christine's keyboards dominated throughout the record, which included the female-friendly Top Twenty hits "Big Love", "Little Lies", "Seven Wonders" and "Everywhere." All of the songs suffered from a similarity complex, but the album sold well nonetheless...

Tango marked the end of Fleetwood Mac's golden era. Nicks continued to enjoy success with her solo career into the early 1990s, and the band itself evolved into an easy-listening-friendly operation and away from its 'essence', resulting in rapidly declining sales during the 1990s. By 1997, the Rumours lineup had reunited for one last run with Christine McVie, who ultimately departed the band for good in 1998. The remaining A-listers have remained on ever since, producing the requisite legacy-band tours and live show DVDs common to most classic rock icons that survived into the new century.

Fleetwood Mac like Foreigner managed to straddle both sides of the Atlantic with its considerable influence on pop music during its heyday, adapting to changing tastes during the better part of two decades by leaning upon the strength of its vocal versatilities and the bedrock of its long-time bottom consisting of John McVie and founder Mick Fleetwood. Who ever said drummers don't know what they're doing has apparently never read the story of this band!