The career of Fleetwood Mac is often seen as fitting into two distinct eras: there is Peter Green’s raucous psychedelic blues band (1967-1970), and then the global megastardom era when the band was fronted by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and produced Rumours (1977), one of the most stylistically and melodically iconic rock albums of all time, whose songs were still going viral on TikTok in the 2020s, and which remains the eighth best-selling album of all time.
But what fewer know is the time between Green’s departure in 1970, and the arrival of Buckingham and Nicks in 1975.
Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac really was a blues band, playing Chicago blues, twelve-bar shuffles and long guitar workouts in clubs. Their first album, Fleetwood Mac, released in 1968, featured blues standards including “Hellhound on My Trail”, “Shake Your Moneymaker” and “No Place to Go”, alongside some of Green’s own¸ likewise bluesy compositions.
But as the band’s success grew, Green’s music became darker and a bit less rooted in straightforward blues. “Albatross” was an atmospheric and uplifting instrumental, while “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)” sounded brooding and menacing, reflecting a period in which Green was becoming increasingly disillusioned with fame, money and the direction of the band. According to keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, Green’s LSD use had become heavy, and by 1970 he was openly questioning the group’s success and wealth (and urging his bandmates to give their money away). Green left the band in May that year.
Losing your band’s leader and chief songwriter might in many cases be a fatal blow, but some of rock’s best stories are of those who chose to keep going in such circumstances. One example is Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett. Fleetwood Mac provides another.
Some of rock’s best stories are of those who chose to keep going.
Their first album without Green, Kiln House, which arrived in September 1970, still retained guitarist Jeremy Spencer, whose affection for early rock ’n’ roll gave parts of the record a bluesy retro feel. But Spencer himself disappeared during an American tour in early 1971. He subsequently left the group to join a religious cult, and later form his own self-titled band.
By the time Fleetwood Mac began work on their next album, Future Games, the personnel had shifted again. Danny Kirwan—who had started off as a fan of Peter Green, and had joined the band as an 18-year old in 1968—had become one of the principal writers. Christine McVie (1943-2022) was now a full-time member. The lineup that made Future Games, although barely a year removed from Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, already sounded very different. The album was recorded at Benifold, a country estate in England, using a mobile studio owned by the Rolling Stones.
Future Games starts with Danny Kirwan’s “Woman of 1000 Years”, gentle and spacious, gradually building through layered guitars and harmonies. There is a dreamy, almost suspended quality to it.
Christine McVie’s “Morning Rain” is more earthy. Its opening guitar has an Appalachian country feel. There is a sun-washed, nostalgia to the song, mixed with flashes of wah guitar psychedelia. It is a curious mixture—rustic, breezy, sweet, and colorful.
The lineup that made Future Games, although barely a year removed from Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, already sounded very different.
The third track, “What a Shame”, changes the mood again. It is short, funky and slightly carnivalesque, driven more by groove than melody. There are horns in the arrangement, though they sit strangely low in the mix, almost as if they are bleeding through from another room.
Then comes the title track, “Future Games”. Written by singer and guitarist Bob Welch, who had only recently joined the band, it is long, slow and almost stately. There is something regal and magisterial about it from the lift of the first guitar riff. Intertwined lines establish a mystical mood both nostalgic and futuristic, as the song builds to a chanted crescendo before collapsing into a ringing guitar solo and the repetition of the mantras “future games” and “I am not the only one”.
“Sands of Time”, written and sung by Kirwan, is intricate and delicate in equal measure. It unfolds like origami. It is striking how much it has evolved from the old Fleetwood Mac model of the blues guitarist taking center stage, into a hymn-like pop song where the instrument is used as part of the arrangement, creating texture and movement.
“Sometimes”, also written by Kirwan, starts jolly and almost pastoral. Yet there is a darker emotional undercurrent. As the song develops, the mood becomes reflective and serious, with an almost depressive refrain dwelling on how “you’ve gone away and left me”, building to riffs that sound faintly in the register of George Harrison. It’s a blues song ripped apart and reconstructed in the musical idiom of country, folk and soft rock.
“Lay It All Down” brings a relatively straightforward burst of rock energy. Welch pushes the band into a faster, harder-rocking mode, with a heavier groove. To me it’s aged less well than some of what surrounds it. It sounds very much like the early 1970s—in stark contrast to a lot of the other material, that has a much more timeless quality.
The album ends with Christine McVie’s “Show Me a Smile”, gentle, seemingly addressed to a child (although Christine McVie never had children) who “will be a man in your time, my little one”. The verses are nursery rhyme-like, until they break into the illuminated crescendo of “shine me a light from your eyes, dear, don’t let me see a single tear”. While she is an accomplished and popular singer, McVie’s writing has always stayed rather childlike in manner—even in the later Nicks/Buckingham phase, she has hardly ever grown beyond naïve melodies, nursery lyrics, and unoriginal chord changes, none of which later prevented her from landing three of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits (“Don’t Stop”, “Little Lies” and “Everywhere”).
While she is an accomplished and popular singer, McVie’s songwriting has always stayed rather childlike.
Taken as a whole, Future Games is resplendent. It’s filled with warmth and sunlight, but also complexity and experimentation. Kirwan, Welch and McVie each brought something different, and the album’s identity emerged from the friction between all of these moving parts.
That process continued on Bare Trees, released in 1972. Where Future Games is exploratory and open-ended, Bare Trees is tighter and more assured. Kirwan remained central, contributing the driving title track, the delicate instrumental “Sunny Side of Heaven”, which carries some of the same open-eyed and wondrous atmosphere that is found on Future Games, as well as the haunting “Dust”, built around ascendant arpeggios and lyrics dwelling on demise and the time “when we are dust”.
If Future Games established a new version of Fleetwood Mac, out of the shadow of Peter Green, Bare Trees doubles down on some of that style, but with overall a little less splendor.
Of course, just as the band found a new equilibrium, everything was about to change yet again.
Danny Kirwan’s relationship with the band came to a head during the touring period after the release of Bare Trees. By 1972, his behaviour had reportedly become confrontational. After an incident in which he refused to go onstage and smashed up his Gibson Les Paul during an argument, he was fired from the band.
Fleetwood Mac—who at this point must have started to feel they were something bordering on indestructible—responded to the loss of Kirwan by staying true to past form and rebuilding with a new lineup.
Guitarist Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker were invited to join the band for their next album, entitled Penguin, released in 1973. That album carries on in a similar style to Bare Trees, although in a perhaps more polished (especially in terms of recording and audio quality) and Americanized vein.
Walker did not have a long tenure in the band: by the time of Mystery To Me, also released in 1973, he was gone.
The standout on Mystery To Me is Bob Welch’s “Hypnotized”, a languid song built around a circular drum groove, winding guitars, and lyrics inspired by UFOs and strange lights in the sky. It’s a portrait of musical and thematic evolution, though to my ears it, like “Lay It All Down” on Future Games, sounds relatively of its time.
This iteration of the band wasn’t to last either. Bob Welch departed at the end of 1974, frustrated from continuous touring.
Within months, Mick Fleetwood would discover a track by a relatively unknown American duo called Buckingham Nicks. The band approached Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist, and asked him to join Fleetwood Mac. But Buckingham insisted that his creative partner Stevie Nicks also join. And so they both did, and Fleetwood Mac rebuilt their identity once again.
In this mould, the group became global megastars, releasing massive albums like Fleetwood Mac (their second self-titled album, following the first during the Peter Green era) in 1975, and Rumours in 1977.
That’s the era of Fleetwood Mac that many fans like to dwell on.
But it’s not the only part of the story.
The Fleetwood Mac of Future Games, Bare Trees and Mystery To Me was in a time of both transformation and rich musical invention. The band grew into their musical identity over years. And some of their richest musical material—particularly the title track of Future Games—resides there.
Listen to:
Fleetwood Mac — “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)”
1970 single. Distorted, paranoid and menacing. Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac at their most interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKRfCkx8KC
Fleetwood Mac — “Station Man”
From Kiln House (1970). A bridge out of the Green years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSZJFWn7OM4
Fleetwood Mac — “Woman of 1000 Years”
From Future Games (1971). Danny Kirwan opens the album in a haze of layered guitars and harmonies, gentle and almost suspended in mid-air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYHFWGXeDk
Fleetwood Mac — “Morning Rain”
Also from Future Games. Christine McVie mixes an almost Appalachian country feel with sun-washed nostalgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1HoLcWkU98
Fleetwood Mac — “Future Games”
The title track. Bob Welch’s tour de force. Regal guitars, mystical atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL6PWUq1vqA
Fleetwood Mac — “Sands of Time”
From Future Games. Intricate, delicate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jkp34jMeEw
Fleetwood Mac — “Bare Trees”
From Bare Trees (1972). Still carrying Kirwan’s peculiar mixture of melancholy and forward motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84yWm1ZjCg
Fleetwood Mac — “Sunny Side of Heaven”
A wordless Kirwan instrumental full of open space, chiming guitar and the same wide-eyed warmth that illuminated Future Games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BujGOSvIZw
Fleetwood Mac — “Sentimental Lady”
From Bare Trees. Bob Welch in melodic mode: soft, wistful and already pointing toward the smoother American sound the band was drifting into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAz_a8AjHgE
Fleetwood Mac — “Hypnotized”
From Mystery to Me (1973). Circular drums, winding guitars, UFOs and lights in the sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oo3brFVJ9A
