Mick Fleetwood Reflects on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ On Zane Lowe’s Apple Music Show
Mick Fleetwood joined Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss the 45th anniversary of Fleetwood Mac’s iconic album Rumours earlier this week.
During the interview, he told Apple Music about the band dynamics that shaped the album, reflected on Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joining the group and the ongoing complications of their relationship, how the group’s music provided safe harbour from persistent band drama, the benefits of being in a co-ed band, how he sees his role in the group decades later, being an Eminem fan and much more.
The interview is available in full on Apple Music, but if you scroll down, you can enjoy a taster of the full interview as Mick Fleetwood reveals his thoughts on Fleetwood Mac’s classic album Rumours.
Mick Fleetwood: “I didn’t really know what was going on until a little while later. And the fact that we’re having this conversation 40 odd years later about the same body of work that was created by that line of up with Fleetwood Mac is one I don’t think about it until you start talking about it…
“I think probably to a large extent to the other band members, a permanent backdrop that has become part of no doubt the fabric of who we are certainly as players and artists, but also the effectual with what it did to us as people through that, the challenges of it, the sociological messes and joys that it brought, all of that are in these collection of songs known as the Rumours album.
“I think it was a little bit of, for me and John especially, in a way we had our, for us, it was a large tidal wave back in England with the beginnings of Fleetwood Mac in 1967, ’68 with Peter Green, where we were the pop boys of certainly down in Australia and the Commonwealth, not over here really at all, apart from some boutique interest in the band, which was demonstrated later by certainly Carlos and people, and the Grateful Dead have definitely heard about the music that we made and apparently loved it.
“So when the wave sort of hit, I think me and John, speaking certainly for myself, we’d had some reference to having something, and in truth the wave dissipated before Stevie and Lindsey, although we continued through the Bob Welch year and so forth, and many wonderfully talented people, you could see on a graph that for us, it was just, we were keeping going, we never thought one way or the other. But the truth is we were on a quiet period in terms of success.
“But me and John had had that shock as really young chaps in England, where we were… Top of the pops and stupid praises, like they’re selling more than the Beatles and all this stuff. And therefore took it in our stride a little bit more, I think, I hope. And it certainly helped me until I got super crazy, and substance abuse later on and all that stuff. But in the early days of the band that we’re talking about that made that album Rumours, I really felt that that too had helped me say, hang on, hang on. This is all fantastic, but we’re doing what we’re doing. And it helped certainly from the Peter Green days, we always, especially led by Peter, held onto our integrity as players and really didn’t get super caught up in being so-called pop stars, or rock stars, or whatever it is.”
Watch Mick Fleetwood interviewed by Zane Lowe on Apple Music here.