(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 7 December 2025 18:30, UK
While there is no doubting that Stevie Nicks has the capacity to rattle the rafters like a flatpack wardrobe on faultline, she also has the uncanny knack of making the spotlight at Madison Square Garden look like a flickering candle.
That ‘private performance’ sensibility takes great control and vulnerability. The latter is very hard to exhibit in a group like Fleetwood Mac. Over the years, the band has certainly proven itself to be far from a daycare centre for wandering musicians. In fact, there have been so many callous casualties that some have questioned whether it is cursed, and the straighter-laced concerns have questioned its working practices.
Danny Kirwan, for instance, was shaping up to be one of the finest guitarists of his generation when he was at the helm of the Mac, but he ultimately ended up homeless and destitute. You can read a lot into how Mick Fleetwood addressed the matter: “Danny had been a nervous and sensitive lad from the start. He was never really suited to the rigours of the business,” the drummer once opined.
Elucidating the problem by adding, “Touring is hard, and the routine wears us all down … Our manager kept us touring non-stop, and we were being stretched to our limits … and the pressure was obviously taking its toll. He simply withdrew into his own world.”
This brutal regime brought a ruthlessness to the group, and nobody knows that more than Bekka Bramlett. The singer, who had previously worked with the likes of Faith Hill, Joe Cocker, and Vince Gill as a backing vocalist, somewhat came to the Mac’s rescue ahead of their 1995 album Time, and the tours either side of it.
At that point, the group were without Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham, but a defiant Mick Fleetwood heard some of Bramlett’s session work and thought she was a great fit. The pair had worked together as part of the drummer’s Zoo side project, and he sensed a musical chemistry.
Bekka Bramlett performing with Fleetwood Mac. (Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Nevertheless, there was an asterisk over her position. Nicks had grown exhausted in the group, and the continued bickering over the inclusion or lack thereof of ‘Silver Springs’ on the Rumours box set had meant that she acrimoniously parted ways to focus on her solo career. At the same junction, McVie refused to go out on tour. So, the band was in disarray, and Bramlett was almost a Hail Mary to save it, more so than a simple substitute.
“I knew my job was to get Stevie back,“ Bramlett said. “I wasn’t a moron. I also knew this was a dangerous job when I took it. I knew I was facing tomatoes. But I didn’t want to wear a top hat. I didn’t want to twirl around. I wanted to be me. I even dyed my hair brown just so people in the cheap seats would know that Stevie wasn’t going to be here. I didn’t want anyone to be discouraged or let down”.
However, Nicks would later point out that there was another way the crowd could tell she wasn’t quite the real McCoy (at least in Stevie’s vested book). In a frosty confrontation following a string of Bramlett-fronted shows with the band, the session singer recalled bumping into Nicks and being addressed as an absent pronoun.”The first thing she said was, ‘Oh, I didn’t know she was blonde. And she oversings’.”
While Bramlett didn’t begrudge the ‘Dreams’ songwriter, it seems this scathing critique did affect her. “Everyone at the table said the same thing,” she told Rolling Stone, “so I know it’s true. But it’s OK. I still love her. She probably felt like I pissed on her tree. I can understand that.”
However, it was the actual members of Fleetwood Mac at the time that she had more cause to be concerned with. “I felt broken,” Bramlett said of her departure. “What you have to understand is that Mick and I were the guys that did all the radio and promotion and TV stuff. We did all of it. I was definitely looking forward to the tour we had already just promoted. Evidently, someone said, ‘Get her out of here’.”
And they did ‘get her out’ in the most brutal of fashions: Mick Fleetwood fired her via fax. That’s like your wife leaving you over email. And that fax was far from heartwarming either. While on tour, Bramlett had joked that she would have rather joined another of her favourite groups, and the quip came back to bite her.
Mick’s fax read: “You wish you were in REO Speedwagon [instead], so I’m going to go ahead and fire you now.” Alas, you suspect it is the cold “oversings” comment that remains unretracted that still stings the most. If it’s any consolation to Bramlett, David Crosby near-enough accused Nicks of the same flaw, and he was her hero, too.
Thankfully, unlike some of Fleetwood Mac’s fallen members, Bramlett would continue to have a busy career as a session singer, member of Bekka & Billy, and seemingly happily retreated to the quieter, safer side of the business, which, in all honesty, is pretty much anywhere but the Mac.
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