(Credits: Far Out / Fleetwood Mac)
Mon 3 November 2025 19:30, UK
Few bands did rock and roll quite like Fleetwood Mac.
Sure, their intra-band squabbles made Rumours such a compelling listen, and in essence, the dramatic lives in which they lived those relationships were very rock and roll. But I mean it in the traditional sense, the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” sense. Because while their music was soft, tender and at times commercial, the way they lived their lives was chaotic, as anybody with a reputation for hedonism.
In fact, it was their penchant for illicit substances that ultimately kept them together through those heady studio days. They even had a studio routine in order to feed this attitude, led by their band leader.
“In the studio, we had a ritual in which the engineers and band members all started humming a tune — it changed over the years — which would serve as a siren’s call for cocaine, specifically the cocaine that I was invariably holding,” Mick Fleetwood wrote in his memoir.
He continued, “As if in a trance, I would drop what I was doing and, in slow-motion, beckon them over.”
Everything in their lives was full throttle, and so when that very album, which was fuelled by an unhealthy love for cocaine, then achieved commercial success, the lifestyle became inevitably more dangerous. Floating around in the gardens of LA’s most exclusive and drug-fuelled parties, these five members of Fleetwood Mac would walk around like musical gods, becoming distanced from the perspective needed to live a normal life.
But then, after Tusk in 1979 and then a string of worse albums in the early 1980s, the once leader of this cocaine ritual found himself in a desperate situation. The line-up as we know it was on the brink of a break-up, and Fleetwood was certifiably broke, as the lavish rockstar lifestyle had caught up with him.
It was while he was en route to Ghana, for a trip with producer Richard Dashut, that Fleetwood had received the call from his accountant that the gig was up. He could no longer use his credit card, and the life of reckless spending and drug taking had to be curtailed. Furious by this new reality, Fleetwood decided to go out in a blaze of glory and bought a Rolex watch at the airport out of spite.
But in the midst of a tailspin, fuelled by Ghanian cocaine and booze, Fleetwood looked down at his watch and processed the gravity of his decisions. In his memoir, he explained, “The reality of the excessive life I was living and all that was running from back home hit me full force. In the moment, disgusted by myself, I smashed the gold Rolex I’d just bought on the bar.”
His repent didn’t last that long, however, as he revealed that he was able to fix the watch once, and in turn undoing his spiritual epiphany. But then, in a twist of fate, he eventually lost it for good, in a Dutch brothel of all places.
“It serves me right,” he claimed.
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