(Credits: Far Out / Mick Fleetwood)
Tue 21 April 2026 4:00, UK
Too many people forget that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham weren’t the be-all and end-all of Fleetwood Mac. While that 1970s and ‘80s era of the band might have fostered its biggest hits, the legacy of the band already existed long before they got involved.
Here is your reminder: Fleetwood Mac is a British band. Though the average listener would associate them with sunny California, the band actually began back in London in 1967. Back then, they were a blues unit through and through. Their earliest tunes are more like extended jams that traverse through the various sounds of the genre that the original leader, Peter Green, loved.
As the band then morphed and evolved through various lineups, one constant stayed around. Mick Fleetwood was not only the band’s namesake, but he also exists as the only enduring member who was there from start to finish. He stuck it out and so witnessed each and every iteration of the band.
With all that knowledge, he’d say that if there was one key part of the band’s history that feels like a vital influence people criminally overlook, it was Bob Welch.
‘Who?’ the average Rumours listener yells. People so rarely give the band’s earlier eras the time of day, and even less seem to pay attention to the great but strange interim period that existed once the group had relocated to California but hadn’t yet met Buckingham Nicks.
In that gap, they released a run of great records. Starting with Future Games in 1971 and ending with Heroes Are Hard to Find in 1974, these albums track the band’s evolution from something bluesy into the more classic rock sound they settled into.
The key to all of that was their guitarist, Welch. “He was a huge part of our history, which sometimes gets forgotten,” Fleetwood said.
It wasn’t just that Welch was changing up their instrumental style, cleaning up some of the dirtier blues sounds to evolve. But he was also their leading songwriter, giving them some amazing tracks like the seductive ‘Hypnotized’ as well as ‘Precious Love’ and ‘Sentimental Lady’. Listen to any of them, and they appear as the perfect bridge between what was before for the band and what was to come.
“Mostly his legacy would be his songwriting abilities that he brought to Fleetwood Mac, which will survive all of us,” Fleetwood said of the musician, adding of his broader impact on that early 1970s blues-infused but easy rock sound, “If you look into our musical history, you’ll see a huge period that was completely ensconced in Bob’s work.”
Really, it feels like Welch set the stage for the coming high period of Fleetwood Mac, and even though he wasn’t even in the lineup then, his impact and influence on the group endured, playing a big role in their future success, though most fans wouldn’t even know his name.
