John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers<\/a>, which became something of a blues-rock university for a generation of young artists, to try and make it on his own. Armed with his trusty companion, John McVie, the pair formed their own band under the assurance of their own surnames and recruited those they thought would be the frontman who would take them to global fame.<\/p>\nPeter Green was very much a worthy candidate in that regard, with unparalleled performative charisma and a level of guitar playing skill that was the envy of any great blues player at the time. With McVie alongside him in the rhythm section and his wife Christine soon joining to provide an extra layer of vocal harmonies, Fleetwood wholeheartedly believed he had the winning formula. <\/p>\n
That was, of course, until Peter Green spiralled into a state of drug-induced madness that ultimately sparked his exit from the band, and in one swift movement, the entire world was ripped out of Fleetwood\u2019s palms, and he was right back where he began: at square one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Desperately searching for the answer, he stumbled upon Buckingham and Nicks, who, despite initial reservations, proved to be his saviour \u2013 their unique style of songwriting pivoted the band\u2019s sound, before descending them into a whirlwind of drama that would ultimately go on to define some of their most treasured work.<\/p>\n
Buckingham and Nicks locked horns and engaged in one of the most public break-ups of music history, which ran parallel to that of his old mate John, who was midway through a divorce with vocalist Christine. As these four scorned lovers spiralled into heartbreak, the band finally found the success he had been dreaming of, and so in some bizarre twist of fate, the future of his own band would depend on each of its members accepting the trauma of their reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The band largely accepted that despite their success and despite fate\u2019s design to keep them together, they would never truly be friends. That was an unspoken rule, with only Fleetwood and John McVie being the only ones willing to break it, for as the two original members of this ever-dramatic band, they forged a friendship that could quite simply never be broken.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn is truly my best friend,\u201d Fleetwood once said. \u201cI adore him. It\u2019s mutual. We\u2019ve been through so much. He is the most truthful person I know. We share a sense of humour. Loyalty; Musically, we\u2019ve done it for so long together that anything else is shallow compared to John. Long ago, playing the blues, we learnt that a rhythm section needs to be gracious: you\u2019re creating a platform for others. We don\u2019t have musical egos at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Together, their friendship made up the backbone of this unpredictable band, and without them, they wouldn\u2019t have existed at all \u2013 through thick and thin, these two bastions of the rhythm section consistently looked after one another, promising that they would always stick it out, no matter how tough it got.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Mick Fleetwood) Fri 13 March 2026 20:30, UK Even before the wild days of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,15411,3299,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-474281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-fleetwood-mac","tag-mick-fleetwood","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mick-Fleetwood-Drummer-Fleetwood-Mac-2021-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n