Mick's First Job

[michelej1]

November 2, 2011, 12:00 PM ET. Wall Street Journal, Speak Easy
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/11/02/my-first-job-mick-fleetwood/?mod=google_news_blog

My First Job: Mick Fleetwood.

Before he became the drummer of of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood was just a 17-year-old boy living in England looking for a way to make some cash. He took a job at a store called Liberty London answering phones at the sanctions desk. It’s the only job Fleetwood would ever hold before he was catapulted to rock’n'roll fame.

“My job was this. A customer would be in the store, like Lady Fontuse, and she was looking to by a fur coat. So someone would call up to me and ask if the lady had enough on her account. I would always say yes, she seems to be well taken care of. But it turned out there was a docket. I am dyslectic, have been my whole life and I would go into this blind panic. I would think I don’t know my alphabet, and I pretty much approved any phone call,” Fleetwood said.

But approving in a blind panic wasn’t such a good idea, and Fleetwood knew sooner or later he would be found out.

“Jack, who ran the office, said I spoke good English and he had be plans for me. He was devastated that they had to let me go after four to five months.”

During that brief employment in 1964, Fleetwood made about four pounds a week, all of which he gave to his sister for food and rent. Seeing as he was staying with her in Notting Hill Gate it seemed only fair. “It was the honorable thing given that Sally, my sister, let me rent my little mattress in the attic.”

But Fleetwood would take more than the money with him when he left Liberty London.

“I can’t function in those types of constraints. I am truly blessed that I have been able to avoid that. And I learned to try as much as possible to not be anywhere I don’t need to be.”

Fleetwood is often credited as keeping the band, Fleetwood Mac, together. He credits his time on the job.

“In order to run a great business, you must know that a bunch of really intrinsically unhappy people, that’s not a recipe for success. Don’t be anywhere you don’t need to be, it’s just like that.”

[Villavic]

This is how Mick describes it in his bookÑ

So I traipsed around and eventually was hired at Liberty's, the posh department store in the West End, toward Piccadilly. It was my first (and only) job of the kind where you had to clock in. I remember that I walked into a glass-walled cash office to talk to this rather swish old fellow about the job. He thought I was well-spoken, with the right accent, and took me on. He put his arm around my shoulder and told me that if I stuck with it I might be in an office like this someday. I looked around: it was like being in a cage.

I hated every minute. I worked on the sanction desk clearing people for credit and I could barely recite the alphabet. There were all these folders on my desk that I couldn't read. I went into terrible sweats, and ended up clearing everybody. John Jesse was working nearby in an art gallery on Bond Street, selling Henry Moore sculptures and beginning to collect the Nouveau and Moderne pieces for which he would become quite famous. I used to steal away to the gallery at lunchtime to stare at the sculptures and share a sandwich with John. I still treasure those moments because I so loathed Liberty's. I did my best to make myself repugnant there. Instead of the de rigueur collar and tie, I would wear a mod roll-necked polo shirt. I chewed gum and grew my hair. Other workers didn't like it and complained. Eventually I got fired and that was the end. I've never had another job.

What was I going to do? I didn't know right then, but I somehow felt something would happen, and it did.

One day in Hawbury Mews, I was playing drums in the garage by myself. As I doodled out a pattern, the garage door opened and a boy about my own age poked his head in and listened. I recognised him. His name was Peter Bardens and he lived three doors down from us in the mews. Pete got me my first gig, and thus began my career as a professional musician, "with two sticks and a drum."