Curse of Fleetwood Mac (Daily Mail UK)
 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1xSaOTE52

Psychosis, sex cults, suicide and the curse of Fleetwood Mac guitarists
By Tom Leonard, 10 June 2012

An autumn night in 1972, and minutes before Fleetwood Mac are due on stage for the latest gig of their U.S. tour, a drama is unfolding in their dressing room.
Danny Kirwan, talented guitarist and the glamour boy of the band, is drunk. At just 22, he is an alcoholic who goes for days without food, existing only on beer.
Increasingly mentally fragile, he suddenly loses his temper over the simple process of tuning a guitar. Banging the wall with his fists, he hurls his expensive Gibson Les Paul instrument at a mirror, showering broken glass over his bandmates.


He then stomps off into the auditorium, pausing only to smash his head against a wall until blood pours from his face. Refusing to come on stage, he spends the show heckling the band from the audience as they struggle to play without him.
Perhaps it’s not surprising to learn that after he was swiftly sacked, Kirwan developed mental health problems as the effect of drink and drug abuse caught up with him. He even ended up living homeless on the streets of London.
But if Danny Kirwan’s story is a salutary warning of the excesses of rock and roll, he was certainly not the only member of Fleetwood Mac to suffer bizarre breakdowns or personal tragedy.

Now, yet another former guitarist with the group has succumbed to what many people regard as something of a hoodoo.

Last week, Bob Welch, 66, was found dead by his wife after writing a suicide note and shooting himself in the chest.

According to one source, Welch — who lived in Nashville, Tennessee — had spinal surgery three months ago.

Informed by his doctors that he would never recover the use of his legs, he told his wife Wendy he did not want her to have to care for an invalid.

It was a heartbreaking end for the soft-spoken Californian who years ago fell out with his old bandmates after he sued them over the rights to royalties — and was then excluded from Fleetwood Mac’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

The band’s singer Stevie Nicks said his death was ‘devastating’, hailing ‘an amazing guitar player, he was funny, sweet and he was smart’. She was, she added: ‘So very sorry for his family and for the family of Fleetwood Mac — so, so sad.’

Sad for sure, but Welch’s tragic end could not be called entirely unexpected given that — even by the standards of rock bands — the Fleetwood Mac ‘family’ is as turbulent and dysfunctional as they come.

The long-lasting British-American group may be remembered for such hits as Don’t Stop, Little Lies and Go Your Own Way, but in terms of drug-bingeing, partner-swapping, back-stabbing drama, it made the Rolling Stones look like a village fete brass band.

And perhaps no job in rock has proved so ill-starred as being a Fleetwood Mac guitarist. Welch was the second of them to die this year.

Bob Weston died in London in January from a haemorrhage aged just 64. He was found in bed with the TV on at his flat in Brent Cross, North London. Friends had called police after not being able to contact him for several days.

What current frontman Lindsey Buckingham recently dubbed ‘The Curse of the Fleetwood Mac guitarists' started back in the late sixties.

Guitar hero Peter Green founded Fleetwood Mac as a blues band in London in 1967. Colleagues noticed that by the time they released their fourth album in 1969, he was going off the rails mentally.

After taking large amounts of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, he grew a beard, began to wear robes and a crucifix and told the band’s manager he was Jesus.

He became obsessed by the supposed immorality of them becoming rich and wanted to give the band’s earnings away. The others could not believe he was serious.

Touring Europe in March 1970, Green binged on dangerously impure LSD at a party thrown by a bunch of rich Communists in a Munich commune. Friends said he was never the same again, transforming from mildly eccentric to fully-fledged basket case.

Green, who said he’d had a vision at the party in which he saw an angel holding a starving child, left the band two months later, complaining drummer Mick Fleetwood had refused his request that they donate all their royalties to charity.

He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Green spent time in various psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, and his friends were shocked to find him in an almost continual trance.

The man who had been hailed as one of the finest blues guitarists of his generation fell into destitution, having to find work as a hospital porter and even a gravedigger.
Much of his financial troubles were self-inflicted. In 1977, police surrounded his house and he was arrested for threatening the band’s accountant, David Simmons, with a shotgun. Bizarrely, Green said he was furious because Simmons was still sending him royalty cheques.

Mick Fleetwood used to visit Green regularly, but eventually gave up. ‘I was just so sad I couldn’t wave a magic wand and have him be the person I wanted him to be . . . he was very sick,’ he said.

Green managed some sort of recovery after he moved in with his mother in Great Yarmouth and even managed to resurrect his musical career in 1995 with a band called The Splinter Group. But he will always be remembered as one of the great Sixties musical talents cut off in his prime by drugs.

Slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer, one of the Fleetwood Mac’s original members, was notoriously wild on stage, imitating Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. Offstage, he couldn’t have been more different, a closet religious fanatic who sneaked away from the rest of the band on tour to read from one of the small Bibles he hid in the linings of his jackets.

Former band members say Spencer, too, had a bad trip — in his case on the mind-altering drug mescaline — during a 1971 tour of the U.S. After an earthquake hit Los Angeles, he had a premonition that something bad would happen there. It did — for Fleetwood Mac.

Spencer told Mick Fleetwood he was popping out to Hollywood Boulevard to buy a magazine. He never came back.

Days later, his frantic fellow band members discovered he had joined the Children of God, a sinister cult which used sex to ‘show God’s love’ and win converts. Spencer refused to rejoin the band.

He later explained he had been approached in the street by a Children of God member named Apollos, got chatting about religion and was invited to visit a nearby ‘church mission’. He still works for the organisation, now called The Family International, writing and illustrating stories.

Then there was Kirwan, a talented if humourless musician who was so emotional he would cry as he played. Landed with much of the songwriting duties after Spencer vanished, he was soon out of control, struggling to handle fame and gradually unravelling — as the story of the smashed guitar illustrates all too well.

And what of the tragic Bob Welch, who took his life last week? A young hippy whose father was a successful Hollywood producer, he joined the band after Jeremy Spencer joined the Children of God.

Mick Fleetwood credited Welch with saving the group — a sane and good-humoured presence who kept spirits up in those dark years.

Sadly for him, he left the band in 1974 just before Fleetwood Mac recruited Nicks and Buckingham, and made Rumours — which until Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the best-selling album of all time.

Before his departure, though, yet another guitarist sparked a drama that threatened to tear the band apart. Plymouth-born Bob Weston was revealed to be having an affair with Mick’s wife, Jenny Boyd — sister of Pattie Boyd, the former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton.

Devastated, Fleetwood sacked Weston and the band cancelled a planned tour of America.

Determined to recoup some of his financial losses, manager Clifford Davis launched one of the most bizarre stunts in the history of rock. Without telling the band, he formed a ‘new’ Fleetwood Mac — none of whom had ever played in the group — and packed them off to play the U.S. dates.

In the ensuing legal battle over ownership of the band’s name, neither the real nor the fake Fleetwood Mac were able to play. Bob Welch put up with the madness for another year before he left and launched a moderately successful solo career.

Today, after going through a staggering 15 different personnel line-ups, Fleetwood Mac still reunites for occasional project.

As for the curse on their guitarists, Buckingham is still going strong, somehow avoiding ever becoming a deranged alcoholic, drug-addled schizophrenic or Bible‑carrying cult member.

In his last interview, Welch mused that he, at least, had found happiness in Fleetwood Mac. ‘I just wanted to play guitar in a good band,’ he said.
For several of his old bandmates, it wasn’t quite such a great career move.

Has anyone ever seen video of the fake Mac?

Ugh....
 

Typical British tabloid excrement, with kernels of truth floating in the same old allegations, exaggerations and lies. As someone said: 'Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story...'
After looking at it, touching it, sniffing it and tasting it, be thankful you didn't step in it.

Perhaps, Mr. Spencer, you're the only one singled out in this article that might have a voice left to talk about "the Fleetwood Mac curse" in any detail. Please feel free to give your view of all that was written since you were there and probably know most of the guitarists. Thank you for at least giving a reaction here. What you wrote, of course, makes us more curious.

Green, who said he’d had a vision at the party in which he saw an angel holding a starving child, left the band two months later, complaining drummer Mick Fleetwood had refused his request that they donate all their royalties to charity.

What struck me is that this is pretty much verbatim the imagery used by Stevie in the song You May Be The One, which is reportedly about Lindsey.

'You were an angel, and I was a starving child..."

Jeremy, you're absolutely right about its being tabloid sleaze and crap.

What on earth does rock and roll excess have to do with Welch's suicide last week? Why discuss one in the same breath as the other? One story is a morality tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. The other was a very sad end to a purely medical crisis.

Another stupidity is the journalist's conclusion that Welch was left out of the RRHOF by the band as punishment for suing them. There are plenty of print interviews around of RRHOF committee members (like Robert Hilburn) explaining the decision (which was a committee decision, not a band decision—the band doesn't get to choose).

The Daily Mail have an incredible talent for publishing dross that haslittle to no truth or substance behind it. A bunch of monkeys could write a better paper than the Mail.

I agree with David and ButterCookie about The Daily Mail crap.
Anyway, the biggest problem for many 60's and 70's groups, for example Jefferson Airplane, was the wide spread of brain burning synthetic drugs such as LSD and cocaine. In show business were widely used, just think about the famous "blue velvet bag" that Fleetwood Mac had in the studio: they could snort cocaine whenever they felt tired and needed energy to play, rehearse and record continuously, without ever going to sleep.
It was really rare in those years to find a band whose members did not use drugs, simply because people didn't know the harmful and often deadly effects of these substances, especially in the long run. Everyone used it because it seemed the right thing to do and the only trick to find energy and play for hours.
We all know that Bob Welch snorted cocaine for a while, in a particularly difficult period of his life when he was depressed and without fame after leaving Fleetwood Mac; fortunately, like Stevie, he managed to win addiction and come out clean. They are smart people.
I don't know if we should talk about a "Curse of the Fleetwood Mac guitarists", maybe the truth is that some people have sought death, destruction and madness by their own hands. You can't blame someone else or the fate if you do anything to damage your health.
Death for Bob Welch was a different choice: he was healthy, going from being completely independent to depend on someone else while stuck on a wheelchair. He thought it was better to die than live like this, especially because he was still 65 years old. As a person who suffered and sometimes still suffers from depression and has considered suicide in the past, now I can say that of course I don't approve suicide as final option, but everyone is free to decide the "best" for their lives. I'm not one to judge. Apparently he assessed the situation before killing himself, especially thinking of his own wife and the burden that such a situation would create to her and his family.

not to say all things in wikipedia aren't true, but the exerts about danny kirwan are almost verbatim from wikipedia. now, i'm almost certain james wrote most of that :lol: but i bet if they used danny's they got the rest of the info for the other band members from the same place and that's just sh*tty journalism. who uses wikipedia for references?

They're only interested in increase their profits selling more copies writing lies or inaccuracies about someone else's life and personal issues, it's a shame.

The pathetic thing, is the people who purchase that crap, and even worse, believe it.

I agree with you, people have morbid curiosity...I don't know if this happens also in the U.S.A or UK, but for example here in Italy we have a lot of crap tv shows or magazines such as Novella 2000 or Eva 3000 full of stupid gossip about celebrity. This is the gossip country, and I hate it. It's a lacks of seriousness and respect for privacy.

Dave Walker, Billy Burnette, Rick Vito and Dave Mason all seem to be doing okay these days.

Matt

Of course, and even if Billy underwent quintuple bypass surgery in 2009, he's doing very well. Anyone could have heart problems, even young people: unluckily it's a common disease these days. Too much pollution, junk food, stress, less movement and a more sedentary lifestyle. My dad had a heart attack and was only 45 years old: he didn't smoke and never used drugs in his whole life but was overweight. For Billy it must have been a stressful life, always on tour, infact he said that shortly after returning from a tour he felt short of breath and went to the hospital, where doctors quickly admitted him and performed open heart surgery.

The Daily Fail. . .
 

This trash wasn't worth linking.VULTURES! ! !

Hilarious that they would state Lindsey Buckingham avoided becoming this that or the other. . .the man is/was a stark raving loon

Crap.. if there's a curse then it's in all people who abused drugs in the 60's and 70's. And many of them died young, far more than the late FM members. What is more ridiculous, they became "heroes" because of dying young (I read long ago they didn't forgive Bob Dylan for having survived all these years).

So boring, like when they started to say there were satanic messages in Eagles' Hotel California and Styx's Snowblind, when playing the songs in reverse.

Plus, the road isn't exactly the healthiest place in terms of diet and exercise. I found the "stress" of touring had more to do with food than the hard work, crazy long hours, and endless traveling. I actually enjoyed THAT part of the road.

I read all the gossip mags and I enjoy them very much. I have a huge collection in my closet. You'd think I owned a magazine shop if you saw how many there are. I don't have much free time so I read them when I'm able. I keep them in order by date. Some go back to 2009. I love reading the old ones because whatever it was that they claimed the celebrity was doing was usually denied by the celeb or their press agent. Then six months to a year later come to find out it was true.

A good example of this was the mags were reporting that Madonna and Guy were seperated and getting a divorce. Both camps denied and guess what? They got a divorce. The mags reported Will and Jada were divorcing and that was denied and guess what? D-i-v-o-r-c-e.

These mags know they can be sued so I'd bet they are careful what they state as fact.I will admit they are not always correct. For example they say in practicaly every issue that Brangelina is breaking up and they are still together or that Jennifer Aniston is preggers and to my knowledge she has not had any children.

An aquaitance of mine gives me approx. 40 new mags every other week and I laugh to myself knowing that the current issue won't be read for another two years.

Why is everyone so quick to dismiss this article as crap? It's not like it's dishing out accusations or gossip...everything it mentions seems to be well-documented in the history of Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green's mental health problems, Jeremy's sudden departure to join Children of God, Bob Weston's affair with Boyd, and now Bob Welch's unfortunate suicide.

You are right, they often don't have the time to have a normal lunch or dinner, sometimes they don't even eat (I remember Lindsey complained in the backstage of Rumours Tour because he didn't eat anything since morning) and maybe they only drink strong drinks...

Because those journalists often exaggerate the facts, sometimes they lie writing about things they don't even know and their lack of sensitivity is appalling, specially when a celebrity dies..

Oh my God, do you know that someone tried to do the same with "Rihannon" and "Gold dust woman" and people on Youtube think that there are satanic messages in it if you reverse the tape? That's so stupid... :shrug:

And that's why I've always turned down tour offers. I'm just not built for the road. I love hard work, but I also love sleeping in my own bed, and hanging with my friends after a show. I think I would hate being gone for weeks at a time....

I'd like to do it, if I was a musician and I already knew how to play the guitar. Even if I have some articular problems I'd like to live "on the road". I lived almost 2 years with hundreds of cockroaches, spiders (that frighten me) and toxic mold without a heater at almost 14° F, so I'd be willing to take the risk!
Do you remember when Stevie said that Chris always slept on the speakers in the van? Poor her back! Can you imagine how she walked in the morning? :eek: I'd have loved to sleep in that van with her too, I'm sure it was a freezer at night during winter and real penguins often came to visit her, and an oven during summer, so she could cook eggs by simply placing them on the car body.
Surely you've thought a lot about it before deciding not to tour. Since you can still play but at the same time sleep on a real bed, take a shower in your own home, being free to hang out with your friends and, most important thing, protect your health, you made the right choice!

I agree with you there. but I don't see anything in this article that is exaggerated, or that I would consider a "lie." Everything in the article is, I believe, generally accepted among fans as being true.

They were too harsh... :distress:

I can't stand these rags.They drive me nuts with all the fabricated stories they publish.They can leave Bob and the rest of the Fleetwood Mac family alone.

Oh yes but it is ridiculously funny to suggest there is a "curse", specially about people who abuse drugs; I'm not saying all FM members did, and of course this is about all rockers and not specifically about Bob Welch death, but I just think when you had a life with excess, it pays its toll. And nobody forced them, it was their choice (I know it was usual and part of the "culture" in those days, but I can't believe they didn't even think it was harmful).

Now that you mention it, I recall about GDW too. Plop!!

If that's what you choose to believe, fine for you. But don't claim that I or other people believe some of the crap in that article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKk7M7V9F8 Someone wrote that she was singing "My Lord is you", "What it is about my evil", "Forgive me" and "Evil warping's in Order" :D I'm sure Stevie would laugh so hard listening to it! :p

I didn't know it was in youtube!!:lol: I can't hear the phrases they mention. Maybe a "forgive" , but not "forgive me". It's just coincidence.. hey WAIT! SO IT IS TRUE!!! THE RUMOURS WERE TRUE!!! MICK SAID IT IN HIS BOOK!!! :sorry:

Meanwhile, as 1976 drew to a close, our career began to accelerate. In November our three-year-old album Mystery to Me was awarded a gold album; sales had been substantially goosed by increased airplay of "Hypnotized." Then, as we wrapped up our new album, John McVie came up with a new title for the record.

Rumours.

It was brilliantly apt. It seemed at the time that everyone in the music business in southern California had the exclusive inside dope about the secret lives of Fleetwood Mac, and no one hesitated to circulate the most scurrilous tales. They said that Stevie was sleeping with me; that Christine had run off with Lindsey; that Stevie was seeing both John and me on alternate Wednesdays; that violent fistfights were commonplace in the studio; that Stevie was definitely leaving the band next Friday; that Stevie had left us months ago and this was the reason the new album had been delayed; that we were all crippled by mass quantities of alcohol and cocaine; that Stevie practiced black magic and led a coven of witches in the Hollywood Hills; that Fleetwood Mac was a burnt-out case.

If you write "Fleetwood Mac reverse" on Yt you can also find "Never going back again" and "Rhiannon" :D

Tell me it's not true :eek:

I read Chris said something similar about her too! I hope I'll find that interview again ;) Anyway, this is too funny :D

The evidence...
http://www.buckinghamnicks.net/sn/im...itchyWoman.jpg

Just out of curiosity, what parts do you not believe? Peter Green wanting to give all the money to charity? His mental health problems and the subsequent hard times he suffered before returning to a better place in the mid-90s? Jeremy Spencer's sudden "disappearance" from the band and turning to the Children of God? Danny Kirwan's "breakdown" and the problems that he later had (and presumably still has)? Bob Welch's suicide? Because I was under the impression that all of those events are generally accepted as having really happened.

Or is it just the notion of a "curse" that you take umbrage with? If so, I'll give you that. Sure, it's some strong verbiage, but given the history of FM guitarists, I don't think it's it all crazy to create the "curse" narrative.

The things you mention above are pretty well accepted as fact (with the exception of Peter Green wanting to give all the band's money to charity). But a number of the details given in the article are clearly bull. Peter Green never "fell into destitution" - he always had plenty of royalty money coming in, and he took menial jobs because he wanted to, not because he needed to. Sure, over the years he gave away plenty of his money to various causes (including to his family) but nothing I've ever read suggests that he ever came close to giving all his money away at any point. And "police surrounded his house" - again, that's complete fabrication from everything I've read about his mid-'70s arrest. I could go on, but you need to do your homework before you claim that "I don't see anything in this article that is exaggerated, or that I would consider a "lie." Everything in the article is, I believe, generally accepted among fans as being true."

And as far as a "curse"...whatever. The author is obviously trying to be sensationalist in this article so he can call it whatever he likes. But you don't have to believe everything you read.

I can practically feel the venom in your voice as you typed this to Josh. Honestly, with the exception of Jeremy Spencer, because it is about him, I just don't understand why a fan of the group would be so upset by the article. It reminds me of when anyone would hear I was a fan of Stevie and they would tell me she's a witch. I'm not gonna waste my time defending her. I just say, "yup, she is."

Good for you, Sharksfan...
 

All the details you pointed out as bull, are just that. Also the story of Peter gravedigging is one of the lies that, despite my years of refuting, is still perpetuated; he was merely tending the garden of a church which included the graveyard. But that's too tame a story for the sensation hungry.
I treat such articles like a testimonial in court ... one lie and it's out. I've had too many years of dire experience with the press ... especially the British one, it's worse than the American press. They have long forfeited any right to my respect.

No venom here, and you misunderstand my point, vivfox. The article is what it is, sensationalist, exaggerated, people should understand that and it seems that most here do. Josh asked what I thought was not true in the article so I gave a couple of examples. My problem is Josh's earlier assertion that "Everything in the article is, I believe, generally accepted among fans as being true." As I mentioned before, if he chooses to believe everything in the article, that's fine - but I don't like someone else telling me what I accept as true, simple as that.

You apparently are glossing over my words "I believe"...I was always under the impression that most of the things the article cited were generally accepted. Which is why I simply asked why people were up in arms. If there were fabrications/lies/misrepresentations, nobody was citing any...so I thank you and Jeremy for pointing out some examples that have apparently been exaggerated by the press. None of us (save Jeremy) were there, so we have no way of knowing.

I was never telling anybody what to believe...I simply asked why everybody was so quick to dismiss this article as crap...when I was under the impression that most of the "allegations," if you will, were true, or , at least, generally accepted among fans. Nothing in the article seemed that new/crazy/out-of-the-ordinary to me in terms of the Mac "history." But again, it's not what I am "choosing to believe"...it's simply what has been reported as being true over the years...and I understand that we cannot always believe what we read (and that applies to you too, of course).

Jeremy Spencer,
Your words are appreciated here.

:D:D:D
http://www.comicbookbin.com/artman2/...stleblower.jpg