Mick's 8 favourite Fleetwood Mac songs
 

pretty sure this is old.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/mick-fl...ood-mac-songs/

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Joe Taysom· October 25, 2020
Mick Fleetwood picks 8 favourite Fleetwood Mac songs

Mick Fleetwood is one of the most celebrated drummers of all time, a musician who is the glue that has kept Fleetwood Mac ticking for over 50 years. There isn’t much that Fleetwood hasn’t done and there is a reason why he is seen as being such an integral figure in the world of music.

Everyone undoubtedly has a different opinion on what the best Fleetwood Mac track is but there are very few people who are more qualified to speak on the topic than Mick Fleetwood himself. The drummer is one of only two omnipresent alongside John McVie in the plethora of different line-up’s the band have had over the last half a century. With a host of new fans now flocking to check out the band who soundtracked the most famous TikTok video of all time, also featuring a carton of cranberry juice, which songs would the leader of the band pick as his favourites?

Mick Fleetwood may well be one of the most under-celebrated figures of pop music. With his band, he, alongside some other talented musicians, changed the face of pop music. They gave it a sunshining hue and a golden-flecked core that meant the make-up of music as we know it would change forever. He mad easy listening something everybody wanted to get down to.

With a repertoire like Fleetwood Mac’s, it is an almost impossible task to pick out just one track and the drummer was unable to narrow it down to less than eight when asked by Music Radar. We are going to take a look through these eight delights from various stages from the iconic band’s career that saw them go from session musicians starting out on their own in 1967 to Grammy-award winning global juggernauts.
Mick Fleetwood’s 8 favourite Fleetwood Mac songs:

‘Love That Burns’ (1968)

Fleetwood’s first choice comes from the Peter Green era of the band from their sophomore effort Mr Wonderful in 1968 which is a world away from the type of music that would appear on their seminal Rumours album but it’s an incredible piece of music nonetheless.

“Peter Green. Fleetwood Mac. This is probably, almost, my favourite song. It kills me. Peter kills me. He was my friend, remains a friend, and he started Fleetwood Mac with me in 1967,” he said of the song. Not necessarily the biggest hit of the band’s career, the selection is born from Fleetwood’s own connection to the song.

“This is me in my full-on training ground,” he continued. “This is the essence of playing Oh Daddy, the essence of what I was able to get out of playing a form of music that allowed me, as a young chap, to express myself so thoroughly, not only vicariously through Peter – because I loved his playing so much – but when I was privileged to be playing behind somebody so talented. When I hear this, it’s all about a young chap, me, knowing why Peter was so overjoyed to be playing the music that he loved so much.”

‘Go Your Own Way’ (1977)

The second choice from the drummer comes almost a decade later, from the Rumours era of the band. Following Peter Green’s departure and the start of their global dominance, there’s one song that will always follow the group. ‘Go Your Own Way’ is probably Fleetwood Mac’s most well-known number and one that simply couldn’t be left off Fleetwood’s list.

“Lindsey walked in with a demo, in his wonderfully ordered fashion from the days when he’d just joined Fleetwood Mac until he realised that John and I played in a certain way,” remembered Fleetwood when recalling his favourite songs, “which was compliant to the structures and aspirations of a songwriter.”

“I love playing this song. It’s one of my favourites because I get to kick the hell out of my drums, and it’s got that wonderfully primal part. It’s a great ‘let loose’ stage song, in which I can revert to my old animal ways and not be quite so polite. Lindsey is a full-on rock ‘n’ roller on this song, and that I love.”

‘Rattlesnake Shake’ (1969)

Fleetwood then returns back to the Peter Green period for his next choice, the excellent ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ is easily the standout moment of 1969’s Then Play On and is fully deserving of its place on this esteemed handpicked list.

“On this song, you hear structure, yes, but you also hear me being incredibly free to break into the shuffle at the end, which was not supposed to happen, but it did and we went, ‘Oh my God, we really like that.’ I really loved that because it was my way of participating in creating the character of the song,” he says.

Adding: “It incorporated the freedom to go off on a tangent, to jam – the classic ‘Do you jam, dude?’ We learned that as players. You hear that alive and well in the double-time structure that I put in at the end, which on stage could last half an hour. It was our way of being in The Grateful Dead.”

‘Walk a Thin Line’ (1979)

‘Walk a Thin Line’ is one of Lindsey Buckingham’s finest moments from 1979 effort Tusk, a project which saw the band boldly deviate away from the sound of Rumours which had gifted them such rich successes and was a testament to the group that they shied away from the easy road.

“This is a Lindsey Buckingham album, written for the Tusk album,” recalled Mick Fleetwood in his insightful conversation. “I redid it this for The Visitor, the album I recorded in Africa, and the reason I did so was because I really loved the song and wished that I’d written it. I approached it with a whole ensemble of African musicians, so as a percussion player, during these recordings, I was, as we say in England, ‘like a pig in ****.’ I had the greatest time playing with these musicians on this rendition of this particular song.”

He added: “George Harrison was my ex-brother-in-law, so when I came back to England, he put some beautiful slide guitar on the track for me. I adore him and his music, and he is sorely missed.”

‘Dreams’ (1977)

The list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of ‘Dreams’, the track remains Fleetwood Mac’s only song to top the Billboard chart in the States and embodies everything great about their seminal LP Rumours. This track played a pivotal role in the band becoming the household name they are today and should rightly be considered one of their best.

“Dreams is a given,” Fleetwood says. “I think it’s the most famous song that Stevie ever wrote. The intro, I think is one of those stupidly simple things that came from the drummer who played with Al Green and The Staple Singers, so it’s from my love of what I call ‘greasy music.’ It has a real feel, and it’s lazy, behind the beat – stupidly simple but well-thought-out.

“The tempo of the song, I’ve been finding out, is something that really appeals to drummers, so I take that as a compliment. It’s something I took from great players who I love so much: Keep it greasy and stay in the slot. Gotta be in the slot!”

‘Oh Daddy’ (1977)

Christine McVie wrote ‘Oh Daddy’ for Fleetwood, even if he didn’t know it initially. At the time, Fleetwood was the only father of the band, with two daughters, therefore, the Rumours track holds a real poignancy for the drummer. “I’m a sucker for this one because it really is a structured song, which is so appealing to me as a player,” Fleetwood explained. “Basically, it’s me playing a slow blues with Christine.”

He continued: “Sentimentally I say this because I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out not too long afterwards, that the song was actually written about me. At that point, I was the only daddy in the ranks of Fleetwood Mac. Christine is a sister of mine and truly a great musician – and a blues player.”

‘Oh Well’ (1969)

The drumming maestro returns yet again to the halcyon days of the Peter Green era when the band’s dynamic was a lot more straightforward and they didn’t have to deal with the pressures that came with being one of the biggest bands in the world. “It’s two minutes of madness that I love. It’s a stop-and-start song, and to this day I get the heebie-jeebies thinking that I’m going to mess it up – which is good because that’s the child in me.”

Fleetwood added: “The structures that I was able to put together make it something that is very unique. It’s become a real staple of the diet, way more so than I ever realised with our contemporaries and the best of the best – they’re absolutely fascinated with this song.”

‘Tusk’ (1979)

The final track is the titular number from Tusk, which encapsulated the decadence of Fleetwood Mac during this time — ‘Tusk’ is pure unadulterated chaos which feels like the polar opposite of Rumours which is perfect because of its imperfections.

Speaking about the track, he said: “This is Mick Fleetwood gone AWOL. I really enjoyed working with Lindsey, who put the structure down. The song had basically been discarded during the Tusk sessions, and no one knew what to do with it. We’d made this jam song. The crazy jungle beat is very much a Mick staple diet.

“The song came back to life, on the face of it, from an asinine idea I got when I was on holiday in France. There was a brass band walking around the village, and I came back and said, ‘We need to put the USC Marching Band on this,’ and everybody thought I was crazy. Of course, we did it, and it’s become one of the classic Fleetwood Mac songs in concert.

Has Christine ever said that Oh Daddy was about him? Because I never heard that in my life until The Making of Rumours, TWENTY years after it was made, when Mick made the claim. I think he went to the $tevie school of truth telling.

My memory is like yours in that it was first revealed during the 20th anniversary Rumours documentary. However, I believe Chris also inferred it was about Mick. I remember something like her saying Big Daddy was about Mick how he was the only dad of the band. Then she went on to say he was "little daddy" for a bunch of years but he was always the rock of the band to keep it together. I just remember her little swipe at Mick's trouble years and calling him "little daddy."
Having said all that....the inspiration of the song is obvious some sort of love interest of Chris. It may just have been a false story when talking about the song. Who knows.

I'm still throwing the bull sh*t flag on this play.

They wouldn't have waited 20 years to reveal it. Lying Mick came up with the story, so company woman Christine dutifully backed him up.

Am I the only one that noticed that there are 3 Lindsey songs on the list...the very person he booted from the band?

Does anyone remember what the original words were? That could help us decipher who’s your daddy.

Like a lot of Fleetwood Mac songs, I don’t think Oh Daddy is about one thing or one person. I think it’s a mood piece and a lyrical collage. Perhaps it’s a vague sort of nod to someone in the band, like Mick, but it’s probably a string of words and phrases that just sounded great to Christine or the rest of the band, as it took shape in Sausalito, and maybe it started with an underlying reference to someone initially.

Oh, daddy, you soothe me with your smile
You’re letting me know
You’re the best thing in my life

Rather than draw arrows between each word and a supposedly corresponding reference in real life, I hear a song as a stylized way to create a mood. That’s certainly true in Lindsey’s case, where he admitted to often writing lyrics to fit existing bars of orchestrated music. I think even Stevie does that a lot, in more songs than we realize: If we took each mention of the word “tragedy” in her body of work literally, her life would have to be worse than that of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. Sometimes a line of ersatz poetry is just a line of ersatz poetry, and it creates a fictional world or just sounds groovy.

I noticed, too, and expected that someone would cite it as proof that Mick wants Lindsey back in the fold.

And of course it doesn't matter at all what Mick wants. He will follow what the old cash cow wants..so it is a no go.

He didn't list NOT THAT FUNNY, proving he hates Lindsey. :laugh:

I always suspected it was a lot to do with Curry. She was dating him at that time (though we have no way of knowing the timeline of the song to the relationship) but the bolded words above seem to fit a romance, and he was it during that period around that album (reference YMLF which she openly says was about him).

But who knows:shrug:

It’s a fairly self-centered list. Most of the songs on it are there because they have something to do with Mick (or Mick thinks they do!).

Tusk was, according to Mick, a co-write with Lindsey.

Rattlesnake references a guy named Mick.

Walk a Thin Line was used on Mick’s first solo album.

Oh Daddy is supposedly about Mick. (He’s so delusional about this that he’s pretty much gotten Christine to say it was.)

Oh Well and Love That Burns May be his true personal favs. I suspect Dreams and GYOW are there because, in addition to being great songs, they’re the most famous pairing of Mac tunes.

He once claimed the “great dark wing” in Sara was him...Surprised that’s not there.

Stevie has said this in interviews herself, back in the day so...:shrug:

I would cite it as proof, sir, but I think this is an old selection of Mick’s. However, I think it’s several years old and he compiled it long before he thought about firing Lindsey.

Mick soothes everyone with his smile, much like Mary Tyler Moore turns the world on with hers.

This is what Christine said in 1990. I believe it. I think this was the true origin of the song and don’t think Mick was imagining things.


“Oh Daddy, I had written about Jenny and Mick. Jenny and Mick were going through their bad times as everybody else was and this was written so to speak from the shoes of Jenny who at that time was really really sad about the lack of prospect of their marriage surviving. So, this was all about those two.”

Besides, she likes to talk about him as a daddy. Which is not to say Sugar Daddy is about him, thank the heavens. But in 1987 when asked who held the band together she said the energy shifted. When it lapsed in one person then the other person will pick up the reins. But she said Mick was the real glue.

“Mick, I would say, is the guru if you’d like, the daddy.”

Not That Funny blows goats.

No, not that one.

Please don't compare Mary Tyler Moore to Mick.

That's like comparing an angel to a year old bucket of pig sh*t.

I'm sorry to insult pig sh*t so rudely. :lol:

awww ha ha ha
awwww ha ha ha ha
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwrooooooooooooooooooooo
awwwwwwwwwwwwwrooooooooooooooooooooooo
ahwwwwww ha ha ha ha ha....

NO IT'S NOT THAT FUNNY!!

You reminded me of the Japanese TV show from 1990 where every Fleetwood Macster mentions his or her favorite song. Christine mentions something from Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters, and Stevie mentions Jimi Hendrix “Little Wing.” Anyone remember what Mick talked about?

My own favorite song list is huge!

• I Love You Goodbye (Thomas Dolby)
• It Only Takes a Minute (Tavares)
• Mothership Connection and One Nation Under a Groove (Parliament)
• Big Time and Come Talk to Me and maybe Biko (Peter Gabriel)
• Go or Go Ahead (Rufus Wainwright)
• That Lady (Isley Brothers)
• Heaven (Glen Scott)
• I Missed Again (Phil Colllins)
• Changes and This Is Not America (David Bowie and Pat Matheny)
• Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)
• Across 110th Street (Bobby Womack)
• Kaleidoscope (Fenech–Soler)
• 1979 (Smashing Pumpkins)
• It’s a Shame (Spinners)
• Be My Baby (Ronettes) the greatest pop studio recording of all time
• Shut Us Down and Red Rover and Soul Drifter and Say We’ll Meet Again and Did You Miss Me? (Lindsey Buckingham)
• Fantasy (Earth Wind and Fire)
• Lessons in Love (Level 42)
• Everybody Everybody (Black Box)
• Save It for Later (English Beat)
• Let Me Down Easy (Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose)
• My Ever Changing Moods (Style Council)
• The Loved Ones (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)
• Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)
• In God’s Country (U2)
• What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye)
• Atlantic City and Meeting Across the River (Bruce Springsteen)
• Home by the Sea and Turn It On Again (Genesis)
• If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
• Leave It Open (Kate Bush)
• For the Love of Money (O’Jays)
• South Central Rain (R.E.M.)
• The Tears of a Clown (Smokey Robinson)
• Strength, Courage and Wisdom (India.Arie)
• Lotta Love (Neil Young and Nicolette Larson)
• Dancing to Your Music (Archie Bell and the Drells)
• I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man (Prince)
• ABC and The Love You Save (Jackson 5)
• I’d Rather Be with You (Bootsy Colllins)
• Sideshow (Blue Magic)
• The House that Jack Built (Aretha Franklin)
• Stone in Love (Journey) my very guilty pleasure

I don’t have a favorite song list, but Did You Miss Me made your cut? Hmmmm.

Too many Prince and Jackson (I will throw in the entire family together) songs to mention.

The Beat Goes On, It’s the Little Things and Needles and Pins for Sonny.

SYLM, Hold Me, OMH and Calumny for Christine

Too many Lindsey and Stevie Songs to mention.

Nothing from Diana Ross, David? Even a Supremes song would be appreciated.

When you guys were saying they would get back together I was like NO WAY. But there have been subtle signs lately that I think this may not be so far fetched. What a joke. I will not go.

HA David when the album came out I LOVED NTF. I just thought it sounded so cool. I was sure it would be a single. I get the hate though, but I love the studio version. The live is annoying.

I've told this story a million times, but in high school, I'd FORCE all my friends to watch Mirage. They ALL hated ntf live! They would watch as long as I fast forwarded though ntf. That was our deal.

All that screaming... all that screaming. Oh oh AHHH AAHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I will say now, that "screaming Lindsey" would never go back to FM again, after being fired by that bitter old goat.

I want to say I won't go, but I'm not sure. I don't want him to go back. Ever. He, of all people, should have more self respect for himself. It will be really pathetic if he goes back. IF I go see them, it will be without most of the respect that I've always had for him.

I like NTF when it is short and sweet. I like the energy.

On Mirage, well it’s not really a song any longer. I can see why it’s annoying. However, I do find the “don’t wait me wait” and the smoke rings sexy, so I don’t complain too vociferously.

I did crack up in the rehearsal video when Stevie came on stage and said “it’s not that funny is it?”

I do like it when Lindsey is smoking the joint, and John is trying to get in there and suck up some smoke.

And Christine playing the upright piano on stage left, which they followed(ntf) with Sara(if memory serves-1982 is a long f*cking time ago, now), on which she played the same upright.

Its so funny because I had the EXACT same experience. I was hypnotized by Mirage and made my friends watch the VHS tape. They walked out halfway through. They were into metal and I was such a dork watching Fleetwood Mac :eek:

I had feelings of shock and disbelief how they bolted the way they did. I guess my forced indoctrination was not working.

Part of Fleetwood Mac died when the upright piano left the stage :(

It was NEVER the same again

That's the truest, most brilliant, smartest, most factual thing anyone has ever said ever!!!

Because it's the last time they were an actual BAND. By Tango, we had backup singers, off stage keyboard players, and percussionists.

Let's face it, the old goat had already started taking over back then, 33 years ago.

Yep. We had the same experience. Except my tape was Betamax!:lol:

I chose VHS!! Yay!!! I lasted years later. :lol:

Are you seriously suggesting Lindsey wouldn’t have had a bunch of backing musicians if he had stayed?

Did you see the OOTC tour?

Four other guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist, and three percussionists, and probably still used prerecords.

Sara sounded so good on the upright piano. It was never played the same way again. When Nicks did it solo in 1981, those opening keyboards were like nails down a chalkboard IMHO. NTF live was worth it just to see Christine pound on the upright piano. She reminded me of our grade school music teacher who would wheel in the upright piano and pound away loudly and try to get us kids to sing.

Visionary that I am, I talked Mom into buying Betamax!:p

I have two copies of the Brazilian rip off Mirage DVD, though. The one with the Behind The Mask band on the cover. :lol:

That's pure speculation on your part.

I did not see OOTC.

Not really. According to Mick in 1987, Lindsey wanted to add a second full-time guitarist for the tour, and said that it would have been Billy Burnette. I asked Billy about this in a Q&A and he verified it.

There’s an enormous musical difference between Lindsey’s band setup in 1993 and the direction Fleetwood Mac went in the 1980s and 1990s up to today. It boils down to a lot more than just an onstage head count. The Buckingham band was a precisely orchestrated approach with an experimental spirit, which you can clearly hear live in the interplay of acoustic and electric guitars, percussion, and vocal lines in all those sonically immaculate conceptions on Out of the Cradle: “All My Sorrows,” “Soul Drifter,” “You Do or You Don’t,” “Surrender the Rain,” and others. That show was designed to create a cinema soundtrack, almost, with a massive canvas of emotional moods.

What Fleetwood Mac did was much more formulaic and less thought out: to double, triple, and quadruple the instrumental and vocal onslaught merely to project everything outward in the cavernous halls of a sports arena or outdoor amphitheater. It was an IMAX event, not an experiment in orchestration. Maybe some of the songs benefitted, like “Go Your Own Way” (because the three member singers had got so sloppy over the years). But not everything did. Several songs lost their subtlety and their groove, no thanks to all that hardware backstage in the form of keyboard modules in Dan Garfield’s arsenal. In 1987, the band pared things down again for a few blues songs, as you know, and those blues songs were lovely, even though the arena setting was all wrong. Buckingham’s first live experiment in 1993 was an elegant, inspired melding of setting and production; the size of those “intimate” venues fit the scope of the show. As for LB’s stated desire to bring along another guitarist or two on tour with Fleetwood Mac in 1987, we’ll never really know exactly what he meant, will we? I think he had something a little more interesting in mind besides just filling sound holes and going 11 on the amps. I think he even said he wanted a second guitarist onstage so that he could try different things he had never had the opportunity to try before.

Point being that Lindsey didn’t have an aversion to adding auxiliary musicians, even in 1987. It wasn’t just coming from Stevie.

With all of the different sonic layers on TITN, it’s hard to imagine songs like Little Lies or Isn’t It Midnight working without an extra keyboardist and a percussionist.