When Exactly Did Bob Welch Leave Fleetwood Mac?
 

Most accounts list the generic December 1974 as his departure date, but I'm curious exactly what day he left the band and when the band mobilized to recruit Lindsey and Stevie. Welch's last performance with the band to my understanding was December 15, 1974, so that provides roughly a two week time span of when he could have departed. Based on certain accounts, Mick contacted Keith Olsen around New Year's Eve to receive Buckingham's phone number, so I'm thinking that Bob's departure was later in the month.

not sure it's been made public which exact date he left. i've always just assumed it was soon after that last show in dec.In that dance group interview in 97, mick had said 'there was a 5% chance' that bob might leave and chris interjected, 'i think it was a bit more than 5%' and john added, 'the writing was on the wall.' so maybe they suspected he'd be taking off... but mick heard BN while Bob was still in the band, so i wonder if that was before december...it probably was.


--Lis

Ha ha
I never heard or remember that interview from the Dance. However there is a Bob interview on youtube that he says in his own words how much he hated working with the band and how much he could not wait to leave (I am paraphrasing of course). He also said the band hated him and resented him for the music he was making immediately after leaving Fleetwood Mac. He said the band hated his music so much that the band felt his music was going to hurt Fleetwood Mac. I sort of have a memory of Mick also describing Bob was not happy in his books. So I am surprised he said 5% chance.
On Bob's old website he would write how the McVies acted like royalty and Mick and Chris hated his talking during Bermuda Triangle and would give him side eye.
Of course once Fleetwood Mac became superstars they all loved each other again.....well at least until the mid 90s :eek:

What is amazing is how fast his replacement came. That live radio show was in December 1974? And just a few weeks later they go out and get drunk on margaritas and hire a guitarist they never played with before.

Well, here is Mick's account:

It happened after a minor incident. We were playing in Las Vegas and things were strained. It didn't seem that serious, but I could sense that something was in the air. In the kitchen after a gig, Bob sort of snapped and Chris said "F++k you" either then or later; my memories of this are hazy because it was nothing heavy. Unfortunately, it happened at the end of the tour, as we were about to make a new album. Bob simply said that he was leaving, and it wasn't a massive surprise.

"I felt like we were just going around in circles," Bob says. "Fleetwood Mac was floundering then, and the essential creative freshness had faded. I thought I needed to strike out on my own and find another context. They felt all they had to do was to add new blood. I could've stayed, but I felt that if I didn't test myself now, I'd never do it. I remember John McVie said, 'Bob, it's rough out there; you don't realize what you're throwing away for some possibility that doesn't exist.' I knew what he meant. Fleetwood Mac is a marriage you don't give it up easily. Mick tried to convince me to stay, but..."

It was almost New Year's Eve when Bob left the band. There was some upset over the latest defection John Courage destroyed an amp when he was told, emblematic of the crew's frustration with the foibles of musicians but I just said not to worry, that all would turn out well.

I rang up Keith Olsen over at Sound City and asked the name of the chap whose music and guitar-playing I had liked when I visited the studio...

i remember him saying the band hated his album after he left (and that he took satisfaction in that!), but not that they hated *him*. that's sad if bob felt that way...but 1974 was not a good year for the band or for their marriages, so maybe everybody was just tired and cranky and getting on each other's nerves.

chris and john have both only said pretty nice things about bob, from what i recall. i wonder what they were doing that made bob think they were acting like royalty lol. maybe it was just a very obvious american/british divide in terms of behavior/mindset/expectations. or maybe bob was exhausted from doing as much as he did to try and keep the band going w the lawsuit, getting them all to move to the US etc.. mentally he was prob just done with it all.

--Lis

No I dont think the band ever "hated" Bob. But Bob was not comfortable anymore with the Brits. There is an old story that I believe was on Bob's old site that Lindsey ran into Bob while recording the White album at some club and Lindsey asked Bob, "How the hell could you stand to be around these people?" :lol:

But regardless of what happened in 1974, everyone was rich and happy by 1977. The Mac were superstars and filthy rich. Bob had a top 12 solo album with 2 charting hits. Love was in the air until it wasn't ;)
Bob's side of the lawsuit really made Mick and the band look desperate. Bob and the band signed a royalty deal on the older albums that suddenly had new interest. In the Mac's darkest years early 90s when it looked like they may be over Bob finds out the band had renegotiated the royalties deal without him. To fight Bob was so penny pinching. The case was settled but it came from the darkest period of the band which is why the band was probably fighting over nickels.

Yeah i get a kick out of that story with lindsey. I'd imagine it must have been a bit of a head trip to try and finagle your way into the tight bonds that existed between the 3 brits....they could read each other like books and had been around long enough to prob feel a little possessive of the band and maybe distrustful or skeptical of newcomers and their contributions.

i laughed at bob's description in his Q&A about how it felt w them...can't recall exactly but along the lines of mick being like your weird cousin who spoke by making faces, john was your alcoholic uncle who you had to humor, chris was your crotchety aunt who also made crotch jokes ...:lol:.. i mean i'm sure it was no picnic at times, being in the middle of everyone's moods and idiosyncrasies!

--Lis

Was that the first seed that led to the decision not to include him in R&R Hall of Fame 1998 ceremony?

Bob's wife Wendy said that Christine said that if Bob was included, that she wouldn't be attending the induction.

Christine's tone and manner when Bob Welch was mentioned in that Dance rehearsals interview says everything. She was NOT happy with him. Mick, on the other hand, seemed compelled to mention him.

Re: the date of Bob's leaving. My guess is early-to-mid December. However, Bob was already cogitating an exit. Band lawyer Mickey Shapiro remembers Bob coming to visit him just a week after Mick Fleetwood had a consultation. The purpose of Bob's visit was to say he wanted out. Mickey was aghast at the circumstances of his new clients.

Whatever the date of his exit, it is quite clear from all accounts that Fleetwood and the McVies did NOT want Bob to leave. They had steady, modest success with Bob and didn't want to lose it. In 1974, Bob was their main link to the label and, as Mick has written in his magnum opus ;-), their "de facto manager" until Bob pushed Fleetwood and McVie to take a more active role in their own management. They had to be scared out of their minds when he quit.

I can imagine the core trio of Brits being difficult to work with. Their communication styles and sensibilities were in stark contrast to Welch's--or Buckingham's. Given their long history together on the British music scene, they might have treated Welch as "new blood," someone who needed to come up with a lot of the musical ideas and yet they felt was low in their pecking order. Weston once called them "kingpins." If that was the case, it would have had to be maddening for Welch. By 1977, Lindsey could at least leverage his role in their huge success to gain power. And by 1980, Stevie pretty much controlled all of them with her celebrity. But Welch didn't have celebrity.

I also suspect part of Bob's frustration with the Brits had to do with how they handled band operations after the canceled tour. Mick left for Africa; John to Hawaii. A postcard from John to Clifford Davis suggests John new about the reforming of the band, which did NOT include Welch, whom Davis did not like. That might have pissed Bob off. He had worked for years with them and they just haphazardly sort of let Davis run over them.

Yeah, I really find this very hard to believe. wendy was an interesting lady but a bit loopy in some of her opinions. this just seems very out of chris's character. I mean she had nearly both feet out the door w the band by then, she was done and retiring. do we honestly think she would have cared soooo much if bob showed up for 2 minutes on a stage that she would make a statement like that and then not show up? i can't wrap my head around that.

i still doubt that the Mac members 'made the decision' to exclude bob. i tend to think it was simply the RRHoF choosing the members in the 2 most successful incarnations.

--Lis

Bob really opened doors to the band. As the first American he took lots of arrows and hard knocks from the Brits. It definitely made it easier for 2 Americans with big ideas to join the band. The core of the Mac (Mick, John, Chris) were all set in their ways. Lindsey was young and had big ideas. I can understand the friction they must of had. But success melts that away I guess. But we all change. Chris was the reluctant one to come to the states. But then she gave lots of interviews in the late 70s how much she loved California and living in the States.
When success is rampant everyone is happy. But once success for Bob ran out and he found out about renegotiated royalties behind his back would have made anyone unhappy.
I always give Stevie kudos for always remaining best friends with Bob. She never turned her back on him.

In an interview with Goldmine magazine, Stevie said the following:

Mick called us right after Bob Welch left. He never said 'do you want to audition' or 'duo you want to come over and we'll get to know each other' or anything. Right from the beginning, it was 'do you want to join?'.

The article also says that the five musicians go together for the first time at a Mexican restaurant "a couple of days" after Mick asked the duo if they were interested in joining the band. This seems to suggest a late December departure for Welch, although as other users have mentioned above, I'm sure Welch was already contemplating his exit from the band before that.

oh, wow, she was best friends w bob, too??! she's got such a long list ;) but i assume those two never had the complicated history that mick, john and chris had w bob... they had all been thru good/bad/stressful times together before L&S joined. maybe that's why stevie and bob always seemed to hit it off...by then, they were just buds enjoying their success.

--Lis

Well, I've never had anyone sue me, but I'm VERY SURE that I wouldn't be happy about it.

I'd be demanding your non-inclusion as well.

F with Christine, and end up with your head on a stick. :xoxo:

I know the settlement is sealed and we would never know what Bob got. However does anyone know the timeframe when the rest of the band renegotiated without Bob? Was it in the timeframe of the lawsuit or was it done many years earlier and Bob happened to find out in the 1990s?
You would think it could not have been for much money in Fleetwood Mac terms. But then again you are talking about a band's drummer that sold his RRHOF award. :eek:

Yes, Mick wrote that the only time they held auditions was to replace Jeremy. But that was it. "Fleetwood Mac hired musicians on intuition and instinct" (about Rick & Billy).


. Bob appeared from Paris after we had heard four or five people play. He brought along some tapes, so we knew he could play; more important, we all got along well and decided that he was gonna be in the band. The auditions went on anyway for a while, but one night we went downstairs and started playing and that was it. It was unanimous. We loved his personality. His musical roots were in R&B instead of blues, and that was refreshing. We thought it would be an interesting blend. We knew he could sing; it was sort of talk-sing, with astute phrasing and timing.

In an interview with Classic Rock magazine, Mick Fleetwood said that Bob Welch "turned his notice in" at the end of the Heroes Are Hard to Find tour. There's a difference between announcing your departure and actually leaving at the end of the tour, as the Record Plant performance occurred roughly one week after the last date of the Heroes Are Hard to Find tour.

https://www.fleetwoodmac-uk.com/articles/FMart101.htm

I think whether there was a formal announcement or not, Mick realized Bob wouldn't be in the next album before he asked Keith. Though Lindsey wasn't a direct witness, he also commented so in the Classic Album Rumours documentary.

Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio to record an up-and-coming album. And I think he suspected that Bob Welch was going to be leaving the band. Bob Welch was the guitarist that I replaced. But at this particular time, he was just looking for a studio.

In a parallel universe, Lindsey and Stevie are recruited and Bob changes his mind and comes back. I don’t know how it would have panned out, but it would have made for a hell of a band.

Depends at what moment he decides to come back. If it's few days or weeks, maybe the english guys accept it. But I don't see Lindsey would like to work with Bob in the new band. More conflicts. That wouldn't have lasted long.

And if Bob had decided to come back when the white album is already being played on the radio, I don't think they would have welcomed him.

The press kit for the White Album seems to indicate that Welch was supposed to maintain some sort of role with the band even after his departure.

"On the last day of 1974, after four years in the band, Bob Welch was exhausted by the band's arduous touring schedule, and desired to pursue solo musical goals. However, he'll still be involved with Fleetwood Mac on the production side, beginning with the follow-up to Heroes Are Hard to Find".

https://www.fleetwoodmac-uk.com/arti...twood-mac.html

But at the end that didn't happen, did it? I don't remember reading about Bob interacting with the band in the recording sessions.

Well, Debbie Downer, you don’t have to go and dampen my dreams. It’s only a ‘what if?’

I know, my dream was a wonderful studio album when Christine came back. But life wasn't that great.

PS: Debbie who?

He jammed with the band during the Rumours sessions as mentioned in Ken's book, but Welch did not maintain an active role in the band after his departure outside a few live performances of "Hypnotized" and the occasional visit.

Wasn't Bob among the group of singers at the end of Don't Stop?

I believe he was.

Oh my god….ive just had my first experience of a Mandela effect….:distress:
A Debbie Downer is somebody who is negative who dampens other peoples joy.

Google:

a pessimistic person
Evolving from the character's popularity, the name Debbie Downer eventually became an established slang phrase referring to a pessimistic person who frequently adds bad news and negative feelings to a gathering, thus bringing down the mood of everyone around them.

Apparently it’s a term that was started on Saturday Night Live in 2004. But I swear it’s a term I grew up with way before that. As a Brit, I’ve never even watched Saturday Night Live in my entire life, but I’m sure it’s a common things from the 70’s and 80’s. Now I’m freaked out a bit as there’s no mention of Debbie Downer appearing anywhere before 2004.

I grew up in the States and I've heard Debbie Downer my entire life. It did not start in 2004. I don't know the origins but heard it my entire life as early as the 1970s.

Exactly….but if you google it you won’t find any mention of the term….ever, before SNL

Is Bob the one behind the one lying down?

https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/...0,c_fill/h_447

Just for the record I didn't have the intention to be negative, nor spoil or criticize any dream. As I already posted, I did have dreams about the band, too.

I just read the post and understood it as a hypothetic scenario and I analyzed, wrote what I think and share some what if ideas if that happened. I just thought I was following the game. It's what we do here, isn't it? Specially since there is no Fleetwood Mac anymore. I think it's all we have left. Sorry if it was misinterpreted. :(

Yes, sitting next to sandra on the floor, behind the guy who's lying down.

--Lis

Fuzzy was teasing you

Yes, I should have said Just for the record OR Just in case... :)

Yes Villavic, all good.
I know it would never have worked out for Bob to be in the band with Stevie and Lindsey. As much as anything else, there’d have been way too much creativity. They were already competing for album space between them he 3 of them so having a prolific songwriter like Bob would never have worked. I do wonder how they would have sounded though. If Bob could have bowed slightly to Lindsey’s production a little.

I don't think it would have with Lindsey and ANY OTHER MAN singer/songwriter, unless the guy was just a complete wuss. I think the girls were more willing to give in to Lindsey's production ideas, than most men would be.

I've asked a few different sources and they all aligned in saying, "that it's just not true". And one said, "Why would you listen to anything that woman said?" Rest her soul, but she was a bit crazy.