June 24, 1995, Times UK
ROCK FAMILY TREES:
The Fleetwood Mac Story
Today, Saturday, BBC2, 9pm
THE band began 27 years ago, when a steady young rhythm section and a limited but brilliant blues guitarist who was celebrating his birthday were given some free studio time as a present. The blues guitarist was called Peter Green and he was the first and the greatest of the band's guitarists to go wild or crazy or Awol, or all three. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie have survived as the core of Fleetwood Mac, and they've got less hair, fewer brain cells, and a lot more money and enemies than they had back then. They also, just in case they lose the drift of their own stories (which, in McVie's case is likely, he's a gorgeous example of a rock star, grey bearded, bandanna across his pate, and a steady supply of little noises and hand movements to fill in the holes in his sentences), have Pete Frame's ''family tee'' and John Peel's voiceover to give us the details. The script is a little plodding. The direction is pedestrian and sometimes laughably literal: when a guitarist successor tells the story of Peter Green turning up with a piece of cheese in his hair, a piece of cheese obligingly drops down in front of us. But the stories and the contributors are fascinating. Drugs, sex, bitterness, madness, primary school headmasters, they're all here.
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