Disney: Going Home (Mick in 1993)

[michelej1]

Calgary Herald, July 18, 1993

HEADLINE: MAGIC OF FLEETWOOD MAC TO GRACE DISNEY CHANNEL

BYLINE: BOB BLAKEY

BODY:
LOS ANGELES

There was a time when a business deal would have seemed unthinkable between the hard-drinking, fast-living blues band Fleetwood Mac and the Walt Disney Co.

But that 1960s blues band went through a lot of upheavals, including numerous membership changes and self-imposed sobriety and Disney has discovered the mass appeal of rock-concert specials on its American cable channel.

Result: an upcoming Fleetwood Mac documentary and performance special on the Disney Channel, part of the "Going Home" series that so far has always made it to Canadian audiences on the Toronto-based Family Channel.

Fleetwood Mac's music has touched just about everybody under the age of 50. If those early records, rich with the guitar magic of Peter Green, didn't win you over, chances are the astonishingly successful 1976-77 Mac lineup with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham is a milestone in the music of your life.

The "Rumours" album of 1977 remains one of rock's best sellers. Still led by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, with newer members, Mac soldiers on, currently sounding closer to its blues origins than ever.

Mick Fleetwood met with TV critics here to discuss the Disney Channel special. He's one of rock's most articulate spokesman. And thanks to an engaging, well-written (with help) autobiography a few years ago, he became a valued historian of his era.

In an interview after the session, I asked him if there's ever been any serious attempt to reunite the mid-1970s band, even temporarily.

"No, but we were approached in no uncertain terms to put (together) the Rumours incarnation of Fleetwood Mac for that long-distance, last tour and everything, but it never transpired.

"Lindsey's going off doing what he's doing.

"To be quite candid, we were offered an absolute fortune to do it. It had, certainly, it's up side. But no, it's very unlikely."

The tall (about six-foot-six) drummer made his book as much an account of British and American pop music as a life story. It described with remarkable candor Mac's good and bad moments and the band's highly publicized turmoil.

It also showed some of rock music's darker sides, such as the fate of Peter Green -- "the Green god," as Fleetwood called his idol -- and that of another early Mac guitarist, Danny Kirwan.

Fleetwood says both are sad tales.

Green lives in London as a semi-recluse. People have seen his fingernails grown to grotesque lengths. When he left the band, he renounced fame and wealth, tried to give his money away and stopped playing the guitar.

Since the book came out, "I spoke to Peter," says Fleetwood.

"He's not, I suppose, in the mainstream of what people construe as living a normal life, but . . . he's very cognizant of what's going on but he's also aware of his illness. He has sort of controlled schizophrenia, but he's still that person -- there are elements of that person I knew very well."

Fleetwood hasn't seen Kirwan for many years, however.

"Danny is, I'm afraid, an absolutely horrible story. He seemingly inherited his father's traits."

Kirwan's father "died a raging alcoholic on the streets," and the ex-musician lives in a Salvation Army hostel, drinking regularly at a nearby pub.

Fleetwood said he was talked out of paying his old friend a visit, by someone who knows him now.

"He said, don't do it. The trauma, for Danny, would just . . . He said, 'He talks kindly about you and about the band, but he's very sick.' "

News like that is one more obstacle for one of Fleetwood's biggest goals:

"I've always wanted to put on the show of shows -- to have an incredible concert with all the members of Fleetwood Mac that ever played. My dream is to do that one day."

And the odds?

"Logistically, quite frankly, it's a nightmare. So it's sort of wishful thinking. But stranger things have happened."