SXSW Music Interview: Mick Fleetwood
Fleetwood Mac co-founder reflects on 50 years since the band first got together
By Jim Caligiuri, Fri., March 17, 2017
Mick Fleetwood and John McVie founded one of the most successful bands of all time. While millions still worship the Buckingham-Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac that went global starting in 1975, relatively few are aware of the revolving door of lineup changes the group went through after starting as a quartet in 1967. The drummer pays homage to those early years inside an amazing book of photographs, memorabilia, and archival material with text, Love That Burns: A Chronicle of Fleetwood Mac Volume One 1967-1975, produced by Genesis Publications UK in a run of only 2,000 autographed copies.
"The inspiration for it goes back a long way," explains Fleetwood, 69. "Years ago, Genesis put out a publication with George Harrison. I remember seeing it and, you know, George was my ex-brother-in-law. I was so impressed with the way that book was done. I always wanted to do something like that, so it just made sense.
"I wasn't even thinking about it, but this year marks 50 years since the inception of the original fourpiece band. It took longer to put it together than I thought, so now it's very apropos and somehow historically even more poignant."
Fleetwood possesses some of the rare swag in his own archive, but fans supplied the rest.
"It's really a testimony to the time we live in where you can draw from people with archives," he confirms. "At a certain point, you don't mind where it comes from. I remember Jimmy Page put a book together for Genesis not that long ago. It says in the introduction that he went online and asked, 'Has anyone got any stuff out there?' and a lot of stuff was gathered that way."
