Fleetwood Mac—Millennials will not break the chain
- Shruti Sundar Ray
- Mar 7, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: May 2, 2020
The timeless tunes of the classic soft rock band continue their resonance with new generations of audiences even as members continue to fleet in and out of the line-up
British-American soft rock band Fleetwood Mac’s 20th major concert tour An Evening with Fleetwood Mac, an over-a-year-long multi-country extravaganza, concluded recently in November 2019. The best-selling band, that has seen many changes in its line-up over the years, was formed in 1967 and is still going strong.
The tour is noteworthy, not only as a testament to the enduring appeal of the band that continues to draw in full crowds, but also for the marked absence of Lindsey Buckingham, lead guitarist and vocalist from the classic-70s-Rumours line-up. The rest of the so-called-classic line-up—comprising drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist Christine McVie, and singer songwriter Stevie Nicks—toured alongside replacement members Mike Campbell, formerly of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Neil Finn of Crowded House.
“Last year, just when it seemed the sordid telenovela of Fleetwood Mac could provide no further twists, the band kicked Buckingham out, reportedly at the behest of Nicks,” reported the Guardian, giving the concert a rating of three out of five. During the tour, Buckingham is reported to have sued the band, which settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
For some, this iteration without Buckingham is sacrilege—“Lindsey Buckingham’s absence casts a pall over a singalong show, despite sterling work from subs Neil Finn and Mike Campbell.” For others, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for a band known for its drama. “There is no perfect distillation of Fleetwood Mac. No epitome. They are an ever-changing beast whose endurance would be their greatest legacy if they didn't have so many amazing songs,” says one reviewer of the Australia leg of the tour.
Despite the wide genre diversity in their popular songs, in terms of monetary significance, the 1977 album Rumours tops all charts. Rumours was Fleetwood Mac's second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, who joined in 1975 and were dating at the time. It has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the fifth biggest-selling studio album of all time.
It is still selling. As is evident from their 2018–19 world tour. And many many appearances in recent movies and TV shows—The Chain in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Landslide in Netflix’ Atypical, Dreams in shows such as Big Little Lies and Quantico, and multiple songs in American Horror Story: Coven, to name a few. “Overall, the under-35 crowd is now listening to a whopping 58% more Fleetwood Mac than they did two years ago,” says data story-teller at Spotify Eliot Van Buskirk, who was quoted by Digg.
“Fleetwood Mac’s music does a spectacular job of crossing the spectrum of human emotion,” according to reporter Angelica Cabral for the Phoenix New Times. To understand what they mean, one would have to delve into the “folky, poppy, psychedelic” tunes of Fleetwood Mac’s songs and also their introspective heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics.
“For you, there'll be no more crying / For you, the sun will be shining / And I feel that when I'm with you / It's alright, I know it's right,” start the lyrics of Songbird from the Rumours album. Sharing their experience of listening to the song while feeling isolated, Cabral writes, “For the full three minutes and 20 seconds of run time, I cried while Christine McVie told me it was going to be all right, that for me there would be no more crying. After listening to the song over and over, I began to believe her.”
“And knowing the things that their songs touch upon—optimistic sadness, existential anger, supernatural revenge—it’s hard to shake the feeling that it wouldn't ring uniquely true with a generation that is working through some real shit,” says one reporter commenting on the resurgence of the popularity of Fleetwood Mac among millennials.
According to Cabral, “Online, people write about their heartbreak and sadness, leaving it all on the table for the world to see, much in the same way Fleetwood Mac metaphorically cut themselves open and let the world take a peek into their pain.”
One reviewer surmises that “the mystic croon of Stevie Nicks—more so than the saccharine trappings of Christine McVie or unremarkable anger of Lindsey Buckingham” lies at the heart of this appeal. “Her songs are in communion with the eternal. They are about the heart’s ancestry, the force of the natural world, and the lovestruck sob into the void that comes echoing back 20 years later at an alarming volume,” says another in agreement. “I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you / You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you," sings Stevie Nicks in Silver Springs one of her greatest songs that demonstrates with stark vulnerability how “true love makes mournful witches of us all”.
Silver Springs was cut for time from Rumours, an album recorded amid much interpersonal strife within the band. “Christine McVie and John McVie were separated, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up after years of partnership, and Mick Fleetwood’s wife was divorcing him. All of this caused considerable tension within the band,” notes one commentator. This is part of the band’s charm, notes Cabral. “It’s not just the music that draws people in, it’s the story of how the music got made that intrigues many people. As millennial comedian John Mulaney puts it, Rumours was made “by and for people cheating on each other.” And if there’s anything people, and especially younger people, love is watching drama unfold; it’s why shows like Keeping up With the Kardashians have managed to stay on the air for so long.”
The drama for Fleetwood Mac is not frivolous though; it stems from the intensity of love, heartbreak and moving on without love lost. The Chain, one of the most popular songs of the band and the only song credited to all the five ‘classic’ members, “cobbled together from various demos and fragments until it belonged to everyone” as Sarah Marshall writing for The Week puts it, is testament to this sentiment—“the impossibility of staying together, and the impossibility of coming apart”.
Marshall reckons that The Chain would make for an apt anthem in divisive times. Like the chorus of the song shouts out over and over, “And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again / I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain.”
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