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Fleetwood Mac · S2 E1
Without a Leader
Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer try to fill Peter Green's shoes. Neither can carry the weight
Summer 1970. Peter Green is gone, and Mick Fleetwood is on the phone calling every guitarist he knows, because the band named after him has three weeks until its next tour and no lead player.
Chicken Shack, "I'd Rather Go Blind" (1969). This is Christine Perfect before she became Christine McVie. A raw, devastating vocal over a sparse blues arrangement that reached the UK top 15. This is the voice Mick Fleetwood heard and knew the band needed.
The Morning After
Mick Fleetwood does what he will do for the next fifty years: he refuses to let Fleetwood Mac die. Danny Kirwan is 20 years old and suddenly the lead guitarist. Jeremy Spencer is still doing his Elmore James act, brilliant but narrow, and nobody is sure either of them can carry the weight Peter Green left behind.
Kiln House: The Survival Album
“We never once considered stopping. Peter was gone, and it was terrible, but the band was bigger than one person. That was always the point of calling it Fleetwood Mac and not Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.”
— Mick Fleetwood, "Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac," 1990
TAP TO REVEAL: What was Christine McVie doing before she picked up a microphone?
What did Christine McVie study at Birmingham College of Art before becoming a musician?
Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)
A 1970 single written by Danny Kirwan, released just after Green's departure. It is delicate, wistful, and completely unlike anything the Peter Green band would have recorded. Kirwan's voice is thin but pretty, and the guitar work trades blues grit for something closer to folk-pop.
Dragonfly, Fleetwood Mac (1970)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Kirwan's voice is thin but the writing is delicate, a glimpse of the songwriter he might have become.
The band has a new voice, a new sound, and a reason to keep going. But during an American tour in February 1971, Jeremy Spencer walks out of the hotel to buy a magazine and never comes back.
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