INTRODUCTION

IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE…

Play on. Two words, no more, but they’ve said it all to me.

They’ve been, at different times, a simple direct order, a call to action, a mantra and a comforting concept that promised rebirth. I first read them in the most beautiful and romantic couplet in Twelfth Night, my favourite of Shakespeare’s works. I’ve never forgotten it; in fact I took it to heart immediately because it spoke to me. When things have moved me so profoundly in this life, be they people, places or things, no matter how they’ve come to me, I’ve made them forever a part of me. I’ve signed countless autographs with the phrase ‘Play on’. I’ve said it to many people in many contexts. As I’ve made my way through life, as intricate and difficult as it has often been, as ecstatic and debauched as it has too often been, those words have always been with me. What they’ve come to mean to me has been a rock when the rest of my world was set adrift.

The entire couplet is the inspiration behind the title of Fleetwood Mac’s fourth studio album, Then Play On, released in 1969, which I still count as my favourite record. My second favourite is easy to choose: it’s Tusk, released ten years later by a very different incarnation of the band–the only one that many of our fans are familiar with. To those fans reading these words, please do stick around, you’ll be amazed to learn how many roads we travelled before we met you.

On the surface, Then Play On and Tusk have little in common sonically, but listen deeper and you’ll hear a band with its back against the creative wall, recording music at the brink of its existence. Both of those albums were made when we would either play on or cease to be, and when the idea of overcoming the insurmountable through creating anew was the only way out for us. I can’t say that I saw it as a solution, but I felt it as my faith, and I preached to my compatriots to play on–and that’s what we did.

I’m still here, lucky enough to be partnered with the greatest musical comrades I could ever hope to have. We have been through so many ups and downs, and though I denied it for years, particularly to my loved ones, I know now that since this band began, I have devoted my entire life to it. In every incarnation Fleetwood Mac has brought me so much joy that I hope whatever our fans have taken from the music is a fraction of what I’ve got from it. I’ve also realised, through trial, lots of error, growing older and hopefully wiser, how much that choice has weighed on my family. It’s hard to devote yourself to a musical family of our magnitude while trying to nurture one of your own; it’s an unfair tug-of-war I am still working out.

Music is a beautiful language, one that anyone with a beating heart can understand, no matter where they’re from. We need to share that, we need to honour that; it’s one of the only things that defies the boundaries humans love to erect. Music has seen me through everything–because when all else failed me, it remained the one thing I could rely on. It was, literally, the only thing I knew I could do with some degree of skill. More than that, it has always brought me joy and allowed me to find my centre. When I’ve felt lost in life, if I’ve lost myself in music, I’ve always found my way again.

I am sixty-five years old at the time of this writing, looking back at forty years in rock and roll. My first gig as a drummer took place in London in the 1960s when I was still a teenager too young to be legally drinking, even in England. I had no proper training, just a desire to be a part of the culture I saw evolving, combined with an innate attraction to rhythm. I went after a dream and found it backing some of the best English blues players of my generation during a time that changed history. I didn’t plan any of it, but I did believe that if I stayed true to my muse, I would find my way. And I have–though it’s never been easy.

On my farm in Maui, Hawaii, an island that I’ve been visiting regularly since the 1970s, and of which I’ve been a full-time resident for over a decade, I have a weather-sealed barn full of memorabilia: photographs, journals, clothes, cars, endless video tapes, concert recordings, all of it bits of Fleetwood Mac and my life. As much as I’ve always been driven creatively to move forward toward something bigger, brighter and unknown, I’m also a deeply-rooted nostalgic. I adore photos, mementoes, all bits of ephemera that represent each and every time and space I traverse. I’m a hoarder when it comes to these things. I love to document the moment, as much as I realise how much that moment is transient, nothing but a stop on the road.

I am thankful for that preservationist instinct because, having moved houses so many times, across continents, from the UK to Australia to Europe and the States, it’s a minor miracle that so much of this stuff is still in my possession. I’m not sure how to accurately convey what it’s like to open a photo album and find a Polaroid of a friend who has passed away, or pages of handwritten lyrics of songs, all of them with edits by my bandmates, from decades previous. A flood of memories wash over me when I find these treasures, all of them new again, focused by the perspective I’ve gained in the years since. It’s a beautiful kind of limbo, seeing yourself, your past alongside your present, through a new set of eyes.

I share this by way of an explanation of how this book began. My co-writer and collaborator, Anthony Bozza, interviewed me on my farm in Maui for Playboy magazine in March 2012, at a time when I’d just unearthed over fifty hours of footage of Fleetwood Mac touring Japan in 1977; the culmination of the Rumours tour. We were in our prime and it was the finale of the band’s highest high to date, so I hired a film crew to travel with us, giving them free rein to capture us both on stage and off. My intention was to edit the film and release it as a feature to run in cinemas the year after we wrapped the tour. That never happened; so many things got in the way, and I forgot about that little film for thirty years. I wasn’t even looking for it when I found it: I was trying to locate home movies my parents had shot of my siblings and me when we were kids. Instead I found a pile of tins in a box that had somehow made its way intact through the various storage units I’ve had over the years.

I had all of it converted to digital, preserving the saturated colours of the original work as much as possible, then I hired an editor and set about doing an organisational rough cut of what I decided would be a film, a DVD, who knew–I just knew it had to be shared. I was reviewing the first edit of those forty hours of history when Anthony arrived. It was wonderful to relive those all-but-forgotten moments with Anthony, a life long Fleetwood Mac fan. It refreshed my zeal and excitement and so began our journey. Over the course of the next two years, during trips to Maui, and time on the road during our 2013 tour, he and I relived the past. The result is what you now hold in your hand.

This book will not be a definitive history of Fleetwood Mac; you can find the facts and figures and plenty of rumours elsewhere. This is much more personal. It is the story of all that has ever mattered to me, the moments, the people, the time. It’s the story of my life in rock and roll and the blues and how the band that has meant everything to me came to define me. I used to say that wasn’t the case, but I know now that it’s true.

I see things with wonder each and every day. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I got here. I love drumming and I know I’ve never been suited to do much else, but truth be told, I regard myself as a guy who happens to drum, not as a guy who is a drummer. It’s a strange and subtle contradiction, but it’s part and parcel of how I see things and how I’m just now learning who I am. I’ve always valued progress over reflection, and romanticised drama and chaos more than I should have. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m taking the time to look inside now. I’m still a student. I’m still ‘in process’.

It reminds me of another philosophy of mine that I rely on when the going gets tough. When it all becomes too much, pick yourself up and go somewhere. Go somewhere you’ve never been, somewhere you’ve dreamed of going, somewhere romantic and mysterious. Go anywhere you can, because a journey is an adventure and adventures are how we learn who we really are. Writing this memoir has been a journey for me and I invite you to join in my adventure. It’s time now and I’m ready, so if you’re coming with me, off we go.