the Fake Fleetwood

A Bay Area Music History

The Fake Fleetwood  

I started getting interested in listening to music in the 60’s, the first concert I had ever gone to see was in the spring of 73, when a friend and I saw the Fleetwood Mac Band.  I was just shy of my 18^th birthday, and still a couple months away from graduating high school.  There had been a time earlier when I saw “The Grassroots” play at Disneyland, but that really wouldn’t be what I’d classify as a concert, because it was at Tomarrowland, next to Never Never Land.  Bands at Tomarrowland would play about 30 minutes before the hydraulic stage would sink below ground level, disappearing, replaced by a giant planter.  Crowds would then disperse and maybe 30 minutes later the stage would pop back up, with the planter as the roof, and the band would begin playing again. People would start mulling around, gathering in to watch and then 30 minutes later, it sank down again.  It was Disney’s way of giving you a brief experience of a rock concert at the same rate as one of their carnival rides. But it was the first time I had ever seen rock music played live, I was consumed and taken in by it.  I had been to Disneyland a couple times in the 60’s, but this was something new, I had never seen anything like this.  It was cool how Disney was integrating rock music into their wholesome family theme park. I stood there through 2 or 3 waves of crowds before I was pried away by my friend, who wasn’t as interested.   In California, during the 70’s, Rock and Folk music were clearly becoming a part of our culture, just as I was coming into age.  

The first REAL concert I went to see was the British Blues band called Fleetwood Mac, who were playing at the Women’s Gymnasium at San Jose State University.   With a high school buddy, John,  we arrived up to the venue where  Pink Floyd could be heard blaring out through the loud speakers from inside, so loud that the music could be heard clearly outside, giving it an extra bit of a thrill.  I can even remember the song that was playing as we got in line to go in, “Fearless,” off the Echoes Album, a song with crowd chants, molding perfectly into my first event. Whenever I hear that song now, a distant memory of those times comes back to me.  It became what I would learn to expect as a standard of atmosphere when going to these type shows. 

I believe we had assigned seats, ending up in the bleachers toward the back of the gym where we got comfortable, it was so first time. The lights soon dimed and the music started playing but I don’t recall the name of the opening act, but I do remember there was an extended drum solo at some point in their set.  It went on maybe 15 or 20 minutes,  John was ecstatic!  

Fleetwood Mac in those days was one of my personal favorite bands to listen to on the radio and record player.  Friends and I use to love talking about their music and albums, like Future Games, Then Play On, Bare Trees and particularly Kiln House, these were all Fleetwood Mac vinyls that my older brother owned and I was listening to regularity.  Songs like Green Manalishi, Oh Well, Station Man and Black Magic Women where  played often on the radio and  were played this night to a great appreciation of the audience, but songwriters  and the former  lead guitarist, Peter Green and Danny Kirwin were  no longer a part of the band.

PETER GREEN  DANNY KIRWIN   

Fleetwood Mac’s lead guitarist, Peter Green and Danny Kirwin were starting to do some very interesting stuff together in the late 60’s.  It had been some of the most productive period for the band to date and they were selling lots of records and getting a lot of radio air play.   These two were very creative and developed a unique style when carrying the length of a tune together.  Unfortunately both were gone by the time I first saw Fleetwood Mac, but optimistically I had hoped they might show up but they didn’t.  Green had quit the band in 1970 after a reported LSD induced trauma which lead him to believe money was evil and the profits should be giving it all away.  But before Green left he kicked out one huge hit called “Green Manalishi,”   in which in my opinion was one of his best effort to date.  With the loss of Peter Green, the band contemplated breaking up, but Green’s young protégé, Danny Kirwin seemed to fill the gap.  A year or so later another guitar player left the band, Spencer, opting out to join a religious cult,”   vaguely was he ever heard from again.  What was happening with this great band?  Years later,  band manager, Clifford Davis once tracked Green down bearing royalty commissions, but Green yielding a shotgun warned Davis to never come back.  After the incident, Davis contacted the cops and Green was arrested and hospitalized, never really resurrecting his career.  Green’s fast fade into public obscurity turned in to a mental illness assuring he would not be returning anywhere in the near future .   Then Kirwin started distancing himself from the band, he was drinking a lot of beer and wouldn’t eat for long stretches of time.  Some hinted that he too was in on some weird trip.  Then one night Kirwin went into a rage during a tune-up session, and in that night’s performance he watched from the crowd as the band struggled through their sets without him, so he was fired.    I don’t think Kirwin liked Spenser’s replacement Bob Welsh.   Welsh was claiming Kirwin was taking things WAY to seriously.     

Kirwin had been shocked by his dismissal in 1972, his career went nowhere after that, which was a terrible waste.  Years later, word was Kirwin was walking the streets of London, homeless, like Green he would later be diagnosed with mental illness too, or was it the LSD?   It is important for me to stress  here how significant it was to see these 2 creative artists just fall off the map while on their way stardom, yet the band continued to carry on.

Bob Welsh replaced Spenser, Kirwin was replaced and a guy name Bob Watson, these were the two guitarists that I saw play the night at the girl’s gym.   That night they played a lot of Welsh’s contributions, like Bermuda Triangle, Miles Away and Sentimental Wind, stuff off of the “Penguin & Mystery To Me” albums.  And then the band went off into all the hits the predecessors had written, songs that the crowd recognized and swooned over.  Welsh had become the band’s frontman by default, when Kirwin, Spenser and Green had quickly faded away. 

But through all these changes the band had two constants, drummer  Mic Fleetwood  and John McVie on bass, who had melded together to become one of if not THE best  solid rhythm  section on earth.  John’s wife, Christy McVie was contributing a respectful piano, while writing songs and singing too, but there was trouble from the start with this marriage, fueled by John’s drinking.

Bob Welsh’s contributions were not any of my favorite, though not awful.  The albums he had predominate influences over, were clearly during the band’s least successful era.  In my opinion, interest in this group was tapering off during the early 70’s; the band appeared to have lost its magic and was coasting on its past successes.  However for me that night’s concert was great, I wish we could have had better seats to see the band up close in action. But after the show, John and I agreed the band missed the unique influences that came from Green and Kirwin, but still they were carrying on live shows without missing much of a beat.

This was a weekend show I saw and when I went back to school explaining to classmate who it was that we’d seen the week before, one guy expressed a  moan of jealousy, revealing he too was a Mac fan.  And then a couple days later he said “hey, if I pick up some tickets to see a live show would you be interested in going along?”  And I said “ yes of course,” so about a month later a bunch of us from Aptos High School were off to San Francisco for what would be my first Winterland Ballroom show, staring;  Johnny Winter,  Foghat and Frampton’s Camel .  On the day of the show we got there plenty early and stood in line for good seats and ended up sitting in the back balcony.  When I looked down into the standing crowd of people below, with the famous Winterland mirror ball above their heads, it made me wonder why weren’t we down on the floor?   The show was a rocker that night, plenty loud, with plenty of electric guitar.  We all left that place with our ears ringing, which stayed ringing till we woke up the next morning.  For the record; Jumpin’ Jack Flash was played by all three bands.

This was how it all started with me, how I became interested in the live music scene.  As I met new people who shared the desire to go to shows like these, I continued incorporating live music into my diet, following bands like someone else might follow a baseball team, or a star player.  I was lucky to have been able to share part of this generation with promoter, Bill Graham, who had the wear-with-all to provide us with Winterland, soon to become our home away from home on weekends.  Winterland was to become the premier concert hang-out of the 60’s and 70’s.  

In the fall of 73, I started into college for a lack of a better plan.  Continuing to live with my folks, I began attending Cabrillo College, but it didn’t take long to realize that college was not going to cut it for me and before my first semester was even over I had met a girl back down in ‘The Valley” and whenever I could get my hands on the family car, or it was warm enough to ride my motor cycle, I would go over the hill to see her.  My older brother had moved back down to Santa Clara Valley too. 

During this time, rumors started circulating that “The Who” was coming to town, another one of my favorites, all I could think of was (Live At Leeds.)  So for one of my first dates with this gal friend, Karen, I took her to see The Who at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.  When the tickets went on sale for that show, it sold out in an hour, it was all assigned seating.  I was lucky to get a pair, I had some friends in the same line who weren’t so lucky. 

Our seats at the Cow Palace were assigned and not very good, they were pretty far back, regardless, it was still a very memorable night.  In what turned out to be a pleasant surprise, Lynyrd Skynyrd was the opening act, making their Bay Area debut.  They blew the crowd away with electric guitars, closing with the all-powerful “Free Bird,” closers of all closers.  The Who was actually a bit of a disappointment, as half way through their set of Quadrophenia, Keith Moon passed-out and collapsed behind his drums.  Followed by a 20 or 30 minute interruption, they were able to revive Moon and the band came back, but a couple songs later Moon was down again, this time for good.   Pete Townsend requested help from the audience and someone from the crowd jumped on stage to fill in for Moon, they could finish the show but needless to say there were no encores. 

If you were to ask me, there was a time when there was no better drummer than Keith Moon, it later became clear Moon was on his full, downhill  spiral skid,  five years later, age 32, he was dead, (drugs and alcohol). We got to see Moon one other time at Winterland before he died, but by then his intensity was slipping.   

A couple months later I was still hanging out with Karen, she lived at home with her parents, who took a liking to me so I was able to hang out there a lot.  She was still going to high school during this time and she wanted to take a bunch of her neighborhood girlfriends to see a live show, like she had seen with me when we saw The WHO .  So we started paging through the entertainment sections of the newspaper and noticed that Fleetwood Mac was coming back to town again, this time playing at the old San Jose Civic Auditorium.   I said, “what the heck, they’re great, let’s go.”   I was feeling  like I would  be the veteran now,  which felt pretty good.   Karen went out and bought a bunch of tickets for us and her girlfriends, and once again I was going to see Fleetwood Mac. 

The show was on the last day in January of 74, the tickets were bought well ahead of time and we got real good seats, maybe 5 or 6 rows back on stage right.  The 1^st band was a good opener, I thought they called themselves Silversmiths, but thinking back, they may have  been Aerosmith.  None the less they had a lead singer that looked and sang like Steve Tyler.  I was all pumped up to be able to see music like this up close, and on deck was Fleetwood Mac who I was anxious to get a good look at.

When Fleetwood Mac came on the stage, the lights where dimed down and didn’t come back bright again until they fired up.  Excitedly I began panning the band looking for somebody I might recognize,  but nope, I couldn’t  recognize anybody.  They went through about 4 songs without stopping, rolling from one song to another to another, but after the 4^th song came a break, and that’s when it started.  People from the audience started yelling “hey, who are you guys?” But before an answer could come forth, another song would start.  The music wasn’t bad but the songs they were playing weren’t Fleetwood Mac songs, not that I could recognized anyway.   After 2 more songs there was another break and the crowd, including myself chirped up again, booing and shouting  “who the hell are you?”  This time we got a reply, “We are the NEW Fleetwood Mac.”  And then , BOOM! starting right back into playing again, drowning out the crowd chatter.  Thinking back, that’s how they were introduced too, as THE NEW Fleetwood Mac band.  By this time me and a good part of the crowd had become perturbed, where was Mic Fleetwood?   Mic was 6’5, he couldn’t be missed, he wasn’t even playing the drums, how could this be the Fleetwood Mac without him?  Hahh.  We’d been had!  I told the girls “let’s go,” but  I don’t think the other gals even really knew what the hell was going on, but we all got out of our seats and walked out in the middle of a song.  One  gal was hesitant in wanting  to go, she was  having a good time, but Karen and I were fans and we were pissed.  Walking back out to the ticket window  we demanded our money back, but that wasn’t about to happen.  Days after the event we served papers on the promoter trying to get him into small claims court to get our money back but the guy kept dodging service, so Karen’s dad knew a lawyer who made a phone call and we got our money back by agreeing not to tell anybody on what went down.  The attorney told us that the promoter had been duped by the manager of the band, Clifford Davis

Despite the setbacks, it really didn’t damper my desire to continue to go to live music, as I attended 6 more shows that year including one show where Karen and I stood in a sparsely attended floor  crowd, right up in front of the Winterland stage.  This was to be my first time in a standing crowd and what was really nice was that there was  very little crowd pressure because of the light attendance; we really had a great time.  At Winterland in general, the crowds were alcohol free, mostly because of serious body and purse searches you went through at the front doors,  and there were no concessions.  But what they obviously couldn’t stop was the marijuana use, and the crowd freely passed joints around all night.  In my years to follow never did I see any fighting at concerts, when everybody is stoned and mellow, compared to drunk and crazy, things seemed to go a lot smoother.  There is just a bunch of head bobbing foot tapping music fans, with big smiles on their faces.

Standing for 5 to 6 hours we saw 4 bands that night with the headliner Poco, whose album “Good Feeling To Know,”  had been playing on the record player constantly at Karen’s house.  We also saw Foghat, who I had seen on my first trip to Winterland, but this time it was close up, they were playing the Energized album, that was very impressive.   Then we saw a band called Copperhead, half way through their set, local favorite, John Cipollina started playing some standout slide guitar, a recognized style he was famous for when playing with the Quicksilver Messenger albums that my brother owned.  The opening act was Maggie Bell, and when Karen caught the rose that Maggie threw from her hair, to finished her set, it was a great start to an all-around fabulous evening and  I was hooked.

Later that summer there was what they called “A Day On The Green” which was when the lawn of the Oakland Coliseum was opened up to where people could sit on the outfield grass for a festival type atmosphere, this was something new.  Oakland Coliseum was where the Oakland A’s and Raiders played and it had beautiful manicured grass.  Bill Graham had worked a deal to use the facility inviting super bands to play at this very large venue.   The opening acts were often just as good as the headliner, we saw Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Band, Joe Walsh and Jessie Colin Young.  I’ll bet Graham had 70 thousand people packed in that place, all for a full afternoon in the open air sunshine with a bunch of like-minded young individuals.    Back then these festival concerts were a lot more lax about what they would allow in, we took in a small ice chest,  I was able to smuggle-in  a gallon of Gallo Hearty Burgundy wine, disguised in a plastic milk jugs, let me tell ya, those days are long gone,  now, when going to a facilities like this, all food and drink has to be provided by venders, with prices  4 times what you would pay on outside, so much for a cheap drunk.  What I found that day was that there’s nothing better than an all-day wine high while watching music outdoors.  Marijuana use was of coarse everywhere, you rarely saw it smoked publically, except for at concerts like this and private parties.  But concerts in the 70’s, it was smoked freely and openly, people would  let your freak flag fly creating an atmosphere of freedom which was something fun to watch.  I believe this had a lot to do with the success Bill Grahams was enjoying, he had created an atmosphere where you didn’t have to worry about getting busted, the normal Joe  hadn’t  experienced this before and people were buying into it big time. I could let my hair out of my ponytail, smoke a joint and drink wine in public.  This was the closest thing to a west coast “French Quarter” as things could get. “quote where everything goes”

I weaved my way toward the front of the stage that day, leaving Karen behind with her girlfriend, that way those two could do what they liked doing best, which was flirting and flaunting with boys.  And me?  I felt no guilt doing what I liked best,  which was boogying in with the crowd, drinking wine and having a great time.  The sun was hot and my body was sweating, as a result there was not a lot of  need to go to the bathroom,  even with consuming wine all day, and that was a good thing because getting back to where you had staked a spot out there would have been nearly impossible, as you might guess.  This day marked a new chapter between Karen and I.

By 74 I had gotten a full time job working at a school district in East San Jose, driving a truck.  While working there I was to meet Rick who would become a lifelong friend of mine.  He had been to a couple concerts in his days too and one of them was the same show in at the Oakland Coliseum, so we compared notes and stories.  The other show he had seen was when his father took him to see Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.  Rick loved music and had a couple brothers and sister who were real music fanatics too and we all started to hang out on the weekends.  Music and concerts was an important part of our lives these days, everybody was parting  and having a good time at these shows, not costing a lot of money.  Back then we could get into shows for about $6.00 or $7.00 which was  a lot back then, but it was always well worth it. 

After meeting Rick we stepped up attending shows even more regularly, he and his brothers were  impressed that I had been to Winterland and they wanted to go.  But the first tickets Rick picked up were to go see the band Genesis up in Berkeley, he  wanted to know if I would go along and I said “hell yes,”  so the two of us drove up and watched Peter Gabriel perform with Genesis at the Berkeley Community Theater .  Rick was mesmerized, he fell in love really with the live music scene and he would soon become a long time concert buddy of mine.  Even as I write this 40 some years later you might still might catch the two of us grey-hairs in a crowd somewhere. 

The Bay Area was in the rotation for all the good artists and bands, Rick was all-about wanting to take full advantage of that.  Having a wide taste in music he wanted  to go to any concerts that he thought that might be good, and his list was long.    The next thing I heard from Rick was that Fleetwood Mac was coming to town again, and he said he wanted to take a bunch of his girl friends  from his old high school and  asked if I wanted to go with, and I said, “hell no.”  I told him what had happen the last time I saw Fleetwood Mac.  Laughingly he assured me that he had read where some of the original band members  had reformed the band picking up a couple of new frontman  and were back playing again.  Immediately I thought of Green and Kirwin at guitar, but he said no, he didn’t know that  would be happening.  Anyway, he convinced me to go with him and these gals and we all headed to the venue which was the San Jose Civic Auditorium again, needless to say, I was skeptical about the whole thing leading right up till show.

40 years later, after the bogus Fleetwood Mac show, I read numerous accountings  on what had actually transpired during those times, here is how the fake show came down. 

After the Fleetwood Mac tour of 73 continued down  the road (this would have been the tour I saw them in my first ever concert ), the McVies, (Christie and John )  who had been married for 5 years,  were fighting constantly, mostly due to John’s alcohol habits.  The two of them were debating which one may have to leave the band.  Constant changes and problems made guitarist, Bob Welsh contemplate a career on his own, especially when news hit him that their other guitar player, Bob Watson, was having an affair with drummer Mic Fleetwood’s wife, Jenny.  Jenny Boyd Fleetwood was a sister to Patty Boyd Harrison, George Harrison’s wife, the cute little model Harrison met on the movie set, “Help.”   Patty and Jenny were both as cute as puppies.  Anyway, Mic’s wife, Jenny, confessed the affair and the band tried to stick it out, but dissention weaved its way in and Mic finally pulled the plug in late October of 73, while in Nebraska.   The road crew fire Watson early one morning in his hotel room, the rest of the band members split up and headed off in all different directions, abandoning the remaining dates of the tour.  This didn’t settle well with manager Clifford Davis who felt he had been put through a lot with all the constant changes.   What happened next became the bazaar part of the story;   Clifford Davis had apparently reached the end of his patience with the band, becoming  fed up with all the  drama  and cancellations over the past few years.  He then took a legal position that he owned the name “Fleetwood Mac,” (which was obviously named after Fleetwood and McVie.  For his own benefit, he set up another tour, fronting a phony band masquerading as the new Fleetwood Mac  and then sent them on the road to play.  None of the original members were a part of the new band.  The new band was made-up from a group members from Curved Air, which was another act that Davis had been managing.   This would have been one of those shows that we saw January 31, 1974. I am not sure how many more shows they tried to pull-off  before or after this one, but from what I’ve read it couldn’t have been many, because it wasn’t long after that the whole bogus tour collapsed and lawsuit began to fly when  original band members started the process of claiming back their name.   And looking at Aerosmith’s touring schedule, there is a big black out for their touring schedule during this time, indicating they wanted no reference to this fraud.  Anyway, there is my personal recollection on what a Fake Fleetwood Mac concert looked like, but that’s not the end of the story.

Exactly one year after the Bogus Fleetwood Mac show, the newly re-formed Fleetwood Mac took the stage, and once again at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, and what we saw that night was simply some of the most dramatic music  we’d ever seen.  New material coming off a new album, simple called “Fleetwood Mac”  blew the crowd away, the band had been re-born.  The heart of the band was still there in the likes of Fleetwood and the McVies , Christie McVie was back at piano and she was writing good material  that was feeding off here love affair with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.   Welsh had left,  pursuing his own career, Mic Fleetwood was back, trying hopelessly to patch things up with his cheating  wife.  And then there was two new frontmen, musician from the Bay Area , Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks .  Buckingham and Nicks were lovers and came in as a package deal.  So everything  the band was doing was based on young  love, broken love, and heartache, which seemed to poured out vividly in the performance.     

Buckingham didn’t appear the normal cut of what a rockin roll guitar player, he was tall, lanky and had that big fro of hair.  He also wore a skinny beard and mustache, looking too much like he could have been a member of Curved Air.   Stevie Nicks on the other hand was blond and beautiful, all dolled up in her black flowing skirt with shawls and platform boots, swirling around the stage like voodoo queen. With all that going on it didn’t make any difference what Buckingham looked like, he could do no wrong.

Nicks was gorgeous but not without a gimmick, at one point in the show she started in on telling  some heart breaking story between songs that ended with her going into tears and clinging onto Buckingham for support, I think it was the song “Landslide,” but can’t be sure.   This new songs got the crowd all riled up, especially the girls.  All this kick-started the band into future stardom, the shows that followed were tremendously popular and  incredibly good that night. The Fleetwood Mac was back, and went that year  to be more popular than ever before with their new album going to the top of the charts.  They followed up with another great album, Rumours and through  the 70s and 80’s Fleetwood Mac became one of those super-mega bands, that Bill Graham would later headline along with Peter Frampton at “A Day On the Green” a year ½ later.  And there was Stevie Nicks doing her whole crying routine again.

I never thought the band lived up to expectations after Rumours ,  but those two albums that they put out in the mid 70’s have to be a couple of my favorites, making for a classic comeback for the record books.

There was a time when the Fleetwood Mac band could be looked upon as a band cursed, experiencing  derailments from the druggie and loose sex years of the 60’s, but all the while, leaving a legend of classic tunes and recordings behind.  The show I saw in 75 with Rick in the small San Jose venue was unforgettable.  It would have to rate at the very top of hundreds of shows I’ve seen over the years.  Through all the changes during the life of the band, they appeared to have peaked even higher then before, eventually petering out in the 80’s. But during their regeneration of the mid 70’s, one would say they captured a feeling of the times, like a classic photo might.  Never could a bunch of songs run such similar plain in my life as some of their songs coming from this band during this short time. “Never Going back Again” and “Go your Own Way,”  these songs to me represented the a couple of my favorites.  Fleetwood Mac was one of the better bands when growing up during this era.

Author's Note

work in progress, I would like comments and feedback on this

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[Constance Payne]

Your research is well done. Remember when doing research to cite your sources which is extremely important in research work. Failing to cite a source is plagiarism.