Fleetwood Mac FAQ

Ryan Reed BACKBEAT BOOKS

Studious but self-aware tome on fifty years of Mac.

Subtitled All That’s Left To Know About The Iconic Rock Survivors, this facts-and-fun book for fans of the critically indulged, cocaineaddled soft-rockers shrewdly taps into their most interesting feature: their bonkers saga of bust-ups and back-stories.

It shapes the tale in five phases: the Peter Green era, the transitional era, the Buckingham-Nicks era, the post-classic era and the modern era. While that suggests gravitas on a par with a deconstruction of pointillism, Reed realises how funny the offstage calamities of this band – or, really, series of bands – have been. The recent binning of Lindsey Buckingham appears to have occurred just before publication, but by then there have been enough angst-hilarity crossover episodes to fill twenty books, from “the LSD-fuelled Munich commune incident” to analysis of the Mac’s chronically bad cover art.

There are top-10 lists aplenty and interviews with fringe members, producers and crew.

A well-gauged blend of research and irreverence.