'Fleetwood Mac': Drama that Inspired Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six premiered on Amazon on March 3, 2023. Although the show was a hit by mostly the Gen Z audience, I've only had the time to watch it after seeing it was still talked about on TikTok.

The show has combined everything that a '70s band was made of: love, drugs, affairs, and rock and roll. A time when musicians were more 'free', social media didn't exist to see and criticize everything, which led to real-life drama that seemed too complicated to be real, just like Fleetwood Mac. The author of the book, Taylor Jenkins Reid says that she listened to Rumors -the legendary album of Fleetwood Mac that was full of chaos, love, and affairs- and watched the band's interviews while writing the book.

The Forming of Fleetwood Mac

The group was formed in 1967 by Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie. Later, by the '70s, John's wife, keyboardist Christine McVie, and guitarist Bob Weston joined and the group was completed, for a while.

The drama started early in the group's career when Weston was fired from the band after having an affair with Jenny Boyd, Fleetwood's wife. That event opened the door for Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham to join later on.

In 1974, Mick Fleetwood divorced from his wife Jenny. John and Christine McVie were together, though they later admitted that their problems started at the beginning of their careers. That was around the time when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined as a couple. But same as McVie's, the pair said their relationship started to fall apart in their early Fleetwood days.

Rumours

1977's Rumours is known as one of the best albums of all time. However, in this period, nothing could go worse for Fleetwood Mac. The recordings of the album took over a year that was the time all the betrayals, breakups, affairs, and problems happened.

McVie's relationship was hard to define as a relationship back then since the couple didn't quite speak to each other except for music after their divorce in 1976. Meanwhile, Stevie and Lindsey's 8-year-long relationship was all about fights. And surprisingly Mick Fleetwood re-married Jenny who cheated on him, just to divorce again in a year.

Songs

Christine McVie wrote "You Make Loving Fun", a love song that was clearly not about her ex-husband. It was about the lightning director that she loved, however she told McVie that the song was about her dog.

Stevie Nicks wrote "Dreams", one of their most popular songs, directly at Buckingham. Buckingham snapped back with "Go Your Own Way" which is about loving someone who does not know what they want. The song later became an anthem for the group for everything they went through.

"The Chain" is the group's anthem for betrayals that took place in a year-long recording.

And lastly, "Silver Springs" -which is my favorite- written by Stevie Nicks. Nicks still names Silver Springs as "probably the best song she has written". The song was actually cut from Rumours by Mick and her husband Lindsey, which devastated her. Though promises were made to her to release the song on the B-side of the album or on the next one, the song was not released for 20 years.

The band's most successful lineup -the Rumours five- returned to the stage in 1997 with a live album, The Dance. During this Warner Brothers Studio stage, Nicks' precious song that she fought for 20 years was out there for everyone.

She sang this song looking directly at Buckingham, singing the lyrics,

"You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you".

Daisy Jones & The Six

The author of the book, Reid said that she listened to Rumours, watched lots of interviews, and the "Landslide" stage of the band during the writing stage. While this confirms how Fleetwood Mac unofficially inspired the writing and making of Daisy Jones & The Six, after the show, "Silver Springs" became popular again on TikTok where everyone said it resembled the show. It came to a point where Lindsey Buckingham, whom the song is about, posted the guitar solo of the song on TikTok with a caption: "I hear we're talking about that '97 'Silver Spring' again..."

The show's success made a lot of people interested in Fleetwood Mac, even those who never heard of the band before. Thinking about it, now that 'Silver Springs' still playing on my headphones while I'm writing about the story of Fleetwood Mac right after binge-watching Daisy Jones & The Six, I think Steive was right. Neither did we, Steive, Lindsey, Billy, and Daisy could get away from that sound.