Review: 'The Complete Illustrated History of Fleetwood Mac'

Fleetwood Mac's story is often more interesting than their music. At their best, they courted legit weirdness (the invigorating and eclectic Tusk) or at least made finely crafted radio-ready pop that burned with personal intensity (Rumours). That intensity was a consequence of their oft-told story: a genuine rock soap opera of hook ups, break ups, packing up, and shacking up. However, they began as a hit-or-miss British blues band and went through several nondescript incarnations on their way to becoming the cross-Atlantic juggernaut that recorded and stirred Rumours. Even that mega-selling monster is a hit-or-miss affair with Lindsey Buckingham's bitter Buddy Holly riffs and Stevie Nicks's bewitching ballads sitting alongside Christine McVie's MOR soft pop stylings.

Originally published in 2016, and now being reprinted, Richie Unterberger's The Complete Illustrated History of Fleetwood Mac traces the group from their beginnings as a vehicle for Peter Green's bluesy slow hand through their metamorphosis into the Buckingham-Nicks machine. Unterberger's writing is informative and as straight-forward as a McVie torch song but a welcome bit of Buckingham oddness intrudes on the narrative with LP-overviews by an all-star roster of guest contributors, such as Dominic Priore (Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!), Barney Hoskyns (Small Town Talk), Martin Popoff (Anthem: Rush in the 1970s), Zoë Howe (Stevie Nicks--Visions, Dreams, an Rumours), and Anthony DeCurtis (Rolling Stone). There are also plenty of full-color and B&W pics of Stevie Nicks in her top hat and Mick Fleetwood with his mouth hanging open.