The Fleetwood Mac Guitarist's Curse

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by JFSebastion, Oct 20, 2019.

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  1. JFSebastion

    JFSebastion Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maricopa Arizona
    So like a lot of people who have followed Fleetwood Mac over the years. One has to wonder if there is truly a Curse on anyone that plays guitar for more than an album for the band. In other words, stick around Fleetwood Mac for a length of time at your own peril if you play guitar. Rick Vito and Billy Burnette seem to have slipped by the curse simply by not hanging around too long.
    The latest victim is of course Lindsey Buckingham. Ousted from the band quite heartlessly , Buckingham suffers a heart attack, has open heart surgery and may have damaged vocal chords. No one has stated his voice has returned at this juncture. Beware Mike Campbell, this curse is not something to take lightly.
    The list starts with Peter Green, arguably the best British Blues guitarist of all time, Acid casualty. Danny Kirwan nervous breakdown, the German LSD may have done him in as well. Jeremy Spencer, an odd one. Still alive and playing well today, but he disappeared into a Cult in California ( Children of God ) for decades. He reemerged to play slide guitar in Europe as if nothing happened, but years gone. Bob Welch , may have had the cruelest fate. Near blind, confined to a wheel chair from back surgeries that couldn't put him right again, snubbed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, he committed suicide rather than face being bed ridden and a burden on his wife. Bob Weston Fired for having an affair with Fleetwood's then wife Jenny. Even though Mick said it was his own fault for neglecting her.
    So what got Buckingham fired? Some say it was for smirking at Stevie Nicks during a speech she was giving. Or the fact that Buckingham didn't want to start a tour until he himself had completed a tour first. Even though Fleetwood Mac was stood up by Stevie Nicks the year before when the band recorded an album that became Buckingham- McVie instead of calling it Fleetwood Mac, even though Fleetwood and John McVie both play on the whole album. This is one strange story line. Any thoughts?
     
  2. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    I will say I feel, man, poor Welch just couldn’t catch a break in life.
     
  3. fallbreaks

    fallbreaks Forum Resident

    Well, I don’t believe in curses.

    Fleetwood Mac is probably unique in that the leaders of the band are the rhythm section. From the outset Peter Green named his band Fleetwood Mac because he knew he could leave and have a solo career but wanted to give them something they could count on. So in a sense, Fleetwood Mac’s original guitarist already had a sense he wasn’t going to last. And would be replaced.

    Guitarists tend to be songwriters and singers and frontmen - usually leadership positions - and it must always rub that they’re not ever going to be in charge. So I think you could argue that simply joining Fleetwood Mac, as a singing, songwriting guitarist, is something only a man in desperate circumstances would do. And desperate men have weaknesses, as well as strengths.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  4. JFSebastion

    JFSebastion Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maricopa Arizona
    And for something completely weird. Lindsey Buckingham wrote a song called Wait For You recorded 1995 but not released until 2008. In it there are lyrics that go " Suicide Days, suicide, suicide nights. In a wheel chair almost blind." Bob Welch was almost blind, bound to a wheel chair or bed and he shot himself in the chest in 2012! Creepy?
     
  5. JFSebastion

    JFSebastion Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maricopa Arizona
    Although you have made good points, we are surrounded by the supernatural. Don't believe in Curses? Hope Diamond? The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine? The Bell Witch ? The Kennedy family? The 27 Club? You have to admit at least that there are an abnormal amount of guitarists that have tragic lives in Fleetwood Mac!
     
  6. writteninwater

    writteninwater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oslo
    It's like a bunch of teenagers. All the drama and hot and cold with each other.
     
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  7. gregorya

    gregorya I approve of this message

    Anagrams for Fleetwood Mac:

    Mowed Elf Taco
    Claw Feet Doom
    Fad to Welcome
    Ace Me Twofold
    Flawed to Come
    A Comet Flowed
    Elf Cot Meadow
    Mod Face Towel

    That should help to explain things... ;)
     
  8. Chemguy

    Chemguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Western Canada
    Mod Face Towel would be a great alternative band.
     
  9. Smackswell

    Smackswell Kossoff & Ralphs LA 76

    Location:
    Baile Atha Cliath
    And lets not forget the story about the band Stretch and the song "Why did you do it?"
     
  10. AlienRendel

    AlienRendel Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, il
    You know how you can tell if your house is haunted? It isn't.
     
  11. wdiv

    wdiv Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maryland
    Still better off than being a Spinal Tap drummer
     
  12. Peter Green having mental issues after taking a LOT of bad acid is not surprising.

    Danny Kirwan having mental issues after doing both that AND having a lifetime of alcoholism isn't surprising.

    Bob Welch dying young after many years of cocaine abuse isn't all that surprising.

    Lindsey Buckingham having a heart attack after many years of cocaine use plus what appears to be quite a quick-trigger temper isn't all that surprising.

    See a common thread here?
     
  13. CrawdaddySim1

    CrawdaddySim1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indianapolis, IN
    I'm actually surprised that more of the band didn't go permanently crazy. Considering the fact that collectively, they snorted half of Peru. And stayed in the same band as their exes, for YEARS.
     
  14. JFSebastion

    JFSebastion Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maricopa Arizona
    It is not the fact that someone takes LSD it is that it was "bad acid"
    or that one ends up in jail and the other in a mental institution.
    or that one commits suicide from blindness and invalidity
    or that one has a bad heart attack while having surgery damaging his vocals chords whilst just being dumped from the band.
    while another joins a religious commune and disappears
    see a common thread here?

    Many people have overcome drugs and alcohol ( Joe Walsh, Ringo Starr etc..)
    There is usually only one drug addict in a band say like Scott Weiland ,
    sometimes two like James Honeyman Scott and Peter Farndon
    but there are more than normal amount in the Mac. Simple numbers!
    and a variety of maladies on top of that.
     
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  15. MikeVielhaber

    MikeVielhaber Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    Bob Welch didn't just "die young", he killed himself. I'd say that's a little surprising.
     
  16. JFSebastion

    JFSebastion Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maricopa Arizona
    too funny if only it were true. Inner dimensional demons exist, they are just called ghosts
     
  17. MichaelXX2

    MichaelXX2 Dictator perpetuo

    Location:
    United States
    This is a music forum...
     
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  18. ganma

    ganma Senior Member

    Location:
    Earth
    So ... who you gonna call?
     
  19. Nomadicarchivist

    Nomadicarchivist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington D.C.
    Fascinating band on many levels. Starting with the fact that despite the band being partially named after him, John Mcvie was NOT the first bass player in the band.
    McVie initially chose to stay with Mayall so Green and Fleetwood started without him
     
    ARK likes this.
  20. Somerset Scholar

    Somerset Scholar Ace of Spades

    Location:
    Bath
    I sense a strong whiff of the occult around Fleetwood Mac.
    It is in the music, lyrics and imagery.
    Too many tragedies to just be coincidence.
     
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  21. zebop

    zebop Well Known Stranger

    Bob Welch's demise is totally tragic and it's also tragic that he wasn't inducted in the RRHOF, Billy Burnette and Rick Vito are still with us and I think there's another one, Dave Walker from 72-73, I think he's alive.
     
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  22. Manalishi

    Manalishi With the 2-pronged crown

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Drugs are bad, m'kay.
     
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  23. spencer1

    spencer1 Great Western Forum Resident

    Up next the curse of the Grateful Dead’s keyboard players ...
     
  24. Holerbot6000

    Holerbot6000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Lindsey's 'curse' is a lazy egotistical blonde. Some say she's a witch. I was thinking of another word, very similar...
     
  25. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan
    The only curses are the ones we bring on ourselves - apart from that there's just plain bad luck, misfortune, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Fleetwood Mac, two guys (hold-overs from a once-great 60s blues-rock band) who repeatedly and sucessfully recruited a long list of talented artists, the coat-tails of whom they rode to fame and fortune. Ya gotta admire that kind of ambition.
    The other side of that coin begs the question, had they not recruited those artists to enlist their talents under the established banner of renown, would any of [those recruits] have found the same level of success independently, of their own navigation? It would seem that for at least half of them - talent notwithstanding - the answer is likely to be no. Fleetwood and McVie are certainly no slouches when it comes to talent seeping out of the pores in their skin. Asking the question are they deserving of their fame is a non sequitur.

    LSD is the worst drug known to humankind. At least heroin leaves one with their sanity while it slaves them to the grave. Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan - all casualties in one way or another to the psychotic burlesque of lysergic causticity. Each one could have ridden that titanic wave of success just as easily as Mick and John did. Take acid out of the equation and there remains little doubt they would have. Crippling tragedy is the end-game there , and the jumping-off point to safety is not the same for every individual who risks experimenting with it. ****ed the world up good, it did.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2019
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