Do you consider Fleetwood Mac to be an English band?

Originally, one Semite and three Gentiles.

Since '71, Anglo-American.

 

Read the title of their most popular album. How is it spelt?

There's your answer

 

They're ours, just like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and the English language and you're not having them!

 

Yes, and I think that picture would have been better in colour too.

 

Peter Greens' Fleetwood Mac were an English band.

After he left and the Americans came on board not really. Wouldn't even describe it as the same band.

 

Hybrid

 

Half of me thinks yes, but the other half thinks no.

 

Interesting nice spot!

 

As long as it is in colour and not in color

 

The first version, yes. By 1975, they were no longer an English band and they never really were again after. Even the British members relocated to California/Hawaii and aside from Christine, set up near permanent residence.

 

It may blow your mind, but there's a whole world out there which is not the US. Also, I wouldn't call a band that had four top 10 hits (three of 'em top 3) in Britain and elsewhere in Europe "also rans".
By the way, as early as late-1968 FM were already past the stage of a strict blues rock band.

 

Absolutely they are an English band.

 

I was alerted by some revisionism in an earlier post...

 

It's Rumours, not Rumors. English band, English spelling.

 

The first album they recorded after moving to America was Heroes Are Hard to Find.

 

I had a feeling...

 

Aha, a Canadian band!

 

Yeah but what about Tux, Tango in the Nite and Say U Will?

 

gyp·sy
/ˈjipsē/

1. 1.
   a member of a traveling people traditionally living by itinerant trade and fortune telling. Gypsies speak a language (Romany) that is related to Hindi and are believed to have originated in South Asia.

So they're not an English band. They're Indonesian.

 

If you went to Piccadilly Circus and asked 1000 random passersby who Fleetwood Mac is, they would say they are one of their favorite American bands and iconic members of the 70's California Soft Rock scene.

That's just the hard truth.

 

Piccadilly Circus is full of foreign tourists. Most English folk old enough to care about Fleetwood Mac know that they originally hail from these Isles.

 

My first thought would be to associate them with SoCal though they are obviously mixed. I consider their career before S/T kind of a footnote of largely historical interest - like The Beatles' Tony Sheridan sessions.

 

Naming members of Fleetwood Mac would be a good question for Pointless on BBC1. Wonder who'd get zero?

 

So the Rolling Stones became a French band when they relocated to Nellcote?

 

Exactly my point. A nice cross-section of the world's population. And they would agree that Fleetwood Mac is known for the 70's California Soft Rock sound they dominate in and not the Blues that they were an obscurity in.

And I'm not sure why this is controversial. Many bands start out in their home country and are weak in the wrong genre, then travel to another country, find the right genre, and become global icons. I found out today that some of Fleetwood Mac's members were British. I'm fine with that, many of my favorite artists hail from England, but it doesn't matter to me. Their sound is 1977 California. Rumors is the Sgt. Pepper of Yacht Rock.