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Sat 4 April 2026 18:00, UK
Elton John didn’t want to take an ounce of his time in the spotlight for granted.
Although fame can be a double-edged sword for most people, Bernie Taupin was always the one more comfortable with fame, while John was having a ball becoming one of the biggest names in popular music. But even if he had a lot of hits in his arsenal, he felt that some bands didn’t truly realise how good they were until they started taking every other member of the band for granted.
Then again, not all bands are supposed to be completely happy with each other. Even John Lennon and Paul McCartney had their disagreements in The Beatles, and it doesn’t take a sleuth to realise that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards didn’t really get along every single time they made a Rolling Stones record. But while John lucked out with his relationship with Taupin, Fleetwood Mac had both the best and worst luck that any rock band could have ever hoped for when they started out.
They already had to deal with having a guitar god on their hands with Peter Green, but after he left, after losing his way to LSD, their wilderness period is a portrait of a band that didn’t really know what they wanted to be. Bob Welch had a great track record for making beautiful songs, but when he left the band, everything started to change when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the fold.
Earlier, it had been Christine McVie’s job to come up with some of the greatest tunes in their arsenal, but they were now equipped with three songwriting geniuses whenever they sang. ‘Say You Love Me’ was the proof of concept that everything was going to be fine, but even when they were fighting on Rumours, John thought that the band didn’t realise the powerhouse that they had on their hands with both Nicks and McVie.
No disrespect meant to Lindsey Buckingham at all, but John considered McVie and Nicks to be the resident geniuses of the group, saying, “I’ve loved [Stevie] for so long. Fleetwood Mac are so lucky because they’ve got Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. Two of the greatest voices in rock and roll. And Stevie is so distinctive, she was on my bucket list. It’s a thrill to work with people that you know are great but you’ve never had the chance to work with.”
If you look at their track record, though, some of their best moments always came from when they were at their lowest points. Rumours was not an easy album to make by any stretch, but while Buckingham was the one crying out in pain throughout most of the record, McVie was the only one capable of writing a song as beautiful as ‘Songbird’, and Nicks was always willing to take the high road when penning tunes like ‘Dreams’.
And since McVie has passed away, there’s a reason why the classic lineup of Fleetwood Mac will never feel the same. Buckingham and Nicks’s relationship has been overexplained to hell and back, but when you look at how many classic tunes Christine had under her belt, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else getting up onstage with the band and singing tunes like ‘Over My Head’ or ‘Little Lies’.
So while it might be nice to see Buckingham and Nicks bury the hatchet and start working together again, John was simply happy to have witnessed that kind of greatness when he did. He came from a much different world than the rootsy sounds of ‘The Mac’, but he could never resist songs that came from the heart like that.
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