These musical trailblazers were almost teachers and tax professionals — but instead, they became
icons. The members of Fleetwood Mac could have gone down completely different career paths!
Mick Fleetwood was born in England in 1947. His father was a Royal Air Force pilot,
meaning young Mick and the family moved around quite a bit during his formative
years. According to the band's website, he even spent a few years in Norway and learned
to speak Norwegian. Mick was an inquisitive and intelligent young man, but his intelligence was
and is perhaps not the kind that shows up on tests given to schoolchildren.
Indeed, Mick failed to excel academically at the traditional British boarding schools
he attended. His teachers considered him quite bright, but he had difficulty memorizing facts
and repeating them. Of his school years, Fleetwood told educationalist Ken Robinson,
"I walked out of school, and I sat under a large tree on the grounds. I'm not religious,
but with tears pouring down my face, I prayed to God that I wouldn't be in this place anymore."
Fortunately, by this time, Mick had discovered the drums, and he poured himself into this creative
outlet. At 15, he dropped out of school, moved to London, and started forming and joining bands,
paying his dues for a few years until the U.S. incarnation of Fleetwood Mac hit it big.
"You're giving us everything! That is Mick Fleetwood!"
John McVie, like his colleague Mick Fleetwood, spent his teenage years in England. However,
unlike Fleetwood, McVie spent his entire childhood in England,
having been born in what is now West London in 1945. In a 2006 interview with The Penguin,
McVie told a fan that he was an only child, though he had a sister who died
"when she was very young," as he explained, without giving any further context. He also
mentioned that as a young boy, his exposure to music was largely limited to what his parents
listened to until his teens when he first got exposed to American jazz and blues.
After this exposure, he was hooked on music and began trying to forge for himself a career in the
industry. However, careers in music don't pay off for everybody, and McVie needed a backup
plan. As MTV reports, for a time in his early career, he had a day job as a tax inspector,
playing gigs at night. That all changed when he met Mick Fleetwood and formed Fleetwood Mac,
after which he gave up tax collecting for good and focused on music full-time.
Christine McVie was born Christine Perfect near Birmingham, England, in 1943. She would spend a
few years married to her band-mate, John McVie, and though they were divorced for
far longer than they were ever married, she used McVie's name professionally throughout her career.
According to an interview that was once on the band's website, Christine grew up
in a musical family, having taken up piano lessons as a young girl. Like John McVie,
Christine was particularly interested in jazz and blues. However, she lost interest in music
by the time she reached adolescence and instead studied art, with a view towards becoming an art
teacher. She did work as an artist, in a manner of speaking, spending a brief
period of time working as a department store window dresser, as Harper's Bazaar reports.
However, music never fully left her blood, and by the late 1960s, she was looking
for a band to join. Eventually, she met and married John McVie and joined Fleetwood Mac,
with whom she would spend the next several decades, despite falling out with John.
Christine McVie died on November 30, 2022. In April 2023, her death certificate was
released by The Blast, revealing her cause of death was a stroke.
The secondary cause of death was cancer with the outlet reporting,
"[McVie was diagnosed with] metastatic malignancy of unknown primary origin."
"She was a huge talent."
Stephanie Nicks had a hard time pronouncing her name as a young girl, producing something that
sounded not unlike "Tee Dee," according to Showbiz CheatSheet. This later morphed into Stevie,
a name that she embraced and under which she has performed professionally for her entire
adult life. As a child, she was surrounded by both music, since her grandfather was
a country musician, and literature — fairy tales in particular, according to Los Angeles
Magazine. That love of fairy tales would inform her later career as a performer and songwriter,
as her lyrics and her stage presence both evoke a sort of poetic mysticism.
Nevertheless, Stevie Nicks' love for music was, at one point, secondary to her love of literature.
According to Soundigest, she went to college to become an English teacher but dropped out
with a semester to go. By this time, she'd already fallen in love with and entered into a committed
relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, and instead of academia, Nicks followed her love into music.
"I always wanted to be a singer. I always wanted to be a songwriter."
Lindsey Buckingham joined
Fleetwood Mac along with his love Stevie Nicks in 1974 at the request of Mick Fleetwood. Before
they made their mark with the legendary pop band, however, they made up the folk
duo Buckingham Nicks. Of course, this wasn't the first vehicle for Buckingham's musical talent.
Born October 3, 1949, in Palo Alto, California, Buckingham's childhood showed many signs of the
developing talent that would eventually give Fleetwood Mac hits like "Big Love," "Second
Hand News," and "Tusk." With influences like Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly,
Buckingham practiced on a plastic Mickey Mouse guitar until he got his hands on the real deal.
He eventually became interested in the Beach Boys and the Kingston Trio and started the band Fritz.
Nicks later joined, and the pair moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and released
"Buckingham/Nicks." Their talent caught the eye of Mick Fleetwood.
In 2018, it was announced that Buckingham had been fired from Fleetwood Mac,
followed by a series of lawsuits that were settled outside of court.