Fleetwood Mac Almost Thanked Their Drug Dealer on the ‘Rumours’ Album – Here’s Why They Didn’t
Fleetwood Mac was infamous for their drug use in the band’s heyday. Founding member Mick Fleetwood revealed that the rock supergroup even considered thanking their cocaine dealer on the 1977 album Rumours. Here’s what the drummer said about the band’s drug use and why they ultimately didn’t mention their drug dealer on one of their most popular albums.
Fleetwood Mac did a lot of drugs while recording ‘Rumours’
Various members of Fleetwood Mac, including Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, have spoken openly about the band’s history of drug use. The women even wore jewel-encrusted bottles of cocaine as jewelry.
“When we were in Sausalito making Rumours, the boys would be doing these huge rails of coke while Stevie and I would be in our own place with our little bottles of coke, with tiny coke-spoons that we’d wear on delicate chains around our necks,” McVie told the Daily Mail in 2013. “Very ladylike – much more refined – and actually fairly acceptable at the time. Inevitably, late at night the boys would run out and come looking for ours.”
In the same interview, Nicks revealed that some of her bandmates did cocaine while performing on stage. “We thought that’s what entertainers did in order to maintain that level of activity and creativity,” the “Gypsy” singer explained.
“Mick had this rotating platform covered with beer-bottle caps full of coke so he could snort away as he was playing,” McVie added. “At least us ladies would slip off stage for a discreet toot.”
Nicks has since lamented her years of drug abuse, saying that “the payback was a complete b****.”
Fleetwood Mac almost thanked their drug dealer on the ‘Rumours’ album
The band was so heavily into drug use that Fleetwood Mac considered thanking their cocaine dealer on the Rumours album. Christine McVie even said she thought the drug improved her performance.
“My drug of choice was cocaine and champagne,” McVie told The Guardian. “I didn’t use any other drugs at all. It’s easy for me to say, but I think it made me perform better.
“There was one coke dealer who kept us supplied with high-grade Peruvian flake, and we were so grateful to him that I considered (in my state of dementia) giving him some kind of credit on the [Rumours] album jacket,” Mick Fleetwood wrote in his first memoir, Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac.
But the dealer was murdered before the band could pay tribute to him on their album. “Unfortunately, he got snuffed – executed! – before the thing came out,” Fleetwood wrote.
Mick Fleetwood once said he snorted ‘7 miles’ of cocaine
Fleetwood Mac did so much cocaine that a former sound engineer once suggested that if someone combined all the white powder they snorted and cut it into a single line, it would stretch seven miles long.
Mick Fleetwood confirmed the calculation in a June 2019 interview with The Sun. “We could sit here and I go into some war story about snorting seven miles of cocaine,” the drummer said. “I guess we figured we did X amount a day, and then some goofball got out a calculator and came up with that seven miles figure and said, ‘Isn’t that funny?’ And it sort of is. But not in the context of where I want to end up.”
He continued, “There was never a conscious decision on my part to stop that lifestyle. I think it naturally just drifted away.”
Fleetwood was aware, though, that his drug abuse could have had fatal consequences. “It came to an end, thankfully. Because, God forbid, it could easily have ended the really bad way – for sure, that could have happened,” he said. “In some ways I’m happy I got through it and didn’t bite the big bullet. But I just had a profound awareness and a realization that enough is enough.”
He also said he didn’t want to romanticize drug use. “I’m conscious that I want to speak appropriately about this. Because the romance of those war stories can adulate something which is not a good idea.”
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
