Mick Fleetwood’s Most ‘Indulgent’ Purchase Went Over Poorly: ‘I Went Broke’
Like all the other members of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood found unprecedented levels of success after releasing their self-titled album. Suddenly, the band could lean into the rock star lifestyle, filling their lives with cocaine, champagne, and private jets. Fleetwood made several expensive purchases during this time. He says that his most indulgent purchase did not work out well for him. As a result of it, he lost a considerable amount of money.
Mick Fleetwood once got in trouble for overspending as Fleetwood Mac’s manager
Fleetwood is a founding member of Fleetwood Mac and served as the band’s manager for a time. After the Tusk tour, he was terminated from this position because the band made significantly less money than they expected. The tour was massively expensive, with the band drinking the finest alcohol, flying in drug dealers, and traveling by private jet. At the end, they couldn’t account for millions of dollars.
After a brutal meeting in which Fleetwood explained that the band’s lifestyle was the culprit, they fired him as manager.
“Now I was off the throne,” Fleetwood later said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis. “It was the democratization of Fleetwood Mac. Ever since, we’ve had review by committee — managers, lawyers, accountants. The Gang of Four.”
Though the band comforted him afterward and said they weren’t mad, he could no longer be the manager.
One of his biggest purchases did not pan out for him
Clearly, Fleetwood Mac was known for its embrace of exorbitance, and Fleetwood was no different. He gave insight into the most “indulgent” purchase he ever made.
“I bought a thousand-acre farm in Australia in the early 1980s,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was this whimsical decision to start a whole new life. The property had about eight houses on it and a fishing lake. I cashed out about 3 million bucks and bought it. I actually immigrated to Australia and gave up my green card.”
He was hopeful about the purchase, but it didn’t end up working out for him.
“I thought it was a great place for all my friends and family, but it was also a pipe dream that literally took me to the poorhouse,” he explained. “I went broke.”
Still, he doesn’t necessarily regret his decision.
“It was beautiful, and I don’t bemoan the fact that I did it,” he said. “I also don’t bemoan that I’m not sitting there right now getting eaten by toxic spiders.”
Fleetwood Mac bandmate Stevie Nicks threatened to sue Fleetwood until he was ‘penniless’
Fleetwood’s bandmate Stevie Nicks once threatened to also put him in a difficult financial position. When he was writing his memoir, she warned him not to include any details that might upset her or she’d sue.
“I told him, ‘Mick, if you slander me, babe, I’ll bury you. I will write down everything that you have ever done and put it out,'” Nicks told Us Magazine, per The Nicks Fix. “We’ve been laughing about this for a week, because his book’s coming out in about three months, and he still hasn’t let one person in the band see it. It’s turned into kind of a joke at this point. But it will not be a joke if this book comes out and I don’t like what’s in it. So I simply told him, ‘Well, I’ll sue you. I’ll just sue you for everything that you have, and then you’ll just be poor and penniless again, and you’ll be sorry.’ I’m laughing the whole time that I’m saying this and he’s laughing, but we’re really very serious.”
Luckily, she did not sue and asked why Fleetwood didn’t include more details about her in the book.
