Danny and Peter were a natural fit, with Danny’s sense of melody on rhythm guitar really drawing Peter out, allowing him to write songs in a different style than he’d been able to previously. Rock songs poured out of him, much of them with a ferocity unlike his earlier work. The new material steered the band further into rock and roll than we’d ever been before and so began Peter’s most powerfully creative period.
The fans, the press and the music scene went wild over our new direction. Peter was so thoroughly respected that he was even given his own column in the weekly music paper Record Mirror where he would espouse vegetarianism, whatever our band was doing, and whatever other bands he liked at the time. Peter didn’t want to be a star, but he did need to express himself. He was entirely self-made and had a real presence off-stage and on that made people take notice of him. His playing, of course, spoke for itself. He knew what he wanted to do by this point and he had a lot of drive. He was also very giving and encouraging to the rest of the band. He didn’t take shit from anyone; he didn’t want to be the king of the castle, although by shining so brightly, he couldn’t avoid it. He was also a lot of fun and had a great sense of humour, which he needed in order to put up with the shenanigans that were going on in the band. To his credit, Peter loved that irreverence when many others wouldn’t have done, particularly as the leader of a band known for flying the flag of the blues.
We spent the next few months touring Europe, where we had a number of top charting hits in several countries. Some of those, in my opinion, I considered to be our least exciting new material. After those live dates we went right back into the studio where Danny and Peter split the writing duties on a whole new album.
No song better signified our new sound than ‘Albatross’, an echoey, over-dubbed extended exploration that I just adored. The song hit number 1 in England, which we heard about while on tour in America. Soon afterwards ‘Albatross’ was played on the weekly TV show Top of the Pops, which signalled the beginning of Fleetwood Mac’s career as a pop group. Our thirty-date tour of America was almost entirely sold out, including a few huge festivals.
We began that tour on the West Coast opening for Grateful Dead at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. We ran into Owsley Stanley, of course, and decided that we were ready to try his acid. We didn’t do it then, we waited until we had checked into the Gorham in New York City, which was a well-worn party hotel where all manner of bands stayed, and we gathered together in a room to make a ceremony of it. What ensued was a mind-melting experience that wasn’t at all what I expected. As it kicked in, we ended up sitting in a circle on the floor holding hands, consumed with anxiety. Each of us panicked in our own way that we were having a bad trip and had done immeasurable permanent damage to our minds. I glanced at Peter, saw him as a skeleton and thought he was dead.
It was horrible, we were all a wreck, and then the phone rang. The clang of the bell sent us through the roof, I remember us staring at it as if it were a piece of alien technology. Eventually someone answered it, not me, and miraculously, Owsley was on the other end. He must have felt our vibrations; like an LSD super-hero he sensed that we were in peril. The phone was passed around, all of us weeping and blubbering to him. One by one he expertly talked us down, the way he had with so many others. It worked and soon we weren’t scared anymore and were just enjoying the trip. LSD was a bonding experience for us that we did together on other occasions, each trip unique in and of itself. It was a tool that brought our collective consciousness together, as it did for so many of our generation. It never became a regular thing for all of us in the way that hash and pot and alcohol were, though Peter and Jeremy indulged more than most, but LSD played its role and it cannot be underestimated.
This tour marked a change in our live show. We’d taken off in terms of our renown, so Harold and the most ribald aspects of our act didn’t get as much stage time. Aside from a wild show at the Whisky A Go-Go club in Los Angeles and a few others, our antics would have got us into too much trouble because this was no pub tour of England. We did get up to our old tricks, though, when we shared the bill with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Janis Joplin got a real big kick out of Harold. She thought it was the greatest thing she’d ever seen.
Just because we learned to control ourselves on stage doesn’t mean we’d mellowed in any way. As a concession to toning things down while performing, we turned things up off-stage by uttering deliberately filthy things very quickly, in proper English accents, to all manner of unwitting Americans who crossed our path. No one knew what we were saying except us, which was endlessly amusing. We did this a lot at restaurants and Jeremy was the absolute master of it. When the waitress came to take our order he’d say, ‘Can I have the vagina burger with the hot sloppy mess on top? Do you have that?’
‘The what? No, I don’t think we have that.’
‘All right. Well, do you have a shitburger thing on rye then?’
‘No, sir. Is it a hamburger that you want? I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you said.’
‘Yes, that’s fine, I’ll have that. Hot slop on the side.’
We’d be sitting there, biting our tongues, waiting for the day when someone would catch on and beat him up. Jeremy loved upsetting the norm like some mischievous pixie. He’d shout obscene things at kids on street corners in nice neighbourhoods. He’d say things that were often quite profound, or intended to make them think, though as usual, Jeremy often took it a few steps too far in the same way he did with his imitations of his bandmates.
That tour of America was amazing: we opened for Muddy Waters in Chicago and booked some recording time at the famous Chess Studio before it closed down. We were able to cut a few tracks with a handful of our heroes from the Chicago blues scene, who were all sceptical of us at first. We had Otis Span on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton on harmonica and Elmore James’ famous sideman J.T. Brown on saxophone. None of them had ever seen or heard of us before and when they got a look at us, I could tell that they thought we were another loud, over-distorted, acid-rock blues band from England, the type who turned it up to mask their fairly basic skills. But we showed them otherwise; they saw that we were a tight little act who could put them through their paces. Peter, of course, won the day with his taut soloing, his guitar tone and the deep soul in every bit of his playing. The resulting album, Blues Jam in Chicago, captures a truly great recording session.
When we got back home to England, ‘Albatross’ was on its way to selling a million copies. We’d set off with a decent roster of gig offers, but we returned with TV spots to do and much larger venues at our disposal. It was very exciting but all a bit dizzying. I took it in stride, as best I could, but it took some getting used to. Once I got my head around it, I did like the attention. It gave me a sense of confidence and that gave me the courage to endeavour to rekindle my romance with Jenny Boyd.
After we had broken up, Jenny went on a journey to find herself, after experiencing what she calls a spiritual awakening. She moved to San Francisco for six months, right at the start of the Flower Power movement. Then she went to India with her sister Pattie, George Harrison and the Beatles, to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. She became so involved with it, as did the Beatles, that she intended to take part in setting up a Maharishi centre in London, to help raise consciousness locally, and then globally, in an effort to bring peace to the world. That didn’t happen. The Maharishi turned out to be not quite who he had seemed to be and she grew disillusioned. Jenny returned to London in the summer of 1968 and began to sell Art Nouveau and 1930s china in a small shop called Juniper, which she ran with her sister Pattie.
I’d never stopped pining for Jenny and I wasn’t the only one. Donovan, who was a huge pop star at the time, was so taken with Jenny that he wrote the song ‘Jennifer Juniper’ for her just before she left England. Then he followed her when she went to India and declared his love. Luckily for me, she never fancied him.
During our tour
of America I wrote Jenny a letter, addressed it to the shop I’d heard she had opened and hoped she still had feelings for me. Things were going great for me with the success of ‘Albatross’ and our American tour, because we’d finally got some recognition and a larger global following than we ever thought we’d have. I wrote about how wonderful it was to play with Peter–I believe I said he ‘oozed with feeling’–and I told her how I’d come to realise that I’d never be a great drummer, but had learned to really understand and appreciate music more than I’d thought possible.
I also asked her to marry me.
We hadn’t seen each other in over six months, and when we did it was in passing, so my proposal was a bit of a surprise. It made complete sense to me, of course, because in my head I knew how I’d felt all along–I just never managed to let her know it. My timing couldn’t have been worse, because Jenny had just made plans to move to Wales with a fairly new boyfriend.
I wasn’t going to let that happen, so when I returned home, I drove my car up to Wales to visit her. She was living in a communal house on a very rural piece of land, with no modern conveniences and no other buildings in sight, surrounded by sloping fields that were covered in snow, dotted with woolly sheep huddled together for warmth. There were about five or six of them living in an old stone shepherd’s cottage, with an outhouse and no heat aside from one large fire. It was a very hippie scene; they’d cook rice in a pot balanced on the logs and spend their time reading, wood carving or going on walks. They listened to Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album quite a lot on the record player.
As Jenny has reminded me, I showed up looking like a Cossack in a floor-length Afghan coat, which made me appear even taller. I looked sharp and smart and in those parts, I was clearly a ‘townie’ beside everyone else in their country, hippie clothes. Truthfully, I wasn’t one of them. I came from a different tribe, as Jenny has told me. I was one of the nomads, one of the musicians, and that tribe wasn’t always on the same wavelength as the hippies. My type of people drank heavily, swore often and did things, well, like we did in Fleetwood Mac. Given the chance, hippies wouldn’t have thrown condoms filled with milk or beer into the audience.
I had to find something to do for the night with these people up there in Wales, so I settled on wood carving. One of the girls had shaped her piece of timber into an angelic statue and one of the boys was busy whittling a flute to play. I joined in, carving an homage to Harold–just a blunt, crude, wooden dildo. Jenny flushed with embarrassment when she saw it, because it was so base and contrary to the Flower Power rules. I could tell that she really wanted to giggle. I didn’t do it just for shock, by the way, I put that dildo to good use; it became the gear-shift knob in my car as soon as I got back to London. It was so flagrantly a wooden dick that I had to buy a leather pouch to put over it so that anyone looking in would think it was a regular shifter. My sister Sally thought this was so hilarious that she bought me a set of small sterling silver balls to use as a keychain for my car with the dildo gear-shift. I still have those balls and still use them to this day.
Jenny had told her new boyfriend, Martin, that I was an old friend coming to visit for a night, so they put me in a little bedroom downstairs where I slept in my clothes, including my coat, because it was so terribly cold. The next morning I drove Jenny to the nearest town for breakfast at the local tea shop. I told her all about the tour we’d just finished and how the band was growing day by day. Jenny told me that when she saw me in Wales she knew I was different. I had more confidence and she saw how excited I was about the future and the band.
‘But Jenny, what about you?’ I asked her. ‘Did you give up your store to live here?’
She nodded.
‘It’s very quaint,’ I said, looking around. ‘The countryside is beautiful, I get it. But you’re going to be bored out of your mind eventually, don’t you think?’
She just smiled at me. We both knew I was right. I also knew her.
‘I mean, there’s nothing going on here,’ I said. ‘Jenny, what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, as we stared at each other, then started to laugh. ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing really. A whole bunch of us had been hanging out together, smoking pot, cups of tea, getting a bit hippie, and I guess I fell into being with Martin.’
‘I can see what they’re doing, the back to nature shit, I saw a lot of that in San Francisco,’ I said. ‘But it’s tough living that kind of life. It’s great if you’re on the West Coast of America. But here? In Wales? It’s fucking freezing, Jenny!’
We were both laughing near hysterically by now. Jenny had tears running down her cheeks.
‘I mean, having to pump the well to get water?’ I continued. ‘Having to go outside in the snow to take a shit? What does that prove? They’re mad!’
When our giggles died down, I asked her what I’d come that far to ask.
‘So you got the letter I sent?’
‘Yes,’ she said, staring into my eyes.
‘I meant what I said. I would like to marry you, Jenny.’
‘I want to be with you, Mick.’
I held her hand and felt my eyes water. ‘Let’s get your stuff and get back to London. I leave for a tour of Europe tomorrow.’
CHAPTER 6
FLIGHT OF THE GREEN GOD
After our time apart, getting back together with Jenny felt like coming home, and I know she felt the same. We settled into a flat at 74 Kensington Church Street in west London, with a little attic room upstairs that I set about soundproofing, so that I could play up there when I was learning new material. I nailed blankets and cushions to the window frames and stuffed my bass drum full of them too. As the band’s direction changed I spent more and more time up there working it out, sometimes–as in the case of ‘Oh Well’–terrified that I’d never get it because I wasn’t good enough. I’d think myself into a corner, then let go, and eventually find my way.
That flat might as well have been a rehearsal space and poor Jenny had to put up with very barebones living. In our sitting room we had a great stereo system and a lot of records, but other than that just a deckchair, a mirror above the fireplace and grey carpeted floors. Later we got a long wooden table, but for most of the time we lived there, we had nothing else. I used to spend nights in that room listening to music with friends like Andy Sylvester who lived downstairs. We’d put on headphones, sit on the floor and listen to James Brown albums, nodding at one another as yet another drum break or bass line blew our minds. The next morning, the entire floor would be littered with vinyl.
Jenny came with us when we returned to America that winter, and I couldn’t have been happier because I wanted her to see all that we’d achieved. We had a new album to support, our second release in the States, and greater popularity over there than we’d ever had before. Our record company, Epic, had released English Rose, which was a selection of the best cuts from Mr Wonderful (that Epic had declined to release the year before) as well as ‘Black Magic Woman’, ‘Albatross’ and four new Danny Kirwan tracks.
Our show had evolved into two long sets, which by the end became an inspired free-for-all. The first set was comprised of traditional blues-based compositions led by Jeremy on slide guitar as well as Danny’s material. Then Jeremy would take a break, leaving Peter and Danny free to launch into long improvised excursions like ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ that drove our fans completely insane. Then we’d all take a half hour break, have a few drinks, then return to the stage for Jeremy’s set, where he’d don his gold lamé suit and introduce us as ‘Earl Vincent and the Valiants’. He had his proto-Elvis character perfected by then; he’d grease his hair back, snarl appropriately, and do perfect covers of ‘Great Balls of Fire’, ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Keep A-Knockin’’ and more.
We went on like this for three months or so, some gigs good, some bad, and though I was happy to have Jenny there, she didn’t feel the same. She was excited to witness what our band had become, but touring life was not for
her. We stayed in seedy Holiday Inns or at the Gorham Hotel in New York. Everyone in the band was a night owl, but Jenny was not by nature, so playing music, drinking all night and sleeping late was not how she’d organically choose to spend her time. She had to find ways of entertaining herself and of spending time with me, which I did as best I could during the afternoons. I remember us being in Chicago on that tour and going on a quest for Levi’s jeans, which you couldn’t get anywhere in England at that time. The only pair that would fit me because of my height were the very largest pair, which looked like clown pants on me.
When we got home, Jenny altered them on her sewing machine and since that was such a chore, one of her hobbies became sewing patches onto my Levi’s when they wore out at the knee or the bottom, which they did constantly. Over time they became embroidered works of art. Jenny also knitted me a scarf while we were on tour. She was just learning, so it ended up being much longer than it needed to be. I would wrap it round my neck several times and it would still fall to the ground on both sides of me. It wasn’t how she intended it, but I absolutely loved it because it had an element of costume, which I embraced in my style of dress.
Jenny was with us one unforgettable night when we played with Grateful Dead in New Orleans. They were headlining a new venue called the Warehouse, which was a huge old barn where cotton had once been stored after picking. It had been converted into the first concert hall of its type in New Orleans and we couldn’t wait to play there. As diverse as New Orleans has always been, it is still the deep South, a place where the police were hostile toward scruffy long-haired types like us.
Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography Page 9
