Fifty years ago this week, Fleetwood Mac made their debut at Windsor’s National Jazz and Blues Festival. Only Mick Fleetwood remains in the diamond-selling group from this original line-up, with bassist John McVie joining the band in September 1967. In honour of the eternally popular band’s half a century, here are 50 facts… or are they merely Rumours?

1. In 1998, Ronald Anacelteo was arrested for stalking Stevie Nicks. After leaving his Denver psychiatric facility, he later told police he planned to kidnap and impregnate her, since he believed her witchcraft would cure his homosexuality. 
    
2. Keyboardist Christine McVie’s first gig in London was supporting chart-toppers The Shadows.
    
3. Fleetwood Mac were banned from London’s Marquee Club after original guitarist Jeremy Spencer wore a giant phallus on stage.
    
4. Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green took his first tab of LSD in San Francisco during the band’s 1968 tour. He quit the band on 20 May 1970 after a breakdown which was linked to his LSD usage.
    
5. The rhythm of Rumours’ opening track "Second Hand News" was influenced by Lindsey Buckingham’s love of The Bee Gees’ 1975 single "Jive Talkin’".
    
6. Vocalist Stevie Nicks recorded her 1981 debut solo album Bella Donna in Bill Cosby’s house.
    
7. Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s brother Greg won a silver medal in the 200 metre individual swimming medley at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968. He died of a heart attack in 1990.
    
8. Bassist John McVie originally trained as a tax inspector.
    
9. In 1967, acclaimed UK blues musician John Mayall gave his former bandmate Peter Green a birthday present of studio time at Decca Records. It ended up being the first Fleetwood Mac session.
    
10. Rumours, one of the top 10 best-selling albums ever, has spent more time in the UK chart than the rest of Fleetwood Mac’s studio albums put together. It spent 31 weeks at number one in the US, as well as more than 680 weeks in the UK’s Official Albums Chart Top 100.
     
11. When Fleetwood Mac’s lengthy 1979 album Tusk refused to fit onto original CD pressings, it was Stevie Nicks’ song "Sara" which was trimmed. The song was cut from 6.22 down to 4.39. It was the second album in a row where one of Nicks’ contributions had been unceremoniously lopped, with her track "Silver Springs" being removed from the original Rumours tracklisting at the last minute.
     
12. After leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1987, Lindsey Buckingham returned to the band for a one-off encore of "Go Your Own Way" at their Great Western Forum gig in Inglewood, California in 1990.
     
13. Appearing on the 1996 Twister soundtrack, the song "Twisted" was the first duet credited to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham since the pair released their pre-Fleetwood Mac 1974 debut album, Buckingham Nicks.
     
14. An old friend of Lindsey’s who would often drop by the Fleetwood Mac studio during ‘70s recording session, Warren Zevon’s 1978 hit "Werewolves Of London" features John McVie’s bass and Mick Fleetwood’s drumming.
     
15. Zoo, a side project which kept Mick Fleetwood musically occupied during Fleetwood Mac’s ‘80s and ‘90s periods of hiatus, sometimes featured Aussie rocker Billy Thorpe.
     
16. While working as a session singer in 1977, Cyndi Lauper recorded a version of the Fleetwood Mac track "You Make Loving Fun". She was ordered to mimic Christine McVie’s vocal so the song could be included on re-recorded hits compilations.
     
17. The first song Stevie Nicks wrote was called "I’ve Loved And I’ve Lost And I’m Sad But Not Blue".
     
18. With her share of Rumours profits, Christine McVie bought Anthony Newley’s property in the Santa Monica Mountains, where she added a sculpture studio to the grounds.
     
19. Some of 1979’s Tusk album was recorded in Lindsey Buckingham’s bathroom.
     
20. The acoustic guitar line from Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 track "Eyes Of The World" was actually recycled from the Buckingham Nicks album’s instrumental track "Stephanie".
     
21. Stevie Nicks’ Steinway piano was previously owned by Leon Russell and Billy Preston.
     
22. During his sessions playing keyboards on Stevie Nicks’ solo hit "Stand Back", Prince would play basketball at the studio. “I think he would have liked a romance with me,” Stevie told Mojo in 2013.
     
23. Rumours’ working title was Yesterday’s Gone, lifted from "Don’t Stop’s" chorus.
     
24. As well as sharing an interwoven history in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Eagles and Fleetwood Mac made their celebrated ‘90s comebacks during MTV sessions filmed on the same Warner lot.
     
25. While recording Rumours, the studio’s tape machine was nicknamed Jaws due to a habit of eating fresh takes.
     
26. In the years prior to joining Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie (nee Perfect) had worked as a window dresser at Dickins & Jones.
     
27. The familiar 1975 recordings of Fleetwood Mac hits "Rhiannon", "Say You Love Me" and "Over My Head" narrowly avoided being lost forever. During studio sessions, the masters for the self-titled album were lost, later turning up in a discarded pile of tapes marked for destruction.
     
28. During his wild years of drink and drugs in the ‘80s, Mick Fleetwood’s party posse included Hollywood hellraisers Nick Nolte and Gary Busey.
     
29. Christine McVie recorded her perennial Rumours inclusion "Songbird" alone in Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall at 7am.
     
30. Already eyeing off lucrative sync opportunities, Christine McVie told Creem magazine in July 1977 that “Don’t Stop would make a great song for an insurance company”. It was later used by Bill Clinton during his 1992 US Presidential Election campaign.
     
31. Mick Fleetwood had planned to become a window cleaner when Peter Green asked him to join Fleetwood Mac in 1967.
     
32. During the Tusk tour, Stevie Nicks requested each of her hotel rooms be repainted pink and come complete with a white piano.
     
33. In June 1989, Mick Fleetwood made an appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation as an Antedean dignitary.
     
34. Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 People magazine cover shoot was affected by Lindsey Buckingham sporting two black eyes – the result of having his wisdom teeth removed.
     
35. Lindsey Buckingham went out with Hollywood actress Anne Heche in the ‘90s. They met on a flight from North Carolina to Los Angeles.
     
36. Despite leaving the band almost a decade before, Peter Green played eight notes on the Tusk track "Brown Eyes".
    
    
     
37. Living in a cheap LA rental in the days before they joined Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks brought in the money as a waitress and played the homemaker while Lindsey Buckingham sat about perfecting his guitar. “I embroidered stars and moons on his jeans,” she said in 2003.
     
38. Christine McVie began dating Dennis Wilson after the release of Rumours, stating “Dennis made me feel the extreme of every emotion”. A few years after Wilson’s 1983 drowning death, her bandmate Lindsey Buckingham co-produced and co-wrote Dennis’ brother Brian Wilson’s 1988 single "He Couldn’t Get His Poor Old Body To Move".
     
39. Fleetwood Mac put out nine albums in their first six years. Comparatively, only five studio albums featuring the ‘classic’ Rumours line-up have been released since Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined in 1974.
     
40. Despite his production credits on various Mac albums and maestro abilities with the guitar, Lindsey Buckingham cannot read music.
     
41. Mick Fleetwood’s rock collectibles business sold John Lennon’s white piano in 2000. It had also previously been owned by George Michael.
     
42. During a BBC Beatles interview, Fleetwood Mac were listening to while touring, John Lennon claimed the Abbey Road track "Sun King" was “where we do our Fleetwood Mac thing”.
     
43. In February 1971 guitarist Jeremy Spencer left his hotel to buy a newspaper, but never returned. He was later discovered to have joined the Children Of God sect.
     
44. Despite the famous hedonism enveloping Fleetwood Mac in the late ‘70s, it appears the bandmates didn’t have the same drugs of choice. “I never bought cocaine,” Lindsey Buckingham exclaimed in a 1997 interview with Guitar World. “Too expensive.”
     
45. A 1970 issue of Melody Maker announced Christine McVie was retiring from music to become a housewife.
     
46. Stevie told US magazine in 1980 that working with Lindsey on Tusk was like “being held hostage in Iran with Lindsey as the Ayatollah”.
     
47. Christine McVie collects antique perfume bottles.
     
48. Stevie Nicks believes in past lives and has suggested she was formerly a monk.
     
49. Lindsey Buckingham damned Mick Fleetwood with faint praise in a Bam interview in 1981: “He has no idea what he’s doing, technically,” he noted.
     
50. The wooden balls Mick Fleetwood is photographed wearing on his belt on the cover of Rumours were pilfered from a toilet cistern in a ‘60s club Fleetwood Mac were playing. He still wears these totems during Fleetwood Mac performances, but had a carpenter create replacements after the originals were - rather ironically - stolen.

Listen to the Spotify I Like: Fleetwood Mac playlist here.

Stevie Nicks recently announced an Australian tour with the Pretenders. More info here. 

- SM