& Palmer—or was it Tower of Power?—they used to spin the drummer. The drummer used to go in a gyroscope and be spun around during his solo. That was the carefree seventies. Not a trick in sight.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about “Stairway to Heaven” becoming this masterpiece that every aspiring rock guitarist must learn?
PLANT: I think we’re in a disposable world, really, and “Stairway to Heaven” is one of the things that hasn’t quite been thrown away yet. But it’s been mistreated. I think all radio stations should be asked not to play it for ten years, just to leave it alone for a bit so we can tell whether it’s any good or not.
PAGE (laughing): Maybe they don’t play it anymore, I don’t know.
PLANT: I can’t believe we wrote so many words in that song.
I found it strange that you were an opening act for Lenny Kravitz.
PLANT: I will always do stuff like that. Opening for Lenny Kravitz was a huge facetious show of anti-ego because he was using so many shapes of ours anyway.
PAGE: Shapes is a nice way of putting it.
PLANT: And he knew that! And I knew that. And everybody in the crew, the band, and the audience knew that. He used to sit enthralled if I wanted to tell him a tale. Or he’d ask if I could get him a pair of my Landlubbers, which were these old jeans with the slit pockets and flares. He’s playing the music he really likes to play and he does a great job, too, you know, but the originality is a little questionable.
Do you mind if I refer to my list of questions?
PLANT: You’ve been doing very well so far without them.
I’ve been using them, but I just don’t like to ask random questions out of context.
PLANT: When they’re out of context, are you embarrassed by them?
Well, the interviews are better when they’re more conversational. But to be perfectly honest, I’m worried that the first half of the interview didn’t record, so I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
PLANT: I knew it!
[Continued . . .]
During a weekend with Lenny Kravitz in New Orleans for a Rolling Stone cover story, he seemed to constantly evade questions about his musical influences. Finally, as we sat in his living room after a concert at the House of Blues by the funk band Zapp, I decided to try one more time.
This might piss you off, but . . .
LENNY KRAVITZ: Go for it.
That song “Rock and Roll Is Dead” begins with this riff that sounds exactly like Led Zeppelin’s “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman).”
KRAVITZ: You mean the first line in the song?
No, the guitar part and then that Robert Plant yowl you do. I was wondering whether you were making a joke by singing, “Rock and roll is dead,” in a song based on a Led Zeppelin riff that everybody still steals.
KRAVITZ: No, it’s just a riff that I came up with.
You came up with it on your own?
KRAVITZ: Yeah. I mean, you know.
I suppose people are always thinking your riffs came from elsewhere.
KRAVITZ: That’s all right. How many riffs are there? Every riff you could say sounds like something else.
I suppose, but some riffs sound more like past riffs than others.
KRAVITZ: It’s just the blues, really.
So you don’t think the introduction to that song sounds anything like “Living Loving Maid”?
KRAVITZ: No. I mean, I think it has a Zeppelin-type quality. Oh, I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it.
With over nineteen million copies sold, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours ranks among the top ten best-selling albums of all time. Yet despite this success, drummer Mick Fleetwood, the band’s de facto leader since 1967, not only struggled with the usual drug and alcohol excesses, but also ended up declaring personal bankruptcy. Some thirty years after forming the band, however, he finally seemed to be getting his act together.
I heard that you were booked to play the Woodstock anniversary concert, which is strange because you weren’t at the first one, were you?
MICK FLEETWOOD: The original Woodstock we turned down years and years ago. We didn’t even know what it was. We were doing something in Detroit or somewhere. Of course, it turned out to be a wildly historic event that we didn’t take part in. One often wonders what would have happened to the early incarnation of Fleetwood Mac had we done that. We might have been the new Led Zeppelin, who knows?28
So what made you decide to do the new one?
FLEETWOOD: Quite honestly, they were prepared to pay us very handsomely for doing it.
How does it feel to be touring sober?
FLEETWOOD: It’s a whole new ball game. I’m clean and sober and enjoying life. I have a lot more energy. I would have still been up in the old days. I would have been raging. I would have been busy faking my way through this interview, praying that I wasn’t going to start stuttering.
What do you think encouraged your excesses in the first place?
FLEETWOOD: I think touring is a perfect surrounding for this. What happens in any performance situation is that you get very professional at monitoring yourself, and you’re able for the most part to perform very adequately under the influence.
But after the show, that’s when it starts. Because you got such a high off the show, plus you’re high anyhow. So where do you go from there? You don’t want to go down, so that’s when you start your socializing. You go to the bar and you have a hotel suite, so you invite people back to the room. And you get your women in there, and wouldn’t it be fun to do this or that? Before you know it, you’re looking at eight in the morning and you’re supposed to be getting on a plane and going to the next show and you feel like shit.
So what was the low point that made you realize you needed help?
FLEETWOOD: I took my abuse to the bottom of the ladder. I was in bad, bad shape two and a half years ago, and not many people knew it because I was able to function. People said, “Well, Mick’s okay. He drinks and he does a certain amount of cocaine, but he’s not that bad.”
The fact of the matter is that it was that bad, and no one knew it. I would have to go walk on a stage or do an interview, and I’d literally be dying inside, sweating and twitching. So I bottomed out and simply said, “I’ve had enough. I’m forty-five years old, end of that chapter.” And it’s been that way ever since, and with no inkling to relapse.
Does it feel strange to be touring without [singer and keyboardist] Christine McVie?
FLEETWOOD: After the amount