Book Review: “Fleetwood Mac All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track” by Olivier Roubin and Romuald Ollivier
It took them more than 600 pages to do it, but French music journalists Olivier Roubin and Romuald Ollivier managed to tell the tale of every song Fleetwood Mac ever released - and even some they didn’t.
It a long journey from the Peter Green- and Jeremy Spencer-fronted blues band that Fleetwood Mac was when it spun off from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers to the mega-superstars they became with Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks at the helm. While these periods have been well-documented, the Danny Kirwan, Bob Welch, Rick Vito, Dave Mason and Mike Campbell eras have not been - until now.
And “Fleetwood Mac All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track” is likely the only place most fans will ever hear of Kirwan’s “Early Morning Come,” which exists only on bootlegs, and the treasure trove of Behind the Mask leftovers recently uploaded to YouTube.
Rather than simply chronologically list the songs, their authors, details of the recording sessions and offer mini reviews of each track - though Roubin and Ollivier do that - they also break up the material with asides titled “For Mac Addicts” and offer biographical sketches not only of the bold-faced Fleetwoods but of lesser-known Macs including Kirwan, Bob Weston, Dave Walker, Billy Burnett, Bekka Bramlett and others.
There’s also a chapter on the fake Fleetwood Mac that emerged between the Mystery to Me and Heroes are Hard to Find albums, which nearly finished off the real band and the authors describe as “probably one of the saddest episodes in the history of the music industry.”
While the material is always engrossing, the writing can be tricky to navigate. The authors toggle between full names and surnames; call LPs “opuses;” refer to McVie and Nicks as “the young woman” through the 1980s; and are occasionally sloppy whether referring to Nicks as “he” and Buckingham as “she;” writing such lines as “Tango in the Night, which took its name from the title track;” and saying the band played to “hundreds of thousands of fans every night” on the Dance tour, which is obviously not correct.
These unfortunate, unforced, errors notwithstanding, “All the Songs” remains essential reading about the many bands Fleetwood Mac has been across five decades as 18 members have come and gone with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie as the only constants. Roubin and Ollivier cover it all while delineating the through line that makes it possible to be a fan of every iteration, with the possible exception of the Time lineup, of Fleetwood Mac, despite their wide variations in style and musical output.
Grade card: “Fleetwood Mac All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track” by Olivier Roubin and Romuald Ollivier - B
8/20/25
