Mick Drug and Alcohol Free (1992)

[michelej1]

[Just uploading this London Daily Mail article that wasn't online already]

December 15, 1992, Daily Mail (London)

HEADLINE: MY LIFE'S BEEN ONE HELL OF A PARTY,REALLY;
SPENCER BRIGHT ON ROCK LEGEND MICK FLEETWOOD'S BATTLE TO BEAT DRUGS AND BOOZE

BYLINE: Spencer Bright

BODY:
OH daddy, you're drunk again. You've been up for three days and you said you were going to come out for dinner, now you don't feel good.'

At least Mick Fleetwood will not be hearing those heart-tugging words again from his daughters, Amy and Lucy. For the past eight months he's been drug and alcohol-free, having given up cocaine and a bottle and a half of brandy a day.

For 20 years, Fleetwood reckoned he had his habit under control. 'I suppose I was adept at faking my way through, and I could function on an everyday level without being a dribbling wreck in the corner of a room. I was a drunk, a functioning drunk,' he says.

Apart from a beer-gut that has now subsided, Fleetwood appears to have suffered few long-term effects from what he repeatedly refers to, and without regret, as 'one hell of a party'.

Looking him straight in the eye, possible when he plonks his six-foot-five wiry bulk on to a sofa, his eyes do indeed seem Optrex bright. He's worried that going sober has been too easy. He's had no help besides self-discipline.

'Right now I don't drink. It's not an imposition - I just don't want to drink,' he says. 'If for one moment I think I'm not going to continue the way I am, then I will, absolutely without question, get help.'

FLEETWOOD'S new, optimistic outlook on life can be summed up in the words of one of the group's most famous songs, Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow from the Rumours album, with it's refrain 'Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone'.

The single, which became Bill Clinton's campaign song, was written by Christine McVie, the group's keyboard player and singer, as a 'healing song' during her parting from her ex-husband John McVie, the group's bass player.

Fleetwood Mac will almost certainly be performing it at Clinton's inauguration as U.S. president in Washington on January 20.

Several catalysts combined to urge Fleetwood to straighten up. He was coming up to his 45th birthday and was mulling over which way his life was heading. 'The time-clock issue definitely rang a bell. I was feeling like a piece of rubbish; it was awful.'

He saw and heard his life flash before him while listening to 25 years of Fleetwood Mac music. He was selecting the tracks to go on The Chain, the newly-released four-CD boxed set commemorating the group's quarter century. He was also sifting through memories for the photographic book My Twenty Five Years In Fleetwood Mac, to be published on January 7. 'I'd be sitting on the floor - I was still drinking then - weeping away, saying 'Oh God, there's my kids. Did I take care of them?' Some heavy stuff came out.'

Unlike some serious drunks, Fleetwood did not drink to find numbness, but to release his emotional side. Now he's attempting to do the same while sober. 'I may well be in for a surprise. I'm finding out things every day about myself,' he says. 'I hope I become a better person, especially for my children.' Both daughters live in Los Angeles. Amy, 21, works for a management company dealing with video producers and is an aspiring actress. Lucy, 19, is at college.

Fleetwood recently calculated that he had spent $ 1.2million (£765,000) on drugs. He blamed his bankruptcy in 1984 not on drugs, however, but on alleged financial mismanagement. After years of legal action, he has recovered some of his fortune from his former advisers. He is a wealthy man once more.

Fleetwood peppers his speech with 'hey' and 'the bottom line is', the result of two decades in America. Otherwise he retains his English accent and gentility. He adored his late father, Wing Commander Mike Fleetwood DSO, a World War Two pilot, and is close to his mother. He suffered from dyslexia and the panic attacks he had when hauled in front of the blackboard at school recur today.

HIS public school experiences left him a shy personality, and there is still a boyish quality to his voice. So he was surprised to hear that Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac's American singer and resident sex symbol, described him to me as a resolute character, a knight who 'rode in on his white horse and swept me up and told them all to go to hell'.

Fleetwood is more used to her saying he is cruel and vile, which she also did to me, in tears. At the moment they are not speaking. 'I wrote her a little Mick letter,' he says. 'I said I hoped that we could find a way of being close again, rather than just speaking through other people.'

Much of the friction between them dates back to their thwarted love affair. It's a story that illustrates why Fleetwood Mac are rock's longest-running soap opera.

In 1977 the group were at the peak of their fame, with Rumours on the way to becoming one of the biggest albums of all time. While Fleetwood was supposedly attempting a reconciliation with his first wife, Jenny, he was having an affair with Stevie. 'We were very much in love at one point,' he says. 'We just drifted apart. I adore Stevie, no matter what she says, which is some wicked stuff sometimes.'

To make it even more sudsy, Fleetwood went off with Sara Recor, a great friend of Stevie's. Fleetwood married Sara in 1988 after several on/off years. They are now getting divorced.

'Sara had a drug problem as well, but has been fit as a fiddle for more than four years. That was a relationship on which drugs and alcohol took their toll.

'Luckily the divorce is not ugly; in fact, I see her regularly. I have a lovely girlfriend, Lynne Frankel, who works for a movie company, and I'm very happy.' Meanwhile, Sara and Stevie are great friends again.

Both Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie are thinking of returning to their British roots. McVie has a house in Kent and is desperate to spend more time there. 'After spending so long away from home, it's a rather wonderful, patriotic feeling when you put your feet on English soil,' she says.

Fleetwood says: 'A few years ago, I'd have said 'No, I don't think I'll ever come back'. I've now started to think I could.

'Maybe it's returning home to die. There's an element of that. Where do you want to end up, Mick, when you're 65 years old?'

[michelej1]

Halifax Daily News, November 6, 2002

HEADLINE: Why Mick Fleetwood quit drugs: 'I looked in the mirror'

BODY:
A glimpse of himself in a mirror prompted Fleetwood Mac star Mick Fleetwood to quit drinking and taking drugs, because he looked like "a sweaty, greasy blancmange."

The drummer's third wife, Lynn, felt sure a vacation to Hawaii eight years ago would help her husband kick his bad habits. And it did, but not before she threatened to leave him there on his own.

"I came here in a wretched condition," Fleetwood said. "My drinking and drug-taking was no longer a laugh; it was no longer funny. It was sad.

"I got there, I drank myself into a stupor, made a lot of friends very quickly, and the next morning Lynn said, 'I think I'm going home."'

Lynn Fleetwood said: "I had so hoped this would be the change of something."

Fleetwood admits that change came when, hungover, he glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror.

"I went into the toilet and I looked in the mirror and I had a long beard, a greasy complexion and I was slightly overweight. I was a sweaty, greasy blancmange and I looked at myself and thought, 'This is it, it's over.'

"I walked out and told Lynn not to go home and let me sleep my way out of it for the rest of the day, and ever since then I've been sober."

Fleetwood said he will never forgive himself for being a deadbeat dad to daughters Lucy and Amy during his years of cocaine and alcohol abuse.

In the documentary about him, filmed by cable channel Bravo, Fleetwood said, "It was like buying toothpaste -- Leer jets, send them in, just make a phone call: 'Send someone out from Los Angeles; I need a new heap of drugs.'

"Part of my crazy behaviour was not being the father that I could have been."

His grown up daughters admit living with their boozed up dad was difficult and confusing most of the time.

Amy Fleetwood said: "Nothing was hidden from us. I witnessed everything and I had concerns for a long time. I didn't have the closeness that I wanted. It was impossible." -- WENN

[Villavic]

Part of this was told in his dvd "2 sticks and a drum". I think he definitely quited drugs and alcohol in the mid 90s when Lynn threatened to leave him on his own, I guess that was just before The Dance. Fortunately for us Stevie and Mick were clean and this reunion was a success. I don't think it would not have been a success, specially the tour, if they were still with drinking problems.