Ghostly Intervention: The song Fleetwood Mac wrote in “half an hour”
Sometimes inspiration strikes like lightning, a miracle, something otherworldly or even godly. Throughout art and music history, plenty of examples of messages, lyrics, or visions seem to hit from above, leaving the artist merely scrambling to get a pen to get it down in time. There was Bob Dylan writing ‘Desolation Row’ on a taxi ride. Paul McCartney creating ‘Yesterday’ in minutes after a dream. Or even Sylvester Stallone penning the Rocky screenplay in only three days. It happened to Fleetwood Mac, too.
Who knows where that inspiration comes from or what the science behind an idea hitting quickly like that is? It feels like some kind of divine intervention or fate, or perhaps in the case of Fleetwood Mac, a message from beyond the veil as Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham seemed to channel the band’s founding member despite never working with him.
Already, it feels like an odd story. When thinking of Fleetwood Mac, the group is separated into its respective couples and collaborative duos. While they were in the band simultaneously and two parts of the group’s most successful lineup, it’s strange to think of McVie and Lindsey coming together to write. It was a rare occasion, but both seemed to get a message from beyond when it came to ‘World Turning’.
As the group moved through different iterations, their sound evolved drastically. From Green’s founding years to the McVie and Lindsey days in the 1970s, the band completely rearranged from a blues group to a rock band. If you try to shuffle their entire discography, you’re met with three or four different groups and styles, depending on what track it lands on. Really, the band should have totally disbanded and started up something new, but as Mick Fleetwood and John McVie endured as remaining members from the start, the name stuck around, and the cast rotated around it.
However, that confusing backstory proved inspiration. While their personal dramas always haunted the band, there were longer-standing ghosts in the studio daily. In 1975, when it came to writing for their first album as a new lineup, Peter Green’s ghost peered over the shoulder of the new members as McVie and Buckingham reworked his song ‘The World Keeps on Turning’ into something totally new.
It seemed like Green took hold of the pen, sending divine intervention or otherworldly inspiration to the pair as they wrote their own take without much strife. “Lindsay had this lick and didn’t know what to do with it,” McVie explained. “We knocked around some vocal ideas, and it happened very quickly – about half an hour.”
Their track is very different to the original. As Buckingham especially announced his introduction to the group, the track is full of his intricate and tricky guitar lines, while McVie opens up the era of duel vocals that would define this new stage in the band. It’s so different that Green isn’t credited on the song. But as the rhythm drips with gritty blues, their founder’s ghostly hands feel like they’re right there, playing along.
Whether they meant it to be or not, or whether it was merely a message from above sent down by their former member, ‘World Turning’ stands as a perfect homage to their past. Sitting on their 1975 self-titled album, Green’s ‘The World Keeps Turning’ also lived on a self-titled release from back in 1968. Allowing their history to play a part in welcoming a new future, McVie and Buckingham’s momentary flash of inspiration seemed to be delivered by the familiar hands of a ghostly friend.