Fleetwood Maccanceling their Pacific tour.
Yeah, I’ve been reading the updates. I am sure he’ll get great treatment; hope he is able to recover both his health and his ability to play with the band.
Very minor sidebar observation: in many of the updates, the reporting goes out of its way to clarify that McVie is the Mac in the band an a co-founder with Mick Fleetwood. Totally smart - most folks don’t fully realize who McVie is, let alone that the band name is based on his name. But it is weird to read references to co-founders Mac and Fleetwood, but no mention of Peter Green. I get it - Green has been out of the picture since 1970 or so and has nothing to do with the most famous lineup - but when it was formed, it was as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac - the use of the bassist’s and drummer’s names was a bit of an inside joke, since Green was the star guitarist splitting off from John Mayall and forming this band with a couple of other Mayall veterans…
It just reads as if history is slowly erasing the reference to Green…
Get well, John.
As much as I’ve enjoyed the later editions of Fleetwood Mac, the line-up of ‘Greenie’,Danny, Jeremy, Mick & John was 60’s magic. “Then Play On”, indeed!
I agree! Peter who? Oh, he wasn’t important. All he did was replace Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, and they continued without missing a beat. Oh, then he formed a band you may have heard of - Fleetword Mac. Oh, while there he wrote an obscure tune - “Black Magic Woman” (no, that’s not a Santana song).
But this thread is about McVie, so let’s remember he played on the best (IMHO) two Bluesbreakers albums ever:“Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton” (the “Beano” album) and “A Hard Road.”
He was also responsible for bringing Christine Perfect (later to become McVie) into the Mac lineup everyone knows.
Get well soon, John!
I finally I bought a copy of Berlin, and Lou Reed dies two weeks later. I finally buy a copy of the Beano album, and John McVie announces he has cancer. I’m usually not that superstitious, but maybe I should quit buying records released by living people for a little while.
Best of luck, John.
McVie wasn’t even in the original lineup, Green named his band that way to attempt to persuade him to join. It clearly worked!
If you haven’t bought Truth by The Jeff Beck Group, can you hold off for a few years? 
(you just got The Beano Album? I’d be interested in your thoughts - perhaps in a separate thread. Some of it is great - obviously Hideaway as Clapton’s Eruption/declaration of guitar god-hood; but some isn’t all that great - e.g., Clapton’s first singing credit, Rollin’ and Tumblin’, as well as their cover of Mose Allison’s Parchman Farm. They shouldn’t’ve attempted to cover Mose; he’s one of a kind…)
Nice to see I am not alone about the Peter Green-shaped hole in the coverage about Fleetwood Mac (let alone, Kirwan, Spencer, etc…). Again, no disrespect to McVie and I wish him a healthy and speedy recovery.
I know you’re not asking me, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gone on record here in giving my opinion that Clapton’s work on “Have You Heard?” may be the best studio work of his career. That said, the cover of “What’d I Say” with the “Day Tripper” riff thrown in at the end is rather silly!
I have always enjoyed your taste; gotta go back and listen. I would go with Hideaway because of its impact, or with his work in Cream…
Well, I just got a chance to sit down and listen to it again with a critical ear. I thought about following your suggestion on starting a different thread about it – but since my answer relates to the lack of Peter Green love today, and we’re talking about it here already, I’m gonna put it here.
I’d heard the record many times about 20 years ago; when I spent a lot of time with a friend who between his father and himself probably had every blues record worth having from that era. The Beano album got played quite a bit. I like it, it’s a good blues record, but it does have a few relative duds on it. I agree with Labdad that Clapton’s duel with the saxophones on “Have You Heard” is probably his finest moment, and probably the best song on the record. However, truth be told, I probably bought the record for “Steppin’ Out”. Those would be the tracks that I feel make the record stand out enough that I won’t sell it again. The rest of the record is ok, but when you compare things like “Hideaway” to other guitar instrumentals, I think it comes up short. It’s got great solos, but I think they’re all over a song that’s pretty “meh”. Their version of Parchman Farm is particularly anemic, especially when you consider what Blue Cheer and Cactus did with their covers of it.
But, those guys had Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac records, too, and they played them as heavily as any other. I’ve spent the intervening time buying up as many of those Fleetwood Mac records as I can lay my hands on. Conversely, I picked up the Beano record a couple of weeks ago because I happened across a blue London label copy at the record store for $6, and figured that was a great bargain.* My friend’s father said, “Nobody played the blues better than English hippies on drugs.” I don’t agree with him completely, but there’s some truth to it. If you’re going to go delving into that era/area of the blues, I recommend buying some PG-era Fleetwood Mac, (particularly the first record) before buying any John Mayall, Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, or Cream records. That band is just on %100 of the time. I know John McVie is more well known for his later work, but he and everyone else on those records rocked. I don’t know why everyone seemed to flourish more after they left Mayall, but I think almost everyone did.
*On the same trip, I thought about grabbing a copy of The Progressive Blues Experiment, but put it back. I’m gonna let that one sit until 2014, if it’s still there in January, I’ll buy it. I had Truth on tape when I was a kid, but it’s long gone. I’ll hold off on replacing it till next year, too. 
Jeez. I’m glad I went to see these guys in July.
Best wishes John.
Continuing this conversation - all within the spirit of celebrating McVie by discussing stuff he has been central to.
scabpicker - all good. I would add a need for Green’s last album as part of Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, A Hard Road. Wonderful stuff, including The Super-Natural, aka The Blueprint for Santana’s Career (just add a Latin beat) - an amazingly hypotic instrumental…
Oh yeah, it’s a very good record, I just think that the first Mac record is better. Mayall can probably take credit for introducing the latin beat - the Bluesbreakers are using basically the same kind of beat/riff on “All Your Love”, before Green was even in the picture.
If this goes on much longer, we’re gonna need to get our own thread.