A clear-eyed account of the band’s transitional years after Peter Green left and before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks arrived — a period of personnel churn, shifting songwriting balance and a move from British blues toward radio-friendly rock.
Personnel turnover — Jeremy Spencer’s departure, Danny Kirwan’s dismissal for on-tour violence, and later additions like Bob Welch, Dave Walker and Bob Weston — reshaped the group’s identity and onstage dynamics.
Critical reaction was mixed (Rolling Stone called Future Games “thin and anaemic-sounding”), but the band kept recording and touring, setting musical foundations that led to later global success with Buckingham and Nicks.
# The overlooked middle years
Fleetwood Mac's biography usually splits into two neat chapters: the Peter Green blues era and the California-era global smash with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. There's a third chapter between those bookends — 1970 to the early 1970s — when the group quietly reinvented itself.
Green's departure left a songwriting vacuum and a band in flux. Rather than recreate Green's role, Fleetwood Mac expanded responsibilities. Guitarists Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer were asked to fill Green's musical space. John McVie's wife Christine (then Christine Perfect) emerged as an influential but initially uncredited presence on Kiln House.
# How the sound moved
Bare Trees kept some of Kirwan's blues roots but foregrounded McVie's growing songwriting voice. Her soulful tracks — notably "Spare Me A Little Of Your Love" on that record — were early signals of the melodic direction the group would pursue.
# Lineup turmoil and its consequences
After Kirwan's exit the band expanded to a six-piece with Dave Walker and Bob Weston. They recorded Penguin with six of its nine tracks written by McVie or Welch. Fleetwood said the new lineup felt "more of a band now," adding that the change created room to explore arrangements beyond strict writer-led parts.
# What these records contribute to the Fleetwood Mac story
These albums aren't a holding pattern. They show a group experimenting with pop textures and shared authorship while still carrying traces of its blues origins. McVie's songs, Welch's contributions and Kirwan's last strong work each play different roles in a transitional catalogue.
Critics and fans were divided: diehards wanted Green-era material, while the band pursued a different musical future. The result was friction onstage and off, but also the steady accumulation of material and experience that made the later, more famous reinvention viable.
# Why this era matters now
Looking back, the post-Green, pre-Buckingham/Nicks phase explains how Fleetwood Mac could change so fully and convincingly. It was a practical exercise in survival: personnel shifts forced new writers forward, arrangements loosened, and the group gravitated toward the melodic pop that would later reach millions. That evolution — uneven and contested at the time — set the structural groundwork for the band's later commercial peak.
# Bottom line
The "forgotten" Fleetwood Mac is not a detour but a bridge. These albums and lineup shifts demonstrate the band's capacity to adapt, redistribute creative roles and work through turbulence. For listeners curious about how a blues outfit became a hugely successful pop-rock band, this period shows the mechanics of that transformation at work.
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