Mick Fleetwood has questions. Not the kind you answer. The kind you sit with for, say, 50 years while your band cycles through 18 members, drops a few global classics, burns down relationships in public, and still keeps turning up to rehearsal.
Fleetwood is back with a reimagined version of 1995’s These Strange Times, a spoken-word mood piece originally buried on Fleetwood Mac’s most unloved album Time. You’d be forgiven for not remembering it — even Fleetwood admits “it was probably not even heard by anybody.” But in a pandemic-era haze of existential reflection, it struck a nerve. “I thought, what if we all consider there’s something you can come out of this period and address?” he says. “That’s what this track became.”
The song is less prophecy, more atmosphere — Fleetwood’s narration wandering like an anxious monk over tribal percussion and Becca Bramlett’s newly recorded chants. Guitarist Rick Vito, another Mac alum, shows up to add a coda that nods to “Albatross.” Even the band’s DNA loops back in on itself.
“I just wanted to re-express some things,” Fleetwood says, “and you know what? Getting a second chance to redo something — that’s God’s gift to a musician.”
Which brings us to the uncomfortable cousin at the Mac family reunion: Time. Released in ’95, during one of the band’s many “everyone-but-you” phases, Time was a murky mess — no Stevie, no Lindsey, but yes to Dave Mason and a version of Fleetwood Mac that felt like an uncanny valley simulation of itself.
“I had to persuade the rest of the band to even let ‘These Strange Times’ on the album,” Fleetwood recalls. “It was an odd, ugly duckling track — spoken word, no real chorus. But now? It finally feels relevant.”
He’s surprisingly zen about Fleetwood Mac’s revolving door. “It’s like one big story. Chapters are chapters,” he says, before rattling off names like Bob Welch, Danny Kirwan, and Billy Burnette with the fondness of someone flipping through a very worn yearbook. “There’s a reason we survived: everyone who came in could express themselves. That was the point. We weren’t trying to duplicate anything.”
Peter Green, the band’s founder and tortured blues savant, looms large over this particular chapter. “Then Play On was the turning point,” Fleetwood says, name-checking the recently reissued 1969 album that marked the band’s evolution from strict blues into something far weirder. “It was Peter feeling confident enough to express himself. He wasn’t just playing his heroes anymore. He was becoming one.”
Green passed away shortly before this interview, and his spirit hangs over These Strange Times. Fleetwood even slips a little bit of “Albatross” into the song’s outro as a quiet nod. “That’s me and Rick,” he says. “It was our way of bringing it full circle.”
So is there still more to come? Possibly. “I think I’ve had this conversation for the last 50 years,” Fleetwood shrugs. “When you think it’s over, we do something else. Even with long breaks — something versus nothing.”
So maybe Fleetwood Mac is still a thing. Maybe not. But Mick Fleetwood is, and he’s still watching the world turn — cymbals at the ready.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
