What Happened to Fleetwood Mac's Original Members After Peter Green Walked Away?

Most bands die when their founder quits. Fleetwood Mac lost its founding guitarist in 1970 but kept the name he invented, and over the next five years the band shed members the way other bands shed drummers. By the time Rumours hit record shops in 1977, the lineup shared exactly two people with the one that first played the blues in London. The founder's slide toward psychiatric hospitals began, his bandmates later concluded, with a single night at a commune near Munich. Years afterward he threatened his accountant, reportedly so the royalty checks would stop. One guitarist stepped out of a Los Angeles hotel and resurfaced inside a religious group, while another smashed his guitar backstage and watched the show from the sound desk instead of playing it. A manager sent a counterfeit Fleetwood Mac across America. Meanwhile the two men whose surnames formed the band's name stayed put and hired a broke California duo, and that new lineup cut one of the best-selling albums of all time while both couples inside the band split up. Fleetwood's own marriage fell apart too.