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Arts & Entertainment

Fleetwood Mac Has Never Been On <em>Saturday Night Live</em>, WHY?

By

Jen Carlson

Published Feb 25, 2015

Modified Feb 25, 2015

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By

Jen Carlson

Published Feb 25, 2015

Modified Feb 25, 2015

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Recently Saturday Night Live celebrated forty years with a massive on-air celebration, bringing back cast members and musical guests new and old. But where was Fleetwood Mac? We got Miley Cyrus... but no Fleetwood Mac? Surely this legendary band must have been invited on the show at some point during the past four decades. Alas, I looked around to find video but came up empty-handed.

Miley Cyrus has hosted the show twice, and been musical guest once, and was part of the 40th anniversary celebration on top of all that. Fleetwood Mac has never been on the show. Not once. Not ever. There must be a reason for this!

First, let's look at the SNL musical guest roster over time:

Fleetwood Mac hit their mainstream success stride around the mid-1970s, right when SNL was premiering, and even though it was new the show was booking big names right off the bat: Patti Smith, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Joe Cocker, The Band, Frank Zappa, The Kinks, Tom Waits, Randy Newman (twice), Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, The Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, Blondie, Dylan, Tom Petty, David Bowie... they all played SNL in the 1970s, along with a ton of others.

During that time, both Rumours and Tusk came out. It's safe to say that while touring for the latter, Fleetwood Mac could have appeared on SNL. They were in New York, or at least the greater NY area, by November 10th in 1979, for shows in New Haven (the 10th), New Jersey (the 11th), and MSG (the 12th and 15th). Surely, if invited onto the show, they could have arranged it somehow, given enough notice. Perhaps on November 10th, when Friend Of Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, was musical guest on the show. Did Tom Petty edge Mac out of ever appearing on the show? That's a conspiracy theory for another time. For now, let's move on to The Lorne Equation.

Does Lorne have a problem with the McVies? Was he worried that 1970s Fleetwood Mac and 1970s SNL cast would result in Too Many Drugs? We don't have Lorne's phone number, so sadly cannot answer either of those questions.

We did reach out to SNL's publicity department, however, where a spokesperson conveniently told us: "We are on hiatus." Another insider suggested, "Maybe they said no?"

snlstevie15.JPG
Fake Stevie on SNL

Interesting.

Has Fleetwood Mac ever even been part of an SNL sketch? Yes, in 2013 their song "I Don't Wanna Know" was in a sketch (watch here). And before that, Lucy Lawless played Stevie Nicks in a burrito sketch (watch here). That's not a lot of sketches for a band that has delivered plenty of comedic material throughout the years.

These days, Stevie Nicks is perfectly happy hamming it up for the cameras—she even addressed those witch rumors in American Horror Story—so it's the perfect time for fans (who have been curious about this in the past) to lobby for the band (now fully back together!) to perform on the show.

If they don't appear in Studio 8H by the end of this year, we'll have no choice but to assume Lorne is the person who drove a wedge between the McVies (who divorced right around the time of the aforementioned Rumours tour).

Tagged

conspiracy theories

fleetwood mac

investigative reporting

saturday night live

snl

original

Jen Carlson

Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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