Abandoning academic pursuits, Fleetwood took up the drums after his parents, recognizing that he might find a future in music, bought him “Gigster” drum kit when he was thirteen. His family encouraged his artistic side, as his father composed poetry and was an amateur drummer himself. Fleetwood’s early drumming was inspired by Tony Meehan, drummer in Cliff Richard’s backup band, the Shadows, and for the Everly Brothers. With his parents’ support, he dropped out of school at 15 and, in 1963, moved to London to pursue a career as a drummer. At first he stayed with his younger sister Sally in Notting Hill. After a brief stint working at Liberty in London, he found his first opportunity in music.

Keyboard player Peter Bardens lived only a few doors away from Fleetwood’s first home in London, and upon hearing of the proximity of an available drummer, Bardens gave Fleetwood his first gig in Bardens’ band the Cheynes in July 1963, thus seeding the young drummer’s musical career. It would take him from the Cheynes – with whom he supported early gigs by the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds – to stints in the Bo Street Runners, where he replaced original drummer Nigel Hutchinson, who had enjoyed brief television fame on Ready Steady Go!. However, by April 1965, when Fleetwood joined the band, it was fading into obscurity. By February 1966, Bardens, who had left the group, called on Fleetwood to join his new band, the Peter Bs, which soon expanded to become Shotgun Express (with Rod Stewart). Peter Green, who was a guitarist in the Peter Bs, left to join John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, followed by Fleetwood in April 1967. His new band already featured John McVie. Bardens would later go on to join the band Camel.

Green became a supportive bandmate who helped Fleetwood in his early experimentation with the drum kit. In his personal life meanwhile, Fleetwood soon became infatuated with model Jenny Boyd, the sister of whom, Pattie Boyd, would be wife to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton. He was, however, dismissed from the Bluesbreakers for repeated insobriety during gigs. Both Fleetwood and McVie were heavy drinkers, and their combined efforts were too much for Mayall and the band to cope with. Green, feeling trapped within the Bluesbreakers, also left in June 1967. Recalling “his favourite rhythm section, ‘Fleetwood Mac'” – Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – Green elected to invite both to join him in his new band, Fleetwood Mac. Though McVie hesitated briefly due to financial reasons, both joined Green by the summer of 1967 with a record contract on the horizon.

The initial incarnation of Fleetwood Mac performed its first gig in August 1967 at the seventh annual Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival, playing a Chicago-style blues. McVie, initially hesitant to commit, was later prompted to leave the Bluesbreakers and join Fleetwood Mac full-time when the former adopted a horns section with which he disagreed. He replaced the initial bassist, Bob Brunning. McVie, Fleetwood, Green and guitarist Jeremy Spencer thus formed the first fixed line-up of Fleetwood Mac.

The band’s first album, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, was released in 1968, and the band toured the United States for the first time, though Green was reluctant to do so for fear of gun crime. Upon their return, they recorded a second album, Mr. Wonderful under simply “Fleetwood Mac” with Green’s name dropped. A guest musician on the album, Christine Perfect, became close with the group and she and McVie were married in 1968. A third guitarist, Danny Kirwan, was also added to the line-up. Despite the success of their third album, Then Play On, and a string of hit singles including “Albatross” and “Man of the World”, Green himself drifted away from the band, struggling both creatively and with increasing use of LSD. He later joined a Christian religious group.

Fleetwood remained a consistent presence in the ever-changing line-up of the group following the departure of Green in May 1970, when Spencer and Kirwan assumed more central roles in the group’s song-writing. In June 1970, Fleetwood and Jenny Boyd were married. In September 1970 the release of Kiln House saw a line-up of Spencer, Kirwan, John McVie and Fleetwood, with Christine McVie providing keyboards and backing vocals. Fleetwood, “a social creature who prized community and communication”, was particularly taken with the group’s new living arrangements: they moved into a large Victoria-era mansion near Headley, Hampshire.

By early 1971, with Christine McVie becoming an official member of the band, Fleetwood and the group boarded a plane to San Francisco. Spencer, fearful following the recent 1971 San Fernando earthquake, reluctantly boarded the plane. Having arrived in America, he grew more disillusioned with the group, and unsuccessfully pleaded with Fleetwood to cancel this leg of the tour. He left the hotel abruptly one afternoon and disappeared. He was found several days later to have joined Family International, then known as Children of God, a religious group started in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California. Once more, Fleetwood attempted to mediate; however Spencer would not return. After Green was asked to return temporarily to help finish the tour, the band met with Bob Welch who would become their next member. Their next album, Future Games, was released later that year. Bare Trees came a year later, in 1972. During the subsequent tours to promote the latter, Fleetwood once more adopted the role of mediator: Kirwan’s self-destructive personality and problems with alcohol culminated in a refusal to go on stage before one concert; Fleetwood himself made the decision to fire the band member. Furthermore, there were early signs of strife in the marriage of John and Christine McVie. Fleetwood again stepped in to mediate between the two members, talking Christine out of a decision to leave the group. The band added guitarist Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker, formerly of Savoy Brown and the Idle Race. The resulting turmoil, however, negatively affected their next album, Penguin, released in 1973 to poor reviews. Walker was subsequently asked to leave the group, and the next album Mystery to Me was received more warmly.

By November 1974, despite having survived legal challenges from Davis, Bob Welch departed. His marriage was failing and he felt that he had hit the end of his creative road with the group. Fleetwood meanwhile was planning a follow-up album to Heroes Are Hard to Find – Welch’s last with the group – which had charted at 34 in the United States. Fleetwood was shopping with his children when a chance encounter with an old friend led him to visit Sound City and producer Keith Olsen. While at the studio, Olsen played samples from an album entitled Buckingham Nicks. Fleetwood immediately “was in awe”. Unbeknownst to him, both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were working in the studio at the time, though the three did not meet until later. On New Year’s Eve, 1974, Fleetwood contacted Olsen to advise him that their planned project was on hiatus after Welch’s departure, however he then suggested that Nicks and Buckingham join Fleetwood Mac. The group ate together at a local restaurant before practising together for the first time in the new studio. The next year the new line-up released Fleetwood Mac.

As with many musicians during the period in Los Angeles, the band began using copious amounts of cocaine. Fleetwood would go on to recollect in his autobiography that “Until then, Fleetwood Mac hadn’t had much experience with this Andean rocket fuel. Now we discovered that a toot now and then relieved the boredom of long hours in the studio with little nourishment.” The personal relationships between the band members were becoming frayed. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced in August 1976, ending nearly eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks also fought often, a fact that was revealed to fans by Rolling Stone in April 1976. The duo’s arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. At the same time, Christine McVie and Nicks became closer. Fleetwood, meanwhile, began searching for a new recording location, and landed on the Record Plant of Sausalito, California. Grissim, working for Rolling Stone, frequently met with the group and took a particular liking to Fleetwood, whom he described as “a real pro.”

In November 1977 Fleetwood and Nicks began having an affair. It continued sporadically for the next two years during the fallout from the end of Fleetwood’s relationship with Boyd, until the pair mutually decided to end it. “Never in a million years could you have told me that [her affair with Fleetwood] would happen,” Nicks later stated. “Everybody was angry, because Mick was married to a wonderful girl and had two wonderful children. I was horrified. I loved these people. I loved his family. So it couldn’t possibly work out. And it didn’t. I just couldn’t.” Boyd and Fleetwood had begun living together once more in 1976, and temporarily remarried to help their children emigrate to the United States. They divorced for the second time some months later. In November 1978 Fleetwood moved into a Bel Air home with Sara Recor, mutual friend of Fleetwood and Nicks who was at the time married to another music producer. Meanwhile, Fleetwood began working on a charity project to get Fleetwood Mac to tour the Soviet Union, however the Soviet–Afghan War later made the tour untenable.

Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s 12th studio album, was released in 1979. The work represented a more experimental direction taken by Buckingham. Fleetwood, recently diagnosed as having diabetes after suffering recurring bouts of hypoglycemia during several live shows, was again instrumental in maintaining the band’s cohesion. He placated Buckingham over feelings of creative claustrophobia and discomfort playing alongside Nicks. On the issue of Buckingham taking creative control away from the other members of the group for the creation of Tusk, Fleetwood recounts that his three-day discussion with Buckingham culminated in him telling the latter that “if it’s good, then go ahead.” Though the nature of the album strained relationships again within the band – particularly John McVie, a long-established blues musician who disliked the experimental nature of the album – Fleetwood himself rates the album as his favourite by Fleetwood Mac, and cites the freedom of creative expression allotted to each band member as integral to the survival of the group. The album sold four million copies worldwide, a return noticeably poorer than Rumours. Though Buckingham was blamed by the record labels, Fleetwood linked the album’s relative failure to the RKO radio chain playing the album in its entirety prior to release, thus allowing mass home taping.

Fleetwood also led a number of side projects. 1981’s The Visitor produced by Richard Dashut, featured heavy African stylistics and a rerecording of “Rattlesnake Shake” with Peter Green. The song “You weren’t in love” was a hit in Brazil because of the Soap-opera Brilliant. In 1983 he formed Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo and recorded I’m Not Me. The album featured a minor hit, “I Want You Back”, and a cover version of the Beach Boys’ “Angel Come Home”. A later version of the group featured Bekka Bramlett on vocals and recorded 1991’s Shaking the Cage. Fleetwood released Something Big in 2004 with the Mick Fleetwood Band, and his most recent album is Blue Again!, appearing in October 2008 with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band touring to support it, interspersed with the Unleashed tour of Fleetwood Mac.

In literature, Fleetwood co-authored Fleetwood – My Life and Adventures with Fleetwood Mac with writer Stephen Davis, published in 1990. In the book he discussed his experiences with other musicians including Eric Clapton, members of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, as well as the affair with Stevie Nicks and his addiction to cocaine and his personal bankruptcy. Reception was mixed. Robert Waddell of the New York Times described the piece as “a blithe, slapdash memoir.” The Los Angeles Times’s Steve Hochman noted that “Fleetwood tells the story as if he was sitting in your living room, which is good for the intimacy of the tale, but bad for the rambling, sometimes redundant telling.” Hochman did acknowledge that Fleetwood was “one of rock’s more colorful characters.”

Michael John Kells Fleetwood was born in Redruth, Cornwall, second child to John Joseph Kells Fleetwood and Bridget Maureen (née Brereton) Fleetwood. His elder sister, actress Susan Fleetwood, died of cancer in 1995. In early childhood Fleetwood and his family followed his father, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, to Egypt. Six years later, they moved to Norway where his father was deployed by NATO. He attended school there and became fluent in Norwegian.

Fleetwood himself later remarked on the growing stature of Green’s difficulties: “I think there is certainly some credence given to the idea that Peter’s condition could in some way be blamed on a bad acid trip he had in Germany … I don’t think it did him much good.” He also recalled in 1995 that “Peter basically ceased to see the light with Fleetwood Mac and had aspirations of playing for nothing in strange places—none of which really happened. He made several interesting albums after he left, then basically took a left turn in terms of his psyche. He pulled out of the mainstream and chose to stay at home. He doesn’t play much anymore, which is certainly a shame, because he’s my mentor, and he’s the reason that Fleetwood Mac became what we became.”

Fleetwood has a secondary career as a TV and film actor, usually in minor parts. His roles in this field have included a resistance leader in The Running Man and as a guest alien in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Manhunt”. Fleetwood co-hosted the 1989 BRIT Awards, which contained numerous gaffes and flubbed lines. In the wake of this public mishap, the BRIT Awards were pre-recorded for the next 18 years until 2007; the awards are now again broadcast live to the British public. Fleetwood and his third wife, Lynn, had twin daughters (Ruby and Tessa) who were born in 2002. He became a U.S. citizen on 22 November 2006. Fleetwood filed for divorce from Lynn in 2013.

He has played drums on many of his bandmates’ solo records, including Law and Order, where he played on the album’s biggest hit, “Trouble”. Other albums include French Kiss, Three Hearts, The Wild Heart, Christine McVie, Try Me, Under the Skin, Gift of Screws, and In Your Dreams. In 2007 he was featured on drums for the song “God” along with Jack’s Mannequin in the Pop album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, a collection of covers of John Lennon songs.

During the group’s next tour to the United States, Fleetwood discovered that his wife, Boyd, was having an affair with band member Weston. Boyd and Fleetwood had one daughter together at the time. Fleetwood, after wrestling with the idea of leaving the band, was later critical of his own role in “neglecting” his family,” though Caillat described Fleetwood in 2012 as “a womaniser.” In October 1973 Fleetwood instructed Weston to leave Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood and Boyd divorced in late 1975. Fleetwood travelled to Zambia to convalesce, with Christine McVie – who was also suffering marital problems – travelling with him for part of the journey. Meanwhile, manager Clifford Davis began to lead a separate group of musicians under the name ‘Fleetwood Mac’, and his increasing legal assault on the original group pushed Fleetwood and his fellow band members to consider managing themselves. Fleetwood took on more managerial responsibility and leadership over the group. Davis meanwhile led a ‘rebel’ tour with a group under the name Fleetwood Mac, which was a failure. While the legal battle raged, Fleetwood applied his skills to a recording project being done in George Harrison’s studio; Harrison also contributed to the project. On the Road to Freedom, a collaboration from Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre was released in 1973. Also on the project were Ron Wood, Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi.