13 MAY 1950 – 8 JUNE 2018
Danny Kirwan passed away this morning, age 68. Unfortunately we are not likely to see our Facebook walls being filled with tributes, as Danny had been out of the limelight for quite some time. For a while, though, he was a notable figure in the British blues/rock scene.
Crucially, he was a member of the early line-up of Fleetwood Mac (featuring Peter Green) in the 1960s, and when Green left in 1969 he was a key force in keeping the band going into the 1970s.
Without Danny’s resolve, there would have been no band to join for people like Christine McVie, Lindsay Buckingham, or Stevie Nicks. Or… well, Neil Finn.
Of his Joining Fleetwood Mac, drummer Mick Fleetwood wrote in his autobiography: “We met Danny at a little club in Brixton, the Nag’s Head, one night when we played with a local band called Boilerhouse. Danny played beautifully, getting a subtle tremolo effect from his fingering.”
Fleetwood Mac’s producer Mike Vernon booked Boilerhouse to play at his blues club, the Blue Horizon in Battersea, and he remembered “Danny was outstanding. He played with an almost scary intensity. He had a guitar style that wasn’t like anyone else I’d heard in England.”
Kirwan became a devoted fan of the band’s lead guitarist, Peter Green, and followed Fleetwood Mac around the London clubs, often turning up at gigs during the afternoon to help to carry the gear in and jam with Green after the soundcheck. “Which is how Danny Kirwan came into our lives,” Fleetwood said. “Danny was a huge fan of Peter’s. He would see us every chance he got, usually watching in awe from the front row.”
Fleetwood Mac had been constituted as a quartet but Green, the band’s founder, wanted to move the band away from pure blues and had been looking for a new musical collaborator and backing guitarist to work with, as slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer did not contribute to his songs. Green found that he and Kirwan worked well together, and suggested to Fleetwood that Kirwan could join Fleetwood Mac.
Although the rest of the band were not entirely convinced, Fleetwood invited Kirwan to join the band in August 1968. Fleetwood said, “Danny was an exceptional guitar player. It was clear that he needed to be with better players … In the end, we just invited him to join us. It was one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments when you realise the answer is right there in front of you.”
Kirwan’s reaction was described as “astonishment and delight.” His arrival expanded Fleetwood Mac to a five-piece with three guitarists. He was an extremely emotional player, and Green later said that in the early days, Kirwan “was so into it that he cried as he played.”
Fleetwood said, “Danny worked out great from the start. His playing was always very melodic and tuneful, with lots of bent notes and vibrato. Danny’s style of playing complemented Peter’s perfectly because he was already a disciple. His sense of melody on rhythm guitar really drew Peter out, allowing him to write songs in a different style. He was full of ideas that helped to move Fleetwood Mac out of the blues and into the rock mainstream … Playing live, he was a madman.”
Fleetwood Mac biographer Leah Furman said Kirwan “provided a perfect sounding board for Peter’s ideas, added stylistic texture, and moved Fleetwood Mac away from pure blues.”
Kirwan was interviewed by weekly music paper Melody Maker soon after joining Fleetwood Mac and gave the first indication of the breadth of his musical influences. He told Melody Maker: “I’m not keen on blues purists who close their ears to all other forms of music. I like any good music, particularly the old big band-type things. Django Reinhardt is my favourite guitarist, but I like any music that is good, whether it is blues, popular or classical.”
The band’s manager Clifford Davis, himself a musician, remembered Kirwan as “a very bright boy with very high musical standards. When we were on the road he was constantly saying ‘Come on, Clifford, we must rehearse, we must rehearse, we’ve got to rehearse’.” Davis added that Kirwan “was the originator of all the ideas regarding harmonies and the lovely melodies that Fleetwood Mac would eventually encompass.”
Kirwan progressed from being an 18-year-old guitarist in a small pub band in south London to being a member of an internationally known touring band in one move. He played his first gig with Fleetwood Mac on 14 August 1968 at the Nag’s Head Blue Horizon Club in Battersea, London. Ten days later he was with them on stage at the Hyde Park Free Concert in London, performing on the same bill as Family, Ten Years After and Fairport Convention.
Kirwan’s first recorded work with Fleetwood Mac, in October 1968, was his contribution of the second guitar part to Green’s instrumental hit single Albatross. Green had been working on the piece for some time, and Kirwan completed it by adding the counterpoint harmony in the middle section. Green said, “Once we got Danny in, it was plain sailing… I would never have done ‘Albatross’ if it wasn’t for Danny. I would never have had a number one hit record.” Kirwan was more modest about his contributions, saying that Green had told him what to do and all the bits he had to play.
Kirwan’s skills came to the forefront on the band’s mid-1969 album Then Play On, recorded at Kingsway Studios in Holborn, London. Green had told Kirwan when he joined the band that he would be responsible for half of the next album, and he kept his word. The songwriting and lead vocals on Then Play On were split almost equally between them, with many of the performances featuring their dual-lead Gibson Les Paul guitars. Fleetwood later said that Kirwan, asked to write his first songs for the band, “approached his assignment very cerebrally, much as Lindsey Buckingham would do later, and came up with some very good music.” Fleetwood said in an interview many years later that Buckingham had “a huge regard for Danny.” Green took a back seat during the recording sessions and left most of the guitar work to Kirwan.
Despite the closeness of their musical partnership, Kirwan and Green did not always get on well personally. Kirwan concentrated more on rehearsing and was more dependent on routine than the other members of the band, with Green recalling that Kirwan always had to arrive anywhere an hour early. Green was much more of a free spirit with incredible improvisational skills, more about jamming than rehearsing.
After rumours in the music press in early 1970 that Kirwan would leave Fleetwood Mac, it was Green who departed, in May of that year. Kirwan said later that he was not surprised. “We just didn’t get on too well basically … We played some good stuff together, we played well together, but we didn’t get on.”
After Green left, the band considered splitting up. Kirwan and Spencer were now having to front the band and their morale was low. Mick Fleetwood said “Spencer was terrified of being a front man on his own, and the pressure on Danny’s sensitive temperament was tremendous.” In fact, the band would have been over around that time if it hadn’t been for Fleetwood’s persistence. He recalled, “There was one terrible night when everybody decided they wanted to leave … but one by one, I talked them all back in.”
The band continued briefly as a four-piece, and were rescued after the recording of Kiln House by the arrival of keyboard player Christine McVie as the fifth band member. Described by Fleetwood as “the best blueswoman in England,” he said “Christine became the glue … she filled out our sound beautifully.”
My favourite song written and sung by Danny Kirwan, Dragonfly, was recorded during this time. It was the first song Fleetwood Mac recorded and released after the departure of Peter Green, as well as their first single with Christine McVie as a full member of the group.
Upheaval was however waiting in the wings. By the time Dragonfly had been released, in March 1971, Jeremy Spencer had left the band.
To replace Spencer, the American guitarist Bob Welch was recruited. Welch remembered Kirwan’s lead guitar style as mature and economical, revealing at a Penguin Q&A session in 1999: “Danny was a very meticulous guitar player. The notes had to be exactly right. He didn’t play any twiddly licks just to fill time. Danny’s style, which he modelled after Pete Green’s, was a ‘make every note count emotionally’ style. No wasted notes, no flash fooling around just to impress. This was actually a very mature style to have at [that] young age … I learned a lot from Danny about economy of notes, and really trying to say something in a guitar lead.”
They may have got on musically, but had a more difficult personal relationship. Fleetwood remembered that they were “very different as people and as musicians.” A personality clash developed and by 1972, under the strain of touring, Kirwan was arguing with Welch.
Welch also said in the Q&A, “Danny was a brilliant musician [but he] wasn’t a very lighthearted person, to say the least. He probably shouldn’t have been drinking as much as he did, even at his young age. He was always very intense about his work, as I was, but he didn’t seem to ever be able to distance himself from it and laugh about it. Danny was the definition of ‘deadly serious’.”
By the summer of 1972, Kirwan had been writing, recording, touring, and performing continuously for nearly four years, since the age of 18, as a member of a major international band. He had shouldered much of the songwriting responsibility through troubled and uncertain periods with key changes in line-ups and musical style. He was pushed into the spotlight as the lead guitarist and front man to take Peter Green’s spot in the band. His talents carried him through, and he did an incredible job all things considered. Sadly, it came with a high cost. The pressure was immense and eventually affected his physical as well as his mental health.
As the band’s 1972 tour progressed, Kirwan became increasingly hostile and withdrawn and was drinking heavily. Mick Fleetwood said in his autobiography: “On that long tour in 1972 Danny became quite volatile… He just got more and more intense. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. He was going inside himself, which we put down to an emotional problem that we had no idea about. We thought he was just being awkward. I had no idea he was struggling at that level.”
He added, “Danny had been a nervous and sensitive lad from the start. He was never really suited to the rigours of the business. Touring is hard and the routine wears us all down. Our manager kept us touring non-stop and we were being stretched to our limits and the pressure was obviously taking its toll. He simply withdrew into his own world.”
Kirwan left/was asked to leave Fleetwood Mac in 1972 after a backstage breakdown following yet another clash with Bob Welch. Guided by ex-Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis, Kirwan recorded three solo albums for DJM Records between 1975 and 1979. These albums showed a gentler side of his music, as opposed to the blues guitar dynamics of his Fleetwood Mac years.
The first of these, Second Chapter (1975), exhibited various musical influences, including a style close to that of Paul McCartney later in his Beatles career – a similarity that Rolling Stone also picked up on in their review of the album.
The next album Midnight in San Juan (1976) has less McCartney-isms (but featured a reggae-inspired cover of the Beatles’ Let It Be, which was released as a single in the US). Otherwise Kirwan tended towards simpler tunes and dispensed with the heavy production that had dominated his previous album. The lyrics were still mostly about love, but were less cheerful than before, with growing themes of loneliness and isolation.
Kirwan’s last album, Hello There Big Boy! (1979) featured guitar contributions from his Fleetwood Mac replacement Bob Weston on two tracks, Getting the Feeling and You. Weston later said he found the experience difficult. Kirwan had become totally reclusive and barricaded himself within a womb of studio baffle boards for most of the sessions.
None of Kirwan’s solo releases were commercially successful, which could be attributed to his reluctance to perform live. Kirwan did not play any live gigs after a few shows with Tramp and a single performance with Hungry Fighter, all in 1974. This left all three of his solo albums unsupported by any form of extra exposure or active promotion, apart from an irregular string of equally unsuccessful singles. None of his singles were released in continental Europe, where he might have enjoyed some success given Peter Green’s resurgence there, particularly in Germany.
After his final album and tour in 1979 he left the music business for good.
Unfortunately, during the 1980s and 1990s Kirwan endured periods of homelessness in London. Ongoing mental and alcohol-related issues marred him, but eventually he went into a care home which could give some assistance and look after him.
On 8 June 2018, Kirwan died in London aged 68. An obituary in The New York Times quoted his former wife as saying that he had died in his sleep after contracting pheumonia earlier in the year.
Several tributes would appear over the coming days. One who wasted no time was Mick Fleetwood, who posted the following via his Facebook page the same morning as the news broke:
Today was greeted by the sad news of the passing of Danny Kirwan in London, England. Danny was a huge force in our early years. His love for the Blues led him to being asked to join Fleetwood Mac in 1968, where he made his musical home for many years.
Danny’s true legacy, in my mind, will forever live on in the music he wrote and played so beautifully as a part of the foundation of Fleetwood Mac, that has now endured for over fifty years.
Thank you, Danny Kirwan. You will forever be missed!
~Mick Fleetwood and Fleetwood Mac~
Christine McVie later shared the following in a 2018 interview with Mojo: “Danny Kirwan was the white English blues guy. Nobody else could play like him. He was a one-off. Danny and Peter gelled so well together. Danny had a very precise, piercing vibrato – a unique sound. He was a perfectionist. Listen to Woman of 1000 Years, Sands of Time, Tell Me All the Things You Do – they’re killer songs. He was a fantastic musician and a fantastic writer.”
Jeremy Spencer also spoke to Mojo as part of the feature, saying “Danny brought inventiveness and melody to the band … I was timid about stepping out with new ideas, but Danny was brimming with them.”
Postscript: Fleetwood Mac added one of Kirwan’s songs, Tell Me All the Things You Do from the 1970 album Kiln House, to the set of Fleetwood Mac’s 2018-19 An Evening With Fleetwood Mac tour. Guitarist Neil Finn and Christine McVie shared vocals while images of Kirwan was shown on the screen.
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