Mick Fleetwood recently discovered that he got his job with Fleetwood Mac only because Peter Green felt sorry for him in the aftermath of his split with girlfriend Jenny Boyd, whom he later married.

The story of his audition emerged while Fleetwood was interviewing founding guitarist Green for Fleetwood's new book Love That Burns: A Chronicle of Fleetwood Mac, 1967-1974. “I thought he was going to say, ‘Well, I thought you were a pretty good drummer,’” Fleetwood told Classic Rock. “But he said: ‘You’d just broken up with Jenny and you were devastated, and I just thought you needed to do something. That’s why I asked you to join the band, because I just wanted you to get back on your feet.’

“How amazing was that? It really had nothing to do with whether I was a halfway decent drummer or not, it was just because he loved me and didn’t want to see me in pain.”

Fleetwood said Green named the band in a gesture of “friendship" for their relationship. "Someone asked him why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac?" Fleetwood recalled. "And he said, ‘Well, in truth, I thought at some time I’d probably move on, and I wanted John [McVie] and Mick to have something after I left.”

Crediting Green with giving him confidence as a musician, Fleetwood noted, “I play from the heart. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. And he told me, ‘Mick, you’re okay, just play.’ Peter was the consummate team player.”

Green left Fleetwood Mac in 1970. In a separate interview with Rolling Stone Australia, Fleetwood insisted that a planned 2018 group tour won’t be billed as a farewell. “Everyone in the band has decided it’s not," he said. "Phil Collins called his tour ‘I’m Not Dead Yet.’ Well, we’re not dead yet, but God forbid, we might be, so you could say, ‘I better go see them!’ But you won’t see a poster calling this a farewell tour.”

More From Classic Rock Q107