While living in Notting Hill Gate with his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, Mick worked briefly at Liberty's department store before being fired. One day while playing his drums in the garage, he caught the attention of a young neighborhood musician named Peter Bardens; he later got Fleetwood his first gig with a band called the Senders before inviting him to join his own band, The Cheynes, in 1963. While playing the club circuit with the Cheynes, Mick met and became friends with eighteen year old, John McVie, the bass player in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. At age sixteen, he also met the girl he would later marry, Jenny Boyd. After the collapse of the Cheynes in 1965, Fleetwood drummed for a short while with a band called the Bo Street Runners. Next, Mick was recruited once again by Peter Bardens to play in his new band, Peter B's Looners (later known as just the Peter B's) where Mick got to know a talented young guitarist named Peter Green. By May, 1966, the band

Mick was out of work when Aynsley Dunbar, the Bluesbreakers' drummer, quit in the spring of 1967, and Fleetwood was surprised when Mayall asked him to join: "It was never a serious long-term venture in my mind, which was just as well, because I was asked to leave after a month (for drunkenness)." Although his stay in the band was brief, it was long enough for Fleetwood, Peter Green, and John McVie to realize they had a good working and social relationship. When Green decided to form his own band several months later, he immediately knew who should make up his rhythm section.

A founding member of Fleetwood Mac, Mick has seen the group through its many incarnations, through struggles and successes. His devotion to the band put stresses through his own personal relationships-- he often seemed to be "married to the band." He did eventually marry Jenny Boyd in 1970 and had two daughters; Amy Rose was born in January, 1971 and Lucy was born in April, 1973. [Here is an anti-drug clip by Mick and Amy Fleetwood (Age 3) from Get Off II ] In October 1973, Mick found out that Jenny was having an affair with bandmate Bob Weston-- the tour was cut short and Weston had to be fired. After the legal battle that ensued with manager Clifford Davis (over the rights of who owned the name 'Fleetwood Mac'), Mick took over the role of band manager and continued to do so until 1979. When Bob Welch decided to leave the group in 1974, Mick was the one who happened to notice the talents of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks while out looking for a studio; Keith Olsen played him 'Frozen Love' off the Buckingham Nicks album to demonstrate the acoustics of the room. The drummer admits that his initial inquiry was "Who's that guitarist?" but he very quickly learned that Buckingham would not join without his partner: " I was aware of them coming as a package pretty early on, but there was a point where I was truly after Lindsey Buckingham, and the fact that Stevie was an afterthought is why she never forgave me. " In the end, the two ended up hitting it off so well with the others in the group that they were hired without an audition.