November 23, 2025 • 8 mins
Author Ray Robertson shines a light on the little-known story of Danny Kirwan, guitarist/vocalist with Fleetwood Mac from 1968 to 1972. A heartbreaking tale of an overlooked musical genius.
Listen to Episode 334 - Duane Allman, Muddy Waters, Nick Drake & More: 20th Century's Most Fascinating Musicians
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe
Listen to Episode 334 - Duane Allman, Muddy Waters, Nick Drake & More: 20th Century's Most Fascinating Musicians
15% OFF Any Purchase At Old Glory For Booked On Rock Listeners! — Over 300,000 officially licensed items. Featuring legendary music artists like Bob Marley, The Beatles,
Grateful Dead, and more. Use the code "BOOKEDONROCK" or hit this link:
https://oldglory.com/discount/BOOKEDONROCK
----------
Booked On Rock is part of The Boneless Podcasting Network
BookedOnRock.com
The Booked On Rock Store
The Booked On Rock YouTube Channel
Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:
BLUESKY
TIKTOK
X
Find Your Nearest Independent Bookstore
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com
The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
Ray robertson his brand new book titled dust More Lives
of the Poets with Guitars. Danny Kerwin is maybe the
most interesting musician to make this book. He has kind
of lost that.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That's so cool to hear you say that, because he's
very unknown.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This is a guy you can make a movie out of.
It's a tragic story, but it's a fascinating story, and
it's one of those man if he just maybe got
some help and things could have turned out differently.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Different times, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah. Yeah, he was with Fleetwood Mac from sixty eight
to seventy two. Bear Trees from seventy two is one
of my favorite mactoons.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh really, yeah, Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, you're right. Quote for a former member of a
world famous rock and roll band. Danny Kerwin is remarkably
little known, both in terms of the biographical details of
his life and the wonderful music he created. He is
not a legend. He is a mystery. The mystery part
of his life is regarding his post Fleetwood maciears right,
that's that's when things get.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And I actually say the same thing that what you
just said. I said, you know, he does deserves a
biographer or a documentary. I've tried to interest a couple
of people and they they're like, oh, but I say, look, man,
he was in Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It wouldn't be you know, he's not like he's unknown.
He's unknown.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But it's that that period of Fleetwood Mac that know.
And you talk about the Peter Green years and then
the the Lindsey Buckingham Stevie Nicks years, there's this period
in between and for me, some of the music that
Danny made and the fact that he joined the band
when he was eighteen years and three months old, not
even a legal drinking age, and four months later they
(01:31):
have a top you know, a number one song with Albatross,
with his song on the flip side. I mean, it's
just too much, too quick. He's living with his mother
in a basement apartment in Brixton. The next thing is
he's traveling the world with this rock band and he
turned he never really was a big drinker. He turns
to drinking as it waited for stress. And then Green
leaves the band and he's pushed out front, you know,
(01:53):
and if you see the pictures of him. I try
to describe him as best I can. He looks, you know,
he's got like the jug ears, the bowl haircut, the
big blue eyes. He doesn't look like a grizzled blue
rock guy, you know, and they're like stick And if
you listen to the bootlegs which I have of him
playing live, you know, he's the stage announcements. He sounds
like he's apologized this nick songs are quiet number We're
gonna do now, you know, it's like he's not that guy.
(02:15):
He also wasn't a jammer, you know. He liked to
write create little, perfect little songs. So again anesthetical to
the time. But when he gets kicked out of the
band in seventy two at twenty.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Two years old, it's kind of over. You know.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
He spends three years hanging around, and then he gets
a record contract in seventy five. The first one has
some really nice stuff on if you'd strip away all
the strings.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And horns and all the bullshit.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
The next two are abomination, and he basically ends up
in a homeless shelter by the time he's thirty, and
he's not sleeping outside. Sad Yeah, yeah, yeah, either's so
there's some quotes in there that from Mick. Fleetwood wrote
two autobiographies, so he talks about the last time that
he saw him. Because when they're touring Touss, you know,
Rumor sells twenty million copies and Toughs only sells eight million.
(03:03):
But they're in England, and Fleetwood seems like a really
nice guy. He'd looks to look after people. So somehow
or another he used his money and power to sort
of get Danny's information and call him up and invite
him over to the hotel because that's Fleetwood Max playing
Wimberly that night and he said, you know, Danny said
he had slept on a bench late before and that
he had worms. Fleetwood went to hug him. He's like,
(03:24):
don't touch me. Do you want to come to gig? No,
never sees him again. He lived in pubs in his
room and didn't play any more music. And I just
find sudden the and that's for the title of the book.
I'm so pleased that you're a fan. Because obviously Dust
is a song off the last album, the last Danny
Kerwin song that he made with Mac the second last
song on the album, and it's taken from a Rupert
(03:46):
Brooke poem. He's a World War two, World War One poet,
British poet, and he sort of chisels off the first
two lines and it's one of the most haunting, hauntingly
beautiful invocations of the ephemerality of life and fate and
and and he.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Was just so again, just so young.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
You know, we're not talking about painters or writers sometimes
get better as they get older. This stuff is often
like lyric poets, it's it's when you're young, with all
that energy and passion and openness that closes up. You know,
the Dylan's of the world who keep making interesting music,
or the Neil Young's, or the Joni Mitchells like I
(04:24):
listened to. Like I think Neil is rated at the
top until Russ never sleeps. And that's that's a long time,
a long time to be making, you know, popular music
and still connecting that way. Where Danny, I think, is
that that kind of flame out that's more typical of
that brilliant flash in the sky that disappears.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I just feel it's.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Important that people need to know about Danny's music, and
I think that they'll get they they'll they'll have a
better life.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I mean it reminds me of said Barrett, what
happened on the night that they did fire Danny Kerwin,
and that was in August of seventy two. There's we
finally got to because he just he bailed before a show.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
He bailed before a show.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Apparently he not only was he drinking a lot, he
didn't like his nerves are really bad, so he didn't eat,
so that compounds the drinking. He's really really really really
really thin, really nervous, not sleeping, not eating, drinking and
apparently by the end it wasn't one incident. Fleetwood was
the only one who sort of was the intermediary. Everyone
else was. He said, asking Jenny for a cigarette at
(05:25):
that point was like asking for a fight.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He would isolate himself self isolate, and.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Apparently Bob Welsh, he was in the band by then,
he had problems with Bob Welsh. And the night before
the gig, they were not the night of the gig,
they were backstage getting ready to go on and he
smashed up his famous less Paul and smashed his head
against the wall.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Instead.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I'm not going on stage, and you can do a
lot of things to your bandmates. But you can't bail
on them, you know, you can't not play. And so
they limped out there and finished the gig. But they're
missing their league guitar player. They're missing the guy who
sings a lot of their songs and the skin of
the saddest thing that I found was that when Fleetwood
told him that that at the hotel, he said, and
(06:06):
that Danny didn't really know that there was a problem.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh really, I've been a hamp. I thought that's not
gonna bode well for the rest of his life. Like,
you don't think there's a problem, you.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Know, No, that was just that was just another day
for him.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, It's like, yeah, and you're twenty two years old.
I mean, I mean me, at twenty one, I couldn't
slap my ass with both hands. At twenty two, it's
like you're you're already now a has been I.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Mean, that must just do your nut in entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
The first album second chapter has some things I write
in the book about how someone released a compilation in
two thousand that sort of strips away some of the
extraneous instrumentation, that there's some beautiful songs in there, but
you can already.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
See he's sort of regressing back to the kind of music.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That interesting thame what Danny is and that generation of
rockers is their record collection isn't just filled with rock music.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
He grew up on his mother's record collection, so a
lot of.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Jazz music, hall music, top top top ten, top thirty
music in nineteen twenty all these sorts of antiquarian musical form.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So it really enriches his style.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
You know, if you just listen to rock your music,
your sound is going to be, you know, fairly limited
that way. And what's interesting about him is that later
on when he does those solo albums, they almost returned
to this sort of Anavelian kind of It sounds like
he's trying to make music for a different era, almost
like he's willing himself to go back to his youth
(07:39):
or his mother's youth.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It's it's very painful stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, I've never I've never heard it. I've never heard
the solo stuff, so I'm gonna give it a listen.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
There's four songs off the second second chapter, including the
title track, but yeah, they need they threw everything. Danny
wasn't a major player on this.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
His produce, his manager was there, and so you know,
when in doubt, put violin, when in don't, put horns,
put things.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And and then the next two after that most mostly
cover songs because he really wasn't writing all that much.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Songs that he had written ten years before, new songs,
songs by people in the band. His manager wrote a song.
You know, someone probably said, hey, he was in Fleetwood Mac.
He's good. He used to be good looking. Anyway, he's
a good looking young man. Sure, we're not gonna throw
a huge amount amount of money at him or anything.
But the irony is that his first solo album after
two years out of MAC is in seventy five, the
year that the first MAC album comes out, you know,
(08:29):
the first one with Stevie Nix and the one just
before Rumors and it sells, you know, only three million
or something, and then rumors.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and the last the last couple are they're hard
to listen to. He's he's clearly not the uh he's not.
He's not powering this.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Someone else is sort of you know, building a record
around so they can get a check.
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
Ray robertson his brand new book titled dust More Lives
of the Poets with Guitars. Danny Kerwin is maybe the
most interesting musician to make this book. He has kind
of lost that.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That's so cool to hear you say that, because he's
very unknown.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This is a guy you can make a movie out of.
It's a tragic story, but it's a fascinating story, and
it's one of those man if he just maybe got
some help and things could have turned out differently.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Different times, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah. Yeah, he was with Fleetwood Mac from sixty eight
to seventy two. Bear Trees from seventy two is one
of my favorite mactoons.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh really, yeah, Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, you're right. Quote for a former member of a
world famous rock and roll band. Danny Kerwin is remarkably
little known, both in terms of the biographical details of
his life and the wonderful music he created. He is
not a legend. He is a mystery. The mystery part
of his life is regarding his post Fleetwood maciears right,
that's that's when things get.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And I actually say the same thing that what you
just said. I said, you know, he does deserves a
biographer or a documentary. I've tried to interest a couple
of people and they they're like, oh, but I say, look, man,
he was in Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It wouldn't be you know, he's not like he's unknown.
He's unknown.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But it's that that period of Fleetwood Mac that know.
And you talk about the Peter Green years and then
the the Lindsey Buckingham Stevie Nicks years, there's this period
in between and for me, some of the music that
Danny made and the fact that he joined the band
when he was eighteen years and three months old, not
even a legal drinking age, and four months later they
(01:31):
have a top you know, a number one song with Albatross,
with his song on the flip side. I mean, it's
just too much, too quick. He's living with his mother
in a basement apartment in Brixton. The next thing is
he's traveling the world with this rock band and he
turned he never really was a big drinker. He turns
to drinking as it waited for stress. And then Green
leaves the band and he's pushed out front, you know,
(01:53):
and if you see the pictures of him. I try
to describe him as best I can. He looks, you know,
he's got like the jug ears, the bowl haircut, the
big blue eyes. He doesn't look like a grizzled blue
rock guy, you know, and they're like stick And if
you listen to the bootlegs which I have of him
playing live, you know, he's the stage announcements. He sounds
like he's apologized this nick songs are quiet number We're
gonna do now, you know, it's like he's not that guy.
(02:15):
He also wasn't a jammer, you know. He liked to
write create little, perfect little songs. So again anesthetical to
the time. But when he gets kicked out of the
band in seventy two at twenty.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Two years old, it's kind of over. You know.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
He spends three years hanging around, and then he gets
a record contract in seventy five. The first one has
some really nice stuff on if you'd strip away all
the strings.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And horns and all the bullshit.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
The next two are abomination, and he basically ends up
in a homeless shelter by the time he's thirty, and
he's not sleeping outside. Sad Yeah, yeah, yeah, either's so
there's some quotes in there that from Mick. Fleetwood wrote
two autobiographies, so he talks about the last time that
he saw him. Because when they're touring Touss, you know,
Rumor sells twenty million copies and Toughs only sells eight million.
(03:03):
But they're in England, and Fleetwood seems like a really
nice guy. He'd looks to look after people. So somehow
or another he used his money and power to sort
of get Danny's information and call him up and invite
him over to the hotel because that's Fleetwood Max playing
Wimberly that night and he said, you know, Danny said
he had slept on a bench late before and that
he had worms. Fleetwood went to hug him. He's like,
(03:24):
don't touch me. Do you want to come to gig? No,
never sees him again. He lived in pubs in his
room and didn't play any more music. And I just
find sudden the and that's for the title of the book.
I'm so pleased that you're a fan. Because obviously Dust
is a song off the last album, the last Danny
Kerwin song that he made with Mac the second last
song on the album, and it's taken from a Rupert
(03:46):
Brooke poem. He's a World War two, World War One poet,
British poet, and he sort of chisels off the first
two lines and it's one of the most haunting, hauntingly
beautiful invocations of the ephemerality of life and fate and
and and he.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Was just so again, just so young.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
You know, we're not talking about painters or writers sometimes
get better as they get older. This stuff is often
like lyric poets, it's it's when you're young, with all
that energy and passion and openness that closes up. You know,
the Dylan's of the world who keep making interesting music,
or the Neil Young's, or the Joni Mitchells like I
(04:24):
listened to. Like I think Neil is rated at the
top until Russ never sleeps. And that's that's a long time,
a long time to be making, you know, popular music
and still connecting that way. Where Danny, I think, is
that that kind of flame out that's more typical of
that brilliant flash in the sky that disappears.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I just feel it's.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Important that people need to know about Danny's music, and
I think that they'll get they they'll they'll have a
better life.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I mean it reminds me of said Barrett, what
happened on the night that they did fire Danny Kerwin,
and that was in August of seventy two. There's we
finally got to because he just he bailed before a show.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
He bailed before a show.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Apparently he not only was he drinking a lot, he
didn't like his nerves are really bad, so he didn't eat,
so that compounds the drinking. He's really really really really
really thin, really nervous, not sleeping, not eating, drinking and
apparently by the end it wasn't one incident. Fleetwood was
the only one who sort of was the intermediary. Everyone
else was. He said, asking Jenny for a cigarette at
(05:25):
that point was like asking for a fight.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He would isolate himself self isolate, and.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Apparently Bob Welsh, he was in the band by then,
he had problems with Bob Welsh. And the night before
the gig, they were not the night of the gig,
they were backstage getting ready to go on and he
smashed up his famous less Paul and smashed his head
against the wall.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Instead.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I'm not going on stage, and you can do a
lot of things to your bandmates. But you can't bail
on them, you know, you can't not play. And so
they limped out there and finished the gig. But they're
missing their league guitar player. They're missing the guy who
sings a lot of their songs and the skin of
the saddest thing that I found was that when Fleetwood
told him that that at the hotel, he said, and
(06:06):
that Danny didn't really know that there was a problem.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh really, I've been a hamp. I thought that's not
gonna bode well for the rest of his life. Like,
you don't think there's a problem, you.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Know, No, that was just that was just another day
for him.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, It's like, yeah, and you're twenty two years old.
I mean, I mean me, at twenty one, I couldn't
slap my ass with both hands. At twenty two, it's
like you're you're already now a has been I.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Mean, that must just do your nut in entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
The first album second chapter has some things I write
in the book about how someone released a compilation in
two thousand that sort of strips away some of the
extraneous instrumentation, that there's some beautiful songs in there, but
you can already.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
See he's sort of regressing back to the kind of music.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That interesting thame what Danny is and that generation of
rockers is their record collection isn't just filled with rock music.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
He grew up on his mother's record collection, so a
lot of.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Jazz music, hall music, top top top ten, top thirty
music in nineteen twenty all these sorts of antiquarian musical form.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So it really enriches his style.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
You know, if you just listen to rock your music,
your sound is going to be, you know, fairly limited
that way. And what's interesting about him is that later
on when he does those solo albums, they almost returned
to this sort of Anavelian kind of It sounds like
he's trying to make music for a different era, almost
like he's willing himself to go back to his youth
(07:39):
or his mother's youth.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It's it's very painful stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, I've never I've never heard it. I've never heard
the solo stuff, so I'm gonna give it a listen.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
There's four songs off the second second chapter, including the
title track, but yeah, they need they threw everything. Danny
wasn't a major player on this.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
His produce, his manager was there, and so you know,
when in doubt, put violin, when in don't, put horns,
put things.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And and then the next two after that most mostly
cover songs because he really wasn't writing all that much.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Songs that he had written ten years before, new songs,
songs by people in the band. His manager wrote a song.
You know, someone probably said, hey, he was in Fleetwood Mac.
He's good. He used to be good looking. Anyway, he's
a good looking young man. Sure, we're not gonna throw
a huge amount amount of money at him or anything.
But the irony is that his first solo album after
two years out of MAC is in seventy five, the
year that the first MAC album comes out, you know,
(08:29):
the first one with Stevie Nix and the one just
before Rumors and it sells, you know, only three million
or something, and then rumors.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and the last the last couple are they're hard
to listen to. He's he's clearly not the uh he's not.
He's not powering this.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Someone else is sort of you know, building a record
around so they can get a check.
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