Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Herbert Worthington

In new book Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse, former model, and rock muse Jenny Boyd reveals her own perspective on the tangled romantic politics of Fleetwood Mac.

Jenny, sister to model and Beatle George Harrison‘s first wife Pattie Boyd, met Mick Fleetwood in London when she was 15.

She would later marry the drummer in 1970.

And, amidst the fame, money, drugs, and heartache which defined the early years of Fleetwood Mac, Jenny and Mick would attempt to raise a family.

Fleetwood’s intense focus on his career, long periods on the road and cocaine use, alongside Boyd’s own struggle with addiction and affair with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Weston, strained their relationship.

The pair would endure numerous falling outs.

Yet after reconciling in on a 1977 trip to Ireland, Jenny returned with Mick to LA with hope they could rebuild their family.

“When he pulled out a white packet from his waistcoat pocket, I tried not to show my disappointment,” she writes of their 1977 meeting.

“There’s something I ought to tell you,’” Mick informed her upon being asked about the status of their relationship.

Boyd was no stranger to the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle nor the tangled romantic politics of Fleetwood Mac.

His response nonetheless caught her off guard.

“I’ve been having an affair with Stevie for the last few months,” he shared. “Since we were in Australia.’’

Nicks and then-partner Linsdey Buckingham had joined Fleetwood Mac, a band which Mick co-founded, in 1975.

At the time Stevie and Mick struck up their now-famous affair Nicks was dating The Eagles‘, Don Henley.

“At first I didn’t understand what he’d said,” she recalls. “It took some seconds for it to sink in. I stared at him in silence, feeling as though I’d been kicked in the stomach; my mind and heart in complete turmoil as I struggled to make sense of his words.”

Boyd then recalled the band’s 1977 Rolling Stone cover shoot, one which depicted all members of Fleetwood Mac in bed together.

Of all bandmates, Mick and Nicks are especially close.

(Both Nicks and Fleetwood have since confirmed it was the shoot which planted the seeds of their romantic relationship.)

“She had finally got her hands on him, I thought bitterly,” Jenny Boyd recounts, “and I had never suspected.”

“The trouble is,’’ Mick then told her, “I can’t make up my mind if I want to be with you or her.”

Naturally, this put a dampener on any reconciliation, though Fleetwood and Boyd remained friends.

“At times, once the shock had subsided,” Boyd shares, “Mick and I would chat about his falling for Stevie as if we were old friends. ‘Oh well,’ he said one day, as we were walking towards my house, ‘she wrote some good songs because of it all.’ We looked at each other and laughed.”

Boyd also recalls an interesting situation that followed.

“The children and I went to John and Julie McVie’s wedding reception in Christine’s house,” Jenny writes. “Mick didn’t show up, and I realized not long after arriving that Stevie was hiding in the broom cupboard. I could see people being dragged in one by one to talk to her, but she couldn’t face me. I ignored it all and talked instead to sympathetic friends who knew about the affair and were not supportive of it.”

Jenny, Mick, and Stevie would later reconcile, but the rest of this story, along with Boyd’s recollections of George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton as well as her own life inside of the rock ‘n’ roll aristocracy (and beyond it), is told in Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse. 

The book is set for release on March 26 via Urbane Publications.

Pre-order a copy here.