Fleetwood Mac decided to go their own ways. How do bands know when to quit, and shouldn’t more do so? | Michael Hann

After the death of Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks has called time. There is an art to timing it right - just look at the Beatles

Though Stevie Nicks has only now called time on Fleetwood Mac - there's no point in continuing after the death of Christine McVie, she told Vulture - this is a band that has been on the brink of ending for more than 50 years. They might have called it a day when their leader, Peter Green, left in 1970. Or when their sublime guitarists Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan left in 1971 and 1972. Or when the group's three main writers - Nicks, McVie and Lindsey Buckingham - wanted to pursue solo work in the early 80s. Or when Buckingham left for the first time in 1987. Or when McVie departed in 1998. Or when Buckingham was sacked in 2018. But every time they found a reason to carry on.

Hey," wrote Steve Albini in the sleeve notes to his group Big Black's final album in 1987, breaking up is an idea that has occurred to far too few groups, sometimes to the wrong ones." That sentence - written as a fan as much as a musician - captures the tension between the observer, who wants their favourite musician to leave a perfect legacy, and the performer, for whom making records and touring is their job - the thing that puts food on the table and is often the only thing they actually know how to do.