Fleetwood Mac

[Zzzptm]

Over the last 2 days, I've played through 5 Fleetwood Mac albums - Penguin, Mystery to Me, Heroes Are Hard to Find, Fleetwood Mac, Rumours - and I'm working through number 6, Tusk.

First 3 are with Bob Welch and without Danny Kirwan or any of the earlier guitar players (aside from Bob Weston, brought in at the same time as Welch). Last 3 are with the "classic rock" lineup with Buckingham/Nicks.

The 3 with Welch I really enjoyed a lot. Loved? Not at first sight, but I do plan to go back to them. Those were rich experiences and the vocals of Welch and Christine McVie are great on them. The songwriting from both of those outshine the several other efforts from others that made it to the albums. Penguin featured Dave Walker (ex-Savoy Brown) on vocals on 2 tracks, and I can let those fall by the wayside. The real meat on Penguin is from Welch and VcVie. Both those dominate on Mystery to Me and totally own Heroes Are Hard to Find, which I think is my favorite of the three albums. It's also the one with just Welch on guitar, Bob Weston having been fired previous to that.

But the band were frustrated by lack of commercial chart-topping success, so Welch stepped back and Buckingham/Nicks came in. Fleetwood Mac has a much stronger "California" vibe to it and had better sales. I like it, it's a good album with some really well-written and filled-out songs on it. Rumours, of course, has the Classic Rock format by the balls with 8 of the 11 songs being ensconced in the Classic Rock Top 1000 songs that make up that format. Although the album wasn't at all "safe" when it was recorded, it's become that way through its success.

Then something very Blackmore-y happens with Tusk. While McVie and Nicks continue to write songs very much as they've done before, Buckingham takes a hard left turn and refuses to make anything that sounds like what he did on the previous two albums. He didn't want to get nailed down with a particular kind of format, so he revolted against the system and went experimental, taking cues from The Talking Heads and The Beach Boys. Oh kaaaaaaaaaaaaay...

The result is a double album with half the songs being odd ditties from Buckingham that I really don't get into and a set from Nicks and McVie that could stand on its own as a great album had it not been in the shadow of Rumours. It reminded me of the writing split in Deep Purple between Gillan and Blackmore that was very much evident on The House of Blue Light and The Battle Rages On. Blackmore and Buckingham had their own reasons and ways of reacting, but it's quite similar how they processed their control impulses. They wanted to be on top of things so much, they basically refused any direction other than their own. And when the record company asked for more of what they did on the last offering, that's where they decided to stick it to the record company.

Fascinating to realize that parallel.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Are you going to look at the albums from the 60s and early 70s before Penguin?

[Zzzptm]

I've tried out Ride On and found it hit and miss - it's the Danny Kirwan material that I'm not a fan of, while Peter Green's work is often satisfying. Sampled Green tunes from other albums, but I find the Welch albums without Kirwan to be the ones I'm enjoying most.

[Thelemech]

Always loved Rumours and am a huge fan of the Peter Green material. One of my fav guitar players from that time period.

[Vyn]

Kirwan was a fantastic musician, and definitely had his own style. But in those lean years between Peter Green being in full effect and Bob Welch cranking it up, Kirwan's style dominated their output.

He leaves me kind of "meh". I can listen to any of those records, but they work best for me as background music and aren't anything I'd go to any trouble to actually play.

Thier first two records are awesome representations of Chicago blues distilled through English sensibilities. Then things went kind of meh for me. I think Bob Welch added a much needed umph, but he was never enough of a force to really drive them, nor was Christine. She displayed massive talent in that band but it was the band that brought it out of her.

I really like their 1975 self-titled release. Buckingham had the force to really drive things, and built Nicks up into a powerhouse expressionist. Rumours is like voyeurism into someone's private life, they laid it all out. There was a time when I could not turn on a radio without hearing something from that record. It made Fleetwood Mac into an institution - it was the right kind of music at the right time. The hippies were growing up and having had enough time behind them to experience the ups and downs of life, that music resonated like a bell.

After that, it seems like the bubble popped. Certainly they remained popular, but there is simply no comparison between the late '70s and any year that came after that, as far as their success goes. I remember reading about a team of botanists that discovered a tribe of natives way up in the Amazon basin, about 1978. These natives had never met anyone that looked different than them, and after a few awkward hang signals between both parties, one of the natives started singing The Chain. Ok, maybe I didn't read that, but that is how completely dominating they were at the time. It hadn't been too long since The King died on his throne, and as big as Wings had become, even with the whole Beatles legacy still in the air, no one could touch Fleetwood Mac as far as recognition and popularity.

They are the band that caused me to really get into punk music lol

[Zzzptm]

Rumours is very much like Hotel California. Takes the age they're in as everyone's coming down from their trips and realizes that there's an accounting due for all the choices they've made. If those albums had been made 5 years earlier, they'd be underrated gems. Had they been made 5 years later, they'd be lumped in with Chris Cross and Toto as "Yacht Rock". FM really lucked out to be so honest in their music right at that time.

I've seen Buckingham compositions turn up on other records of the time and they have a similar sound to them as do the ones he did for FM. They also happen to be tracks I tend to like the most or almost the most on an album, and I'm looking back at the label to see who wrote them and go, "Heh... Buckingham... shoulda known!"