DrinkTeaVille
By the time that big Fleetwood Mac album came out in 1977 I wasn't really paying attention, mostly because my friends and I were already starting to sniff around at that new musical thing coming while we stapled egg cartons to the garage room walls.
You know that then 'new' musical thing that now means that, more than forty years later, all the algorithms in all the gin joints in all the streaming service worlds inevitably lead me back to 'Gates of the West' by the Clash.
Anyway, after Lindsey Buckingham was on Marc Maron's podcast recently, I went back and had another listen to Rumours, etc.
And then I did some digging around in an effort to learn what, exactly, it was that Mick Fleetwood heard while listening to demos at Sound City Studios in 1974 that led him to ask Buckingham to become Fleetwood Mac's new guitar player.
Surprisingly, the algorithms do not take you to that thing that Fleetwood heard on 1973's Buckingham/Nicks album because that album is out of print.
But you can find it - and it's all there - the whole thing, pre-formed.
So much so, that it's pretty darned clear that Fleetwood and John McVie essentially became little more than Buckingham's and Nicks' (and occasionally Christine Perfect's) rhythm section when it came time to make the band's next two albums - you know, the ones that made them all rich and soon drove them white line crazy.
If you don't believe me about that Buckingham/Nicks thing (and/or don't already know), just have a listen...
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Post title is apparently what McVie said to Fleetwood when he was struck dumb by the realization that the two of them were about to make sixteeen tons of money backing that California sound that Buckingham and Nicks had concocted.
Subheader?...You can hear the Cat/Yusaf influence that Buckingham talks about on Maron in that B/N album...Incidentally, it was an album that went nowhere except, weirdly, in Northern Alabama...Go figure.
Regarding 'Gates of the West'...Back in the day I was very proud of having a cut of Mick Jones's somewhat obscure homage to Mott the Hoople's 'All the way from Memphis' that was the pre-London Calling antithesis of Strummer's earlier 'I'm So Bored With The USA' on a compilation tape that played endlessly in the pirated Kenny van throughout the early '80's.
Update: If you want to go backward in Fleetwood Mac time into the blues, check out this great post by our good friend Danneau.
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4 comments:
I get what you're saying Ross, but the shift to the California sound started a few years earlier with Kirwan and Welch to some degree; Kirwan, a man whose raw talent would lie waste after a few short years of brilliance. I like what the band did with the addition of Buckingham and Nicks and that album of theirs pre-mac is amazing in so many ways, alas it never saw the deluxe edition/remastering it deserved and stayed in the delete category, enjoyed by the few who have the original vinyl (myself included). BC Waterboy
Thanks BCW--
Great to hear from someone who really knows about this stuff. I know Welch's sound and I see that, in addition to doing his own thing after he left FM, he also toured with Ms. Nicks when she was doing her solo thing.
As for Mr. Kirwan and his stuff...Now I have another rabbit hole to go down!
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I have an original copy of the vinyl from the seventies. Been a fan of the Mac since the beginning.
This post sent me reeling back through a ton of time and music. I left a few thoughts on RESH over in the blog crawl. Thanks!
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