Ken Caillat's book...bits and tidbits
 

Well, my book arrived late today. I've only been skimming through it... One of the first bits I noted was his claim that Stevie did not sequence Rumours as claimed all these years..... Judy Wong did!

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Don't tell her!

I'm about 70 pages into it, and I love it! You feel like you're right there in the control room of the studio. He writes that none of them can write or read music, which is fascinating. There are already a bunch of little anecdotes I've come across that I've never heard before. Caillat can seem harsh in his descriptions of the band members sometimes, however it is clear that he respects them as people and as musicians.

I thought the bit about not miking Stevie when she plays the tambo was interesting, they let wanted to record Mick playing it instead. Interesting read so far, Ken certainly didnt hold back when it came to JC either.

I loved the story of Stevie sobbing when she had to cut parts from Silver Springs, but once she realised that she either cut lines from it, or lost royalties by having less songs, the sobbing stopped and she became ruthless :laugh: Also loved how she rescued The Chain and was all smug about it.

that would be inaccurate regarding Christine, who is classically trained.

Yeah, her dad would be spinning if she couldn't read or write music. Michele

Maybe not, though. From personal experience, that's a skill that can go away if unused for a great length of time, and I seriously doubt that she would have needed to read music in the decade leading up to Rumours.

This is absolutely true. I played almost a half dozen different instruments from elementary school up through the end of high school, but a decade later, I most certainly cannot read music anymore. I also was able to speak, read, and write Spanish at that time... but have lost that skill as well. Even though Christine was classically trained, she focused her talents on playing in jams & by ear for the majority of her career. I could easily see her not reading music by the time of Rumours, especially given her alcohol & drug usage at that juncture. :p

huh? i didn't use it for the last 3 decades and i can still read notes and play their instruments when my kids have to practice for school. it's like riding a bike or learning how to ski, i suspect.

Yeah, that's definitley interesting, whether that skill can be lost or not...I played saxophone for five years, and didn't look at music again for four years. I can still read music, but not very well, and I wouldn't want to if I didn't have to. That's right though, I forgot that Christine is classically trained- I was really surprised when I read that they couldn't read music!

Yes, I took piano lessons for 7 years and I doubt whether I could find Middle C, but Christine has said that every now and then she will still play a classical piece just for the exercise and discipline. So, I think she still knows how.

Michele

Not for everybody.

I also don't think someone who was trained as extensively as I believe Christine was could really lose the skill.

I mean, it may not come as naturally if you are long out of practice - but once you learn and master it to a certain level it it's always gonna be there. From my experience anyway.

However, with that said, I'm not sure that Christine's musical literacy would have been of all that much use to her during the recording of Rumours, anyway. If none of the other band members could read/write than there's really no practical reason for her to have been. I'm sure her training helped in other ways in terms of crafting the songs, though.

Based on what Chris herself has said about her musical training in the Keyboard magazine interview and elsewhere, her classical training wasn't very extensive. She abandoned it early on to start playing early rock and roll, like Fats Domino. From there, she played rock and blues, learning how to replicate the styles of Bob Hall and Sonny Thompson.

I'm going to assume that she can still read staff notation, but at an intermediate level. In that sense, you never truly forget everything you ever learned about notation, but you get better or worse over the years, depending on how much practice you're getting. (By the way, there's plenty of classical music that an intermediate reader can amuse himself with.)

I'll second the opinion already given that there isn't any Fleetwood Mac music that would have required the keyboardist (or any of the other guys) to be able to read staff notation, let alone read it fluently.