Searching For Madge - "symphonic" part
 

here's one that i've been thinking about every now and then for ages, and it came up again as i've just been browsing through all the older threads once more (and if it has been discussed here before, it must have escaped me):

that "orchestral" passage in "searching" (starting at 5:25 up to 6:10) still keeps me wondering. has anybody got a clue if this is an original part (recorded especially for the occasion)? or is it an excerpt from some classical work and - if so - where is it from? and who recorded it (probably not the mac themselves)?

if there's someone in the know about this, i'd be grateful if he or she would share any info and knowledge on this matter . . .

While I would never pretend to be knowledgeable enough about “classical” music to recognize a composer’s work from a mere forty seconds of music (I probably wouldn’t recognize more than a few of the “Masters”, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, if I heard the entire symphony); but I doubt that what is heard in ‘Searching for Madge’ was lifted from an existing score.
What is it then? Excellent question, and one we will probably get a satisfactory answer to, like so many questions surrounding the “Then Play On” sessions.
In June of 1969, Green did an interview with New Musical Express where he talked of a classical composition that he wrote, (lasting all of three and a half minutes) that he would have a full orchestra record soon.
I believe that he would have needed to bring someone in to write an actual score.
It was also around this time that there was a press release about Green and Spencer collaborating on an orchestral and choral suite revolving around their shared religious beliefs.
We have no way of knowing if these projects ever got past the planning stages, but there are strings heard on the two covers that Clifford Davis did around this time, ‘Man of the World’ and ‘Before the Beginning’.
I believe that the music heard in ‘Searching for Madge’ was recorded by the musicians brought in to play on the Davis recordings.
Was the piece part of a longer work, written by Green? We unfortunately have no way of knowing.
What I wouldn’t give to have access to the Warner-Reprise vaults, with the tapes and the studio logs.
With so much material from this time frame finding its way on to the two out-take collections, “The Vaudeville Years of Fleetwood Mac” and “Show-Biz Blues” the label may have felt that a “box-set” collection of the “Then Play On” sessions would seem redundant (we of course have no way of knowing how much more there is) but it seems like lost opportunity to me.
Warner Bros. Film pioneered the burn to order DVD trade, making films with otherwise limited commercial appeal available; I can’t see why they wouldn’t mine their vast musical catalog for something similar.

thanxalot for your thoughts on this, b.b.!
and your cd-on-demand idea is truly intriguing, for my money at least. but are we likely to ever see this working in an age where a majority of customers - and thus the music industry - is increasingly taking to virtual music media . . . as we all know too well, sadly not every good idea is to materialize, let alone be crowned by success. still, that would really be something else! :thumbsup:

Vaughan Williams?
 

I've always wanted to know this. This subject was discussed on this forum thread:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread....186121/page-2

and Vaughan-Williams as a suggestion for the classical interpolation sounds very plausible to me. He wrote nine symphonies- when I have a free weekend I might listen to them all to see if I can identify it (or maybe not!).

I can remember listening to the orchestra come in on Searching for Madge for the first time about 26 years ago, thinking, "crikey, what's going on here, I'm going to have to take this cassette back to Woolworths, there's some sort of fault on the tape!".

edit:

This post suggests it's Vaughan Williams' London Symphony

http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=41570

now this is some kind of hint, mr scarrott! sorry, i missed this thread here on the ledge. if you check this out and spot the part, please let us know about the source - would be GREATLY appreciated!

by the way: reading about your reaction on listening to "searching" for the first time i was reminded of very similar thoughts on my own. i was only 12 years old at the time and i was considering something being wrong here. although i knew "revolution 9" from the beatles "white album", which had already confused me from start to finish, somehow i doubted that this was truly intentional. boy, i was young and dumb! :D

. . . well, well, well! i did treat meself to quite a number of vaughan williams' symphonies last night . . . but they mostly sounded so VERY similar to me ears! though i'm absolutely convinced now that this actually IS an excerpt of one of his symphonies (there are countless passages in this vein all over the place!), i believe it takes a real vaughan williams expert to really spot this exact 45 second snippet somewhere. i pretty much gave it up now - too confusing for me. :confused: (i only think i can rule out the "london symphony" - doesn't sound like it.)

anyway, i'm still open for the correct answer, if anybody might be able solve this riddle . . . !
(what about you, mr scarrott?) ;)

I'm going to have proper listen to the London Symphony later on, but just in case we're all going on a wild goose chase, I've e-mailed the Ralph Vaughan Williams society to see if someone can identify it.

Maybe then we can all sleep easy knowing that the whole thing wasn't scored and put together by John McVie :D


Edit:

oh, sorry Lazypoker, just spotted your comments re the London Symphony. Let's see if I get any response from the society.

I've also posted on a Classical Music Forum

http://www.talkclassical.com/43446-c...fleetwood.html

One day, we'll solve this mystery..

. . . jolly good idea, mr scarrott, a promising move! :thumbsup: (although the first negative answer has already dropped in there . . . :( )
nevertheless - let's hope for the one big enlightenment . . . !

I too failed to hear the forty-five seconds of music in ‘Searching for Madge’ in the forty-five minutes of ‘London Symphony’ but that could be just because I missed it –
Could you say the music heard in ‘Madge’ was “influenced” by Vaughan Williams? Absolutely! You can also hear a much more obvious influence on Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” in the piece,
Great idea posting the query on the classical music board Mr. Scarrott –

As to thinking that there must have been something “wrong” with your record when first hearing the piece, it reminded me of my Mother’s reaction when she first heard me playing The Rolling Stones’ ‘She’s A Rainbow’. Funny how I never thought to connect the two songs before reading those comments…

although drifting slightly off-topic with this: when i had bought the beatles' "hey jude" single and flipped it to hear "revolution", i was sure that this copy was faulty - such an absolutely distorted sound just couldn't be right . . . let alone with the beatles (what a discrepancy between those two sides of a 45!). but i finally gave in when the record dealer assured me everything to be alright. aah, the days of youth! :D

Just thinking...these days it's not uncommon to sample another artist's work in a song but I don't think that was the case in 1969. Would the band have been able to do that so easily - and would the record label have allowed it?

I lean in the same direction - I find it hard to believe that no one, some one writing about the piece, or a representative from Williams' label, or Reprise itself, on the original vinyl or on any of the reissues, would never have credited the piece -

i agree with both of you, sharksfan and b.b. - although not crediting used classical compositions or works in pop/rock has a traditon for ages. for instance "questions" by manfred mann's earthband, which is based on the main theme of schubert's "impromptu in g flat major" - no mention of that, at least on the 45 i have. admittedly that was later on, but there's plenty more of that all over the place.
but listening to that passage again a few times, i detected that they must have tampered somewhat with this orchestral recording (whatever it is): sounds like they've incorporated some kind of sound effect there, maybe slightly superimposing something onto it - which partly created a mild disharmony (sort of), as if trying to defamiliarize this piece a bit. or is my mind starting to play tricks on me - what do you think? :shrug:

The question of acknowledgment has been one that has been lurking in the back of my mind. Vaughan Williams was composing mainly from 1910 to 1957 so at that point I would have thought that all of his music was under copyright, but even taking that into account the orchestral performance itself would have had copyright protection as well, so permission would have had to have been sought to use it... unless it really was a new commission at the time.

Lazypoker's point about Questions doesn't really arise as Mannfred Mann would have just been using the melody and as Schubert died in 1828, copyright issues wouldn't have arisen. I would have hoped that he would have acknowledged its use out of politeness, though.

I'm amused at the thought of composers turning in their graves infuriated at the thought of missing out on royalties. Think Beethoven over the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, or Saint Saëns over the desecration of his Organ Symphony (one of my faves) by If I had words (which is not)

We could try e-mailing Jeremy via his website, but I'm loath to bother him with something that he wasn't really involved with. It wouldn't be very polite. He drops by every so often, so we'll see. If I ever meet Mick again, this will be my question but somehow I doubt that he'll remember...

i stand corrected concerning this point, mr scarrott.
but in general (not only on the classical music front) it can be said that the danger of being sued hasn't prevented quite a lot of folks to use other peoples' work without credit (and the record companies didn't mind, either) - especially in the bluesrock field: led zep with "whole lotta love" or "bring it on home", for example, or canned heat ("bullfrog blues"), but even the beatles were sued by chuck berry for a few words in "come together", george harrison with "my sweet lord" . . . it goes on and on and on.
some may have gotten away with it, others haven't - so, with that in mind it still leaves some possibilities open . . .

Agreed. As another example, think of Lindsey' s use of Pachelbel's Canon in D Major for Eyes of the World on the Mirage album.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
 

I've had a couple of friendly and very kind replies from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Sadly, there's no killer identification made, but the Chairman of the Society, who told me he is a fan of Then Play On thinks the excerpt identifies the Fifth Symphony as an influence or feeling for the extract. I'm listening to it now.

Do you know, I think actually played the 'cello in a university orchestra performance of a movement or two of this 30 years ago... that rolling theme from the first movement is coming back to me.

Another member contacted me, sharing memories of going to Mac gigs many times in the Sixties, standing ten feet away from the band as Peter introduced Danny Kirwan as their new guitarist. Interestingly, he advised me that Rikky Rooksby author of the Complete Guide to the Music of Fleetwood Mac is also a member of the RVW society. I don't own the book, but I remember leafing through it in the bookstore. If memory serves, he's a fair and objective reviewer, and it was pretty well written as well. I seem to recall he wrote something along the lines that much fun must have been had during the recording of the Madge tracks.

I've just noticed another poster on the Talk Classical forum has suggested:

Sounds like Vaughan Williams fifth symphony, final movement as it gently fades away

http://www.talkclassical.com/43446-c...fleetwood.html

I must get back onto that site to thank Becca and Metarie Road. Many thanks to the RVW members! We have more in common than we dared imagine.

EDIT:

I guess the fact that Ricky Rooksby is a fan of RVW means that it's less likely that the excerpt was by him. He would have mentioned it in his track-by-track analysis in his book, I would have thought.

I couldn't hear it in the ending of the 5th symphony, btw.

agreed! a very sweet ending as this is - and some similarity can't be denied - but it ain't it. the mystery goes on . . . but thanks so much for all your efforts so far, mr scarrott!

Do you happen to know which words were the problem lazy poker ?(or can I just call you lazy ?)

Here come a flat top he come, movin up with me
from You Can't Catch Me

the original lyric line from chuck berry's "you can't catch me" read:
"here come ol' flat-top, he was movin' up with me"
john lennon used this line in "come together":
"here come ol' flattop, he come grooving up slowly"
and because of these few words berry (who to this day NEVER misses even the slightest chance to make a little more dough) sued the beatles . . . can you believe that?! :rolleyes:

p.s. call me what you will . . . but don't call me lazy! ;)

In fairness I think (?) it was Morris Levy who sued John over that ...think he owned the publishing. Regardless of the right and wrong, Levy was apparently a gangster and a particularly unsavoury character.
Check this intro out for another bit of classic borrowing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dfh9QIjR3Q

. . . so we did it again - drifted out of topic a wee bit ;)
anyway - for those interested in the full plot, check out this:
http://www.thebeatlesrarity.com/2015...come-together/
and thanxalot, ash, for pointing out the origin of the "revolution" intro! now that's a cute one i didn't know!

Jeremy doesn't know...
 

I overcame my initial reluctance and emailed Jeremy Spencer regarding this, just on the off-chance that he might remember something. I had a lovely reply from him, but sadly he can't help us on this one. As his only involvement with TPO was that haunting bit of piano on Oh Well Part 2 , I didn't honestly expect him to know anything about it.

My thanks to Jeremy for his time and reply, though.

So I don't know where to go from here. I noticed that Martin Celmins, who wrote Peter Green's biography is on linkedin and there's the Peter Green and Friends facebook page.

Maybe one day one of us will be listening randomly to Radio 3 or Classic FM and we'll hear the passage identified in all its glory..

Thanks for giving this a try, Mr Scarrott! I did pose the question on the "Then Play On ... Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac" Facebook page shortly after it came up here, but no one is any closer to an answer there.

By the way, Mike Vernon is a member of that Facebook group and was one of many who replied to my question there. In response to another comment, I'd already mentioned that Mike Vernon was no longer producing the band at that time and that engineer Martin Birch might have the best recollection, and Mike Vernon agreed with that. But no one seemed to know how to get in touch with Martin Birch, so no luck proceeding in that direction.

I think until anyone can show otherwise, my best guess is that that portion of "Madge" was an original piece.