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-   -   'Rumours' Turns 40: The Monumental Impact of the Album and of Stevie Nicks (http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=57364)

TheWildHeart67 07-20-2017 04:56 PM

'Rumours' Turns 40: The Monumental Impact of the Album and of Stevie Nicks
 
I thought maybe this is more appropriate to post in the Stevie Nicks boards section, but for some reason cannot find a delete option when I go to edit.

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/0...-stevie-nicks/

With the final weeks of summer upon us and autumn solstice on the wind, we should not let the 40th anniversary of the release of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours pass without acknowledgment of the monumental impact of the record, and that distant season of the white witch, Stevie Nicks, whose otherworldly talent found its time and place in the pop music cosmos of 1977.

It is unnecessary at this late date to speak of the commercial success of the album. Nor is there anything nuanced to say about the emotional relationships so famously interwoven with the band’s history. Suffice it to say that if you were a young Californian of either sex in the mid-seventies, chances are good that you were to one degree or another in love with Nicks. Our passion didn’t mean exclusivity; the whole world was learning to love her.

Onstage, Nicks embodied the feminine archetype dreamt of in half-sleep and vanished in the awakened state of knowing the goddess was reachable only in dreams. “Reigning Queen of Rock” was the title Rolling Stone writers bestowed in the wake of Rumours, but that title fell far short, didn’t began to encompass the realms that Nicks was queen of. All she signified about a countercultural era that was ending.

Confronted with the mystical gifts of an artist like Nicks, cerebral appreciation is lost in empathy emanating from the listener’s own dragged around heart. As open and vulnerable as the wisps of the veils around her shoulders, Nicks yet had the strength to bear and celebrate everything that superstardom meant for a songstress and lyricist wholly surrendering to what lay deep in her heart, and her own heartbreak.


Fleetwood Mac was renown in its sixties British blues rock incarnation for almost a decade before the classic seventies lineup premiered. Songs like the proto-heavy “Oh Well” enjoyed heavy FM rotation in 1969, and troubled guitarist Peter Green’s last hit with the band, “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)” brought down houses in 1970.

In the Golden State, British rock buffs that had flocked to Winterland for drummer Mick Fleetwood’s seminal quintet weren’t quite sure what to think when the relatively obscure duo of Nicks and her muse and lover Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac on New Year’s Eve in 1974. The new lineup’s first album, Fleetwood Mac, featuring hits like “Landslide” and “Rhiannon,” reached No. 1 and sold five million copies.

But it was Rumours, which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1977 and became one of the best-selling albums of all time (40 million to date), that certified the British/American ensemble’s musical legacy.


Stevie Nicks would remain in Fleetwood Mac, but went her own way with Belladonna in 1981, followed by 1982’s The Wild Heart, launching a solo career distinguished by songs and moods as bewitching as anything she’d done with the band. Her return to Fleetwood Mac and 1982’s magical “Gypsy” returned the old religion of her beauty and unparalleled performance art to the group that made her a superstar.


Social scientists and survivors have offered theories about when the sixties actually ended. Some cite the inundation of the Haight/Ashbury District by countercultural riffraff as the end point. Many more have christened the star-crossed Altamont Concert in 1969 as the beginning of the end.

I was hanging on Haight when cannabis and wine skeins turned to meth, downers, and bad trips. When peace and love became commercialized, and the hippies began their exodus into the redwood vales of Northern California. I was in attendance when The Rolling Stones took the stage at Altamont Speedway, and Meredith Hunter pulled a gun, and the Hell’s Angels took him out.

I can tell you firsthand that it was possible to immerse oneself in the sixties rock and roll ethos, the “rebellious” lifestyle, and at the same time hold a secret crucifix up against the toxic progressive politics gaining a foothold in the larger American society. I was there with the long hair, the fringe jacket, and was decidedly no angel, but was able to ignore and dismiss the Marxist anti-capitalist underbelly that even then seemed so wrong.

Fleetwood Mac would endure, but the sixties finally ended for me with the release of Rumours.

Two new and disparate musical evolutions were waiting in the wings to crash the party in 1977, with two new icons to usher them in: a high-stepping John Travolta making moves to Bee Gees disco in Staying Alive, and a sneering Johnny Rotten, whose Danse Macabre as the seventies clock ran out gave voice to the generation following mine: these kids were anything but all right.

The sixties ended for me with“Gold Dust Woman,” and the apparitional Stevie Nicks singing in her flower-child rasp about a woman digging her grave with a silver spoon, and repeating “Go home” three times, twice as the end of a question, and finally as a stark admonition.

It was time to go home.

SisterNightroad 07-26-2017 06:14 AM

Love Letter To A Record: Tigertown’s Alexi Collins On Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.

Here are their love letters to records that forever changed their lives.


Alexi Collins, Tigertown: Fleetwood Mac — ‘Rumours’

Dear Rumours,

I was about six years old when I first saw you. I remember sitting on the floor watching television, while you watched me from the milk-crate that you lived in along with the rest of my parents’ records. During the commercials my eyes would wonder, searching for something more interesting to look at and often they would find themselves staring at you.

I don’t know why I was so curious about you, maybe it was the fact that I didn’t really know what a record was, maybe it was the old-timey black and white image of a beautiful woman posing next to an extremely tall and slender man that made you so intriguing; all I know is that the image of your face has always been burnt into my subconscious.

Throughout the next 15 years of my life I had heard most of your songs, but I did not connect with you as an album until I was 21. My brother and his wife asked if I would be interested in playing keyboard for their new band, just for one show. I accepted and not long after that show, I became a member of Tigertown.

As I began working on my keyboard skills, my bandmates suggested that I listen to you for inspiration because you had inspired the conception of the band. I purchased you in an mp3 format and listened to you on repeat for weeks. I quickly realised that you were possibly the most perfect collection of pop songs that had ever been released as an album.

As a band we constantly referred to you, which was particularly evident in our early music. When confronted with a decision we would ask each other, “What would Fleetwood Mac do?” In our more recent music your influence is much more subtle, however we still refer to you when it comes to blending vocals, writing songs, and Chris won’t give up until he plays a guitar solo as good as Lindsay’s solo on ‘Go Your Own Way’.


As my obsession with you intensified, I began reading everything I could and watched documentaries about your creation. There was more drama within this group of five musicians than there has ever been on any reality TV show ever. Lindsay and Stevie were breaking up, John and Christine were going through a separation, and Mick was going through his own divorce. While they all couldn’t stand speaking to each other they still came together to create music and sing the songs about their own affairs, divorce and heartbreaks.

It’s impossible to not listen to you differently when you know what the band went through while creating you. Not only does this make you a more interesting album, it makes you a symbol of the beauty that can come out of hardships. A reminder for a band like us that no matter what, we’ll always have music.

Your album has impacted me so much that I have been to three seperate Fleetwood Mac tribute shows, just to hear your songs performed live. Two years ago I was also lucky enough to see the real thing and the band sounded amazing. I will never forget that night. 38 years after your release and the crowd still responded most to your songs.

As I write this love letter to you in my lounge room, I am being watched by that same copy of you. I have stolen you from my parents’ record collection and I do not plan on ever giving you back.

Alexi,
Tigertown

--

Tigertown’s new single ‘Warriors’ is out now. The band will support Tove Lo at her Splendour In The Grass sideshows in Sydney tonight and Melbourne on Friday.



Read more at http://musicfeeds.com.au/features/lo...qPwlzjD5ucl.99

Street_Dreamer 07-27-2017 04:46 PM

I'm waiting for Rumours to be release on Blu Ray. I mean it's been on every other format minus Laserdisc it seems.

Netter75 07-28-2017 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Street_Dreamer (Post 1214516)
I'm waiting for Rumours to be release on Blu Ray. I mean it's been on every other format minus Laserdisc it seems.

There is a disturbing lack of Fleetwood Mac on the format (bar two Lindsey solo shows and the rare Stevie Soundstage blu). If they released a vintage concert (Mirage Tour? Bella Donna Tour?) restored ala Ronnie James Dio's Sacred Heart video I might have a heart attack. A Rumours/Tusk/Mirage/Say You Will Blu would be very cool as well.


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