Behind The Mask turns 28
 

Earlier this month BTM turned 28. Does anyone feel old yet? Today is Earth Day and that's when it hit me today. I bought BTM on Earth Day in 1990. The album was released in early April 1990.
I may be in the minority but I actually like most of the album. 8 songs are good to very good. Its a very cohesive group effort. I think Rolling Stone said it was the Mac's best "group" effort since Rumours. Tusk and Tango were hardly major group efforts. I actually like this album better than Tango (go figure). I love hearing Christine play keyboards again (something that I missed on Tango). No drum machines and no computer stuff either. Its straight forward rock. Half the album is not worth listening to but just over half of it is pretty good IMHO.
I bought it at Record Mart, Greengate Mall, Greensburg, PA. Gosh remember malls and record stores???? I bought the cassette and I really liked "In the back of my mind" from the first moment I heard it. It was a bit unconventional and it was so amazing how they encompassed all 3 vocalists at different times during the song.
There is an entire thread devoted to the cover. I am a fan of it too. You can analyze it all day and still discover more things. I think it portrays the band very good in a subtle way.
Flashback 1990. Ironically there was a major book by Dave Pallone that came out exactly the same time as the Mac's Behind The Mask. Pallone's book was also called Behind the Mask. His book was coming out as major league's baseballs first openly gay (retired) umpire. There was major promotion for the book and everytime I heard something on TV or radio about Behind the Mask, I thought it was going to be about the Mac and it was about Pallone.

Behind the Mask is a good album. It is good as Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk, Mirage, and Tango in The Night. The entire album is worth listening to.

I am disappointed mainstream radio did not play and promote singles from Behind the Mask more. Mainstream radio was playing more crap than good music, and there was a transition of sound from the 1980's to the 1990's.

I remember really liking it when it came out; although I don't think it's stood up well over time.
The Stevie Nicks songs are pretty mediocre, but Christine's are all good, especially the title track. It was definitely a moment for her, as was Tango In The Night.
As for the rest, they're fairly unmemorable.

I wish BTM would get the treatment that the Rumours-era albums got but I know it's never going to happen.

I agree that Stevie's songs were very lacking... but everyone else really stepped up their game on BTM. The album was more guitar driven, something I had missed since Rumours. Christine was really at the top of her game here, continuing her streak from Tango. Even her songs from the Chain box set were incredible- Love Shines and Heart of Stone showed that a Mac lineup with Mick, John, Christine, and Billy would have been just as formidable without Lindsey or Stevie!

I didn't like the tour set list. The fact that the first song from the album was buried more than halfway through the set. I know In The Back Of My Mind was eventually moved to earlier in the set which it should have been. Stand On The Rock was definitely one of the worst choices to play live. When The Sun Goes Down is a good song to dance to but it's not something Fleetwood Mac should have played live IMO. Love Is Dangerous is okay but it isn't a good live song either. Skies The Limit, Hard Feelings, Freedom and When It Comes To Love would have been great.

I enjoyed BTM when it came out. Save Me was an incredible lead single. It's been a while since I've listened to it. I remember attending the Rumours convention in Virginia Beach the same year. During the party the DJ played The Second Time as the closer. Fun times! Just a lot of fans gathering to share their love of the band.

I have always LOVED that album. I bought it the day it came out and I remember thinking Billy and Rick were just the shot in the arm Mac needed as I felt LB's production on Tango was too commercial compared with the organic sound of White Album and Rumours.

Chris was still every inch Chris on Skies the Limit and the title track and Rick Vito totally rocked - Love is Dangerous and Stand On the Rock remain firm favourites of mine.

I have to confess I wasn't a big fan of Billy's writing though - note that his contributions were either collaborations/duets with other members or written with outside professionals. I couldn't help thinking he probably had very little to do with the writing of When It Comes to Love which bore all the hallmarks of Simon Climie and Dennis Morgan its co-writers. Climie of course was the vocal half of the short-lived Climie Fisher duo (remember (Love Changes) Everything?) and went on to produce and co-write Eric Clapton's ill-advised forays into drum machines like My Father's Eyes.

That said I can't help but salute Billy for standing by Mick through the wilderness years that culminated in the commercial disaster that was Time.

I agree, especially with what you said about Save Me. I know radio was changing at that time, but I was truly surprised the single didn't chart higher. Christine sounded sensational on it and she looked beautiful in the video. And I love Rick's guitar playing, too.

I enjoy this album. It's such a departure from Tango and sounds like a band album. There are some clunkers of course. I remember being in college and it got played on college radio quite a bit.

As Long As You Follow is also a great tune. Christine was on fire and even stole the show in Cleveland for the concert. *Richfield to be exact.

I am in the minority but I like three of Stevie's four songs on this album. That said, I do often forget about them. Love is Dangerous, Freedom and Affairs of the Heart are really fun when I do listen to them, particularly the first two. I dislike The Second Time. I think they are stronger songs than her Tango in the Night Songs.

Behind the Mask is a great song.

I totally agree!

“Freedom” could have been a great song, but the cheesy over-production ruined it. I almost want them redo that now that Mike is in the band. Just turn it into a straight up, no BS rocker.

I think Stevie's songs on BTM are fine, but not stellar. None of her BTM songs are as good as Seven Wonders, but they're all much much better than Welcome to the Room or When I See You Again.

I also love that we can hear Stevie on Skies the Limit, Save Me, In the Back of My Mind, etc.

I hate Affairs of the Heart. Its one of the few Stevie songs you can hear the klonopin in her voice :eek: Its a very basic song and the back up vocals drive me to drink (never have love, never have love, oh but its better not to lose) blah blah blah

Having said that, most of the album is very good IMHO.

As Long As You Follow may be my favorite Christine song. Did she ever perform this live? It's on my wish list for this upcoming concert....really want to hear it.

She's never performed it live, but if she did this upcoming tour, I would completely freak out! That song is such a beautiful tribute to the fans, I think, and since it's on their greatest hits album, even the most casual fan is familiar with it. I know it's unlikely, but I'm hoping against hope FM will perform it this year, maybe in place of Think About Me.

Very cool, McLamb. I've always found the track listing of BTM rather fascinating. I thought In the Back of My Mind would have been an interesting way to start the album, but Skies the Limit was probably appropriate because it's a Christine song, and they wanted to begin with a known quantity, so to speak.

I also find it interesting that Christine practically disappears after track 8, which is Behind the Mask. Her songs should have been more spread out. It would have been nice to have 2 of her songs on side one and 2 on side two. Seems weird she only had 4 songs on the album, but with 4 songwriters in the band, I guess it makes sense.

I remember an interview in 1990 and Skies the Limit was a last minute addition to the album. After the album was complete the band was worried the album sounded too dark for a Fleetwood Mac album. Christine's title track was not her usual peppy love song. Christine wrote Skies the limit rather fast and they recorded the track and slapped it right up front to dwarf the dark sound.

Thanks for the info, Macfan4life! You always have the coolest trivia and I appreciate it. If Christine and Eddy could whip up a song like Skies the Limit that fast, they were even a better songwriting team than I'd thought! But did they replace another Christine song with Skies? I can't believe she originally had only 3 songs on the album- and one was a duet, even!

Imagine if the album had had Love Shines and Heaet of Stone!

That piece of trivia came from Dick Clark's countdown show in 1990. He used to host this adult contemporary radio top 30 countdown. I was in college in a far away place where this was on the radio. I was not even aware there was a second single after Save Me because I never heard Skies the Limit on the radio ever except on this show. Apparently the song charted on Adult contemporary charts in late 1990. So I would listen every Sunday and hear these tid bits every week. I don't believe the song replaced another but there were no usual Christine peppy love songs on BTM. Even Save Me is not really a love song in the typical Christine fashion. Usually she is singing how wonderful she is in love. Save me she is not in love and just begging to be given that chance. So in a panic Skies the limit was written quickly and put on the album track one. Problem solved.

I love Skies the Limit but can you imagine if it was a Buckingham produced track?

Skies The Limit
Victim of Love
Intuition
Freedom
Save Me
In The Back of My Mind
-
Behind the Mask
Got No Home
Affairs of the Heart
Do You Know
When the Sun Goes Down
Love Is Dangerous
Game of Love

Hmmm... I love Skies the Limit pretty much as is, and certainly a lot more than Mystified or You and I. I think Lindsey did a great job with most of Christine's songs, but Save Me, Love Shines, As Long As You Follow, and Behind the Mask are as good and in some cases better than her earlier songs like Oh Daddy, Say You Love Me, Only Over You, or Love in Store. And don't get me wrong, I like some of those songs, too, but they're pretty lightweight. I have a feeling Save Me by Lindsey would have been less guitar driven, for example. Just my opinion, of course.

Btw, I've read posts where people said the album BTM sounded muddled or wasn't produced well. I would love to know what they mean, specifically. I know little about how music is produced, I guess, and so it can be hard for me to understand those kind of comments. For example, how can one tell if the fault is in the production or in the performance itself? If the sound is 'muddled,' isn't that more an engineering issue? I'd really love feedback about this sort of technical question.

The only FM example I can really think of as sounding muddled is Goodbye Baby from Say You Will, especially the beginning. It sounds like a demo or outtake, rather than a finished song. I figured if I noticed the poor sound quality, it must be pretty obvious LOL!

Is this your preferred track list for BTM, SteveMacD? I love Game of Love and can't believe it didn't make the cut- one of my favorites and so underrated and catchy! And Intuition is my favorite Rick Vito song and would have been great on BTM.

Please please please let there be a Deluxe Edition of Behind the Mask! I know, wishful thinking...

It is.

I really hope they do a Deluxe on this one. They won’t, because of it wasn’t a hit by FM standards, and because people will wonder WTF the band was thinking with the final track listing. They made a great album, they just didn’t release it.

How were those tracks made available?

Bare Trees is another I play around with…


Child of Mine
The Ghost
Homeward Bound
Sunny Side of Heaven
-
Bare Trees (w/ Danny’s Chant intro)
Sentimental Lady
Spare Me A Little of Your Love
Trinity
Dust

TrueFaith77, Intuition was on Rick Vito's solo album from the 1990s and Stevie sang backup on it. You can hear 2 of the songs if you type "Intuition Rick Vito and Stevie Nicks" and "the Game of Love Fleetwood Mac" on YouTube. Victim of Love is harder to find, it's by Billy Burnette and is a blues rocker type song, but I haven't heard it in a long time.

Intuition is really good, probably the best vocal I've ever heard from Rick. The Game of Love is just a catchy song but for some reason I really love it. Give 'em a listen on YouTube and let us know what you think.

Skies the Limit is pure pop greatness from Christine. While no longer cranking out to 40 hits since the music industry was changing, the song still proved she still had the formula. She can make simple phrases like You make loving fun into gooey love songs. Skies the limit uses the same formula. I particularly love the keyboard beginning because its classic Christine the way she plays. All 4 singers harmonizing sounds pretty good too. The video was excellent too. If my memory is correct it was filmed in Red Rocks, Colorado. I had to look this up but the song peaked at #10 on adult contemporary charts. Always loved the crack of the drum right before the vocals start. Save me barely cracked the top 40 but had a great video. Fleetwood Mac's first album with no Stevie Nicks single or hit. Times were a changing ;)

Funny how different someone's opinions can be! Skies the Limit took me FOREVER to get into because of that damn keyboard intro. It's sooooo cheesy and over-the-top bright and happy. After many (MANY) listens of the song I've started to appreciate it more. It's quite catchy and the blend of voices on it is excellent. Imo it serves it's purpose as a forgettable opener that showcases each singer.

Behind the Mask is similar in an opposite sort of way. The intro to that song is fantastic and totally draws me in, the build up is alright but it amounts to nothing :shrug:. The blend of harmonies on the chorus sound awful to me ears, like an indistinguishable blob of bored, breathy vocals that reappear on bits of "Freedom", "Affairs of the Heart", "Stand on the Rock", and "Love is Dangerous". That cool intro never really builds to anything musically either.

Save Me and Freedom are great songs that would have been greater if done differently. These two suffer hard from the muddled production bwboy was inquiring about. I don't know what the term "muddled" means to other people, but I can explain my take on it. The actual mixing of these songs leaves much to be desires. The instruments don't sound like they have any life, there doesn't seem to be a lot of space in the mix to hear what they're doing. It all sort of blends together into this uninteresting mass, which is a shame because many of the songs are good at their core. There are also random guitar licks and keyboard stamps that are thrown in with little rhythm, further distracting from the vocals and actually decent main instrumentation. Affairs of the Heart is similar, making an already mediocre song forgettable because none of the music on it is at all distinct.

I have no idea if I'm explaining this correctly, but for a concrete example listen to Rick Vito's solo version of "Love is Dangerous" and compare it to the BTM version. The instrumentation isn't necessarily better but those instruments and vocals are far more distinct sounding. There also aren't layers of nonsense licks and flourishes to distract from the riff. I guarantee you that if you separated Stevie's vocals from the BTM version they would sound much more passionate and arresting simply by separating them from that production style. For further comparison listen to any of good songs from SYW and decide which ones have more memorable instrumentation. That album may not be a masterpiece but you can't say it's boring to listen to, unlike a good portion of this album (unfortunately).

When the Sun Goes Down is actually a good song and doesn't suffer nearly as much from these production issues but it's sooooo out of place on this album. Next to songs like When It Comes to Love and Skies the Limit it feels like it was spliced from an entirely different album. It does have some nice guitar work and harmonies though.

Stand on the Rock, The Second Time, When It Comes to Love, and Hard Feelings are all garbage from the ground-up as far as I'm concerned. Got No Home, Intuition, any of the three new songs from "The Chain" boxset, Game of Love, and maybe a reworked It Ain't Over (Billy-Christine duet from a solo album) or "Are You Mine" (unreleased Billy-Stevie Duet) would have improved the album greatly. Also if the Mac worked on Desiree it would have absolutely kicked "Love is Dangerous"'s ass and added a true rocker to the album.

That turned into kind of a long rant didn't it :laugh: hope that gave some kind of a perspective on the issues people have with the production of the album bwboy! Can't speak for everyone but those are definitely my raw opinions of it.

Netter, thanks so much for taking the time to explain those concepts to me, I definitely have a better understanding now. I'm curious- do you think some of the issues on BTM you referred to would be fixed, or sound better, if the album were on a dvd audio, like most of the Deluxe Editions were? Or would the dvd audio just amplify the poor sound quality? Also, where would you say the fault lies- with the production by Greg Ladanyi? Again, thanks for taking the time, and I'd love to hear what others think of the sound quality of BTM.

When you mentioned "the crack of the drum right before the vocals start," that totally hit home for me because that is something I've always loved about the song, too. The video WAS shot at Red Rocks, and someone, I can't remember who, posted they were at that concert and that they filmed the video after the concert was over. I've always hoped that the entire concert might have been filmed and would love to see it released on audio or video, but that ain't gonna happen :distress:

As far as Stevie's songs, I remember hearing no Questions Asked exactly one time on the radio, and that was it. I really like that song, actually, but no way was it going to be a hit... EVER. Same thing with Paper Doll, which was actually supposed to be on the Greatest Hits album with As Long As You Follow, but Mick replaced it with No Questions Asked.

Glad I could be of some service with that long winded post :).. Unfortunately I don't know much about the process of remixing an album to DVDA or what could be done. Obviously they can't remove the layers of Ladanyi production over the album without defying the intent of the original album. As far as the mixing goes.... Maybe? Separating the instruments and vocals and giving them some room to breathe may help. Bring some of the vocals to the front, push those little flourishes to the back... It might work? Hearing Christine and Billy sing "Freedommmm" in separate channels may eliminate the "blob" complaint I levied. Mike Campbell's guitar riff is actually not bad on this song either, even though you don't take note of it as you should under all the mess unless you really pay attention imo. A remix may help make that more distinct and the song more memorable and effective.

If BTM was ever released in deluxe format I'd buy it in a second just to see what they could do with it. I'm all for any opportunity to enjoy these songs more, though I'd be more in for any live tracks. This lineup absolutely killed songs like Save Me, When the Sun Goes Down, and In the Back of My Mind live, let alone material like Isn't it Midnight and Oh Well. Wish a live copy of LID would surface! Someone in the FM camp said they record either audio or video from each tour so they've got something somewhere.

She didn't even write Seven Wonders :lol:

I really love BTM and always have. All of Christine & Stevie's songs I play regularly. I know Stevie's voice wasn't in the greatest shape and she was klonopin'd up to her eyeballs, but at least she was very present and contributing to the band on this record, unlike Tango where she literally waltzed in, sang her songs and left. BTM always feels like much more of a team effort, which is something I really love about Fleetwood Mac.

Exactly
Even the small parts Stevie sings like during When the sun goes down you know its really Stevie singing instead of being "layered in" like on Tango :eek:
BTM really holds up.

Heck yeah I remember that mall and that store...my future sister in law worked for the one in Laurel Mall in Connellsville, where I graduated from in 1990. I also loved that album. I have been listening to "The Second Time" a lot lately just having lost my jr high sweetheart to suicide, we started dating in 1986. We used to go to Westmoreland Mall at Kaufman's and wait all night in the parking lot for Ticketmaster to put tickets on sale at 10 the next morning. You made friends then everyone was so cool. We'd take turns going to Eat N Park lol....man I miss those days....

I loved Behind The Mask. I really got behind the Rick and Billy years. I wasn't to angry or sad that Lindsey had left. Not like now. I love Do you know and Hard Feelings. And I thought Stevie's songs were really good except for The second Time. I love lindsey and I hate that he was let go from Fleetwood Mac, but I'm not crazy about his producing style. I'm not crazy about Mirage or Tango in the Night. Behind the Mask is more straight forward rock n roll. It's a shame that incarnation of the Mac didn't last too long.

I agree with most everything you said. The reason this incarnation of the Mac did not last too long is because BTM was a major dud. One song barely cracked the top 40. No Stevie singles either. A Fleetwood Mac album without hits was just too strange. IMHO I am glad they did not embrace the pop vibe like on Tango or Mirage. But commercially there was nothing to stick around for. Christine really was a front person for the band at this time. Stevie was zonked out and the new guys weren't as well known. Chris wrote some great songs and loved her playing on the album.