osted: Thursday, June 16, 2016 12:00 am
BY LAUREN CARTER FOR THE SUN CHRONICLE
CARTER: Messy moments make a masterpiece
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/vip/o...ba40764ff.html
I recently subscribed to the Tidal music service, which has given me access to virtually every song and album in existence.
Naturally, I started diving deep into Fleetwood Mac's collection (if you don't know about my obsession with the Mac, that's for another column altogether) and found the "Rumours" super deluxe edition, which includes loads of demos, out-takes and rough cuts recorded during the making of the album.
I've listened to "Rumours" dozens of times, but I've never heard the early versions of songs that, in my mind, are the definition of pop/rock perfection, and getting a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of those tracks from rough ideas to polished gems was illuminating to say the least. I couldn't help but see a parallel between the process of recording music and the process of living life.
Very often when it comes to any type of achievement, we see the finished product, the best-selling album, the masterpiece. It's rare to see the process it took to get there, the early sessions and experiments and songs that were scrapped and songs that became other songs and songs that sound nothing like how they started out.
We're quick to celebrate success, and rightfully so, but we seldom recognize the value or necessity of the toil and struggle that led up to it.
I've experienced what felt like pretty big setbacks and failures in my life. Situations that didn't go the way I planned, times when I didn't achieve what I wanted, times when I lost in some respect. As painful as those moments were, when I looked back months or years later, those perceived setbacks and failures were actually the very things that set me up for future success down the road. So many accomplishments in my life literally would not have been possible without first experiencing what felt like disasters or detours that were taking me off course but were actually bringing me exactly where I needed to be. Rough cuts and out-takes, if you will.
One of the standout moments on the "Rumours" special edition, and the moment when I really understood that recording an album is a process akin to living life, was when I heard the two songs that ultimately became the group's iconic hit "The Chain."
There's the Stevie Nicks demo by the same name that included the chorus "and if you don't love me now, you will never love me again/I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain." And then there's the second half of a bluesy Christine McVie track called "Keep Me There," which becomes the hard-driving finale of "The Chain."
The two original songs sound nothing like each other. They were written by two different artists. But elements of both songs were combined while the remainder of each song was scrapped to create one of the group's most instantly recognizable hits, the song that's opened virtually every show since 1977.
Did any of them foresee that result when they started out? I doubt it. Was the process of blending those two distinctly different songs into one chaotic and frustrating? I'm guessing it was. But the end product was something so beautiful and perfect that you'd never know the messy route it took to get there.
If you stopped and listened to "Rumours"- or any great album, for that matter - in the middle of the recording process, you might have been unimpressed. But you also would have missed the point. Each moment in the process was not an end in itself, it was a step leading to something greater - and it was precisely by working through the rough, imperfect, messy moments and improving upon them with each new take that the masterpiece was revealed.
Lauren Carter can be reached at
bylaurencarter@gmail.com and on Twitter