Listen To This Eddie: With ‘Carry Fire’ Robert Plant Proves He’s The Most Vital Artist Of His Generation
Listen To This Eddie is a weekly column that examines the important people and events in the classic rock canon and how they continue to impact the world of popular music.
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One of the biggest tours of 1977 was Fleetwood Mac’s live run supporting their monumental new record Rumours. Onstage, and to the crowd, everything seemed relatively copacetic between the members of the band as they poured out their hearts and aired their dirty laundry to thousands of people a night. However, the same tensions that fueled their new music continued to dog the band as they flitted from arena to arena.
“Our success was wonderful but victory came with greater tension between our band members with each passing day,” drummer Mick Fleetwood recalled in his autobiography Play On Now. “There were frequent fights because our art, our business, and our personal lives were all the same, and we lived it out onstage and off, every single night.” The strain took a noticeable toll on Stevie Nicks who pushed herself and her voice relentlessly. “Midway through the tour we decided to bring Stevie’s close friend Robin on the road to look after her,” Fleetwood recalled. “But despite Robin’s presence and all the advice in the world, Stevie could not be tamed when the spirit moved her; she’d tear her instrument to shreds in deference to her songs.”
A prime example is the band’s swing through Japan at the end of the year. The whole band is on-point during this performance — Lindsey Buckingham is an absolute monster on lead guitar — but Nicks really takes the cake with sultry renditions of “Gold Dust Woman” and “Rhiannon.”
Incredibly, Fleetwood said in his book that he has about 50 hours worth of footage from their time in Japan that’s he converted digitally and visually re-mastered. Let’s all collectively hope he gifts us with the fruits of that labor sooner, rather than later.
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