Posted Jul 06, 2012 @ 04:09 PM Peoria Journal Star
http://www.pjstar.com/blogs/mindingb...s-superstardom
Non-success story #?: Leaving Fleetwood Mac just before the groups attains superstardom
By Steve Tarter
The recent death of musician Bob Welch (a suicide at the age of 65) is yet another reminder of the slippery slope of success.
Never heard of Welch? He was a member of the super-group Fleetwood Mac just before they became super.
Welch sang and played guitar for the British-based group from 1971 to 1974, composing songs like “Sentimental Lady” and “Hypnotized.”
After Welch left the group, a couple named Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham joined the band and the rest, as they say, is history.
Mac’s two albums, post-Welch, happened to be monsters, “Fleetwood Mac” and "Rumours.”
The first release had songs like “Monday Morning,” “Landslide” and “Rhiannon” while “Rumours,” which wound up selling 40 million copies worldwide, brought us “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way” and “Second Hand News.”
Fleetwood Mac had always been an interesting and inventive band, but with Nicks and Buckingham, they ascended into pop history.
Yet it was Welch who suggested that the one-time British blues band settle down in California, his home state.
David Fricke wrote about Welch’s contributions to Fleetwood Mac last month in Rolling Stone. He pointed out that Welch’s work on five albums prior to the arrival of the gold-dust twins “brought an L.A. polish and smart-pop delicacy” to the group’s sound.
I must, however, take issue with Fricke on the matter of “A Mystery to Me,” the 1973 album he described as “well-produced but bland.”
First of all, the album’s cover art that Fricke called “astonishingly bad — a garish painting of a crying gorilla eating a cake,” I found interesting. You want bad album art? Try this:
http://www.boredpanda.com/worst-album-covers-ever/
As for that album’s contents, Fricke’s description of “Hypnotized” is profound: “Urgent noir propelled by a shuffling mix of guitars and (Christine) McVie’s’s electric-piano understatement, with Welch singing in a sleepwalking cadence like a Raymond Chandler detective musing to himself in a late-night rain.”
But Welch had other strong songs on that album. Starting with “Emerald Eyes,” there’s “Keep On Going,” “The City,” “Miles Away” and “Somebody,” all written by Welch. The guy was not only cooking artistically but here he was, propelling the band to its glitzy pop destiny.
Now talk about noir: One day, success is in your hand and the next, you’re scratching your palm. Welch left the band and tried unsuccesively to go the solo route. Later, he got into a legal squabble with Mac band members over royalties. When Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the group[ failed to even list his name as a member. You do five albums and you get bumpkus.
If your connection to Big Mac is only through those mid-70s radio hits, you’re missing out on a lot. Aside from the early “Then Play On” (when Peter Green was with the band), there was the delightful “Kiln House” from 1970 (with “Station Man” from Danny Kirwan). As Fricke noted, Bob Welch’s albums — “Future Games” (1971), “Bare Trees” (1972), “Penguin” and “Mystery to Me” (both 1973) and “Heroes Are Hard to Find” (1974) — are hard to find in the digital-music era. They’re not available on either Spotify or iTunes.
So get the albums. Unless you have to hear “Go Your Own Way” one more time.