Quote:
Originally Posted by sjpdg
Honestly, there are times I think the band was just over-reaching in an attempt to make up for Christine not recording or touring on "SYW". Overall, it's not a horrible album. It's no "Penguin" (IMHO the absolute worst FM album ever!!), that's for sure!!
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I've never really thought about it in that manner, but you're pretty spot on with that observation. At the time, I was extraordinarily excited to see what Buckingham and Nicks would sound like within the confines of Fleetwood Mac without Christine's very pedestrian pop influence. What ended up happening was akin to 2 siblings being left at home alone for the first time while the overbearing mother runs her errands
. Stevie and Lindsey were running around screaming at the top of their lungs, pulling each others pig tails and pushing each other down the stairs
. I believe it was Stevie who long said that Christine is/was the glue of Fleetwood Mac. And that comment finally made sense to me following SYW. She was the bridging factor between the very manic Buckingham and Nicks. Not only did she make them behave, but there was a middle ground commonality factor in her music.
I am often very hard on SYW, but I feel it necessary to reiterate I think it has some
fantastic music on it. I think Stevie's songs such as
Illume and
Destiny Rules were her best Mac contributions since Gypsy. I think Lindsey's envelope pushing songs like
Murrow and
Red Rover are positively brilliant. In many ways, some of the tracks on SYW still sound very progressive today. You can't say the same about songs from Stevie's
Trouble In Shangri La, for instance (which sounds very dated to me now). My biggest gripe with SYW was it needed to be pared down. There was such a breadth and amount of material that the album just came across as a giant hot mess of battling egos. There was no balancing factor with Christine... who in my opinion bridged Stevie and Lindsey on
Tusk, which is often compared to SYW.
PS: I have to disagree with you about
Penguin! Yes, it had two of the most giant stinkers in Mac history:
I'm A Roadrunner and
The Derelict, but it also had some truly stellar Christine McVie contributions
.