Dave Redford's Log of Rhythms Blog, April 2014
http://logofrhythms.blogspot.com/201...4/rumours.html
My fave 365 albums, in one calendar year
At one point in my life, when I was infected with that lame strain of snobbery that afflicts all music bores, I would have been horrified at the idea of selecting a Stevie Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac album over one from the group's earlier Peter Green period. The fact this soft rock album came out at the height of punk makes it an even more difficult decision. But I'm unrepentant. As pop albums go, this is close to perfection. As musical trajectories go, the Fleetwood Mac story is one of the most remarkable in pop, starting out as a London-based blues band in the late 60s and transforming beyond almost all recognition into LA purveyors of AOR (Adult Oriented Rock). As group dynamics go, no band has attained the same levels of incestuousness and emotional tension as mid-70s Fleetwood Mac. By the time of Rumours' release, Drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass player John McVie were the only surviving members from the group's early phase, with John's wife Christine McVie then also part of the lineup as well as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The relationship between newest members, Nicks and Buckingham, had already been falling apart during the recording sessions and touring for the band's previous album, while Fleetwood's marriage to Jenny Boyd was on the rocks and the McVies were heading for divorce, with Christine having an affair with the band's lighting director, Curry Grant. Many of the songs are messages written by band members to other band members,
a state of affairs that's summed up succinctly in the album's title, Rumours.
Go Your Own Way is a perfect case in point, a song written by Buckingham to Nicks but sung by her with passion ("loving you isn't the right thing to do", "tell me why everything turned around"). This layer of context gives the songs added emotional depth. Buckingham also penned Second Hand News and Never Going Back Again, the latter adding a sense of finality to their crumbling relationship ("been down one time, been down two times, never going back again"). What's interesting to me, having listened to this album on many family car trips and even sung along cheerily, is how catchy and upbeat many of the melodies are, yet hidden beneath this pop sheen is a maelstrom of swirling emotions. This formula of adult themes, catchy hooks and west coast harmonies was hugely successful, with Dreams, Don't Stop, Go Your Own Way and You Make Loving Fun all Top 10 US singles. Any British Grand Prix fan will also immediately recognise The Chain. Two of the album's best moments are the quieter ones at the end of each side, Songbird and Gold Dust Woman. The latter is Nicks exposing the dark underbelly of the drug taking and hedonism that affected the band during this period, while Songbird is one of several wonderful but sad songs that Christine McVie contributes to the album. As break-up songs go, there's something incredibly pure and generous about the singing and lyrics of Songbird ("And I wish you all the love in the world, but most of all I wish it from myself"), the perfect antidote to all the animosity.