As others have said, my vote is 75-76, everything about the era is just fantastic. A new fresh sounding band with incredible songwriting from 3 very distinct writers who mesh to perfection. It is also notable that the majority of Rumours was written and recorded during this era. Particularly Stevie, her voice was the best to come on the scene in a long time and live particularly it was such a forceful instrument, and showed such amazing promise for this band to really become and rock and roll classic in the vein of the other big greats in the industry. Although I really love Tusk and the Mirage era that followed, the whole performance came down a few notches from the initial stellar beginnings of the classic line up. This edge was never to return. It was not until well into the Rumours tour in 1977-78 that things began to unravel and cocaine was becoming the obvious destructive factor on this band, not really the fights and relationships that they would have us believe tore them apart, I believe it was more the drugs. The phoned in concerts, the declining quality of the writing etc really was noticeable, but the band maintained its legacy. This is true even today when so much focus is on the 75-76 period, the setlists all contain the majority of the work of this period and has stood the test of time.
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