Quote:
Originally Posted by David
My friend Steve sees Fleetwood Mac as a crockpot—any good ingredient should get chucked in, where it'll simmer for several hours and break down and be just delicious. Throw in a little Dave Walker, Rick Vito, Bekka Bramlett, Dave Mason, Neil Finn (maybe throw in Tim Finn while you're at it), Sheryl Crow, Mike Campbell—if they're good musicians, you'll have a tangy gazpacho.
I see Fleetwood Mac as a mathematically precise recipe (the way baking recipes are precise)—you can't just toss in anything and expect it to gel. I love hollandaise sauce, but I don't want it ladled over my gelato.
The best members in Fleetwood Mac over the years weren't just good musicians—they were the inevitably right musicians for that group. That rightness isn't easy to articulate, but most of us know it when we see it and hear it. Peter, Jeremy, Danny, Mick, and John had an inevitable rightness. They were charismatic, musically inventive, wacky, electrifying—the cultural chinks in the wall. The Rumours 5 at least for a time had its own charisma. Even the Welch+McVie+McVie+Weston+Fleetwood group created a memorable whole out of disparate parts. The recipe in each case worked.
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I had to giggle reading this post. With all due respect to Dave Walker, Rick Vito, Bekka Bramlett, and Dave Mason who are fine musicians ... Mike Campbell and Neil Finn are in a whole different musical league than they are.
Mike Campbell is widely considered to be one of the best rock guitarists of all-time. Mike is also a great songwriter having co-written classics such as "Boys of Summer" and many others.
And Neil Finn is widely considered to be one of the best songwriters on the planet having been inducted into the Australian Music Hall of Fame.
Moreover, Campbell and Finn have a long history of being great "team players" elevating their bands to very high levels. They are in a completely different musical stratosphere compared to Walker, Vito, Bramlett, Mason etc.