My introduction to the band Fleetwood Mac was also far from typical. I noticed Billy Burnette as a great songwriter and guitarist on Roy Orbison's "Mystery Girl" album. Rick Vito also had a cameo on that one but I did not associate him with anything yet.
At one point, I read about Billy being in Fleetwood Mac. Next thing that happened, a solo album by another Fleetwood Mac member came out: "Out Of the Cradle" by a guy with the strange name Lindsey Buckingham, whom I'd never heard of before. I listened to it in a store to check out the music. It was nothing like I would have expected of Billy but it was so good.
So the first Fleetwood Mac related CD I got was Lindsey Buckingham's solo album "Out Of the Cradle" because he played in the same band as Billy Burnette. Think about it: Isn't this somewhat sacrilegious? ;-)
After that, I found Billy's solo CD "Coming Home" in a mailorder catalogue and ordered it right away. It remains a favourite to this day.
Somehow, I found out another while later that Billy only played on one Fleetwood Mac album, "Behind the Mask" at the time, but that was nowhere to be found in the stores in my area in around 1993. Luckily for me, I found a cutout CD of it in another mailorder catalogue. I ordered this and when I first listened to it, that's when I first heard the ladies.
Of course, my main focus was on Billy's material at first. He sang a lot on this record together with Christine McVie. So that's how I got into her. Yet, despite enjoying her duets with Billy, I feel her BTM solo songs are not among her best, but she made up for that by the high quality of all songs she released thereafter. "Affairs Of the Heart" is so good it got me interested in Stevie Nicks' solo material. The one guy whose songs I could not really get into was Rick Vito. He's a great guitarist, mind you, but when I look at his solo material, I feel he is unnecessarily limiting himself to the jump-blues style when really, he is capable of playing in many more other styles, too, like he has shown with Fleetwood Mac.
When "Time" came out, I was happy because I did not see any prior announcement of it. It was just there in the store at that very moment. But where was Stevie? I noticed her absence when looking at the sleeve. Bekka was in her place and when she opened her mouth and she sang "Winds Of Change", I could not get into her singing at all. I did not recognize her voice which I had heard before even, from her duet with Joe Cocker which I had already had on his album "Have A Little Faith". I guess she is trying too hard to be Stevie on "Winds Of Change". Luckily, not on her other songs on the album.
It's a shame that the BTM band never got the chance to release another album of new material together. "Love Shines" and "Paper Doll" are only glimpses of what could have been. I believe it would have been great music. Instead, the new guys had to again promote an album of the previous band for the 3rd time in 4 albums.
If that's not milking it, I don't know what is. It's no surprise the ladies and Rick left.
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