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Old 09-28-2020, 06:50 PM
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aleuzzi aleuzzi is offline
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I remember that RS article the first time around--and I remember thinking the title of it (Fleetwood Mac: Happy at the Top) was sarcastic. They do NOT seem terribly at ease or happy here. All of their notorious artistic tensions are on full display, even in the absence of Stevie.

Take this excerpt:

Calculated or not, Mirage worked: in a few weeks, it hit Number One, a position Tusk never reached. Christine said she expected the showing and was surprised only by how fast the record hit the top slot. John McVie agreed, adding that he always expects to sell millions of copies. And if not? “I think we’d disband,” said Christine.

To most of this band, chart position and sales figures mean a lot. “The only yardsticks you have are Billboard, Cashbox and Radio & Records,” said John McVie firmly.

“You also have what’s in here as a yardstick,” said Buckingham, slapping his chest. “You can’t let that other stuff be your motivation for making albums.” He was adamant; just because Mirage hit Number One doesn’t make it any more of a success in his book: “No, no, no. Not to me. You’ve got reviews, you’ve got other things.”

Here we see the three Brits (Mick echoes the McVies later on) unapologetically embracing capitalism. They measure their artistic success in terms of album sales. Meanwhile, Buckingham defends what he deems is artistic integrity. Stevie may have beeen only one of the four greedmongers but her role in the band was necessary to achieve and maintain that #1 spot. This kind of thinking paved the way for Stevie's coup in 2018. None of us should have been surprised.

Buckingham even makes a passive aggressive joke to Fleetwood in the beginning of the article where, in response to the rumor of a new lead singer he turns to the drummer and says: "Is this your way of saying I'm fired?"

The sad thing is both sides are right and both sides are wrong. What we might easily dismiss as the crass commercialism of Fleetwood, Nicks, and the McVies was an essential drive in crafting the often irresistible music on MIRAGE and TANGO. No one questions Buckingham's genius and his ability to take demos and turn them into musical triumphs. His own penchant for strangeness and provocation balanced the pop song craft. Great. But some of his songs seem, in their own way, as self-indulgent and narcissistic as Stevie's.

The article shows five musicians who enjoy and are trapped by their celebrity. They don't necessarily enjoy each other's company but they stay together because they are at their most commercially AND artistically appealing when they work together. This is a dream. It is also a nightmare.
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