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  #16  
Old 01-31-2017, 04:21 PM
FuzzyPlum FuzzyPlum is offline
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Originally Posted by Wdm6789 View Post
You've heard Why, and Gypsy and Sara, right?
I think you could apply different definitions for best.
In some ways I think The Chain is the best...I'd certainly describe it as the 'greatest' FM song.
Go Your Own Way is also up there.
But I'm with you on those three songs- they are just perfection. I was listening to Sara in the car very recently and it struck me as being the most beautiful piece of music...ever. Some people dismiss it as simple and monotonous but it really is just heavenly.
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  #17  
Old 02-01-2017, 08:43 AM
Dr.Brown Dr.Brown is offline
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I was listening to Sara in the car very recently and it struck me as being the most beautiful piece of music...ever. Some people dismiss it as simple and monotonous but it really is just heavenly.
I agree, it's what really drew me into Fleetwood Mac (along with the Gypsy video). It still captivates me each time I listen to it. My preference is for the original album track, not the edited, live, or demo versions (the "cleaning lady" phrase is cute, but those "ooh-aahs" are so tacky and ruin the song for me).
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  #18  
Old 02-01-2017, 08:50 AM
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The Chain
Go Your Own Way
Second Hand News
Oh Daddy
Gold Dust Woman
You Make Loving Fun
Never Going Back Again
Dreams
Songbird
Don't Stop
I Don't Want to Know

That can change day by day. Not a bad song in the bunch.
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  #19  
Old 02-02-2017, 09:51 AM
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FLEETWOOD MAC-RUMOURS 40TH ANNIVERSARY-LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, STEVIE NICKS, MICK FLEETWOOD

When California musical duo (and lovers) Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined British blues-rock veteran band Fleetwood Mac, their first collaboration in 1975 (their “white album” ) sold more copies than any previous album in the long history of their label. No one was in any way prepared for this new line-up’s stunning initial success, so you can imagine the in-house anticipation for Fleetwood Mac’s next effort. They had to wait a full year for it, however, as four of the five members were breaking up literally in the studio while Rumours was being recorded. Fleetwood Mac co-founder drummer Mick Fleetwood joins Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks with me In The Studio for one of history’s most popular albums ever at an estimated forty million sold worldwide, an album that Rolling Stone magazine ranks at #25 on their Top 500 All Time list .- Redbeard

YOU CAN STREAM IT HERE: http://www.inthestudio.net/redbeards...-rumours-40th/
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  #20  
Old 02-02-2017, 11:33 AM
jbrownsjr jbrownsjr is offline
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FLEETWOOD MAC-RUMOURS 40TH ANNIVERSARY-LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, STEVIE NICKS, MICK FLEETWOOD

When California musical duo (and lovers) Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined British blues-rock veteran band Fleetwood Mac, their first collaboration in 1975 (their “white album” ) sold more copies than any previous album in the long history of their label. No one was in any way prepared for this new line-up’s stunning initial success, so you can imagine the in-house anticipation for Fleetwood Mac’s next effort. They had to wait a full year for it, however, as four of the five members were breaking up literally in the studio while Rumours was being recorded. Fleetwood Mac co-founder drummer Mick Fleetwood joins Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks with me In The Studio for one of history’s most popular albums ever at an estimated forty million sold worldwide, an album that Rolling Stone magazine ranks at #25 on their Top 500 All Time list .- Redbeard

YOU CAN STREAM IT HERE: http://www.inthestudio.net/redbeards...-rumours-40th/
Listening now!
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Old 02-02-2017, 12:08 PM
jbrownsjr jbrownsjr is offline
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Originally Posted by SisterNightroad View Post
FLEETWOOD MAC-RUMOURS 40TH ANNIVERSARY-LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, STEVIE NICKS, MICK FLEETWOOD

When California musical duo (and lovers) Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined British blues-rock veteran band Fleetwood Mac, their first collaboration in 1975 (their “white album” ) sold more copies than any previous album in the long history of their label. No one was in any way prepared for this new line-up’s stunning initial success, so you can imagine the in-house anticipation for Fleetwood Mac’s next effort. They had to wait a full year for it, however, as four of the five members were breaking up literally in the studio while Rumours was being recorded. Fleetwood Mac co-founder drummer Mick Fleetwood joins Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks with me In The Studio for one of history’s most popular albums ever at an estimated forty million sold worldwide, an album that Rolling Stone magazine ranks at #25 on their Top 500 All Time list .- Redbeard

YOU CAN STREAM IT HERE: http://www.inthestudio.net/redbeards...-rumours-40th/
That was fantastic!
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  #22  
Old 02-02-2017, 03:17 PM
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It was good. The Lindsey stuff was fresh but the Mick and Stevie parts were rehashed from other interviews. Part of me is very tired of hearing the Rumours stories over and over for the past 40 years. Lindsey did tell new stuff that I have not heard before. Lindsey also is the only one to mention the 40th anniversary of Rumours which is more evidence the Stevie and Mick parts were recycled.
I have to correct the record with Redbeard though. Fleetwood Mac (1975) had 3 hits, not 2 hits. Over My Head hit #20 was the biggest "hit" of the Mac at that point. I hear Over My Head on the radio as much as Say You Love Me. It drives me crazy when people discard hit songs that don't make it to the top 10 or 11. One of the Doors biggest hits is Riders on the Storm. It hit #20 on billboard. No one discounts its a hit from the Doors
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Old 02-02-2017, 03:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Macfan4life View Post
It was good. The Lindsey stuff was fresh but the Mick and Stevie parts were rehashed from other interviews. Part of me is very tired of hearing the Rumours stories over and over for the past 40 years. Lindsey did tell new stuff that I have not heard before. Lindsey also is the only one to mention the 40th anniversary of Rumours which is more evidence the Stevie and Mick parts were recycled.
I have to correct the record with Redbeard though. Fleetwood Mac (1975) had 3 hits, not 2 hits. Over My Head hit #20 was the biggest "hit" of the Mac at that point. I hear Over My Head on the radio as much as Say You Love Me. It drives me crazy when people discard hit songs that don't make it to the top 10 or 11. One of the Doors biggest hits is Riders on the Storm. It hit #20 on billboard. No one discounts its a hit from the Doors
Lindsey's interview was old too, it was just more recent.

P.S. Found it, most if not all of Lindsey's parts were from his 2014 Readbeard interview here: http://www.inthestudio.net/online-on...ckingham-pt-1/

Last edited by SisterNightroad; 02-02-2017 at 03:59 PM..
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  #24  
Old 02-03-2017, 07:11 AM
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We rank every tune on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ from worst to best

Great albums come with great stories. Sometimes they’re born of horrendous heartbreak, like Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago or Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sometimes they’re born of rage, like Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill or Kanye West’s Yeezus. Sometimes they’re born out of drug-addled daydreams, like The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow.
Sometimes, they’re born from an explosive combination of all of those things. Rumours is such an album.
In 1976, Fleetwood Mac were falling apart. John McVie and keyboardist-vocalist-songwriter Christine McVie divorced after eight years of marriage. Guitarist Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks finally called an end to their volatile, on-off again relationship. Mick Fleetwood’s wife had an affair with his best friend. To add further fuel to the emotional fire, the band’s cocaine habit was spiralling out of control.
Despite all this, the band pressed forward with recording the follow-up to 1975’s Fleetwood Mac. In the Spring of 1976, they retreated to a studio in California and proceeded to pull together Rumours.
What emerged was a a once-in-a-lifetime record. Rumours is a brutal examination of the politics of relationships, personalities, and ambition. Despite barely speaking to each other – or in Buckingham and Nicks’ case, screaming at each other – they still managed to produce work that capitalised on their best qualities. Each member hit their stride as songwriters, from Buckingham’s immortal ‘**** you’ to Nicks with ‘Go Your Own Way’, to Christine McVie’s delicate ‘Songbird’, to Nicks’ twisting and beguiling ‘Dreams’.
To listen to Rumours is to hear the profound tensions and innermost thoughts of the band played out through music. Even 40 years later, the songs sound as immediate and raw as they felt when they released. To listen to Rumours is to listen to a bottled moment in time.
Here’s every track from the album, ranked from worst to best.

11. ‘Don’t Stop’
‘Don’t Stop’ doesn’t just take the cake for the worst song on Rumours, it’s in the running for the worst Fleetwood Mac song of all time. The glib, saccharine piece of positivity has been the bane of primary school child ever since it was released.

10. ‘You Make Loving Fun’
It’s the squelchy bass line and cascading harmonies that makes ‘You Make Loving Fun’. During recording, McVie told husband John that the lyrics referred to her dog, only later revealing to him they were written about an affair she had had during their relationship breakdown.

9. ‘Second Hand News’
“I know there’s nothing to say / Someone has taken my place.” The opening lines of ‘Second Hand News’ – and by extension, Rumours, as it’s the opening song – well and truly set the tone of the album. Also those strange, percussive sounds? That’s Buckingham hammering on a plastic chair.

8. ‘Oh Daddy’
The instrumentation and production on ‘Oh Daddy’ is arguably the best on Rumours. From the intertwining of guitar harmonics with the sliding bass line, to the guttural stabs of piano, to the sudden crescendos of drums – ‘Oh Daddy’ is musically enthralling.

7. ‘Songbird’
Christine McVie had been persistently overshadowed by the more beguiling Nicks, but not on Rumours. McVie’s gentle songwriting is a salve to the fire of Buckingham and Nicks, and nowhere is this more apparent than through the softness of ‘Songbird’.

6. ‘I Don’t Want To Know’
‘I Don’t Want To Know’ wasn’t written during the Rumours sessions, but was a track from when Buckingham and Nicks were performing as a duo prior to joining Fleetwood. It’s inclusion on the album was rather last minute, as a replacement for Nicks’ song ‘Silver Springs’, which the rest of the band felt wouldn’t fit on the album. Nevertheless, ‘I Don’t Want To Know’, with its conciliatory approach to the end of a relationship, fitted well.

5. ‘Gold Dust Woman’
Famously recorded at 4AM, with Nicks having wrapped her head in a scarf to dull her senses and heighten her memories and emotions, ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is the peak of Rumours’ mysticism – and was heavily inspired by a dust of a different colour.

4. ‘Never Going Back Again’
‘Never Going Back Again’, with its Ry Cooder-inspired finger picking and bubbly beat, is by far the prettiest thing on Rumours. Written after Buckingham had a rebound affair after breaking with Nicks, it captures him at a rare moment of introspection.

3. ‘The Chain’
‘The Chain’ is the dark and tempestuous core of Rumours – and the only song on the album to be credited to all five band members. Buckingham and Nicks trade stinging lyrical barbs over a sea of bass and drums – it’s hard not to recoil when Lindsey spits: “If you don’t love me now/ Then you’ll never love me again.”

2. ‘Dreams’
Nicks wrote ‘Dreams’ in 10 minutes, sitting on a bed with just a keyboard drum pattern and a small cassette recorder. The band were initially reluctant to include it on the album – Christine McVie famously called it “boring” – but lucky they did, for ‘Dreams’ is Stevie Nicks’ magnum opus.

1. ‘Go Your Own Way’
If, at the end of the day, Rumours comes down to the complex interplay of Buckingham and Nicks, then nothing can top the free-falling emotional barrage of ‘Go Your Own Way’. It’s thunderous, with drum fills that Buckingham pinched from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’, and clanging acoustic strums that lift up Buckingham’s sprawling guitar solos.
It’s Buckingham’s final, angry goodbye to Nicks. During recording, when Nicks requested that he remove the lyric “packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do”, he refused.



http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/rank-...st-best/870599
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  #25  
Old 02-03-2017, 07:40 AM
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Ready to feel old? Rumours by Fleetwood Mac is turning 40, and we dug up 5 facts to celebrate

Hearing the age of a classic album can serve as a pretty mean punch in the face. Who wants to know that the gem of their youth, a record they grew up obsessed with, has turned 10, or 20, or 30? Nobody likes feeling old.
Well time to apply for your first pensioner’s card, because this one will hit you like a freight train stocked with a ton of bricks.
Rumours, the drama-studded dream pop masterpiece of Fleetwood Mac is turning 40 years old. On the 4th of February 1977 this iconic record hit the shelves, starting a four decade journey through every genre, sub-genre and experimental metagenre which has popped up since.
Somehow, it reigns supreme. No joke, it was the 5th best selling vinyl in Britain last year. It’s high time to celebrate this glorious mid life crisis, as we run through some things you didn’t know about.

Was it the drama, musicality, character or celebrity culture which made Rumours so iconic? Likely, all of the above.

“Shacking up is all you wanna do”
Stevie Nicks wasn’t a huge fan of the lyrics to the album’s most successful track Go Your Own Way. Obviously a song about yourself being the singer’s past paramour is never going to land well, but that doesn’t mean Nicks wasn’t vocal about it.
She called the lyrics “angry, nasty and extremely disrespectful.”

Success immeasurable
Rumours was obviously a successful record, one of the most successful ever, but the numbers it clocked up are simply staggering. It’s gone platinum 11 times in the UK and 20 in the states, hitting a cool average of just over one million sales per year since 1977, which is around 2500 copies every day.
What’s curious was an initial divide in the record’s success between it’s two main audiences. In the US Rumours held the number one spot on the charts for 31 weeks, while in the UK it managed… one.

A dynamite demo
It’s night impossible to think of Go Your Own Way with even the slightest difference – the song is on a level of familiarity up there with Here Comes The Sun or Smells Like Teen Spirit. It’s ingrained.
The first take of the track was surprisingly close to the last, with some choral layering, atmospheric instrumentals and some lyrics being the only difference. Buckingham’s aforementioned “Shacking up is all you wanna do” was nowhere to be heard in this early take.

It’s complicated
While Rumours is nigh on your perfect album, it’s canonical status can be attributed in part to the extensive, soap-opera drama which surrounded it’s recording process.
A diagram of relationships between each of the band members, their lovers and even their spouses would look more like a spider web than any regular polygon.
However, the magic of Rumours was the anaesthetic effect it had on Fleetwood Mac’s tumultuous inner workings. While Nicks was known to glare at Buckingham between takes and sling insults like “**** you, asshole. You can go to hell”, there was an electricity in those recording rooms brought on by the record’s potential energy.
Later Mick Fleetwood explained it perfectly; comparing the situation to a divorced couple remaining united over the love of their kids.
“You break up but you want to do the right thing, not to hurt the *children. The album was our baby. That’s what made an impossible thing possible.”

The balls
A standout feature of the album cover is the set of family jewels proudly draped between Fleetwood’s legs. Unless you had been privy to their live shows, you wouldn’t know that these had actually been a recurring element of his stage get-up for a number of years.
They’re actually a set of toilet chains Fleetwood nicked from a club where the band played one of their earliest gigs. He’s since lost them but don’t fear – he has a new pair of ‘lucky balls.’



http://hhhhappy.com/ready-to-feel-ol...-to-celebrate/
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  #26  
Old 02-03-2017, 07:57 AM
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These posts are starting to annoy me now
I hate these Rumours "experts" ranking the songs. To trash Don't Stop with cheezy lyrics is a bridge too far. Yes its been played to death but if it was not released as a single it would be the lost gem of Fleetwood Mac. The piano shuffle is cool and its a great melody. The flow of the song and production are top notch. ...period...end of story.
Worst song ever by Fleetwood Mac? Not by a long shot. Oh my gosh a positive song? Off with her head!
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  #27  
Old 02-03-2017, 12:06 PM
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Why Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' Hits Home Right Now
Band confronted their own romantic chaos on 1977 masterpiece, asking tough questions that still resonate


Happy birthday to Fleetwood Mac's masterpiece Rumours, released 40 years ago this week, on February 4th, 1977. Human beings had been mating and separating for several dozen thousand years before Fleetwood Mac existed, but this band walked out of Rumours basically owning the whole concept of breaking up. The emotional trauma behind Rumours is the stuff of legend. As Lindsey Buckingham confided to Rolling Stone at the time, "Being in this band really ****s up relationships with chicks." Buckingham split with Stevie Nicks. Christine McVie divorced the bassist and moved in with the lighting director, shifting John's wedding ring to a different finger. Mick Fleetwood left his wife Jenny Boyd and fell for Nicks. As John McVie put it, "About the only people in the band who haven't had an affair are me and Lindsey."

"Of all the elite bands of the Seventies, we're the only one touring with the same lineup we had in 1975."
It's an album that has eerie soothing powers when you hear it in the midst of a crisis, which might be why it hits home right now, with our minute-by-minute deluge of apocalyptic news, the rottenest month to be an American since FDR died. People have always gravitated to Rumours in hard times – it's the sound of five rock stars trying to plant their feet in the middle of a landslide, looking for strength amid all the emotional carnage. "Everybody was pretty weirded out," Christine McVie told Rolling Stone. "Somehow Mick was there, the figurehead: 'We must carry on. Let's be mature about this, sort it out.' Somehow we waded through it." You know things are desperate when the voice of maturity is Mick Fleetwood. But Rumours remains so powerful because it's so ruthlessly clear-eyed about the crisis, instead of smoothing it over. After all the tantrums and breakdowns and crying fits, the album ends with Stevie Nicks asking you point blank: "Is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?" If the answers are "no" and "no," you flip the record and play it again.
The battle of Lindsey vs. Stevie is the heart of the album – it's still strange to see the Mac take the stage and open each show with these two lovebirds chanting "The Chain" together. As Stevie told me in 2014, "We write about each other, we have continually written about each other, and we'll probably keep writing about each other until we're dead. That's what we have always been to each other. Together, we have been through great success, great misunderstandings, a great musical connection."
Maybe, as Stevie warns in "Gold Dust Woman," rulers make bad lovers – but these two are just so damn great at being bad lovers. You can hear the tension explode in Lindsey's "Go Your Own Way," where all three singers join their voices for a rant about packing up and shacking up. For some reason, this song generated harsh vibes. "Now, I want you to know – that line about 'shacking up'?" Nicks said in 1980. "I never shacked up with anybody when I was with him! People will hear the song and think that! I was the one who broke up with him." So what went wrong? "All he wanted to do was fall asleep with that guitar."
The Seventies had so many divorce classics – Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Carole King's Tapestry, David Bowie's Low, Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear – except Rumours is where you hear the broken couples do their mourning and moaning together. It's like if every woman on Blood on the Tracks got to narrate her own verse, from the topless dancer to the Dante freak to the mathematician. There's pain all over the music, but there's also enough playful energy and lust to remind you why these bad lovers find it tough to let go. As Sly Stone sang in "Family Affair," perhaps the finest 1970s divorce song that doesn't involve a single member of Fleetwood Mac, it's a story where you don't want to leave because your heart is there, but you can't stay because you've been somewhere else.

Strangely, when Rumours dropped, the question was whether it could follow up the success of their 1975 blockbuster Fleetwood Mac, which looked like a fluke. The long-running English blues band, originally led by doomed guitar guru Peter Green, rolled through a strange haze of lineup changes, with guys like Danny Kirwan or Bob Welch taking over and moving on. Lindsey and Stevie joined as new kids in town, a pair of hungry San Francisco singer-songwriters scrounging around L.A. The new Mac became a surprise smash – but they paid for it, in a blizzard of narcotic and sexual chaos. "I don't care that everybody knows me and Chris and John and Lindsey and Mick all broke up," Stevie said. "Because we did." But she had no way then of knowing – none of them did – that Rumours would become a myth of monstrous proportions.
Part of it is the musical chemistry, anchored by Buckingham's virtuosic guitars and a rhythm section with a decade of blues gigs behind them. It's Fleetwood and Mac who define the groove – listen to any other band cover "Dreams" and you can hear right away it's not the same song. "The Chain" climaxes with a bass breakdown – remarkably akin to Peter Hook's epochal punk bassline in Joy Division's "Shadowplay." Buckingham showcases his finger-picking in "Never Going Back Again," which sounds like a breezy acoustic interlude until you hear his wounded, defeated vocals. And "Second Hand News" is such an evergreen pop riff, it became a career-making hit two decades later for Hanson, who changed the words to "MMMBop." For some daft reason, the Mac left "Silver Springs" off the album – barely anybody knew it existed until Stevie revived it on their 1997 reunion The Dance, giving Rumours a whole new self-sabotage legend.
There's an optimistic post-hippie fantasy at the core of Rumours, the hope that these civilized adults can be gracious in heartbreak and even empathetic, building a new community in the ashes of the old one. Christine McVie hides behind the "free to be you and me" sunshine of "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun," even though she's forcing John to play bass on an ode to how awesome it is to bang the new guy. ("I don't have to tell you, but you're the only one" – sure, Chris, that goes without saying.) It didn't work out with a happy ending for Fleetwood Mac – they kept torturing each other through the sublime madness of Tusk and the gloss of Mirage. Stevie made her big solo move with Bella Donna, and generously gave an autographed copy to Lindsey, who set it down on the studio floor and left it there unplayed for two weeks, until Stevie got mad and stole it back. That's why Rumours resonates – instead of a cozy ending where everyone ends up friends, it points to a future of struggle. How do you go on living in a community full of broken faith, face to face with the people who've betrayed you? Forty years after 1977, that question is a lot more than just these five rock stars' problem.



Watch five things you didn't know about Fleetwood Macs 'Rumors': http://www.rollingstone.com/music/fe...ht-now-w464358
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Old 02-03-2017, 12:17 PM
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7. ‘Songbird’
Christine McVie had been persistently overshadowed by the more beguiling Nicks, but not on Rumours. McVie’s gentle songwriting is a salve to the fire of Buckingham and Nicks, and nowhere is this more apparent than through the softness of ‘Songbird’.
How does it make sense to single out Rumours as the one instance when Chris isn't overshadowed by Stevie, and then rank all of Stevie's songs higher than Chris's?
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Old 02-03-2017, 12:23 PM
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How Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ Became One of the Best Albums Ever

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, this intense, intimate, engaging miracle that we often take for granted, turns 40 this week.

It’s important that we separate this stellar achievement from the ludicrous time in which it was made.

Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s—or rather, when the mid-ish 1970s became the late-ish 1970s, that un-shining time when the freakish, frantic optimism of the Bicentennial cracked into the blackouts and Bowery-trash fires of 1977—may be too quick to file away Rumours with the other gargantuan leviathans of the Jimmy Carter/Ohmygod-Cheap Trick-is-on Midnight Special-era, i.e., do we just throw it all in a bin with the first Boston album, Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell, Frampton Comes Alive, or Hotel California, and be done with it?
But Rumours isn’t having any of that. It is far better than that.

Rumours may have a place in our 1970s experience, but the 1970s experience doesn’t tell us anything about Rumours.

Rumours is virtually nothing like any contemporary record, either mainstream or alternative.

How strange is that?

Rumours was Fleetwood Mac’s 11th studio album, released nearly a decade after Fleetwood Mac’s debut. How many bands attain that rare spot in the sweet and rapturous air of multi-platinum, record-breaking commercial Arcadia—much less achieve artistic transcendence!—on their 11th album? My God, it was their 11th studio album. Their fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth albums hadn’t even charted in the U.K. Only two and a half years prior to its release, the group had been considered so commercially invisible that their manager attempted to send imposters on the road in their place.

Yet Rumours is not only the ninth-best-selling album of all time, it is an adamantine artistic accomplishment that deserves to be mentioned when we discuss The Greatest Albums Of All Time—and it merits being removed from all the silly cultural confetti usually thrown in its direction, and should be examined with great, loving detail.[i]

Rumours is an old, sweet and complicated friend who gets more interesting every time you talk to them. Even when they tell you a story you have heard 88 times, you find some new details, some new angle, some new twist or emphasis you never noticed before.

But first, a few words about the fascinating story of Fleetwood Mac, and the road that led them to Rumours.

Circa 1974 there was no reason to think Fleetwood Mac’s commercial future would be any brighter than that of Savoy Brown, Renaissance, or Fairport Convention (to name three other credible and well-liked acts of English origin who could play medium and small/medium-sized venues in the States and place themselves on the mid-lower rungs of the U.S. charts). More confusingly, by 1974, the Mac had shuffled through a startling array of lineup changes and musical styles.

Between their formation in 1967 and 1970, Fleetwood Mac were an ass-tearing, incendiary blues and boogie band who pioneered some proto-metal tricks (they also had a penchant for both the ridiculous and, occasionally, the elegiac). A listener who was hearing early Mac for the first time might, not entirely inaccurately, lump them in with Gary Clark Jr., Stevie Ray Vaughan, or Cream.[ii]

For the sake of understanding where Rumours came from, our story really begins in 1970, when Danny Kirwan—originally a second guitarist and third vocalist—emerged as a co-leader of the band. Kirwan introduced an element of near-pastoral folk-pop into the mix, transforming Mac’s boogie churn into a platform for gentle and intense excursions into a sad blue pop.

Shortly thereafter, Christine Perfect, a buttermilk alto vocalist of almost aching sensitivity (and a keyboardist of great skill) joined the band, further supporting the transition of the “blues” Mac into a band with folk-pop and art-folk overtones (I covered some of this in a piece I wrote for the Observer in November of 2015 on Danny Kirwan; please pour yourself a Clamato and vodka and read it).[iii]

The initial foreshadowing of Mac’s mid-‘70s mega success can be found on the two Kirwan/Christine McVie-dominated Mac albums, Future Games (1971) and 1972’s Bare Trees.[iv] The difficult and fascinating Kirwan left Mac in late 1972.

American guitarist and vocalist Bob Welch joined the Mac in time for Future Games, and it’s easy—too easy—to identify this as an integral factor in the road to Rumours; I think this is a false flag. Some might say that gummy, tobacco-stained pop songs like “Sentimental Lady” (from 1972’s Bare Trees) preview Mac’s mega-gold future, but I think Welch’s sly, winking, pallid attempts at California snarl and FM bong-blues are an outlier in the Mac story. It is, in fact, Christine McVie’s simplicity and melodicism and the elegant sorrow of Danny Kirwan that anticipates Mac’s future as a gentle yet persuasive bittersweet macramé-and-satin pop machine.[v]

The first Fleetwood Mac album unquestionably recognizable as a “modern” Mac album is 1974’s Heroes Are Hard to Find. This is largely thanks to Christine McVie, whose material combines British post-folk wistfulness with an easily graspable rhythmic and chordal structure that recalls All Things Must Pass-era George Harrison.

McVie’s alluring and affecting contributions to Heroes show that the Rumours-era Mac was already fairly well articulated before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks even joined the band, and I don’t think she gets enough credit for this. The idea that Mac would be a band that mixed the simple, the soaring, the aching and the accomplished is very largely the gift of Christine McVie, and we see hints of this as early as 1970s Christine Perfect album.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac at the very end of 1974, and their first album with the band, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, reached No. 1 (to date, the best performing Mac album in America had been Heroes, which reached No. 34).

I think it’s fair to say that Fleetwood Mac is clearly a beta version of Rumours. Rather dramatically, within the first second of Fleetwood Mac, we meet the clipped, hiccuping hyper pop of Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham sounds like he’s Andy Partridge writing songs for the Cowsills, or maybe like some holy cross between David Byrne and Harry Nilsson; his opening salvo on Fleetwood Mac sounds almost alien, connected to a new wave future or to the sunny bubblegum of the Rubinoos or Paul Collins (though with that constant, peculiar overlay of an almost Orbison-esque Americana). Even over 41 years later, it still startles.

Although I find Buckingham’s songwriting contributions to Fleetwood Mac thin, his style, his presence, his aggressive and precisely syncopated guitar playing, and his simple but scientific leads are always nearby and pointing clearly to the (near) future.[vi]

And then there’s “Rhiannon.”

On track four of Fleetwood Mac, honey and opium have been poured over the future of the band in the form of this utterly compelling black light and Eve cigarette cat’s heartbeat of a song. In fact, the song itself had been dosed in opium and over-sweetened chamomile tea, since in its original form (performed live, but never recorded, by Buckingham and Nicks), “Rhiannon” was nearly twice the speed, had an almost Southern rock-ish twist, and Nicks’ seductive purr is replaced by an almost Joplin-esque howl.

This transition is very important to note, since it provides a clue about the core genius of the Fleetwood Mac/Rumours-era band: there is something about Fleetwood Mac (whether it’s the grace and glow of McVie, or the Bullet Train-clean pulse of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie) that ropes and wrangles “Rhiannon,” and makes it dreamlike and nearly perfect.

Finally, we arrive at Rumours, released a year and a half after Fleetwood Mac.

One of the defining aspects of Rumours is claustrophobia. Sonic claustrophobia, that is. This, I believe, provides the context for all of its achievements.

The sounds on Rumours are tight, closeted, and largely lacking in ambience. This is virtually unique for a California-based mega-pop band of the 1970s (though more common to the punk records being made at this time in the U.K.).

Ambience—meaning, literal ambience, as in reverb, presence, and the listener’s awareness of the size of the room a band is performing in—is a vastly underrated and important quality. Ambience telegraphs a great deal to the listener about how they are involved in the experience. By creating this masterpiece of virtual non-ambience, on Rumours Fleetwood Mac makes the epic (those amazing arrangements, those amazing songs, those amazing performances) intimate and personal. It’s a very tough trick.

Each and every listener, even if they are listening to the album in a social setting or in a crowd, hears it as if it was a story being told just to them. Because of this, Rumours feels almost like a condensed epic, arranged within an inch of its life but never losing the small-electric ensemble feel.

This intimate ambience also provides a fascinating environment for Buckingham’s intensely orchestrated guitar parts, which are tucked so neatly into the mix that they do not display their feathers, except upon intense examination; discovering the depth and detail of Buckingham’s guitar work on Rumours is like an Easter Egg, or like taking out a magnifying glass and finding the Lord’s Prayer written on the side of a popsicle stick.

If this tight, intimate ambience provides the context for Rumours, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide the framework. I cannot stress this enough: For all the praise we can heap on Lindsey Buckingham and the shiny apples he puts in front of the listener, for all the admiration I can express for the warm, expressive genius of Christine McVie, for all the appreciation I have for Stevie Nicks’ sexy, horny voice and the lacy, blowsy cult that sprung up around her, I think that Fleetwood and John McVie are the reason Rumours is Rumours.

Taut, powerful, and utterly devoid of one single bar where they insist on the spotlight, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie’s performance on Rumours is, well, nearly perfect. Because Fleetwood largely eschews crash cymbals, often keeps the four beat on a tom, and plays a tightly screwed hi-hat, his drumming is often nearly invisible; but that just means he’s doing something very, very right. I can think of no English drummer, with the possible exception of session king Bobby Graham, who played with such a mixture of economy and power.[vii]

Bassist McVie, although certainly conscious of the chord changes, plays Fleetwood more than he plays Fleetwood Mac; which is to say he echoes, almost seamlessly, the steady, fat, flat kick drum, crisp snare, and heartbeat toms of Fleetwood’s playing. He underplays the chord changes, and plays exactly with and on top of Fleetwood. The rhythm section’s approach leaves a phenomenal amount of room for the guitars and the vocals to expand, emote, hum, harmonize, twinkle, and chug. Honestly, I think Fleetwood and John McVie’s performance on Rumours is one of the great album-length rhythm section performances in rock history, yet it never draws attention to itself.

Listen to the whole last quarter of “Don’t Stop.” At precisely the time when 99 percent of the drummers, dead or alive, would be trying to throw some variety, rolls, or time-tricky energy-boosting into the piece, Mick Fleetwood remains unwaveringly loyal and constant to the nearly motorik-like metronomic high hat/snare beat he has played through the entire song. Aside from Tommy Ramone, Klaus Dinger, or the aforementioned Graham, I don’t know of any other drummer who would have made this choice.

There is something about Lindsey Buckingham’s accomplishments on Rumours that defies easy description. Where does this gift come from, this ability to spin Harry Nilsson/Brian Wilson-level melody over “Farmer John” chords with Becker/Fagen precision (yet without ever dipping into Steely Dan’s jazzy pastel Capezios)? It’s virtually unique, almost as if Jeff Lynne was producing the Monkees, or Mutt Lange was producing the Association, or Phil Ramone was producing Captain Sensible (hey, that’s a good idea).

Who else, other than gorgeous oddities like Jason Faulkner, R. Stevie Moore or Sean O’Hagan, devote this much attention to getting the most sugary pop so very, very right, and then do it again and again?

As for Christine McVie, the captivating post-folk/pre-Kate Bush melodic melancholy of her presence (often, her blue, sugary woe reminds me of Nick Drake channeled by Hope Sandoval) provides the gorgeous lilting night-light to Buckingham’s proud, rumbling sun.

As for Stevie, well, she’s Stevie, ‘nuff said, and I am very fond of Stevie Nicks, but oddly, I would contend that she’s the most dispensable element to Rumours’ genius. She exists as a public face for this extremely well-tuned machine, but the gears function fine without her. Actually, I’m not sure Rumours contains a Stevie song half as good as “Rhiannon” or her extraordinary “Beautiful Child” on Tusk.

Rumours was a single, shining moment. With Tusk, the extraordinary ensemble playing that had kept Rumours centered and consistent flies off the rails, and that’s probably the reason that the best moments on Tusk belong to Nicks and Christine McVie, because unlike Buckingham, they are still thinking and acting like band members.[viii]

Buckingham’s work on Tusk is damn good (“I Know I’m Not Wrong” is pretty much as good as anything he wrote for Rumours), but it doesn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac. It sounds like Lindsey Buckingham. There is nothing on Rumours, not one bar, that doesn’t sound like Fleetwood effing Mac.[ix]

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is a gift that keeps on giving. What was a generational touchstone has become, with time, a masterpiece worthy of detailed analysis; it is as joyful when heard in 21st-century headphones as it was when it was played on an over-heated stereo at some hazy high school party. It has grown with us, and will no doubt continue to do so.

[i] Confession: I adore Rumours, but it isn’t even my favorite Fleetwood Mac album. I prefer both Tusk and Bare Trees, and if I am going to take off my weighty thinking cap and just throw my head back and shimmy and scream a little bit—not a pretty sight—I would rather listen to the live albums Mac recorded at the Boston Tea Party in 1970.

[ii] The founder and original leader of Fleetwood Mac, guitarist and vocalist Peter Green, somewhat perversely named the band not after himself, but after his rhythm section, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie.

[iii] Perfect, who issued one exquisite must-have solo album in 1970, would be known as Christine McVie when she joined Fleetwood Mac.

[iv] This isn’t entirely true—there’s some hints in the Kirwan-penned material on 1970’s Kiln House—but how bloody complicated do you want me to make this?

[v] Having said all that, here are four fairly important things to note about Bob Welch: First, he introduces the idea that Mac could survive as a one-guitar band, a concept that would have been unthinkable just two years earlier, when the band had three guitarists; second, he compels the group to move to California, and that’s huge; thirdly, his departure in late 1974 paves the way for history; and finally, considering all the extraordinary and damaged characters who have been in Fleetwood Mac (the band has had 16 full and active members) it is an interesting statistical improbability that only three of them—Bob Welch, Bob Brunning, and Bob Weston—have died.

[vi] 1975’s Fleetwood Mac is actually the second Mac studio album to be eponymously titled; the band’s spitting, gray, Chicago-via-Soho debut, released in 1967, is also titled Fleetwood Mac.

[vii] If for some bizarre reason Mick Fleetwood is reading this, I would love to ask him if the vastly important and under-heralded Bobby Graham influenced him.

[viii] In my opinion, the second-best song in Fleetwood Mac’s entire catalog is Christine McVie’s shimmering, ghostly “Never Makes Me Cry” from Tusk. The first, if you were wondering, is “Albatross,” the heavenly instrumental from 1968, which is one of the greatest recordings ever made.

[ix] Buckingham’s solo work in the 1980s is so swallowed up with the desire to be seen as the precocious child in the classroom (a quality evident throughout Tusk, though nowhere on Rumours) as to be almost universally unlistenable. His ’80s solo catalog is replete with quirks and studio giggles that must have seemed smart at the time, but probably sounded dated, distracting, and useless by the time Buckingham got into the parking lot. This stuff is a prime example of what I have always referred to a SMPTE Code Syndrome—when someone becomes so utterly fascinated by all the little noises that the mixing board can make that they completely lose track of what those noises are contributing to the songs. But there is none of that on Rumours, not one iota.



http://observer.com/2017/02/fleetwoo...ersary-review/
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Old 02-03-2017, 03:58 PM
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"Listen to the whole last quarter of “Don’t Stop.” At precisely the time when 99 percent of the drummers, dead or alive, would be trying to throw some variety, rolls, or time-tricky energy-boosting into the piece, Mick Fleetwood remains unwaveringly loyal and constant to the nearly motorik-like metronomic high hat/snare beat he has played through the entire song. Aside from Tommy Ramone, Klaus Dinger, or the aforementioned Graham, I don’t know of any other drummer who would have made this choice".

THANK YOU TIM SOMMER
FINALLY some love for Don't Stop

I remember Mick saying how prior to the SN/LB era the shuffle Christine played could have been on one of their earlier albums. Mick and Christine rock it and of course Lindsey adds good chops with vocals and some great guitar.
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