Caillat Gives Rumours Analysis, Track by Track

[CADreaming]

Originally Posted by APerfectLie

Except I strangely remember CAH saying it was Lindsey who was breaking the glass, not Mick, and this showed her how much of a GENIUS Linds was because the breaking glass just completely changed the whole song into a masterpiece! ;]

She actually said it was Lindsey's idea but that Mick jumped at the idea to do it.

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by CADreaming

She actually said it was Lindsey's idea but that Mick jumped at the idea to do it.

And you know they probably spent two months using every type of glass known to man - coke bottles, Murano glass, wine goblets, test tubes, etc. - just to get that perfect glass-shattering sound. But then after someone spilled a bottle of Southern Comfort on the rmaster reel, they had to go back and re-record the glass again (because someone accidentally melted the safety reel while freebasing in the console).

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by APerfectLie

Yeah, I am pretty sure Stevie was the main and possibly sole lyricist for The Chain.

Lindsey said that those were definitely Stevie's words. Although, she said he wrote a line. Dee was right about the line being "Listen to the wind blow." That's all she said he wrote. Stevie went on:

That’s it. I had wrote, “if you never love me now, you will never love me again” a year before for something else, but it had the same melody. Lindsey said “can we use it” and I said “well you realize in taking “if you don’t love me now” you are ruining my song cause you are taking the chorus out of it.” Well he didn’t care that much and that was my chain idea because I was the one that decided that this was a definite chain going on here. There was a reason that the links in this chain were holding together and it became a real theme song for Fleetwood Mac.”

Christine said:

The Chain started as the tail end of a jam and we did it all the wrong way round. We kept the end bit and added a new beginning. We used Stevie's lyrics, I created the chorus and Lindsey did the verses. I really don't know how it all came together.

[David]

Originally Posted by michelej1

"Stevie hated when Lindsey got even a little literal. The minute Lindsey would start singing his lyrics, Stevie stormed out and the session would end."

Why would the session need to end just because one of the singers went home early?

"Originally, John McVie had an amazing, flowing and melodic bass part. Lindsey had a problem with that. It took him a while, but eventually, while John was on vacation, he put down his own bassline, one that was very simple, just quarter notes."

So the simpler, later bass line was something Lindsey recorded, not John? Uh-oh. Cruisin' for a bruisin'.

"We made an eight-bar loop of Mick's playing, which created this fantastic, deep hypnotic effect.

I wonder just how many wonderful Mick Fleetwood drum tracks are loops. "Dreams." "Tusk." "Angel"? "Annabel Lee"?

Don't Stop
“I never really liked this song. It was the first shuffle I ever worked on. I didn’t like the drum sound, either – maybe it’s because it started out kind of slow.

You ought to know better than that, Ken. Any time that amazing shuffle player Christine McVie is doing her unique stuff, you're going to have something memorable, something with texture that has no correlative.

“The Berkley Community Theatre wasn’t available, so we used the Zellerbach Auditorium, the same kind of vibe. Christine sat on the stage and played a nine-foot Steinway, and she sounded magnificent. I used 15 tracks for the piano – two close mics and the rest were distant mics. For something like Songbird, I wanted the room to really speak.”

To me, the one flaw on Rumours is the murky sound on "Songbird." Done deliberately, too, which is puzzling, considering that Dashut & Caillat had such fantastic ears.

The Chain
“The very first song we worked on. It began as one of Christine’s things, something called Keep Me There.

Christine wrote the chord progression on the chorus, too.

You Make Loving Fun
“Originally, it was done on Christine’s Yamaha electric piano.

Not Yamaha, Ken. Hohner.

“To accentuate the ‘Clav-iness,’ we put it through a wah-wah pedal.

Well, everybody did that at the time.

Gold Dust Woman
“The song grew more evil as we built it. I called over to SIR and they send over a bunch of weird instruments, like an electric harpsichord with a jet phaser – that created a cool, whooshing sound.

Never mind the stupid glass that everyone talks about. It's that electric harpsichord or Clavinet with the phaser that makes "Gold Dust Woman" have that ultra-cool Navajo sound: American Indian hippie music mixed with Appalachian hillbilly. It's masterly atmosphere they all created on that track, & the band never recaptured that in all its live performances.

[PenguinHead]

Originally Posted by louielouie2000

I found it interesting that Ken very openly expressed his dislike of Don't Stop. I guess I just didn't expect him to say anything but glowing things about the music he helped craft. It's also one of the most well known, signature Mac tunes. You'd think he'd be heralding it's glories. Looks like he feels the same way as the majority of the Fleetwood Mac community, though... that the song just isn't so great.

Another illuminating tidbit was Ken's description of Lindsey's scorched earth way of doing things. I guess I didn't realize that aspect of Lindsey had begun emerging during Rumours. I cannot imagine the tension Lindsey must have created by either 1) booting John's bass parts altogether 2) basically demanding Mick play exactly what he wanted, and Mick doing it. It really piques my interest that Ken would again be this unabashed with his feelings- makes me wonder what kind of relationship he maintains with the band members these days, if any. I know none of the band members would agree to be interviewed for the book, and I'm starting to see why.

Are you implying that Ken has some sort of vendetta against the band? I don't think that is the case. Give him credit for not sugar-coating his stories. He's just revealing his un-candid perspective. To me it's refreshing that he feels no restraint from the band. The most illuminating observations don't come from the band members, but from those who are around them.

[cliffdweller]

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

Give him credit for not sugar-coating his stories. He's just revealing his un-candid perspective. To me it's refreshing that he feels no restraint from the band.

I totally agree. I thought this book would just be another Rumours Classic Albums rehash, but it looks like Ken is really dishing out the opinions in a no holds barred way. I like it. I look forward to reading the book!

I also love the story of "The Chain" in that it's not only a metaphor about the five surviving and never breaking THAT chain, but it's also very much on a literal level about how the song itself is a chain created out of the five's different musical parts. Nice one.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

I totally agree. I thought this book would just be another Rumours Classic Albums rehash, but it looks like Ken is really dishing out the opinions in a no holds barred way. I like it. I look forward to reading the book!

I also love the story of "The Chain" in that it's not only a metaphor about the five surviving and never breaking THAT chain, but it's also very much on a literal level about how the song itself is a chain created out of the five's different musical parts. Nice one.

Couldn't agree more. Just like Carol Anne told "her" story. Ken is telling "his".

Classic Albums is telling Fleetwood Mac's story. And we've hear that a billion times.

[aleuzzi]

What a fun take on the sessions. I imagine there is a certain authenticity in his accounts because he was working as an engineer and was not as bound up by inner-band tensions and jockeying for control. He could remember things with some detachment.

A couple of comments: I have always preferred the McVie bass line on the alternate take to SHN. It really gives the song a force I don't hear in the album take--save Mick's drums and Lindsey's guitar.

I agree with Ken that YMLF has the best sound on the record. It's really a great song because it has all the energy of a live performance with all these amazing studio touches.

With re: to IDWK being chosen over SS, I still don't buy the excuse for length. Even if SS was too long, it might have been cut down a bit more. Or the fade out to GDW could have been shortened to accommodate the overall running time. I still think IDWK was chosen over SS because IDWK is a duet vocal that allows Lindsey some presence on side two. Without that duet, the majority of the second side would have been Stevie and Christine--and this would have offset the vocal balance of the voices.

[kenzo]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

...
I have always preferred the McVie bass line on the alternate take to SHN.
...

I agree totally.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by madeline

I thought I had heard Stevie claim many times that they took the chorus for The Chain out of one of her songs that she had written. Now Ken is saying it was a Christine song. And that Lindsey rewrote the chorus. What is the actual truth on that? Does anyone else remember Stevie saying that?

Yes, I have an interview with her from the Bella Donna era on tape where she says the "if you don't love me now, you will never love me again" part was hers, and "Lindsey said 'can we use it' and I said, "well, you're ripping the chorus out of my song and, well, he didn't care that much" She then goes on to say Lindsey wrote the "listen to the wind blow" part.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by Artemis

This is the second time I've heard about broken glass in Gold Dust Woman (the first being Carol Anne's book) and I just... can't hear it at all =/

me either, Artemis.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Lindsey said that those were definitely Stevie's words. Although, she said he wrote a line. Dee was right about the line being "Listen to the wind blow." That's all she said he wrote. Stevie went on:




Christine said:

That's the one, Michele!

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

me either, Artemis.

Concerning the 'shattering glass' in GDW. If you are listening for the sound of breaking glass, you won't hear that. It's just a quick second of sound that almost sounds like someone stepping on and crunching glass underfoot.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by vivfox

Concerning the 'shattering glass' in GDW. If you are listening for the sound of breaking glass, you won't hear that. It's just a quick second of sound that almost sounds like someone stepping on and crunching glass underfoot.

I shall have to go back and listen yet again.

Seems like a LOT of time and money spent for no real appreciable gain. No wonder everyone says record companies wouldn't stand for that kind of excess these days.

[redtulip]

Concerning the 'shattering glass' in GDW. If you are listening for the sound of breaking glass, you won't hear that. It's just a quick second of sound that almost sounds like someone stepping on and crunching glass underfoot.

I am clearly able to hear the glass breaking starting just after 4:00 in the version of GDW on the 2009 Greatest Hits (Very Best of Fleetwood Mac). However, I can't hear it in the version on Rumours (Deluxe Edition), so they must have remixed or something for the Greatest Hits release. The Greatest Hits version is also 4 seconds longer.

*edit* I take that back, I can hear it on Rumours, but I had to turn the volume up and listen very carefully. It was much more pronounced on the Very Best of Fleetwood Mac.