Not Make Believe (TISL Demo)

[thewhitewingedd]

Does anyone else really love this tune?..I think its great

[FiercestCalmSea]

That is one of my fav TISL demos...not really sure who it is about exactly..though alot off ppl think Linds..i don't really know though..i hope she records it someday.

[Johnny Stew]

"Not Make Believe" and "Thrown Down" are my two favorites from the TISL demos, and the two that I'd most love to see on the new Fleetwood Mac album.

I think "Not Make Believe" tells a great story, and I love the melody. Definitely a catchy tune.
:)


Johnny Stew

[estranged4life]

is a cool demo (As is "Space Needle"), But my fave would be "Have No Heart"...Brian J.

[Jessica Leigh]

i think it would be really neat if not make believe was done by fleetwood mac on the new album... i'd really like that!!! :)

[SmthngOfADreamr]

I absolutely love every one of the TISL demos/outtakes, I'd like to see them all on the next FM album, but I'm sure that's impossible.

Anyway, I have a quick question about demos in general. I've recently began downloading demos and outtakes... but I don't understand how we get our hands on them in the first place. Does Stevie somehow release them out? Are they stolen (if so, why wouldn't that problem have been rectified by now)? Do all artists have such an extensive amount of demos and such available to their fans? Thanks to anyone who can help...

[Sorcerer386]

Not Make Believe is actually not one of my favorite demos. It might be better with some studio work, but in order for me to really like it, she'd have to take out the lines "It hurts my self-esteem, it hurts my everything. I simply cannot stand those lines. Just my opinion...

If I got to pick two TISL demos to be on the new album, I would pick Space Needle (souped up of course, I feel a lot of potential in this song) and Thrown Down (again souped up). I KIND of like Have No Heart, but not a favorite of mine.

[David]

Originally posted by thewhitewingedd
When did all the demos/outtakes start appearing. Were they around ever since the 70's when Stevie first poped up? Did more and more just come out with every Stevie release. Or was it something that just happened all at once?
In terms of the "Rumours" incarnation, the first batch appeared in 1979 on a two-vinyl 33 called "Almanac." These included "Watchdevil," "Cathouse Blues," "Sorcerer," "Designs of Love," "You Could Forget," "Storms," "Secret Love," "Nomad" & the cut-up King Biscuit. I had "Almanac" before I had "Tusk" & I wore it out.

Other songs started to surface on cassette tape around the time of "Bella Donna." There were acetates of "Think About It" & "After the Glitter Fades" & "Leather & Lace" that people got their hands on around that time. They transferred those to cassette & began to circulate them with the "Almanac" material. "Smile at You" circulated at this point, too (I still have my acetate of this one, which I consider a 1976 recording).

Small batches of demos would usually start circulating before albums were released. "Battle of the Dragon," for example, a duet with Tom Petty, got circulated before "Rock a Little" was released. I remember hearing it over the phone from a guy who once posted on this board under a pseudonym (his real name was Rob). "Battle of the Dragon" was intended for "Rock a Little," but word that it had got out got back to Stevie Nicks & that was that. The song was ditched & later wound up on a movie soundtrack.

In the late 1980s, some enterprising bootlegger transferred a lot of the demos that were already being traded around onto colored vinyl, & sold those all over the place -- record conventions like the Hollywood convention at the old Roosevelt Hotel & collector magazines like Goldmine. This stuff is the "Uncirculated Rumours" & "More Uncirculated Rumours" packages. The bootlegger didn't bother finding low generation copies for the transfer, so the vinyl copies sound especially bad -- a lot worse than cassette tapes of the same songs back then.

More & more demos & old studio takes & other crud through the years ... it picked up speed, I think, some years. Many of the fans (including me) have always had large numbers of live concert recordings; these tend to keep pace with the tours themselves & get circulated almost immediately (only in those days you didn't have the Internet to buy from or to help locate who had what). You had huge networks of fans that would keep in touch by mail, organized or led by "arch-fans" like Roland Benoit back east. People in various cities were designated to tape the tour stops in their cities -- the Wild Heart tour, for example -- & those tapes were immediately duped & distributed.

But I think that the amount of demos & other unreleased recordings grew amazingly after "The Dance," when people started burning their own CD-Rs & online auction sites enabled new fans to amass huge amounts all at once, which used to take fans years & years to collect.

Nobody knows for sure where most of the stuff comes from. Everyone's got a conspiracy theory: some people think it was Paul Fishkin or Chris Nicks or even Mick Fleetwood. Stevie said that a batch of demos was stolen from her in the 1970s; I think she was referring to the "Almanac" batch. She works with such a huge group of people on every album she makes that it would be impossible to try to pinpoint where the studio leak is. A clue is that she has frequently admitted that, because she doesn't play instruments, she spends a lot of studio time just sitting & writing, recording herself. God knows who in those studios snags those recordings ... but somebody does.

[chiliD]

From personal experience, I know that employees of the studios (where the master tapes are usually stored while there's a project in process) will, when bored during graveyard shift, slap on a master tape of any particular artist and make their own mixes of the songs. I know of one in particular who made three different mixes of the song that became "Talk To Me" about a year before Rock A Little was released. (of the cassettes I heard of them, the final "official" release sounded pale in comparison)

And, also at this same studio, there was a "safety tape" of the master tapes of the Beatles' "Sgt Pepper" album...the overnight tech crew made their own mix of the album...and my oh my how different it sounded!!

[blinker12]

David, thanks a lot for your informative post. I had always wondered about when and how the demos circulated.

[Bella Figura]

David, thanks for the info, I've always been curious myself how the "insider network" worked. even tho I have been a devoted fan since Rumours, I would only hear Stevie/FM demos at concerts and usually by eavesdroppin' on other people's tailgate parties and I always wondered how they got all that great demo stuff. This was how I heard about 'Mirror, Mirror", "Smile at You", "If You Were My Love" and probably many others... but for some reason I always felt shy about just going up to these people and saying "hey, where did you get this music?" so I suffered and remained an Outsider.

:laugh:, until I got online!!! Yeah!!! then I started to collect and collect, making up for lost years!!! I know Stevie and the gang are not thrilled about all the demos and bootlegs but I don't think they would begrudge the hard-core fan their private collections.
It's just one can't differentiate between a good fan and a greedy opportunist who likes to rip-off the "outsider" fan!!

I think Stevie has come to terms with the fact some of her stuff is out there since she has quoted her demo lyrics (ex: Enchanted and just recently her Sept 11th journal entries). I also think all the demo/outtake stuff has kept her career alive and vibrant during it's lull/quiet and low points. My little sister is a Sarah McLauglan fan and has often commented that she wished she could have demo/outtake stuff from Sarah like I have with Stevie especially now that Sarah's been on a big break herself...'course my little sister is also a big Stevie fan...

[Bella Figura]

Personally I kinda like it when the Ledge closes down due to bandwidth issues, it kinda weeds out those fair weather fans and those people who like to creep around the Net causing major disruptions on discussion Boards. Only the addicted Ledgies know that the Board comes back online in a few days, but in the meantime, the "trolls" hit the road thinking they have accomplished their goal of closing down the discussion board.
everybody's happy :laugh: