Circa 1982, Who *Was* Fleetwood Mac?
 

Fleetwood Mac, as it stands in its current incarnation, is Stevie Nicks & Christine McVie. The men in the band are pure backup (despite the cloying efforts of Lindsey Buckingham to dig up the moldering spirit of Buddy Holly) & as such they just fill in the gaps, round out the record, or just plain snooze when the forces of Nicks & McVie grasp the moment.

--Joe Fernbacher
"Mirage" Review
Creem
December 1982

I pretty much agree with that. Strictly from a songwriting point of view, Lindsey's Mirage material is his worst. Stevie's voice was at her zenith. Christine's Mirage stuff is beautiful.

I agree. I also think LB was reluctant to even participate.

And it's also my favorite era for the band. FM could do no wrong, IMO, in those days. And I loved them all equally.

While I think the bands problems are evident in the music at that point in time {for example Stevies voice having to be dubbed in from other sessions, because 3/4 of the time she was not present during the making of the record do to drugs and solo stuff plus the rest of the bands addiction, fame, money and personality clash issues, with the exception of Christine who usually got along with everyone up untill Tango } I love that record! Book of love , Thats Alright, Love in a store, Only over you , Wish you were here , and Eyes of the world are my faves from Mirage.

This true?

We all know about the Tango sessions, but I didn't know Stevie wasn't present for most of Mirage. I was always under the assumption that they recorded in France....together....as a unit.

Unless I am mistaken I believe I got this from FM behind the music. That it was hard to get Mirage done, becuase she wasn't there and vocals had to be dubbed in. Maybe he said Tango and I got them mixed up. Anyone know for sure? I can't dig out my FM BTM right now~!

Wow, I didn't realize. It seems Lindsey tried pretty hard during Mirage to "do something" but it just came out crappy. I guess I am wrong? I don't even like Christine's Mirage material. The "tinny" production makes it unlistenable to me. And usually Christine's stuff is kind of...untouchable - the voice is still there. (yes, there are exceptions)
Never listen.
Stevie's voice was kick ass, though, I only like her songs. So far.

The tour was outstanding, though, thankfully. :woohoo: :woohoo:

Apparently, they laid down only some basic tracks in France. Most of the work on the album was done back in L.A. at Larrabee. Based on what the other Macsters have said & on some articles at the time (like the David Gans piece in Record), Stevie wasn't around for much more than a couple of weeks.

But maybe she didn't need to be. Besides, her solo album was huge at that point, so that naturally captured her attention.

The story of Lindsey's having to piece together bits of unrelated Stevie vocal tracks in order to create a cohesive work, though, refers to the "Tango" sessions.

Yeah I can see where that person is coming from, at least when it comes to mirage.

How odd that Stevie's tracks are clearly the best.... :confused:

I really like Lindsey's Mirage songs. Am I in the minority here?

I pretty much agree with this review. Chris & Stevie carried this record. This album was the last Fleetwood Mac album in which I actually liked Stevie's songs. I don't think Lindsey really even wanted to do this album because of the flack he had gotten for Tusk. At this point, I think he was sort of half in, half out of the band. The solo careers of both Buckingham & Nicks after Tusk totally changed everything for Fleetwood Mac as a band.

:shocked::shocked::shocked: :laugh: :xoxo:

I like them. But, they pale in comparson to La Nicks and then CM, which is said because they are good on their own, at least to me.

I like most of them! "Empire State" is the only that really doesn't do much for me. I rather enjoy the 50s throwback aspect of most of Lindsey's tracks.

Clearly to you, maybe. Not to, for example, critics like David Gans or Sam Sutherland, who wrote in High-Fidelity magazine:

"Buckingham's own songs are the most distinctive ... keyboardist McVie's are the warmest ... if there's any serious weakness here, it's the perfunctory feel Nicks brings to her songs ... the dreamy pop siren sounds particularly mannered ... Her writing simply recycles the ersatz mysticism & narcissistic role-playing that initially intrigued on songs like Rhiannon ..."

But people have argued otherwise -- which makes minced meat of the argument that the opinion is inarguable.
No, actually, it isn't. An opinion -- any opinion -- is by its very nature subjective. Regardless of how sensible or widespread an opinion is -- "Eleanor Rigby" is a better song than "Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher's Guts" -- it still isn't objective. Objective means irrespective of opinion, belief, emotion or prejudice. There's no such thing as an objective measure of artistic merit.

We can, however, state objectively that the velocity of shallow water waves is roughly proportional to the depth of the water through which they pass.

I always loved "Book of Love" & "Eyes of the World." I liked "Can't Go Back" & "Empire State" & even "Oh Diane" for their arrangement & production values, although I miss that "tube-amp-is-exploding-in-my-face" aspect that he experimented with on Tusk.

:laugh:

I don't think Stevie had turned towards that path until The Wild Heart. Once she spread her legs and gave birth to Rock A Little, that's when the real recycling and embarrassment began.

Same here. "Empire State" is the only one I'm not too keen on, the rest are great. "Oh Diane" doesn't seem to be liked very much, but that's one of my favorite Lindsey songs.

I always liked this review by Geoffrey Himes from the Washington Post, 8/1/82:

LOS ANGELES has long harbored some of rock 'n' roll's most reclusive, most brilliant studio wizards: Phil Spector, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Now Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie must be added to this select company. "Mirage" (Warner Bros. 23607-1), the fifth and latest album by the current Fleetwood Mac lineup, carries on this pop baroque tradition splendidly.

Spector, Fagen, Becker and McVie come from elsewhere, but they (and Buckingham and California native Wilson) have found Hollywood the most conducive environment for manufacturing their dreams. This is the appeal of their art: By the sheer force of their imagination they have created complex, new worlds on record where seemingly disparate elements harmonize perfectly. For many American suburbanites--forced to compensate for their drab world by acts of imagination--these records are reassuring proof that it can be done.

If you subtract the three dreary Stevie Nicks tracks, the nine remaining cuts on "Mirage" marry the melodic accessibility of "Fleetwood Mac" and "Rumors" with the experimental boldness of "Tusk." Christine McVie's four songs feature the intoxicating romantic melodies of her famous singles, but Lindsey Buckingham's production fleshes them out with more intricate imaginative detail than they ever had before. Buckingham's own five songs are clearly rooted in the bouncy simplicity of early rock 'n' roll. He then proves how a little jingly melody and basic lyric wish can be musically expanded into the grand importance they have subjectively for the wisher.

The album's first single is "Hold Me" by McVie and singer-songwriter Robbie Patton. Much like the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda," the song builds from heartbroken verses aching with sustained notes to a punchy, repeating chorus making a plea for love. McVie has constructed one contagious melody for the first verse and still another for the chorus. The body of the song is sung as a duet between McVie's hopeful alto and Buckingham's anxious tenor. Buckingham takes over on the tag: He plays a slow, high guitar solo that extends the plea beyond words; he pits a groaning bass vocal against the pretty, high harmonies.

McVie's "Love in Store" has a couple more gorgeous mid-tempo melody hooks. Buckingham once again expands the romantic moment--this time with layers upon layers of odd, twangy guitars. On "Only Over You" (dedicated to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson) and "Wish You Were Here" (written with John Mayall's drummer Colin Allen), McVie's melodies are suffused with angelic choirs that give the romantic themes the swooning feeling they need.

If McVie's songs are romantic without irony, Buckingham's songs are romantic with irony. Long a musical wizard, Buckingham is finally developing skill at words, too. He now strips his lyrics to simple catch phrases that sound as if they came from "Teen Angel" of 1962, but in fact suggest far more than they explain. "Can't Go Back" suggests in short four-word lines the inevitable but impossible desire to return to one's youth. The irresistible opening theme--a cabaret piano phrase answered by a circus synthesizer phrase over a fast heartbeat rhythm--suggests that it may indeed be possible via one's musical imagination. Buckingham's synthesizer-treated vocal bends in and out of focus magically.

"Book of Love" and "Oh Diane" are even more rooted in the pre-Beatles' era. But the innocence is lined with irony--Buckingham suspects that God knows no more about love than we mortals; he suspects his Diane is slipping away with time. The potential of the original doo-wop harmonies are heightened by Buckingham's control over his greater options in the studio. As his lead vocal fades on each line in "Book of Love," the harmony vocals rise in a crossing arc. Two of Buckingham's biggest influences have been the Beach Boys and the Kingston Trio. He practices his odd brand of folkie-surf music on "Empire State" and "Eyes of the World."

Stevie Nicks is the album's big disappointment. Once one of the band's best writers, she has deteriorated into penning overly long tales about vaguely defined dream landscapes with minimal melodies and the blandest of chord progressions. Whereas McVie and Buckingham evoke dreams through the lovely complexity of their music, Nicks simply talks about dreams and gypsies and evokes very little. Nevertheless Nicks is still an excellent harmony singer, and her echoing vocals on McVie's "Love in Store" give the song an incredible lift. And let's not forget Fleetwood Mac's two founding members; drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie are still important to their band . The rhythm tracks on "Mirage" are sparer yet far more effective than the rhythm work on the solo albums by Buckingham and Nicks last year.

^^^^^

Hmmmm - Gypsy is amongst her best and The other two contain what could be her better vocals. Sounds like someone doesn't like that feminine edge :laugh:

Except for Oh Diane I love that album. I say I LOVE that album.

Well that's the reason exactly why I ADORE that one. I say ADORE that one.

Trackaghost, we're a born minority if it comes to why we like FM. It seems like it is just that what others dislike, hits the nail for us. I'm getting used to it.
Besides, it's not a problem at all, we all are obsessed with them....

Of course, we can also set parameters for what constitutes "good" art, and if - if - we can all agree on those, then we can start making some "objective" judgments about artistic merit. However, the nice thing about art is that everybody comes to it looking for different things, and with different parameters in mind, and so we can all come away from it with our experiences and our own judgments what we thought was good or not. But no, let's not call those judgments objective.

While I don't necessarily agree, I can see this as a fair judgment of "Straight Back" and even (gasp!) "Gypsy." But I think it's a bit fair to put "That's Alright" in this category. As a little country ditty, it's got a rather nice melody, and I think Stevie does a nice job of evoking the emotional state of her character. (And shoot, "complexity of music" isn't what a country song is usually all about anyway.)

Yeah, I think so. It amazes me when people say Stevie's songs outshine Lindsey's on that album. I mean obviously Gypsy does, that's a true classic and the best song on the album, but no one other than hardcore Mac fans would love the wimpy country of That's Alright, or the unfinished feel of Straight Back. I always thought they sounded like B-sides.

:rolleyes:

Anyways. Her voice sounds great. Besides, Gypsy is so much better than all the other songs that it counts as "Stevie's song(s) outshining everything" :lol:

What I dislike the very most on this album, I just realized, is not totally Lindsey's songs, but what Lindsey (I guess) did with Christine's songs. EOTW is okay, I even kind of like Oh Diane (kind of). I think I made this face ===> :eek: :distress: when I heard Christine's songs...Someone said this album sounds way better on vinyl, I think i need to hear that. It sounds mostly terrible to me.

I really like Lindsey's material on Mirage, except for Empire State. Blech. Chris' are good too, but Only Over You is the only song from her I truly despise. Sorry, Hillary. :laugh: And as others have said, vocally, Stevie was in top form. I like Mirage, despite the generally low approval from fans.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

wow, thanks! When's the next lesson? I love your "Things I Already Know that you try to sound intellectually superior about, to what purpose I have no idea" Class! It Rocks!

I love MIRAGE. The only song I am not that crazy about is Only Over You. But even that isn't that bad. Mirage is the first Fleetwood Mac album I got. My dad got me the cassette when it came out. I was about 6. I used to play that and Wild Heart all the time.

I love all the vocals. The harmonies are amazing.

Another reason I love Mirage is because I LOVE the demo and outtakes from that album. Lindsey playing Oh Diane and moaning a long to it. SO good. Also love the If You Were My Love tracks.

I am confused why so many don't love Empire State. I love it.

What they have to do now is Remaster it and add some of the outtakes to it. That would make me very happy. For some reason Mirage is very low sounding compared to all the other Mac albums.

Oh, Amber, come on ... get off it! You & your eyeball rolling. You made a comment that Stevie's songs were inarguably the best, & I only pointed out that some fans & some critics were a long way from arguing that.

If I can never respond to anything without fear of being pegged as a person with a superiority complex, what's the point of my saying anything at all?!! :mad:

Let's say I had made the comment you made, & you wanted to make the point I made. How would you have said it? With plenty of lovey-dovey smilies & hedging & tentativeness so that your point had no meat? You would NOT have done that.

Is Gypsy really that much better a song than Hold Me or Only Over You? I think Gypsy's production & arrangement are what really drive it home. When I listen to the Heartbreakers play it or Stevie herself play it, it's not such a big deal to me. It has nice imagery, nice turns of phrase (Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice/And it lights up the night/And you see your gypsy) & even a typical amount of Stevie doofy-oafy words that just plotz (Faces freedom with a little fear/I have no fear/I have only love).

to me, it seems like an average Stevie Nicks song, maybe a little above average. Classics like Gold Dust Woman, Rhiannon & Candlebright leave it in the dust (except in terms of track production, which is where Gypsy really lights up the night).

don't get me started on your -fill-the-air-with-chit-chat-drizzle, amber. at least you can admit the guy knows his way with words. I love to read them.

I find it funny that Stevie fans always go to the "your just too cerebral" card when defending La Nicks. This mostly happens with Stevie vs LB...

interesting............. :laugh:

no, Gypsy is boring sans the guitar/keyboard and background vocal work

it's kind of like a Britney fan saying that Radiohead is just too simplistic :lol:

That made me howl with delight.

i had quite the chuckle too