Improv...endearing or annoying?
 

I was listening to some of Stevie's live material recently and wondered about the different improvisation she has done over the years and whether these add to, or take away from the song. Some that I find endearing:

"say women, they will come and they will probably go"
"dreams unwind and love is hard to find"

Not so much...

"sings a song like she's singin' it to ya" (I have never like Edge live because of this and dropping the register on Just Like the White Winged Dove, that has always annoyed me.
" I took my love and Itook it down" the pause is much more effective
"you pick Your path and then you pray Changing to third person takes away the intense autobiographical nature of Gold Dust Woman.

What do you think?

I have never given it any thought , besides she is probably not even conscious of it .

I actually like it. I used to go through every performance of Sara I could find just to listen to the endings. My favorites are from the Tusk tour, especially Melbourne. It just sounds so sorrowful and beautiful. There's one from Cleveland that year too where the whole song is a mess with Stevie hitting really bad offkey notes, missing cues and just sounding off. But at the end she sings "it never really died, never really died... oh it was such a heartbeat" and it absolutely breaks your heart. And all the stuff from before just adds to the tragedy of it, like she's some torch singer from days gone by lamenting a life she once had.

I also love how she's changed things in Dreams over the years. "what you had and what you lost, what you had... you know what you lost". I just love that.

Maybe there's a bit of a boredom factor, but overdoing lyric improvisation can affect a song's impact. I think Stevie does this more often than other singers. For me as a listener at a concert , I know a killer song like Edge of Seventeen totally loses it's impact when she changes those beautiful lyrics around too much.

I enjoy it, when it's true and honest improv, because I feel like it's very emotional and just how she feels in the moment.

Now, when these "variations" become rehearsed, then that's a different story.

And of course, some of the things listed in the OP have nothing to do with improvisation at all - like Stevie taking the lower harmony on Edge of Seventeen. That's due to vocal range.

I actually love most of her improv! Some of my favorites are:

Rhiannon:
"Rhiannon you cry but she's gone and your life knows no answer, still your life is haunted."

Dreams:
"They say, some women they will come and they will always go baby, go baby... when the rain washes you clean you will know."

"Oh who is the wildest, the wildest, wildest heart of all? When the rain washes you clean, you will know."

Outside the Rain:
"Look in my eyes, touch my face, do you think baby, there's anyone in this whole wild world that could ever replace me? I don't think so! But if so then take it away!

Stand Back:
"So one man said he could not stay, I said, 'Well darling goodbye! Well go away!'"

The only one that really bugs me is when she sings "down" twice in dreams, but I really wouldn't call that improv since she has been doing it for years now.

I agree..for the most part I really enjoy being able to intently listen and discern subtle differences/pick out my favorites.

UndoingTheLaces I oddly enough was going through some live performances and was 2 songs away from Sara on the Melbourne Tusk show before I read this post. It is GORGEOUS. Do you, or anyone else happen to have a clear version? Also the Cleveland Sara? I hadn't heard that..

EDIT: because I just finished the whole set and Stevie sounds amazing..even in backup roles this concert is worth a listen. Longer held notes, riffs, really great stuff! Also a little laughing exchange between her and LB on Angel

would love to hear this Sara

I'm at the office now but I'll do my best to post both of them tonight. I don't know where the Melbourne recording came from but I've never heard one that was crystal clear. It's definitely soundboard but it sounds like it was dubbed to a casette many years ago. Would be awesome if the original tape would surface. I have one that's not too bad and better than some other ones I've heard, so I'll post it tonight, along with the Cleveland one.

Looking forward to it! Thanks so much

Sometimes, it makes a song for me. Like with How Still My Love, Edge and Gold Dust Woman in particular, I just can't get enough of those little lines and asides she throws in. They feel raw and spontaneous (even if she does it for a whole tour) and it's like they're tapping into a fresh vein of emotion.

Michele

I would love to hear these. Where are they from?

Okay, here are the versions of Sara we've been talking about:

Sara, Melbourne 80

https://www.yousendit.com/download/W...TER0NjlFQmRVag

Sara, Cleveland 80

https://www.yousendit.com/download/W...TERoeVlkVU1UQw

They'll only be good for about a week or so (yousendit, not my rule), so please grab them up now.

And just for fun I'm throwing in the Sara from St. Louis in 79. This is the full length soundboard recording from the performance you've seen in the Tusk documentary. That one was recorded from the speakers I believe and then heavily edited, so this one sounds much different but the vocal is the same. There's even a moment in the video where she sings "All I ever wanted was to know...." letting "know" trail off rather than finish the line and in the video you barely hear her and it's kind of echoey. That's because the sound was coming through the vocal monitor but not going out to the audience, so you're actually hearing it through the monitor. In this recording you'll hear her voice fully when she sings that part. It's really cool. And here's a fun fact, this is also the performance they took the music from for the version on Fleetwood Mac Live. Then they went into the studio and redubbed the vocals. Betcha didn't know the one from the live album and the one from the video were the same performance. :)

Sara, St. Louis in 79

https://www.yousendit.com/download/W...TEQxUUJDaDhUQw

I'm OK with most all of Stevie's improvisations. It must get boring sometimes for her to sing the same songs thousands upon thousands of times, so to change it up a bit probably keeps it at least a little interesting for her when performing.

The one that she almost always does that I absolutely can't stand though is during "Beauty and the Beast", after the big crescendo or whatever where she holds out the long note at the end of "I never doubted your beauty, I've Chaaaaaaaaanged" like on the record and then afterward she says "Or at least I'm trying to change" Ugh! I hate that! And I cringe everytime I hear it. Sometimes less is more. And in this case I prefer less. Her ad lib just takes away from the whole big drama of the moment that preceded it.:sorry:

OK. I'm done. Love ya anyway Stevie. LOL.

Here you go!

Rhiannon is from Baton Rouge 1978.
http://www.mediafire.com/?1op6oyn5kn8dnnr

Dreams is from Austin and Houston 1986. (Improv near the end. Wish these two were better quality!)
http://www.mediafire.com/?bhzp106plwxgdxc

http://www.mediafire.com/?4dfwd33il5xl9p1

Stand Back is from her Solid Gold performance. (Improv near the end)
http://www.mediafire.com/?r6bgjt2ptomlun5

Oh. I always loved that BATB ad lib, it makes it all sound so .... tragic and despairing.

Yes, I've always loved this ending too for the very same reasons!

Thank you for this.

Thanks for the Saras! Cleveland IS so beautiful..

EDIT: Do you know the date for that show as well? I looked at Tusk tour dates and only see Cincinnati and Richfield as Ohio shows.

Thank you so much for these. I love those ad libs. I've never heard them.

Some years ago I was on the way to memorial for a friend who had passed and I had only recently found that version of Sara (sorry britt0308, it's been years, I don't recall what the date was, the year was in the title when I downloaded it). I was listening to it when the ending part with Stevie singing "It never really died... oh it was such a heartbeat" and I had to pull off to the side of the road I was crying so hard. It just hit me so strongly. I think that's why this one is so special to me because it reminds me of my friend.

No worries about the date. Thanks for sharing your story..I think there are those special connections with so many of Stevie's words. I've needed them to get through some hard times and I know that's why she writes them..for us. Thanks again for posting the links!!

I can answer this! Cleveland=Richfield. Quite often in the case of touring a band will be listed as performing in the name of the largest city near where they actually are. Richfield, Ohio is a suburb of Cleveland. Largo, Maryland is a suburb of Washington DC. Often it will just say Los Angeles when in fact it's really Inglewood. And so on and so forth all around the world.

Ah so smart. Haha thank you, thank you!

Sometimes Stevie's ad-libs work well, and sometimes they don't. Her improvisational skills are questionable. Some are clunky or just plain odd, and can throw off the pacing and the band. But she does hit the mark on occasion. I like it when she adds a well thought out nuance to a song. A good example of this is evident in her performance of the song How Still My Love, as shown on her DVD concert. The added repeated phrase of "should I say" was unexpected and simple, but very effective.

I'm a fan of the stuff she added to the end of Beautiful Child, that heartwrenching wail and then "I do love you, I still need you, I wish, I wish that you were mine."

thanks for these UndoingtheLaces!! Man, she really was so hit-or-miss on the road. In part one suspects, because she really didn't know how to take care of her voice properly, among everything else she was doing:rolleyes:

Oooh yeah!

I have loved all of her improv's over the years except the one from Beautiful Child. To me this always sounded like she didn't know what to do with herself so she just garbled out these words at the end. Vocally, it should have ended with the wail.

Speaking of Beautiful Child, can anybody give me any insight or has Stevie ever elaborated on the meaning behind the song. What was her inspiration? The first verse especially? I love the SYW tour version.!

^
I love this line! my fav Improv for sure. I hope she performs OTR on her next solo tour. It is a great opener as well.

I just remember her saying she wrote it on a Sunday night. I think she even specified a time and she said it wasn't about a child.

Michele

I just think Sara was so difficult for them to pull off back then (meaning as, essentially, a 5 piece...perhaps there was an extra guitar in the wings, don't know)
If Mick set the tempo too fast or Christine's playing was a little boozy or if Stevie's voice wasn't gentle yet in control or if Buckingham decided to be sloppy or if the harmonies were poor or if Stevie decided to sing behind the beat every other phrase then that song just became, to me, a mess. The record of Sara is lush. I don't think lush is easy to pull off without layers and layers.

I agree.

For example, "Rhiannon" from Mobile, AL - 8/11/80. I call it the "Is that what you want?" version. She just keeps repeating it and there's no doubt she had a reason - was she talking to Lindsey or the audience, etc.? Who knows - but I love the deliberateness of the delivery.

I'm not sure if there are other versions like this, but it's probably my favorite version.

There are many from that tour. I love that also. And I love you too!:xoxo:

Oh, thanks for the info! :)

And, I love you too! :xoxo:

Quote: Outside the Rain:
"Look in my eyes, touch my face, do you think baby, there's anyone in this whole wild world that could ever replace me? I don't think so! But if so then take it away!


I'm with the camp that is not always so thrilled with her ad libs.

I find it sort of ironic that Stevie is soooo protective of her words in the studio and NO ONE can change them because it'll mess up her song and then she goes out and does that very thing herself!!

"Look in my eyes, touch my face, Baby there is no one that can ever replace that heartache" has such a rhythm to it that goes so well with the beat and then she adds all those blabby words that get crammed in to the same space.... Just throws it all off to me :distress:

I find it ironic that she's protective of her words, but decides, "you know that line, 'if your life was bad to you'? I won't be singing it that way."

Michele

:laugh: Right, bet she wouldn't say that to Bob Dylan...

She butchered Don't Stop.

I mean, she couldn''t possibly thing those are the lyrcis, could she? After hearing it however many times over the past 30something years?