Quote:
Originally Posted by David
In Fleetwood Mac terms, it is.
The studio track exemplifies Fleetwood Mac's strengths with orchestration. And it has a quality that a lot of other top-notch examples of orchestration on Mac albums don't have: real heart instead of sonic puzzles and showmanship. Maybe that's why the studio track doesn't interest some listeners. When you listen to the shimmer and sparkle on other tracks, the arrangement of the instruments feels like a conscious demonstration of the technology in the building, Lindsey's serendipitous cleverness, and the expertise of the engineers. But Silver Springs feels totally committed to an expressive need to convey something that has profoundly shaken its songwriter. (Not in ten thousand years would any of Stevie's solo studio bands have built anything this complex and emotionally subdued around a song of hers.) That beauty is like a documentary of the moods in the room at Sausalito. The interplay of instruments -- like Japanese wind chimes -- feels like nature. What these musicians in their late 20s and early 30s did in 1976 with Silver Springs is the equal of the "feel" Peter, Jeremy, Mick, John, and Danny achieved with their greatest work in 1968 and '69.
Both Danny and Lindsey were devoted to the music of Django Reinhardt, and maybe there's a little Django in their best studio work.
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I agree with you regarding the quality of the orchestration. There are some quality moments in the backing track. But for me, the main problem with SS in its original form is Stevie Nicks. Her vocal doesn’t command the song. Her singing sounds a bit like scratch vocals for another more confident singer to work from. Before its 1997 reemergence I used to find the song “pleasant” but “transitional” because she couldn’t manage the right vocal attack. All of that changed in 1997 when her voice wrapped perfectly around the melody.