Bob Welch has died

[chiliD]

Originally Posted by Tango

I am so sorry to hear/read of the loss of Bob. The first real picture of his personality came through to me here on The Penguin. The two Q&As he did with all the fans are amazing. Steve, not sure if you heard about this yet, but I already know you will take this loss hard with quite a few others here. Clearly Bob Welch respected and enjoyed you in particular-- and I think he loved interacting directly with the fans. He got to tell his story of Fleetwood Mac without any editing. I'm glad that he got to do that here.

Thank you. I heard about this fairly early in the afternoon, but for some reason, the last couple of weeks I haven't been able to access The Ledge from my work computer (the only Fleetwood Mac site that I haven't been able to)...so I had to wait until now to drop by here.

This is very difficult. Time has healed the wounds of losing two Beatles which affected me deeply...but this is a fresh open wound, still. What makes this different is that there was a personal connection between myself & Bob...yeah, it's documented on the Q&As here...and we'd met in person a couple of times, but nothing significantly...just a nod of the head & a smile...or an adoring guitarhead fan trying to pick up every nuance of his guitar work, his stage presence, his lyrical content while seated at his feet in the audience of either a Fleetwood Mac, Paris or solo band show.

As I've posted here numerous times (to where in order to save keystrokes & ease the carpal tunnel aches, I now just "copy & paste" from a saved Word document) in the always recurring "How did you become a Fleetwood Mac fan?" threads, I'd been an avid Fleetwood Mac fan for a number of years before Bob joined, but the transition wasn't really as drastic as it happened as it appears when looking back in retrospect. What really cemented my bond with Bob's tenure in Fleetwood Mac was finally getting to see the band in person for the first (and second) times during those tumultuous Heroes Are Hard To Find days, weeks, months. I already had eaten up the "spookiness" of Bob's lyrical content on a few songs over the course of the previous few albums, but none of it hit home and opened my mind as seeing him present it all in person. I was sad when he left Fleetwood Mac, but I easily fell back into line when Paris hit the road & the album into record stores. Then when he was peripherally brought back into the Fleetwood Mac orbit with Mick as his manager for French Kiss, Three Hearts, The Other One, etc...it was full circle.

The Q&A was a major highlight...he was talking DIRECTLY TO ME! (as I see he has posted here earlier in this thread, a huge THANK YOU to "Penguin Emeritus" Marty Adelson for being the one to facilitate that and provide the connection for that to happen!)

Then on email, Bob's own site(s) & eventually Facebook pages, we had numerous one-to-one correspondences. That he took the time to respond to my messages meant more to me than I can express in words.