Sam Graham's Before the Beginning

[michelej1]

Houston Press New Books Explore Fleetwood Mac's Vast Appetites and Sam Graham's book

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/..._tr.php?page=2

By Bob Ruggiero Wed., Dec. 3 2014 at 4:00 AM


For an additional take on Fleetwood Mac, there is former Record World Assistant Editor Sam Graham's eBook, Before the Beginning: A Personal and Opinionated History of Fleetwood Mac.

The title is somewhat misleading, as it is largely a sort of postmortem on Graham's brief time with the band as a traveling reporter on the Rumours tour and as he gathered interviews for the 1978 (long out-of-print) book Fleetwood Mac: The Authorized History.

There are really no recording insights or road tales, save one incident when Stevie Nicks accidentally falls into Graham's lap during a plane ride -- surely the epitome of a memorable incident, at least for a reporter. And much of the book actually traces the band's history before Rumours.

What makes the eBook interesting, though, are the more than 30 audio-interview clips rescued from Graham's long-moldering cassette tapes. The info he elicits from Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood and Christine McVie at the near-cusp of their fame (and hearing their actual voices) are all fascinating, especially McVie's.

Graham seems just as interested in charting the band's earlier history, and audio segments also include comments from former Mac members Jeremy Spencer, Bob Welch and early producer Mike Vernon.

Other interactive elements include Graham's handwritten notes from a talk with Mac founding father Peter Green (his cassette recorder was on the blink), as well as former manager Clifford Davis, who put a completely fake lineup of the band on tour during a legal and musical downtime for the band.