How Alabama Nearly Killed FM (article/LB interview)

[Livia]

How Alabama nearly killed Fleetwood Mac
Friday, March 09, 2007
As if Alabama's history wasn't checkered enough, here's another dubious highlight you can add to the blotter: The state nearly kept Fleetwood Mac's mid-'70s glory days from happening.

The definitive account comes straight from the mouth of Lindsey Buckingham himself.

This much was never in dispute: Back in September 1973 (according to Buckingham's Web site), the guitarist and partner Stevie Nicks released an album titled "Buckingham Nicks."

It failed to launch them to stardom, but the duo soon went on to vast fame with the Mac, making their mark with the "Fleetwood Mac" album in 1976 and the landmark "Rumours" in 1977.

But the "Buckingham Nicks" platter has never entirely gone away. In the minds of many fans and critics, it's viewed as an overlooked gem -- and not just for its only-in-the-'70s cover, which features the duo in a shirtless pose. To the frustration of many, 24 years after its release, it still has never seen re-release on CD. So if you don't have it on vinyl, odds are you've never heard it.

A more specific urban legend has grown up around it as well: The story that, for reasons unknown, the album was unusually popular in Alabama.

Buckingham's new solo tour, which brings him to the Mobile Saenger Theatre next week, presented a prime opportunity to ask him about Alabama's fondness for "Buckingham Nicks." Surprisingly, the details seemed to come to his mind as easily and clearly as if they'd happened yesterday.

It's no legend at all, he said.

"It was a very strange thing, and we were very aware of it at the time," he said. "It actually was one of the reasons joining Fleetwood Mac was not a clear choice for us at the time."

He and Nicks had proven particularly popular as an opening act in the South, he said. After the album's popularity faded, he said, they were "more or less starving in L.A." But they could go to places like Birmingham, Ala., and headline for crowds of 4,000 or 5,000 people.

"Suddenly we had this groundswell," he said. "We wondered at the time, 'Gee, if we see this through, will it keep going?'"

Lee Stamp can vouch for Mobile's role. Now a Mobile attorney, at the time he was music director and program director at WABB-FM.

"I can tell you exactly why" the album got airplay in Mobile, he said this week.

A Birmingham station, WERC-FM, actually was the first to break the record, Stamp said. Presumably thanks to that station, it was heard by a group of Mobile women who were attending Birmingham-Southern College. When they came home from school, they still wanted to hear the music.

"It became a crusade with them to bug me to play stuff off that album," Stamp said. He'd listened it previously, he said, and it hadn't made that much of an impression -- but putting it on the air made one very important thing happen: "Immediately those girls left me alone," he said.

Stamp said there were limits to what he could be pestered into playing; he drew a hard line on John Travolta singles, for example. But on the other hand, he'd decided his audience generally was "pretty bright" and would tell him where the next hit was coming from.

When he put the Buckingham Nicks material on the air, it got a favorable response, he said. He doesn't remember it as a blockbuster, but as "a good steady record" in terms of popularity.

"I always tried to listen to our audience," Stamp said, "and those little girls were right."

Even so, Buckingham and Nicks eventually opted not to go their own way. Instead they threw their lot in with a group that went on to score millions in album sales and generate numerous classic-rock hits.

To this day, there appear to be no distinct plans to reissue "Buckingham Nicks." The vinyl album has become a collector's item, and has, of course, been copied to CDs for informal trading. Wikipedia, that monument of the digital age -- in which nothing can be forgotten -- says that bootleg recordings of Buckingham-Nicks shows in Mobile and Tuscaloosa can be found online, if you look hard enough.

Buckingham said "the forces that be" have never quite gotten together on a plan to reissue the disc, and that there's "a certain amount of inertia" that would have to be overcome for anything to happen. Translation: Don't hold your breath.

Needless to say, he's more interested in the present work, including his tour in support of the well-received "Under the Skin" solo album.

"For me, this is the best time in my life," he said. In no small part, he said, that's because after deliberately waiting for a certain maturity, he finally has a houseful of young children. "Having had that happen to me has certainly answered a lot of questions," he said.

He also feels his music is well-defined now, that he's better and achieving exactly what he intends to on a recording.

Certainly, "Under the Skin" sounds different from anything else out there. While the tracks consist of little more than guitar and vocals, the arrangements are complex, with layered vocals and processed instrumental tracks.

It should make for an interesting live experience, particularly since he's also working in a fair quantity of Fleetwood Mac material.

"We started with the notion, obviously, that we would have to cover a body of work," he said. The general idea is to emphasize the new solo material, and to rearrange some of the Mac tracks to fit the new sound. (Obviously some rearrangement was a given, since Mac vocalists Nicks and Christine McVie aren't coming along.)

"Basically we put a lot of energy into trying to deconstruct and reconstruct the pieces of the puzzle," he said.

"We're talking about a very intimate approach," he said. "I'm doing quite a few songs by myself."

On other songs he's backed by a supporting trio, consisting of a second guitarist, a third guitarist who doubles on keyboards, and a percussionist.

He's opening, he said with a new song titled "Not Too Late" and closing with another one titled "Shut Us Down."

"Oh you and I we sure can dream," he sings on the latter. "Of conversations that might have been..."

"People seem to relate to the simplicity of that," he said.

"It's really a quintessential show, in my mind," he said. "It's just a great thing to be putting out there."

Lawrence F. Specker is the Press-Register's entertainment reporter. He can be reached by phone at (251) 219-5606; by e-mail as [email protected]; by fax at (251) 219-5799. Mail notices of upcoming events to him at the Press-Register, P.O. Box 2488, Mobile, AL 36652.
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