Was Mirage an attempt to get back into the Rumours groove?

[Villavic]

I was checking my old Mick's book, in order to post in David A's thread. And, as usual, I got hooked again and started to re-read my fave chapters. I was reading about their reunion after the post Tusk tour gap, to record Mirage. Mick's describes it as an attempt to go back into the Rumours groove. However this may be debatable. Perhaps he refers to the "recording again as a band", cause some Tusk tracks were Lindsey exclusive. But were the Mirage songs a return to the Rumours sound? I don't think so. They were less experimental than Tusk, but not a Rumours II. What do you think?

Was Mirage an artistic success? What do you think?

Mirage, the album we recorded in France, was an attempt to get into the Rumours groove again, but updated. Chris's songs, especially "Hold Me," reflected her bittersweet reflections on her relationship with Dennis Wilson, which had almost resulted in marriage but had ended instead the previous December...

...Stevie's songs including the utterly majestic "Gypsy" were what she had saved for us after recording her first album, Bella Donna, which was about to sell ten million copies and make Miss Nicks the Queen of Rock. Some leftover! "Gypsy" is one of Fleetwood Mac's greatest works of art; for me it really crystallises that whole period of the early 1980s, when we were in our mid-thirties and beginning to look back on our lost youth.

...Lindsey Buckingham had also been recording a solo project, which became the Law and Order album. He arrived in France with two good songs, "Can't Go Back" and "Eyes of the World. " Three others, "Book of Love," "Empire State," and "Oh Diane," were written with Richard Dashut at the chateau and in the three other studios in L.A. where Mirage was wrapped up over the next seven months. Tired of being typecast as the archetypal northern California hippie, Lindsey had now veered from his New Wave sound into a 1955 Eddie Cochrane rock and roll feel.

(I remember some semitense conversations on musical direction in this era, as Lindsey still felt that I blamed him for the relatively weak sales of Tusk. I thought we should do what we do best, and insisted on doing this album as a band. This time, the whole band played on almost every track; then Chris, Lindsey, and I spent months in the studio, overdubbing in typical Fleetwood Mac fashion.)

...Mirage was released in mid-1982, an artistic and financial success. Both "Hold Me" and "Gypsy" were hit singles in the United States, and "Oh Diane" was a British chart hit as well. I think we sold about five million albums. It didn't hurt that Rolling Stone had crowned Stevie "The Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll," and that a new cable television channel called MTV was broadcasting our new videos ("Hold Me" set in desert dunes, "Gypsy" in a Stevie fantasy world) to the American suburbs twenty-four hours a day. Mirage went to number one, and it felt great to be back on top for a while.

I don't see the next words a description of a "Rumours", nor a "whole band" again (though I do see Gypsy as a jewel, I agree with chili's post in David A's thread about "launching a half-assed, rushed between Fleetwood Mac albums solo careers")

Mirage also marked the first time that Fleetwood Mac didn't automatically tour to support a new album. Stevie's solo career was now in full swing, and she obviously didn't want to do a long Fleetwood Mac road binge in the midst of becoming one of the biggest stars in the business....
I felt sick when we stopped touring. Mirage was number one and sales were strong in cities where we'd played. I wanted to be on the move, touring until the cows came home, but the others were less enthusiastic. Christine had sessions for her own solo album scheduled, and we'd been lucky to get Stevie at all. As soon as we left the road, Mirage died after five weeks at number one..