Mirage :30 Years

[Villavic]

This is what Mick wrote in his book about the Mirage...

We arrived as the sun was rising on the day we were to actually begin recording. As we drove down the sixteenth-century chateau's long tree-lined lane, Richard and I marveled that no sooner had we laid the whole African chapter to rest that it was time to begin yet another era, with scarcely pause for breath. We pulled up into the drive, looked up, and saw Stevie Nicks peering out of the ancient leaded-glass window of the chateau, looking like Queen Guinevere in the misty early light. It was as if she were waiting for us, being the dawn-type lady that she is.

....
It turned out that the writers had some splendid new music together, and recording was fun. Le Chateau, the "Honky Chateau" of Elton John fame, was a muchfavored studio of Euro-rock aristocracy private, very red mantle, with great food and stupendous ambience. (We had it redecorated for the girls, spending the usual pile.) Plus it wasn't too far from Paris. So into Paris I'd go, with our crew member Dennis Keen. One morning on the way back from one of these forays, we passed a stable and I decided I had to ride the remaining distance to the chateau through the ancient fog-shrouded countryside. So I got this big grey mare, took a long pull from my everpresent silver flask of good cognac, and rode home, and then right up the stone steps of the house's main entrance. Quelle scandale! Amidst a grand to-do, Stevie swept down the big staircase, leapt on the back of my horse, and cantered off through the greening orchards, her long cape billowing behind her.

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 bit tersweet reflections on her relationship with D ennis Wilson, which had almost resulted in marriage but had ended instead the previous December, when Dennis had moved out of Chris's house and her life. ..... "Hold Me" was a great song, and became the first hit single of the new album.

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.)