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

Villavic · #1 05-25-2011, 12:15 AM

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..

cbBen · #2 05-25-2011, 04:40 AM

Every album--by anyone--is an attempt to get in the groove, to stay in the groove, or to get back in the groove. You think anyone wanted Tusk to be anything but a resounding success?

Christine's songs and Gypsy sound like Fleetwood Mac to me, but the rest sounds at least as disjointed as Tusk, if not more so.

Thanks to the solo projects they were short on goods songs, and thanks to probably a number of factors they were short on a cohesive sound.

For Tango In The Night they again were short on songs (Stevie should have been limited to Seven Wonders, because she had nothing else), but Lindsey and Richard managed to give the album a brilliant, consistent sound.

holidayroad · #3 05-25-2011, 08:33 AM

Maybe Mick felt the band sort of slipping away. Mirage was an attempt to get everyone on the same page. I think Mirage is a lot better than people give it credit for. No, it isn't Rumours, but it is a good album and worked well to give Fleetwood Mac an '80s sound'. Unfortunately, the attempt to get the members of Fleetwood Mac to become one unit again did not work out. Everyone went on to 'do their own thing'.

chiliD · #4 05-25-2011, 01:53 PM

Once band members start a concurrent solo career, just kiss the band goodbye. It's happened to just about every band who's had members start solo careers (especially the main songwriters).

Fleetwood Mac's "heyday" ended that final night of the Tusk tour...after that, it was Stevie & Lindsey with Fleetwood Mac...a total "band killer"...individual members became more important than the band.

Again (and again, and again) I think Stevie & Lindsey should've left the band on September 2, 1980. (the day after the end of the Tusk tour).

cbBen · #5 05-25-2011, 02:47 PM

They could have each been allowed a single solo album.

Stevie had a backlog of songs at the time, but her songwriting was not good enough after 1981 to justify the solo albums in addition to Fleetwood Mac.

And Lindsey should have produced other artists to give his creative side the kind of outlet that he felt the band stifled, rather than make solo albums at the expense of the band (or make min-solo albums within the band, as he does on Tusk and Mirage).

Then again, "Rooms On Fire" and Out Of The Cradle are masterworks that would probably never have worked within the context of Fleetwood Mac.

So what do I know?

chiliD · #6 05-25-2011, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cbBen

...Out Of The Cradle are masterworks that would probably never have worked within the context of Fleetwood Mac.

Well, Out Of The Cradle DID work in a Fleetwood Mac context, only 5 years BEFORE it came out, under the name of Tango In The Night...the overall production of both albums are nearly the same, plus Lindsey's songs on Tango are pretty much interchangeable with similar sounding songs off of Out Of The Cradle.

Big Love > Doing What I Can
You & I, Part 2 > Soul Drifter
etc.

Villavic · #7 05-25-2011, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiliD

Again (and again, and again) I think Stevie & Lindsey should've left the band on September 2, 1980. (the day after the end of the Tusk tour).

And not Christine? Why don't you include her? I guess her only one solo album didn't impact on the band. Do you think her songs and contribution were good enough to keep her in the band?

SteveMacD · #8 05-25-2011, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Villavic

And not Christine? Why don't you include her? I guess her only one solo album didn't impact on the band. Do you think her songs and contribution were good enough to keep her in the band?

Christine is the most consistent writer in the band. A solo album is one thing. A whole solo career is another. Hell, even Mick and John did solo albums.

Lindsey and Stevie wanted solo careers in addition to (or maybe instead of) Fleetwood Mac.

aleuzzi · #9 05-25-2011, 09:35 PM

Mirage was an attempt to get back into the Rumours groove; ironically, this attempt was calculated in a way that Rumours was not. By the time of Mirage, the primary goal of the band was to make commercially successful music and rake in more money.

I love parts of Mirage as much as the best moments on any Mac record, but...

louielouie2000 · #10 05-26-2011, 02:38 AM

The only way that Mirage was aping Rumours was in approachability. Rumours is instantly beautiful & identifiable. Tusk is initially very esoteric & challenging to listen to. Mirage was simply dumbing Fleetwood Mac down for the masses following the "failure" of Tusk. I think that's why I just don't like Mirage. I think they alienated their hardcore fans in order to try and play to a wider audience at the cost of creativity and forward motion. It was backpedaling in an almost sneering manner.

cbBen · #11 05-26-2011, 03:23 AM

Keith Olsen would never have let the band into the studio with the set of songs they had when the the tape began rolling on Mirage.

If the idea was to get back to what made Rumours work, they lost sight of the most important thing: material.

**jbrownsjr** · #12 05-26-2011, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cbBen

Keith Olsen would never have let the band into the studio with the set of songs they had when the the tape began rolling on Mirage.

If the idea was to get back to what made Rumours work, they lost sight of the most important thing: material.

I agree with this...

chiliD · #13 05-26-2011, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Villavic

And not Christine? Why don't you include her? I guess her only one solo album didn't impact on the band. Do you think her songs and contribution were good enough to keep her in the band?

Her solo album didn't happen until 1984...after the break between Tusk & Mirage, she probably spent that time writing material for the next Fleetwood Mac album. AFTER Mirage it wasn't quite such a definite thing that there WOULD be a "next Fleetwood Mac album", so she did her own album. It was out of the band's idleness that she did the solo album, not because of a desire to express herself outside of the band format.

**jbrownsjr** · #14 05-26-2011, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Villavic

And not Christine? Why don't you include her? I guess her only one solo album didn't impact on the band. Do you think her songs and contribution were good enough to keep her in the band?

Now Villavic, you know as well as anyone on here that Christine was a "band" member... And you also full well know that if Lindsey would have had commerical success he would have split and that album called SYW and The Dance would not have existed.

Which is fine by me because I think SYW is terrible.

BaronVonBielski · #15 05-26-2011, 02:48 PM

I think it was part in an attempt to please the record company since they all deemed Tusk a failure and were against Lindsey going outside the lines. They wanted Rumours II and they got Tusk. So this was an album made more mainstream at that time...you wanted it Warner... here you go. Didn't really do much better, but it debuted at #1 so it just looks that way.