Buckingham tossed off his songs in under two months. It’s hard to find any comment about why they chose to name their thirteenth record (and fifth under this lineup) Mirage, though the resonance is obvious in hindsight: It’s the illusion of the band, rather than the full-blooded beast. The drug intake exceeded even that of Tusk, according to co-producer Ken Caillat. Harris observed communal meals eaten in silence. Mostly minus Nicks, they mingled their ghosts with those of the haunted Château d’Hérouville, just outside Paris, a destination chosen to accommodate Monaco resident Fleetwood’s tax affairs. Having accepted that the band weren’t interested in “shaking people’s preconceptions of pop,” as he sniffed to any reporter who would listen, Buckingham resolved that Fleetwood Mac’s next album should be a proper group effort. According to Buckingham’s then-girlfriend, Carol Ann Harris, he liked to refer to “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” as “Stop Draggin’ My Career Around.”
Her blousy mystique was the antithesis of his uptight theme, and to dent his fragile ego further, it had been validated by serious men: collaborators Tom Petty, Don Henley, and producer Jimmy Iovine, who she was now dating.
Where Tusk had taken a year to record, Nicks’ debut album, Bella Donna, was nailed in a few days, released in July, and certified Platinum by October-just as Buckingham’s Law and Order limped to No. “Looks like the end of the line,” the New York Post warned in March 1981, as solo careers started to proliferate. They were traveling in separate limos by the end of the bad-tempered Tusk tour, where Buckingham had kicked Nicks onstage, and they’d circled Europe on Hitler’s old train. In the wake of Buckingham’s departure in 2018, the group enlisted Crowded House singer Neil Finn and Tom Petty sideman Mike Campbell-big-name replacements that prove, after 50 years of smash hits and broken relationships, Fleetwood Mac still won’t stop thinking about tomorrow.After two records about cheating on each other, it was inevitable that Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine and John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood would begin to cheat on Fleetwood Mac. And even as more streamlined ‘80s efforts like Mirage and Tango in the Night reasserted their pop panache, Fleetwood Mac have remained a cauldron of drama and intra-band acrimony, the principal members seemingly coming and going without warning. On 1977’s Rumours, Fleetwood Mac dressed up the bitterest break-up songs in the smoothest, sultriest arrangements to the tune of over 40 million copies sold the album’s appeal is so universal that it’s been both cited by Courtney Love as an influence and used to soundtrack Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.īut the band were eager to play against pop-star type-1979’s double-album colossus Tusk betrayed Buckingham’s affinity for post-punk, and though it was deemed a commercial disappointment at the time, it has since been embraced as a cult classic by discerning indie rockers. But Nicks’ star turns on “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” revealed a darker mystique at the core of their easy-breezy sound and, as sudden success caused the long-term relationships within the band to disintegrate, their next release effectively invented a new genre: rock album as couples therapy. After a relocation to L.A., they welcomed singer/songwriter Lindsey Buckingham and his musical/romantic partner Stevie Nicks into the fold, heralding Fleetwood Mac’s transition into soft-rock hitmakers on their 1975 self-titled effort. Since the band’s formation in London in 1967, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie have served as both the rhythmic and spiritual anchors for a group that has hosted a revolving-door procession of outsized personalities, starting with Peter Green, the budding guitar god responsible for early hits like “Black Magic Woman” (famously covered by Santana) and the tranquil instrumental “Albatross” (which The Beatles admittedly aped on their Abbey Road track “Sun King”).Īfter Green quit in 1970, the band cycled through different frontmen-Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch among them-while their keyboardist, McVie’s wife Christine, emerged as a female vocal foil.
#Fleetwood mac mirage series#
Tension can be a great motivator for a band, and no group has put that maxim to the test quite like Fleetwood Mac, a ’60s British blues-rock outfit that-through a series of lineup changes, stylistic shifts, and rocky internal romances-became the paragons of ‘70s Californian pop.
0 kommentar(er)
