Fleetwood Mac -Rumours

Drama…we all seem to go through some kind of drama…either our own or hearing about someone else’s. I was talking with some friends the other day and two of those friends talked about “not dealing” with someone else’s drama.  Of course, it ultimately comes down to how we choose to deal with it. Do we get “dramatic” about it or do we find other outlets to express it?  It seems when others have dramas, we become strangely attracted to their troubles. Somehow, we find it nice to know that others have the same issues under duress.  We look at their dramas and we can feel better about ourselves knowing that others may have things much worse than we do. That may explain why the general public loves the idea of reality shows and (in this case) music.

There are many albums that (as a listener) I’ve heard so much that I know it from beginning to end to the point that it’s practically embedded in my DNA. I know that I’m not alone in this either. I actually read that Jason Bonham(son of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham) used to travel with his dad to Motocross competitions and listen to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on his dad’s state-of-the-art 8-track player for the duration of the trips. I don’t know the first time I heard Rumours. But, I know that it’s something I’ve known for 33 years of my life and it wasn’t until my own marriage ended that I was able to relate to it in a lyrical sense to the themes of heartbreak, jealousy and betrayal. These are all things that come when a relationship ends and yet you must continue to communicate with the person who hurt you and caused this heartache and pain.
Released in 1977, Rumours was the work of 5 musicians and songwriters in a state of personal and emotional turmoil. Fleetwood Mac originally started as an off shoot of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers where the rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood formed a band to showcase the guitar prowess of Peter Green. Various personnel changes led to the recruitment of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend/vocalist Stephanie “Stevie” Nicks. They recorded the band’s 1975 self titled (white album) and brought the band to the forefront of 1970’s pop-rock hierarchy. Soon after that “white” album, Stevie and Lindsey broke up as did keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie and husband John McVie. Even drummer Mick Fleetwood experienced marital strife with his wife Jenny when she moved back to England with his two kids.
At the time of the release of this album, I was 10 years old. One of the things my sisters contributed to my musical growth was exposing me to some great music of the time(they also exposed me to some real stinkers too)  In 1977, one of the formats to experience music through was the 8-track cassette.  Looking back, the 8-track is a rather amusing format to explain to someone who was born in the mid to late 80’s that has never experienced them. My sister Kathy owned Fleetwood Mac Rumours on 8-track and one of my memories of this album was my sister washing the family station wagon while Rumours blared on her portable 8-track player.  My sister was also a fan of watching all kinds of music TV and Awards shows. This is before MTV and so we would watch all the American Bandstand performances and variety shows. She would stay up late and watch the Midnight Special on NBC. I was too young to stay up and watch them. Occasionally, she would wake me up to watch (maybe) Steve Martin do a bit of his comedy act on Midnight Special. But, not more than that. We would watch the Grammy awards and the American Music Awards and stuff like that.  I can remember watching those awards shows the year that Fleetwood Mac seemed to sweep the awards. Every time an award was announced, the camera would be on Stevie, Lindsey, Christine, John and Mick and they would stand up to make their way to accept yet another award.
After the success of Rumours, the band (obviously) grew in popularity and released 3 more albums with the same lineup until early 1988 when Lindsey opted out of a tour and ultimately left to pursue his own solo career. In that time, they released Tusk (1979), Mirage(1982) and Tango in the Night(1987) and I remember distinct memories and small discussions about each of those albums. I remember visiting my cousins the summer of 79 or 80 and they had a cassette copy of Tusk as I recall thinking it was a strange and amusing title for an album. In my early high school years, I remember seeing the video for Hold Me in wide rotation on Friday Night Videos, TBS’s Night Tracks and HBO’s Video Jukebox.  The image of the band walking through the desert and the pile of guitars in the middle of a sand dune is embedded in my memory.  The entertainment media definitely made every album out to be a big event and I even remember seeing bits of pieces of an HBO concert that was recorded too.  My friend John even made some comment about Mick Fleetwood being so stoned and out of it during the HBO concert. Looking back at the band’s trouble with drugs and alcohol, it’s not a big surprise and he was probably right. In 1987, they released Tango in the Night and the first single was the (very 80’s sounding) Big Love. I’ve heard that Lindsay basically did that song all himself because of the colossal addictions of the other members.  This was yet another album and it was definitely another media event and yet another topic of conversation that would usually start with the question “have you heard the new Fleetwood Mac album and what do you think?”
In early 1988, Lindsey announced he was not doing the accompanying tour and was leaving the band to pursue his solo recording career.  The band soldiered on with two new members to replace Lindsey. Soon the drama was gone and the media (and the public) didn’t want to really hear about Fleetwood Mac any more. Stevie Nicks continued to make her own solo records and it just didn’t seem like a big deal like it was in the 70’s and early 80’s.
In 1992, Lindsey finally released his first solo album 4 years after leaving “the Mac” called Out of the Cradle.  I was working as a manager of Tape World in Omaha’s Crossroads Mall and we received a promo CD copy of this album. We were always receiving promo copies of some kind. I took the CD home and put it in my home stereo and the production just floored me.  The vocals and instruments would swoop from one speaker to the another across the room and take me on an aural adventure.  It was incredibly inventive and performed with excellent musical prowess. But, the songwriting was very catchy and very pop oriented. But, It was so good that I went back to work and my assistant manager and I would talk endlessly about how good this was.  Then, we would start talking about Fleetwood Mac to the point of obsession. In those days, the record companies were always coming up with a reason to release some kind of box set and Fleetwood Mac was no exception. Warner Brothers released a Mac box set called the Chain.  My assistant manager-Kevin bought it and made cassette copies of it so we could listen to it on the store. 
Also at this time, was the big 1992 Presidential election year where Bill Clinton was using Mac’s Don’t Stop as his campaign “theme song”.  I’m not the kind of person who likes it when a song is associated with something or someone other than the original theme of the music. Eventually, Clinton asked the band to reunite and play for his presidential inaugural ball. Music fans and Mac fans took notice and it was once again…a big event.  But, this was definitely a reason to take notice of some great music. With the combination of the exposure through Clinton’s campaign, Lindsey’s Solo album and the new box, my interest in “the Mac” was blooming.  I even woke up one morning listening to Omaha’s Z-92 as my alarm went off to the sounds of the lead off track Second Hand News. By this time, I decided I would no longer wait to own the one album I had vaguely known since I was 10 and just buy it. I would dub it onto a cassette for portability purposes and had it with me almost all the time.
Fast forward from 1993 to the summer of 1997. The band regrouped with Lindsey, Stevie, Christine, John and Mick for a full fledged reunion concert and MTV special called The Dance.  Once again, this was an event. There was a concert video, DVD and CD released.  Everyone I knew that was a fan of pop music was talking about the reunion concert.  Guitarists and musicians were bowled over by Lindsey’s guitar picking style during his solo turn on Big Love.  We talked about Stevie’s emotional rendering of Landslide and the maniacal look on Mick Fleetwood’s face as he provided the unique backbeat to all the songs.
1997 was also the 20th anniversary of Rumours.  VH1 highlighted the album on their new Classic Albums Revisited show.  Of course, I was excited to see this show and suddenly saw(as they pushed the faders up and down) the intricacies of that album.  John McVie is truly a genius of the bass guitar. His bass line break in The Chain and Go Your Own Way are so incredible and undeniable. Christine McVie takes a bluesy shuffle like Don’t Stop  and turns it into a pop music classic. The fantastic vocal harmonies of Christine McVie, Lindsey and Stevie compliment each other flawlessly.  But, what still floors me every time is the layered guitar sounds that Lindsey constructs during the intro to Go Your Own Way.

I’ve watched the documentaries and the episodes of Behind the Music about Fleetwood Mac countless times. 1001 Albums summarizes

The Lazarus-like renaissance and transformation of a London-based blues band into the cutting edge Los Angeles-based world champions of Adult Oriented Rock is one of the greatest stories in rock’s rich history.

I’ve heard the stories that Stevie and Lindsey tell of each other.  After the dissolution of my own marriage, I try to relate how these guys somehow make it work in a civil sense. They are forever linked with this band and the music they’ve written and made for this band. In a sense, the music is the offspring or children of their creative union.  So, they are connected through those songs much like I am connected to the mother of my son whom we are both very proud of.
Is it hard for Stevie and Lindsey to be around each other? Is it hard (or tense…or uneasy) for any divorced or separated couple to be around their former love? I can only speak for myself…..and my answer is…….well….er….um……..YES!  If you’ve never been divorced, I’m not sure you would know. I have and it’s hard to know that the person who was your everything is suddenly not.  Now, Imagine you are on the world stage like Lindsey and Stevie and your “drama” is a “Big event” to your fans and the media for years and years after the breakup.  By now, I don’t feel like my drama is anywhere near as big as theirs. But, for myself, the music of Fleetwood Mac-Rumours helps me to get through my own breakup and heartaches knowing that someone can express their feelings through music and somehow I can relate to it.
Even as I write this, I have stopped and started this blog many times to try and figure out how to express my appreciation for an album that I first heard as a 10 year old boy and that grew into a love for the music and eventually as a tool of therapy for myself as a 43 year old man. All I can say is that I hope that I’ve conveyed those feelings as I’ve written this blog.
Thank you!

Yes – Fragile

This past week, I was going through a bin of closeout/used CD’s marked at 4 for $1. One of the CD’s I came across was a band (and CD) called White.  Being the music(and drumming) fanatic that I am, I knew this was Yes drummer-Alan White’s band. So, with that in mind, I want to go back and talk about an album released the same year I started kindergarten!

In 1972, I was 5 years old. It would be 13 years later that I would come to love and appreciate the music of an English band known as YES. It wasn’t as if I’d never seen the name of the band. But, it would be a college friend that would educate me and eventually get me hooked on the music of YES!
During my teen years, I really loved flipping through records/albums in Mall record stores, department stores, and independent record stores. My father was the general manager of a department store and I remember going through the kid’s records and then gradually making my way into the Rock stuff. I was especially drawn to the Beatles after finding out I shared the same birthday with some guy named Ringo Starr. I would start at the A’s and flip through all the records till I got to the Z’s.  I would also peruse through the (what I found out later were called) cut-out bins too. These albums were usually very cheap. But, sometimes, I would find some cool treasures. I often remember getting to the Y section and I would inevitably come across an album(or two) by the band yes,,,,probably Tormato or Drama.
In 1983, There was a big buzz going about the band YES. This was the early days of MTV and music videos.  One of the songs in wide rotation on all video outlets was the song Owner of a Lonely Heart and the album was called 90125.  All of a sudden, YES was everywhere and (from what I heard) I liked it.
Fast forward to the fall of 1985. It’s my freshman year of college. I started my college career as a music education major and one of the first things I was involved with was the College Marching band. On my first day of early marching band rehearsals, I met up with a friend I had met the summer before at KSC Music camp. I walked into rehearsal and saw my friend Shaun. In the summer of 1984, Shaun had educated us small town kids from North Platte about what punk and hardcore was really like by introducing us to bands like Suicidal Tendencies and the Butthole Surfers. He taught me that Punk was more than funny hair colors and goofy clothes that the mainstream media had saturated the public as “Punk Rock”.  After about the second day of band rehearsals, a bunch of us were on our way to a meal of some kind at the campus cafeteria. Shaun shared the information that he had listened to the first 3 YES albums the night before. Wait a minute…YES? The same guy I knew as a punk aficionado was listening to YES? It turns out Shaun had a girlfriend back in Lincoln that was a big YES fan and got him turned onto the band and he turned out to be more of a fan than she was.
This was 1985. Most of my peers had heard the multi-platinum selling album 90125 from 1983. But, very little of them knew about the albums from the 70’s lineups.  I may have heard of Roundabout at one point…maybe!  Shaun was not a fan of the 80’s/Trevor Rabin lineup. He used to say (or rather PROCLAIM) that it wasn’t YES without Steve Howe on Guitar or Bill Bruford on drums. Well, Bruford left after the album Close to the Edge and by 1982, Steve Howe was a member of the new 80’s supergroup-Asia.  Bassist Chris Squire has been the only member to see the band through all of its incarnations.
After meals at the Student Union, we’d walk back to his dorm room and Shaun would pull out a hollow body electric guitar and strum a few songs. But, he would always “warm up” with the opening notes and riff from YES’s Roundabout from the 1971 album Fragile.

Through Shaun, I became more and more interested in the band.  In 1985, Atlantic Records released a live concert video and album of the band’s 1984 tour called 9012LIVE.  As I was walking through the dorms or the student union, I saw a live video of YES (with Trevor Rabin) performing a song that I didn’t know and wasn’t on the 90125 album. They just kept singing something about “All Good People”.  It was complex, longer in length that usual pop songs and really cool.  So, I went to the only expert on YES songs that I knew. Obviously, Shaun told me it was a song called I’ve Seen All Good People from 1971’s The YES Album.
A couple years had passed and I was working at Dustys Records and I had access to all kinds of music. As employees, we would see all kinds of used tapes, LP’s and (later) CD’s come in the store. There was a very “mousey” woman(don’t remember her name) that was a huge YES fan. She began bringing in her old YES LP’s and replace them with a CD copy.  By this time, I had become a fan myself. I think I had heard a CD compilation of the 70’s music.  So, I began to snatch them up for myself.  The three I was most interested in were The YES Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge.
I have a distinct memory of getting my pristine used copy of Fragile back to my apartment and I was ready for some serious listening.  In other words, I sat on my bed and plugged in a set of headphones for optimum aural enjoyment and discernment. I put on the headphones and (of course) the album starts off with Roundabout.  Steve Howe’s flamenco style intro starts the song and into a freight train riff accompanied by Chris Squire’s monster Rickenbacher bass and the pulsating rhythms of Bill Bruford on drums.  After that, the album begins to highlight the individual members of the band and their respective talents. I definitely remember looking at the liner original liner notes and realizing all the musicians had their own showcase pieces.  The second track is Cans and Brahms dedicated to the talents of keyboardist(and new guy) Rick Wakeman. It’s a classical extract from Brahm’s 4th symphony. It’s a mix of Wakeman’s accelerated talents on various flavors of keyboard sounds.   Wakeman had come in to replace original member Tony Kaye on keyboards.  It’s According to 1001 Albums :

Jon Anderson and Chris Squire sought to develop the band’s sound with newfangled synthesizers. Tony Kaye’s preference for Hammonds(and arguments with roommate Steve Howe) led to his exit in August, by which time Wakeman had left the Strawbs, bringing Yes a whole new level of virtuosity and showmanship.

Next up is vocalist Jon Anderson’s multi-layered vocal exercise known as We Have Heaven.  As I listened with headphones, this was hypnotic as the vocals swirled around me. This song could also be a great credit to producer Eddie Offord and his inventive production skills.
South Side of the Sky is next as is definitely a showcase for the band as a unit. In the liner notes of my 1993 Gold-Disc, Bob Mack states:

…both the title and sound effects of which anticipate Dark Side of the Moon.  This may be the hardest rocker they ever did and it’s hard to say which is cooler; the lumber bass riff, Steve Howe’s mathematical but woodsy guitar runs, of the way Bill Bruford kickstarts the beat at both the beginning and after the windy, piano-tinkling middle section

Drummer Bill Bruford short 38 second avant-garde piece is next and is important to note that Bruford was all of 20 years old when he held the drum throne for the recording of this album.
Side two of the album starts off with Long Distance Runaround.  I love how Wakeman’s keyboards and Steve Howe’s guitar start this song together then to be propelled by the Bruford/Squire rhythm section. The song goes from driving beat to laid back with an underlying rhythm while Anderson and Squire harmonize vocally.

The song then segues seamlessly into Chris Squire’s bass showcase known as Fish(Schindleria Praematurus).  The band definitely stretches out and gets to show all of their instrumental chops. Bruford has always championed himself as a jazz drummer and fan of instrumental experimentalism.
Steve Howe is next with his acoustic guitar suite Mood for a Day.  Howe’s guitar playing is definitely a different animal from the rest of the guitar heroes of the 70’s. Most players were from the blues school of playing established by Clapton, Beck, Page and Hendrix. So, Howe was a distinctive voice in the world of aggressive (and louder) players of the hard rock 70’s.
Heart of the Sunrise closes the album with a piece of music that clocks in at 11:26. This song is made of different movements that ebb and flow with relentless musical prowess and then to subtle dreamy vocals and then more complicated riffing and rhythms. Once again, Bob Mack in the 1993 liner notes states how this influenced the metal bands of the 80’s

Finally, the colossal coda, “Heart of the Sunrise” ends the album by pounding the listener into submission with an accelerated, all instrumental-united attack that was adopted a decade later by practitioners of “speed” or “thrash” metal. The only difference between this song and Metallica is that Jon Anderson can sing

At first, I don’t think my mind could take in this whole song. It wasn’t until years afterwards that I truly appreciated the depth of musicianship on this album.

After college, I worked at the Dustys Records store in Grand Island.  In the summer of 1991, Atlantic Records released a box set titled YES-years which featured 4 discs of music from all of the band’s lineups. It was so much to take in. I just became such a fan that I wanted to take in all that I could by the band. Also that year, the band released an album with the 80’s version of the band and the “Fragile” lineup called Union.  It was a summer of much YES music. I liked a lot of the early stuff and then the 80’s stuff too. For the past 5 days, I have been on a YES kick that has only fueled this blog. As I write this blog, I am influenced by the 1993 liner notes. YES was very instrumental and influential not only to the genre of progressive rock and bands like Rush and Kansas, They also influenced pop music. 90’s Pop producer Trevor Horn was once a member of the band and then a producer of such acts like Seal(among others). 
In 1001 Albums…

Critically lauded and Top Ten in the UK and the United States, it signaled, as Jon said, “Yes are a people’s band” – albeit people with a love of the music at its most complex