The Cadillac of Bands

Bone dry here -- haven't seen a rainy day in weeks, maybe months!

OK, I'm back. Sorry to be gone so long, but Never Never Land is a long way off, and it took awhile to return. Miss me? Probably not. I missed this though. Other things were pressing, so I had to give it a rest. But now ... . It feels great!

The year was either '73 or '74 -- y'know, the Dark Ages. Vinyl records, analog clocks, hardwired phones and big gas-guzzling cars. One Caddy was named the Fleetwood (I think). Supposedly a smooth ride. I wouldn't know. But that was the time (college freshman) I was watching a late-night TV program called The Midnight Special. I was at home for vacation or a break of some kind, and the Special featured a band that a lot of people had all but forgotten: Fleetwood Mac.

It was named for its drummer, Mick Fleetwood, and bass player, John McVie. They were the rhythm section for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in the late 60s, when Eric Clapton was the lead guitar man. (If you ever lay hands on the CD of that recording -- get it! The Clapton solos will blow your mind, especially if all you know of him was, say, "If I Could Change the World.").

Fleetwood and McVie formed a steady backing team, and when the Bluesbreakers roster changed (as it always did), Mick and John joined up with Peter Green and (I think later) Danny Kirwan to make their own band -- Fleetwood Mac. They were best known for "Albatross" -- an instrumental -- but Green reportedly had some mental problems and dropped out of the music business suddenly. The band was left with Kirwan, who (I think) brought in someone else to help the band recover. They recorded one of the great folk-rock albums of all time: "Kiln House" (Again, get this one!). A shy-sounding vocalist on one or two of the tracks was John's girlfriend, Christine Best.

The band I saw that night on TV blew me away. They'd found a sensational session guitarist to record and tour with them (I forget his name) and were backing their second record with their new lead singer/songwriter, Bob Welsh. The sound was totally different -- something I've never heard before or since from anybody. Atmospheric guitars, deep and melodic songwriting, harmonies from Welsh and now Christine (now Christine McVie), plus that incredibly solid, pulsing backbeat from the band's namesakes. I had to buy the album.

I also had to wait a few weeks for it to come in (record shipments were slow in those days), but I nailed it at the first opportunity. I wasn't disappointed at all. "Mystery to Me" was one of the best records I'd ever heard (at the time, anyway. My vinyl is long gone, and I don't have the CD.) The song that blew me away the farthest was "Hypnotized." (It even mentioned my state! In those days, North Carolina got mentioned by anybody outside stock car racing about as often as Albania does now). The song's about how easy it is to get put under a spell by a tall tale you want to hear very badly.

I kept waiting for the band to hit it big, appear on the national prime time TV, etc. But it never happened. The concert tour is now said to have been one of the biggest business disasters in rock history. Everything reportedly that could have gone wrong, did -- including (as I recall) Welsh's decision to quit the band for a solo career. The articles I read about it in Rolling Stone (by then, easy to get) and the other music mags pretty much wrote off Fleetwood Mac as a band.

Were they ever wrong. The three remaining band members (the lead guitar guy went back to session work, if memory serves) eventually hooked up with a duo experimenting with a new hybrid of contemporary folk, soft rock, and Appalachian "old-time" music. (Old-time music is the "hill country" music recorded before Bill Monroe invented bluegrass. Think "O Brother, Where Art Thou?") This hybrid did not have a name at the time, but it acquired one many years later: Americana.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham helped John, Christine and Mick record a very successful comeback album. The follow-up record to it was called "Rumors." It stayed at Number One on the Billboard album chart longer than any previous release in recording history. Only Michael Jackson's Thriller beat it (OK, bad pun) several years later, with the help of Quincy Jones and MTV.

Personally, I preferred the old Mystery to Me band (knowing me, I would). But I was glad all those taunts I had to endure in college ("You like what by who?") came back to haunt the taunters, when they fell all over each other to get a copy of Rumors.

BTW: Remember how I said the song "Hypnotized" is about how easy it is to fall under a spell? I'm sure you've all seen the gimmick about how the mesmerizer waves a gold pocket watch on its chain in front of somebody to "hypnotize" them. It came from old Westerns, where the snake-oil salesman would pull out a pocketwatch and wave it in front of some poor farmer to more easily deprive him of his wallet. You see, in the 1880's, gold watches were about as rare and as desirable as ultraportable computers are now. It isn't the waving of the watch in your face that hypnotizes you, it's your secret desire to have the watch in the first place (or cool, high-end computer, Maserati, whatever).

Next time: Heartbreak City.


LJ orig.: 05/02/07