You Make Polling Fun: FLEETWOOD MAC POLL RESULTS, ILM Artist Poll #22

> He used to draw people into his life, strangers off planes and off the streets, and they’d become his best friends.

i won't name names or anything....

heard "Silver Springs" on the radio several times even way back in '77. The first time I heard it the DJ announced it beforehand and I thought Fleetwood Mac couldn't about Silver Spring and assumed it was a coincidence, and the opening lyric convinced me I was right. I only later learned the name did indeed come from Silver Spring, the city.

Stevie Nicks usually says in interviews that she saw a road sign for Silver Spring when she was in Virginia. Silver Spring is in Maryland, a state which borders Virginia although Silver Spring itself is a few miles inward and doesn't itself border Virginia. I keep trying to guess where in Virginia she'd come across a sign giving mileage or directions to Silver Spring - probably traveling eastward on the DC Beltway, or perhaps northward on interstate 95 from Richmond or Alexandria.

― Lee626, Thursday, July 26, 2012 7:29 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We're lucky she was on the DC beltway instead of the Baltimore beltway when inspiration struck or else we might have gotten "Sulphur Springs"

Stevie's hair on the cover of Little Lies makes me sad.

yet Christine's broach cheers me up.

*brooch

Klonopin does such horrible things to hair.

It's unreal how she pissed away a decade on that stuff, all of it with the blessings of an MD, I presume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFGKk0rPq4Q

this song is credited as a lindsey buckingham / brian wilson co-write. it's... not very good. D:

We're lucky she was on the DC beltway instead of the Baltimore beltway when inspiration struck or else we might have gotten "Sulphur Springs"

you could be my dundalk

Timonium casts a spell on you, but you won't forget me

Never have I been a blue, calm sea
I have always been downy ocean

and the lanslide brought me lansdowne

don't go back to rockville

ok maybe not that

would you stay if she promised you hampden?
will you ever win?

Rock on, Arbutus woman

bellona donna

all alone on the edge of... seton hall

lol *hill darn

"Hackensack! Hackensack!/In the middle of my room..."

Hahaha that's so bad.

Linthicum rings like a bell through the night...

Somebody mentioned upthread that "Station Man" and "Hypnotized" carried over into 1975-76, and "Oh Well" is on the 1980 live album. Did any pre-75 material hang around in their live set after 1980?

I recall a dj on the local classic rock station claiming "Hypnotized" popped up in the setlist for a recent reunion tour.

I think some of this stuff sneaked back into their set in '87, once Burnette & Vito replaced LB. Rattlesnake Shake became a staple on that tour, and Black Magic Woman got played as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZVIEaKV4cI

This poll, which I didn't participate sent me back through the entire Buckingham/Nicks-era catalog. In addition to Rumours (and I concur with Al's sentiment that it's pretty clearly the best, revisionism notwithstanding), the first stunner for me in the bunch was "Monday Morning," which is such an effusive way to open this era of their career. I also think Mirage is a pretty underrated record all in all. "Gypsy" and "Hold Me" are incredible singles -- and the production on the whole is kind of a perfect fusion of the Rumours smoothness and Tusk's out of tune guitars (the cover snap is also outstandingly Shakespearian).

One thing: the poll also prompted me to buy the Caillat book, which hipped me to how Lindsey apparently has this long history of physically abusing people -- particularly women (which is confirmed here).

How is this not better known about him? Do people just write it off as the price of genius or something?

i read a chunk of Harris' book one long afternoon at the bookstore two summers ago, and while her blithe entitlement got on my nerves I had no reason to doubt the events therein.

I believe "Blithe Entitlement" was the original title of Mirage.

blithe entitlement is snorting coke with Stevie Nicks in a parked car outside a house where a big early eighties Hollywood party's taking place.

I just read the Caillat book too! It was absolutely worth the read. I loved all the little production details. So much great information there. Wish he hadn't been as hung up on Nina from the Record Plant. What a cornball.

I love this exchange b/w Courtney Love and Nicks:

CL: One thing you've always done, I realized recently, is write about these muses, these other females, these goddesses. These parts of yourself. You don't write big, sexy love ballads about men. I wondered why that was for you? Because I do the same thing. I was listening to a song of Billy Corgan's yesterday called "I Need a Lover." It's sexy, okay. But I'm listening and I'm going, I can't write like this.

SN: You know who else asked me that same question a long time ago: Prince. We were really close for a while--we never went to bed together, but we had something that was very, very special. And he always said, Why don't you write songs that are more sexual? And I said, Well, because that's not the way I am in my real life. I am not a person who walks naked through the house. I will always have something beautiful on. It will be beautiful, and it will enhance me.

Those last two sentences!

There's so many layers to Courtney's question. It's not clear to me that she's only -or even at all- asking about the lack of explicit sexuality in Stevie's music. The way she frames the question tells me she's trying to find out whether her own muse is as autonomous (from men) and feminist ("these other females", "these goddesses", "these parts of yourself") in spirit as Courtney has made her out to be ("Because I do the same thing").

Stevie's answer is very "Stevie", in that neo-Victorian way of hers, and in its final two sentences(which I doubt she would have uttered circa 1975), somewhat diva-ish. But in that answer too, there's more than that, which I can barely begin to articulate..

I was listening to Bjork yesterday, and it strikes me how different sexuality plays out there. Bjork seems to be perpetually startled by sex (and love too), and she keeps circling around this sense of awe and wonder, and gutturaly celebrating it. With Nicks you could say, well, she wants to cover "nakedness" up in something beautiful, and in this way she's just a big prude. But I think it's something else. I think, unlike Guomundsdottir, she's just not at all startled by her sexuality, or even desire more broadly, at all. If anything, what she's "startled" by (constantly disappointed by, more precisely) is the other side of it: the frustration of desire, the loss of the the loved one, and the ensuing aftermath of mourning or melancholy ("I know I could have loved you but you would not let me").

I just read the Caillat book too! It was absolutely worth the read. I loved all the little production details. So much great information there. Wish he hadn't been as hung up on Nina from the Record Plant. What a cornball.

He was kinda corny across the board though, no? It's one of the things I liked about the book. The guy outwardly acquired all the accoutrements of 70s California cool - the gig, the car, the babes, the deductible cocaine- but throughout it he retains a "wow gee-whiz" tone about the whole thing. He comes across as genuinely digging and respecting the people around him, without being blind to their flaws.

Agreed -- I thought it was a great read. How could you not be jealous of him?

You know, aside from the whole Lindsey-choking-him thing.

I have just now realized Lindsey is playing here in town tonight. Snapped up a ticket pronto. Made me glad for this poll having reignited my Lindsey interest.

I saw him in August: a brief, intense performance. Terrific.

Yeah, that was a great show. I liked the contrast between his zenned-out stage patter and the taut, manic playing. Rock and roll.

I showed Christine McVie a little bit of love.

I will forever believe that the chorus to “Hold Me” was cooked up by Lindsey in the studio and that he deserves a writing credit. The original refrain is shit.

Sounds like he added the background gremlins and tightened the lyric?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbYV6PO6UKY

xp :) every good blog post starts with a pre-emptive riposte to the reader

Christine stands in opposition to the general narrative that Lindsay came on board and pushed the band into being a pop juggernaut (not to diminish his contributions)

but Christine's style and songwriting was already pretty established, there's stuff in the Bob Welch/Kirwin era that could easy slot into FM or Rumours

like this for example, love this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmJtRnazW20

Is there a good 70s or 80s live version of “angel” on any sanctioned release or good boot?

I shouldve voted for Coming Home & the 74 Angel. Heroes is a bit of a monster; prob Bob Welch's finest hour (while Christine is warming up for the s/t next year)

Bad Loser too tbh

Don't Stop over Sands of Time and Woman of 1000 Years? Criminal.

A few years ago, I bought four of the early-'70s albums as budget CDs: Future Games, Bare Trees, Mystery to Me, and Heroes Are Hard to Find. I did play them all in the car, but only once and put them away. Took them out again last week and was really struck by two instrumentals (well, one's a near-instrumental): "Sunny Side of Heaven" and "Safe Harbour."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxUtZSdXy6A

They only got one vote between them in this poll--would have added them to my ballot for sure, also "Forever."

I'd never heard Behind the Mask, but the other day my shuffle gave me something that I assumed was Christine solo, but no. Behind the Mask. It was ok.

I want to buy the one CD I'm missing in that sequence above, Penguin, but it's not part of the same budget series and very over-priced on Amazon for some reason ($35 used plus shipping).