Fleetwood Mac: Classic or Dud

I was close friends with a guy who had off and on booked clubs in Seattle, and was thus close to big shots in the 00s scene there, and as a result in the past decade got a major job at Spotify… so when I say that he really liked Tusk, he REALLY REALLY liked Tusk, in the way that white music people in the indie/alt space in the 00s were known to, and was way into everything the famous version of the band had done, had gone to see 'em when Xtine came back, etc etc. Eight years ago, he was staying with me in Brooklyn and I said, "you want to listen to the original Mac?"

"Uh, why would I want to do that?"

"Aren't you curious?"

"Not really"

And so we didn't. He liked the Stones, but was not interested in Brit blues that he didn't already know. I played him Raw Power instead, which he had never heard and didn't like. What I realized then was that he and a lot of other friends were all about the classic rock that everyone had grown up with, and the 80s/90s shit that middle class/upper class whites self identified as music people had known from their early adulthood/teen years, and which naturally led to Modest Mouse/ Decemberists/ Long Winters/ Death Cab and other stuff that is pretty easy going down, all things considered. but when it came to stuff that wasn't in the air or was really abrasive, like say Pere Ubu or Beefheart, that kind of stuff wasn't gonna fly.

For whatever reason, back in the early and mid '00s, I got a tremendous amount of shit for liking Bonnie Raitt and Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. Those two stood out as being unforgivable. It felt like some trendy tastemaker bullshit, and I even remember my friends shitting all over Rilo Kiley's last album because it sounded like Rumours to them. Then sometime around 2009 or later, it was like the pendulum had swung the other way for the very same age group, especially for that era of FM, to the point where I felt like I was surrounded by much bigger Buckingham/Nicks fans than I ever could be. Go figure.

Anyway, I prefer the Peter Green-era, just as I love the album Green did with John Mayall (and the one Mayall did with Clapton, etc.), but I never liked the idea of putting down one era simply because it was different from another. The "middle" years had plenty of gems, especially from Danny Kirwan and Christine McVie, and the 1975 LP, Rumours and Tusk are all great LP's, better than anything their SoCal pop contemporaries were making at the time.

my dad was a huge Peter Green era fan in high school.. “oh well” definitely got some fm play in California at least I think.

For whatever reason, back in the early and mid '00s, I got a tremendous amount of shit for liking Bonnie Raitt and Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. Those two stood out as being unforgivable. It felt like some trendy tastemaker bullshit, and I even remember my friends shitting all over Rilo Kiley's last album because it sounded like Rumours to them. Then sometime around 2009 or later, it was like the pendulum had swung the other way for the very same age group, especially for that era of FM, to the point where I felt like I was surrounded by much bigger Buckingham/Nicks fans than I ever could be. Go figure.

Maybe those of us who wrote for Stylus and worked for Pitchfork subsequently helped changed this attitude, but by 2004-2005 I remember having drunken rock crit conversations about "I Can't Make You Love Me" and a few years later Tango as Balearic classic.

"Hypnotized" is great, but "Bermuda Triangle" is one of the lamest attempts ever to concoct a followup hit. Probably he had a song called "Sasquatch" ready to complete his trilogy of unsolved mysteries.

Danny Kirwan was the only writer in that 1970-74 era who wrote consistently good songs. Christine McVie was still finding her way.

lol “Bermuda Triangle” rules

it sort of felt like peter green-era mac became cool a few years after tusk did in the late 2000s? probably just me reading this darn board though lol. there can't be many bands whose different eras line up with entire mini-generational changes in taste like that. i need a friend who would get me stoned and play me peter green-era mac for the first time. if you're blocking out that possibility then you need to re-examine your life choices imo.

Maybe those of us who wrote for Stylus and worked for Pitchfork subsequently helped changed this attitude, but by 2004-2005 I remember having drunken rock crit conversations about "I Can't Make You Love Me" and a few years later Tango as Balearic classic.

The world tide had been turning slowly since The Dance anyway: I recall a terrific Douglas Wolk piece on Tusk for CMJ in '97-98, and around the same time Alternative Press ran a Mac fact sheet for new listeners.

The real hipsters are into Dave Mason/Bekka Bramlett-era Mac now, it's the undiscovered country.

For whatever reason, back in the early and mid '00s, I got a tremendous amount of shit for liking Bonnie Raitt and Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. Those two stood out as being unforgivable. It felt like some trendy tastemaker bullshit, and I even remember my friends shitting all over Rilo Kiley's last album because it sounded like Rumours to them. Then sometime around 2009 or later, it was like the pendulum had swung the other way for the very same age group, especially for that era of FM, to the point where I felt like I was surrounded by much bigger Buckingham/Nicks fans than I ever could be. Go figure.

One of the first things I wrote for NME when I started there in 1999 was a "buried treasure" piece on the 1980 Live album, and the following week's letters page was full of screeds from irate readers outraged that any positive press had been given to the maligned and then-deeply-unfashionable Mac. They were ***hated*** back then.

The first I remember the hip tide turning was when Spin put out a Top Ten Underrated Albums List in some random issue, iirc, and it included both "Tusk" and "Paul's Boutique" (whose own tide turned radically shortly thereafter). This discussion has already taken place at length, iirc, in a Haim thread, right down to me mentioning the Spin list.

I read Tusk-is-awesome essays months before The Dance. I can tell you my friends, a few years younger than me, used that MTV performance as a gateway.

and Simon Reynolds wrote a seminal piece on Tusk in the early or mid '90s.

Redd Kross (and possibly other LA-centric bands of a similar vintage, but certainly them) were fond of talking up FM and Tusk in particular in and around this time period

and Simon Reynolds wrote a seminal piece on Tusk in the early or mid '90s.

Aye, in a Melody Maker book of essays on buried treasures that came free with the paper, iirc, and which was a BRILLIANT read (I have a copy here somewhere). Simon Price's essay on More Specials is also excellent.

There was a definite generational repulsion from Stevie/Lindsey-era Mac, though. I remember, when doing my Black Flag book, Keith Morris talking about how much he loved early Mac, and being at pains to emphasise how much they actually hated the Rumours-era band.

In the UK they were still a phenomenon through 1990's Behind the Mask, so I wonder if longevity fueled the disgust.

From the archival stuff I've read, it looks like Buckingham/Nicks FM always had strong critical support. Greil Marcus was already an enormous Peter Green-era fan, but he loved the later incarnations as well and was a fan of Tusk from the start. Christgau gave their first two albums an A- and an A when they came out, and Dave Marsh slotted a few of their singles into his 1001 Singles book. But I remember some old Rock List entry had them on a list of late '70s hits that was supposed to show why punk "had to happen," so there's that too. That era of punk and post-punk has always been my favorite rock music, but that's decades after the fact and not once did I ever feel like Rumours was somehow antithetical to everything I liked about music, even if most people I knew was shitting on it for a while.

In the UK they were still a phenomenon through 1990's Behind the Mask

I mean, sort of - I remember As Long As You Follow off the 1988 greatest hits getting play on the radio over here, but I don't remember anything off Behind The Mask. As for the backlash, I think they were just seen as fogeyish and from the past, and the single "I'd Rather Jack Than Fleetwood Mac" definitely put a negative spin on these veterans.

Years ago I skimmed through the DeRogatis-edited collection Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, which has an essay on Rumours where a critic fantasies about assassinating Fleetwood Mac on stage. Book came out in 2004, though I don’t know if the piece itself is older.

and "Go Your Own Way" is punk as fuck. And fuck punk.

I think the ubiquity is what hurt its reputation, however much. I have a good friend that's told me of family road trips in the '70s where it felt like radio was literally nothing but the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and occasionally Boston or something. That's when he told me he first felt a glimmer of the notion of "corporate rock," when it felt like someone higher up mandated that this music had to be played, like, every 20 minutes or something. So sure, I can imagine punk or whatever reacting against the ubiquity of Fleetwood Mac just as any of us might react to the ubiquity of anything we hear all the friggin' time. But there's a level of artistry and creativity to "Rumours" that counterbalances its slickness, and that's something I'd argue a band like the Eagles lacks.

and slickness is not a flaw in itself either

I was thinking about the Kill Your Idols book too. All the pieces in that were newly written. Book reviews singled out that Fleetwood Mac murder piece as among the worst of an uninspiring collection.

DeRo et al., on the cutting edge, taking aim at Fleetwood Mac in the '00s. That dude (who I like as a person), espousing all this BS contrarianism rooted so firmly in his formative views that he just sounds like a Quixotic crank. "You heard it here first, Springsteen is overrated!" etc.

xpost Not at all. But I bet the gleam would grate if it was all I ever heard on the radio.

A first-rate rhythm section, a singer-guitarist-songwriter with once-a-generation production acumen, and two female singer-songwriters with vastly different obsessions -- what's not to like?

And I love the Kirwan-Welch period too.

I mean, maybe Lester Bangs writing "James Taylor Marked For Death" in 1971 was a bold statement for the time, but expecting a pat on the back for writing about shooting that despised villain John McVie in 2004 is pathetic.
There were a few interesting articles in that book, despite the try-hard anti-boomer/Rolling Stone stance.

"Go Your Own Way" is punk as fuck.

Hells yeah. When Tango In the Night came out, a UK station here aired the Mirage-era concert movie, which I taped as a fresh Mac obsessive, and the fierceness and intensity of Lindsey and Stevie onstage was like nothing else I'd ever seen. The version of The Chain is still straight fire.

I mean, maybe Lester Bangs writing "James Taylor Marked For Death" in 1971 was a bold statement for the time, but expecting a pat on the back for writing about shooting that despised villain John McVie in 2004 is pathetic.

Also that piece was genuinely hilarious. Actually being funny can get you forgiven for many sins, and Lester's "larger than life" rep has, I feel, obscured for quite a few people the fact that he was a brilliant, brilliant writer.

and there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGykwC0fdJ4

there's a level of artistry and creativity to "Rumours" that counterbalances its slickness, and that's something I'd argue a band like the Eagles lacks.

― Josh in Chicago

Post an uncontroversial music opinion

Well, sure, but my point was that even back then, almost 50 years ago, the Eagles personified '70s villainy much better than the Mac, but both bands, for several years, were nonetheless slotted in the same file, which makes me think the inescapable ubiquity of both made many people miss said FM artistry and craft, focusing entirely on the slickness.

^^Same thing w/Steely Dan.

...and England Dan and John Ford Coley.

xpost Yeah, exactly, I've known so many people that have flocked to Steely Dan for the same reason they flock to Jimmy Buffett, to have a good time, despite Steely Dan almost always being explicitly about *not* having a good time. (See also: Fleetwood Mac).

xp Yes, I imagine that's why I was raised on the Stones, Dylan, Van Morrison etc. but not Fleetwood Mac; I didn't discover them until my early twenties.

I went over to my parents' house the other day and my dad started pulling records out of his collection that he never listens to and handing them to me; I ended up with "Rumours," "Tusk," and "Tunnel of Love."

Good for you.

Well, sure, but my point was that even back then, almost 50 years ago, the Eagles personified '70s villainy much better than the Mac, but both bands, for several years, were nonetheless slotted in the same file, which makes me think the inescapable ubiquity of both made many people miss said FM artistry and craft, focusing entirely on the slickness.

I remember a lot of the haters conflating FM with the Eagles, which to me was a pretty terrible and superficial assessment. There's a lot about the Eagles that I genuinely despise, where they sound so full of themselves or come off as misogynist assholes. Some great stuff, there's at least a dozen cuts that I really like, but there's much more that I really, really don't.

Re: punk and FM, I think Marcus gave one of my favorite takes on FM, specifically Buckingham. Punk isn't just a sound, and the best thing about them IS punk. Not a written piece, it's from an interview by Geoff Pevere published in 1993:

GP: In the late ‘7os many people were saying that bands like Fleetwood Mac were the reason why punk needed to exist. Punk was an antidote for the kind of music Fleetwood Mac was making, and yet you make a very interesting claim in your book for the Tusk album being a response to punk. Tell me more about that.

GM: Well, I think throwing Fleetwood Mac on the same garbage pile as James Taylor and Carly Simon is ludicrous.

GP: I agree.

GM: Fleetwood Mac began as a blues band; they never lost their edge, even during their sort of California period with Bob Welch, when he was singing all these songs about the Bermuda Triangle and stuff like that.

But in 1977, that’s the year that the Sex Pistols really break as an international act of terrorism. That’s the Sex Pistols’ year. And in some ways the toughest record of that year is “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac...It was as harsh and explosive and confusing a piece of hard rock as anyone had heard since the Who. After that, after Rumors then becomes a huge album, sells twenty million copies or whatever it sold, Fleetwood Mac comes along with Tusk. A two record set, the typical thing a big, mainstream rock band does after they’ve had a big hit; they get self-indulgent and sloppy. Tusk‘s first single is the title song “Tusk.” It was recorded with the UCLA marching band, sounds like they recorded backwards underwater. There’s just bits and pieces of tape loops flying around, and it sounds like this group of amateur musicians lurching toward a song that stays out of reach laughing at them, saying Can’t catch me, can’t catch me! This is what they released as a single? And they did what Nirvana is now trying to do; they said, “Can you keep up with us? Can we keep up with you? We’re gonna try something radical and different.” Lindsay Buckingham, who by that time was the real leader of Fleetwood Mac, had decided that what he was hearing in punk was what drew him to rock and roll in the first place, and here he was now a multimillionaire, a mainstream musician, who’s expected to do exactly what he did the time before, and he did his best to confound those expectations.

I find this particularly interesting because I know something about the world Lindsay Buckingham came out of. We went to the same high school. I went a number of years earlier; I went to school with his brothers. His brothers were swimming stars and class presidents; they were golden boys, and Lindsay Buckingham, though you may say he’s a golden boy, too—he’s made all this money, he’s rich and famous—he was not a golden boy in that family. He’s the one who stepped outside of the future that was prepared for him in that high school, as a class president which he didn’t become—this was a family dynasty, you have to understand—of the future in business, which he turned his back on and he became, for a number of years anyway, a failed, starving musician. That’s not what he was raised to be. So that same spirit, coming out of this very comfortable, very appealing, really good place to go to school and to grow up—Menlo Park, California; Atherton, California—this guy had a “no” in his soul already, and in a way what Tusk was about was his attempt to discover that “no:’ Whether or not he found it, I’m not sure. But it was a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to anybody who thought that they had this band pinned down. And I think that “we really don’t care” attitude was always there in the band.

That's exactly the clip I meant, Alfred. Imagine seeing that as a ten-year-old and having your mind absolutely blown wide open. Why are those two beautiful people screaming at each other??

And there was an immensely chey documentary that ran on late night TV around that time, that spelled out the history of the Mac with less wit or invention than the later Rock'n'Roll Family Trees episode on the Mac (which stands as the acme of its era of rockumentary tbh), but still spelled out enough detail of drug-maddened guitarists, internecine affairs and emotional warfare (and the fake Fleetwood Mac that toured in the early 70s) to truly pique a dumb young kid's imagination.

“Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac...It was as harsh and explosive and confusing a piece of hard rock as anyone had heard since the Who.

luv Greil, this is a great observation/opinion

As was this:

this guy had a “no” in his soul already

I read an early condensed version in In the Fascist Bedroom.

Wasup with these new "demos" singles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xdOzAm78gM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx8UZgg5TtI

Never liked "Go Your Own Way" even a little bit, but I did spend most of a recent day re-remembering how colossal "The Chain" is and comparing live versions to see which one extended the coda the longest, helped along by my younger (27) roommate's enthusiasm. Mac love ain't going nowhere.

xpost I have no idea why they were released, but both those songs are from the Tusk era and appear on the Live album, and apparently haven't been performed or released since.

Huh, I guess "Fireflies" was released as a live single? Peaked at number 60.

go your own way is top 5 for me, its the christine mcvie songs i mostly cant stand. have always hated don't stop, oh daddy and songbird from that album. you make lovin fun can stay though.

the demo tracks come from the recent box set reissue of the sublime 1980 Live album, which also has an accompanying bonus CD of live tracks from 1975-82

"Oh Daddy" is the least interesting song on the album, but "Songbird" is so well sung and so poised that I can't toss it, especially when my experience hearing the live versions deepens the studio cut.