LaRM day 153 (Fleetwood Mac)

I've always considered myself to be pretty much the ultimate indie boy and I've never had any intention of growing up, but doing this idiotic project has revealed the terrible truth: I've got old and so has my taste.  When it really comes down to it I've finally reached that age where, when faced with the choice, I'll probably pick "classic rock" over indie-schmindie every time.  How did that happen? When did that happen? Is it really just inevitable? In any event, it's absolutely proven by the fact that I'm delighted to have finally reached the three largest, most glittering jewels in the "classic rock" crown: Fleetwood Mac's California cocaine trilogy.  Now these three albums have iconic status anyway with the silly old duffers of this world, but gradually it's reached the point where people under 50 are allowed to admit that these are three of the finest rock records ever made.  After all the quaint English blues jams and ineffectual messing around, it took a couple of headstrong (if coke addled) and viciously ambitious Americans joining the band to make it a rock powerhouse.  The first album after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined and immediately took control of the band was 1975's Fleetwood Mac, which, although certainly the weakest of the three albums,  is nevertheless a fantastic statement of intent.  Entirely gone are those blues riffs, entirely gone is the delicate experimentalism, and in their place is the most grandstandingly showy and shiny rock-pop, produced to the nth degree with absolutely clinical precision and performed as if under threat of physical violence, the whole thing is beyond pristine.  The songs are, with a couple of exceptions, as cast-iron as the production, there are no chinks in this stuff, it's almost as if written by machine.  And that's precisely why the whole thing works so beautifully, because it's only in the making of the records that the band functioned pefectly - in every other aspect of their lives they were entirely dysfunctional, and it's that complete incapability of handling life outside the studio that gives these otherwise chilly, smooth songs their life and their warmth. Performed with precision, written with precision and produced with precision, the band nevertheless couldn't help but let all of the mess of their spectacularly screwy lives into the records too.  In terms of the songs on Fleetwood Mac, most of them are great, from the simple pop of 'Monday Morning' to the gloomy Nicks-led 'Rhiannon' and 'Sugar Daddy', from Christine McVie's sentimental beauties 'Warm Ways' and 'Say You Love Me' to Buckingham's angry 'World Turning', it's pretty much all gold.  The only low points are an excessively mawkish 'Crystal' and strangely lifeless 'I'm So Afraid'.  Of course the high point is the Buckingham-Nicks showcase 'Landslide' which really is a remarkably fine song, borne aloft by Nicks' affectingly fragile vocals.

What is there to say about Rumours that hasn't been said a thousand times before?  It's a mammoth record in terms of its stature, its reputation and its sales figures and although in truth the songs aren't quite as watertight as they at first seem, it is without doubt one of the most self-assured and dumbfoundingly perfectly executed records in existence.  No matter how many attempts there have been to ruin it (The Corrs, Eva Cassidy, Bill Clinton, they've all had a good go) it's completely indestructible.  I suppose that one of the reasons is that the poisonously unpleasant dynamics within the band at that point are write large throughout and even in its most sedate moments (the truly sublime 'Songbird', which has been ruinously and mawkishly covered by so many people that you'd think we'd finally get that nobody but Christine McVie can actually sing it) the uncomfortable truth of five people's disappointments, disgust and hatred of each other is palpable. The songs themselves are all great, if a little pat on occasion, and from the opening bars of 'Second Hand News' the whole thing is immediately familiar and comforting.  The first side is just one blistering hit after another: 'Dreams', 'Never Going Back Again', 'Don't Stop', 'Go Your Own Way', it's all chart bothering gold.  More interesting though is side 2, which starts off with the surprisingly experimental 'The Chain'.  In some ways 'The Chain' probably resembles most closely what Buckingham had in mind in terms of the direction he wanted to push the band, odd fractured little riffs and rhythms with an over-arching structure and a somewhat darker mood.  It's the only real instance of this approach on Rumours but it presage the absolutely superb stuff to come on the next album.  The rest of the side is interestingly uneven, from Christine McVie's wonderful mix of jaunty pop song and melancholic melody ('You Make Loving Fun') to bleak miserabilism ('Oh Daddy') and a pay-off with one of Nicks' most witchy bits of spooky pop-mysticism, 'Gold Dust Woman'.  The reissue I've got places out-take and B-side 'Silver Springs' in its originally scheduled place in the album but it's clear why it was taken off because it just doesn't quite fit the overall tone of the rest of the record, but it's also something of a shame because it's a really strong song.  The reissue also has a second CD of demos, alternate versions (including a spectacular earlier version of 'You Make Loving Fun' with fabulous understated harmonies by Stevie Nicks, which aren't on the album version) and, most interestingly of all, a few rough drafts of songs that didn't make it to the album. 

After the insanely huge sales figures for Rumours the band had more money than God and by the time they went back into the studio in 1978 not only had the two couples in the band split up with the bitterest of acrimony but they were all to differing degrees apparently snorting enough cocaine to keep every drugs cartel in Latin America going for years.  And so the resultant album, Tusk (1979) is a bizarrely unpredictable collection of plunges into the paranoid psyches of some unbelievably talented and unbelievably paranoid people.  Bearing in mind how weird the album is it actually sounds pretty straightforward for long stretches and that's due to Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie continuing to write emotionally direct and musically languid songs (languid but fascinatingly complex yet instantly engaging) among which the luminous 'Sara' and 'Storms' are the obvious examples.  It's the cracking mentality of Buckingham, whose megalomania must surely have peaked at this point, which provides the intense production values of the album and its more frenetic and peculiar moments.  The biting frustration of 'What Makes You Think You're the One', and 'Not That Funny', the cocaine frying of 'The Ledge' and 'That's All for Everyone' and the strung-out pre-comedown of 'Walk a Thin Line' are simultaneously exercises in how to screw up a pop song and the most perfect pop songs you'll ever hear.  Everything about Tusk should be an unmitigated disaster yet through astonishing talent, idiosyncracy and luck it's actually one of the very best albums of the 1970's and in truth one of the best records ever made.