Time again to play the vinyl community’s fastest-growing game: Who Among Us Remembers This Guy?
Reintroducing Robbie Patton, another likable wannabe rock star who caught his big break opening for Fleetwood Mac’s troublesome tour behind Tusk — although Christine McVie, whose discography I’ve been revisiting, clearly took a shine to him more brightly than she did the focus of our previous post in this deep dive, Danny Douma.
That then-rising L.A. player also served as warmup act on FM’s ’79-’80 outing, albeit almost assuredly in America alone; Englishman Patton, I suspect, was tapped for the UK and/or European legs.
Yet, whereas McVie merely supplied a bit of keys and backing vocals for Douma’s debut Night Eyes, for Patton’s major-label splash, Distant Shores, Christine not only provided similar contributions but also co-produced the album, alongside frequent Mac collaborator Ken Caillat and the singer-songwriter himself.
My guess is she heard greater potential in Patton’s finer tunes, like the romance-salvaging plea ‘Don’t Give It Up,’ catchy enough to scrape its way to No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 in autumn ’81. I’d say her instincts were correct, at least in the moment: Douma and Patton were evenly matched talents, but Robbie’s record conveys a certain glossy optimism better primed for the decade ahead.
At its strongest, Distant Shores compares favorably to, say, Rick Springfield’s Working Class Dog, recorded at Sound City while Patton was cutting his disc nearby at Village Recorders. Robbie’s doesn’t rock as peppily, nor boast anything as impactful as Rick’s singles — plus he didn’t have heartthrob looks or a soap-opera platform from which to pitch himself.
But he had Christine as his champion.
And though that support didn’t result in anything more than 15 minutes of chart fame, it ultimately led to something far more enduring: ‘Hold Me,’ one of Fleetwood Mac’s best and biggest hits, written by McVie and Patton.
We will hear from him again — in part to explain why the version of ‘Don’t Give It Up’ accompanying this post is technically from a Bob Welch recording.
As on Danny Douma’s record, Lindsey Buckingham also dropped by these sessions to add some fretwork. He too was in the nearby studios around this time working on his first solo album, Law and Order, next up in this series.