Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks weren’t the only ones from Fleetwood Mac to pursue solo ventures after the Tusk tour of ’79-’80 ended acrimoniously (again). The front half of the group’s namesake did likewise, releasing his noble failure The Visitor in June ’81.
There was a time, so soon after their ascendency to superstar status, when the most enduring incarnation of Fleetwood Mac was on such good terms with former frontman Bob Welch that it remains baffling why he was left out of their Hall of Fame induction and acrimony ensured for decades.
Ok, yes, the fact that he sued them in ’94 for unpaid royalties probably had lots to do with that snub. Rewind to November 1981, however, when this star-studded set was captured at West Hollywood’s world-famous Roxy Theatre, and you’ll find they were rarely chummier.
We’ve reached the point in my year-old deep dive into Christine McVie’s vast discography where we must ask, for the first of several times: Who among us remembers this guy?
If you were lucky enough to catch Fleetwood Mac during the first North American leg of their Tusk tour in late ‘79 — and you bothered arriving on time — then you probably saw a warmup set from this likable fellow, Danny Douma.
I suspect you may have some questions.
‘Wait … didn’t you just write about this album a month ago?’
Yes. Well … sort of. In a way. But also … no, not really.
‘Is that a different cover? I don’t remember Mick looking like that, or staring directly at the camera.’
Your memory serves you well. This is the ‘alternate’ version of Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled ‘75 breakthrough.
At last: success for Fleetwood Mac!
Finally my sputtering deep dive into the enduring work of the late Christine McVie has reached its crucial turning point, the classic that ushered in new hires Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham for the 10th lineup of this revolving-door talent collective, not even a decade old by the summer of ‘75, when their own self-titled ‘White Album’ debuted. With it came the longest lasting, most influential, scene-shapingly famous form of what remains an endlessly amorphous entity.
Before my slow-drip deep-dive into the career of the late Christine McVie sinks into her most famous and overly analyzed phase, starting with Fleetwood Mac’s transformative breakthrough of ‘75, I think it’s worth taking a two-years-prior detour into this barely buried treasure. Frankly, Buckingham Nicks, a highly accomplished debut that bafflingly bombed and got the duo booted from Polydor, looms almost as large in the Mac legacy as touchstones that came before or after it.
I did say at the close of my last post in this chronicle of the career of Christine McVie that the most beloved version of Fleetwood Mac was just about to emerge.
But not quite yet. First there needed to be a tour behind Heroes Are Hard to Find, their best-charting LP thus far in the States yet still a marginal success they view with some disappointment. All four members — Mick, the McVies and Bob Welch — sense an imminent shakeup.
I can understand why even ardent Fleetwood Mac fans find it difficult to say they genuinely like this ninth album, the fourth and last to feature Bob Welch — and the first recorded as a quartet, since Bob Weston got the boot after boinking Jenny Boyd. She was Mick’s wife at the time, after all.
Just when I thought I was back on track with my deep dive into Christine McVie’s lengthy discography we got smacked twice with miserable attention-diverting news: first Jeff Beck departed, then David Crosby.
So, again … where were we?
Ah, yes: late ‘73, in full fracturing transition.
This weekend’s #superfriendssunday is a top-track round, the album in question is Rumours as a salute to the late great Christine McVie — and as I’ve been sinking deeper into her music since she passed away two weeks ago, and I’d been planning on posting about important milestones from throughout her career, I’ve decided to step up the pace in the hopes of reaching that ‘77 monolith by Sunday.