The keen eyes and ears of @all.the.records summed up this phase of my already-leagues-deep dive into Christine McVie’s discography in a comment on the previous installment in this series: ‘The takeaway I’m getting from these most recent … posts is the members [of Fleetwood Mac] worked on a lot of songs or records during some downtime in FM in the early ‘80s.’
I’d go a step further, actually: non-Mac downtime work became the band’s new standard operating procedure post-Tusk.
If anyone was entitled to craft New Age-y yacht-rock with a dash of disco by the dawn of 1979, it was the Beach Boys. Except that’s giving them way too much credit, as if they’d planned to do exactly that — when in fact L.A. (Light Album), perhaps the group’s most forgettable collection, is nothing but a hodgepodge of solo material patched together to keep CBS Records from suing them for breach of contract, lest they turn in zero music two years after signing to that label.
We’re still inching our way toward the ‘70s, a stylistically packed decade that will see A&M Records (the focus of this #TuesdaysWithJerry offshoot of #VinylTwosDays) swing from soft pop to hard rock to new wave by the time that era’s glittering New Year’s Eve ball dropped into 1980.
I did warn you there would be more of this stuff. Nearly a quarter of the way through this century we have easy access to the cream of Fleetwood Mac’s concert crop from three-quarters of the way through the previous century — and at this point that almost seems by design.
Mick Fleetwood was keen to put out a live set not long after ‘Rumours’ arose but the rest of the band shot the idea down. Didn’t stop them from recording an estimated 400 shows between ’75 and ’80 during increasingly in-demand tours that built this particular Mac’s reputation almost as much as their multiplatinum monoliths.
This wasn’t the pairing I planned to present today for the 10th installment of my #TuesdaysWithJerry series, an ongoing look at the history of A&M Records (cofounded by the late Jerry Moss) that I’ve hitched to ye olde #VinylTwosDays wagon, captained each week by @vinyl_is_life.
That’s right, Mac watchers, you’ve guessed correctly: It’s time now to resurrect a trove of Tusk-an tour mementos. Buckle up, kids, because there are two more live sets right behind this one — literally seven LPs & 14 sides of performances to get through before we take a fresh look at 1982’s Mirage.
We’re technically jumping into the ‘70s with these compilations when there’s still plenty left in the ‘60s worth mentioning. The Procol Harum assortment with the inexplicably celestial cover is from ’73, Spooky Tooth’s set with peeking tiger from ’76.
If you’ve spent time listening to any of these alternate versions of Fleetwood Mac’s beloved behemoths, whether in vinyl form (like this parallel Tusk) or via scores of tracks that litter deluxe-edition digital copies, you’ve got to admit: Sometimes it’s really hard to discern much difference between outtakes and finished products.
I hardly know where to begin with this beast.
Were this an ongoing deep dive into the varied sounds of Lindsey Buckingham, I’d know exactly how to start: Despite memorable material from Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks — including the utterly gorgeous, sometimes seductive ‘Sara,’ my pick for the latter’s peak moment in Fleetwood Mac or otherwise — this thing still plays like LB’s first solo LP.
Ordinarily I would’ve shared this latest installment in my #TuesdaysWithJerry series on, well, Tuesday.
But as I spent yesterday on the road from Tucson back to Cali, there simply weren’t brain reserves left to produce a post with any measure of meaning. And yet I don’t want to wait longer to nudge this never-ending survey of A&M Records along.