After the manic scattershot of Tusk, Fleetwood Mac pulled hard to the center with 1982’s Mirage, a pleasant enough record that I remember being a bit dull (though I’m overdue a relisten).
After a five year break, they returned with Tango In the Night, an album that combines their winning popcraft with Lindsey Buckingham’s more esoteric tendencies in a way that feels like they’re actually in concert with eachother.
How do you follow up a masterpiece?
It’s a question that every artist asks after releasing a perfect work. Some try the same formula again, hoping lighting will strike the same place twice. Others decide to take a major left turn (see: Radiohead). Some have even gone mad under the pressure.
After the impeccable Rumours, the songwriters behind Fleetwood Mac chose option D: all of the above.
In 1973, two struggling, romantically entangled singer-songwriters, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks (who reportedly splurged on a new blouse for this photo shoot and was enraged that Lindsey wanted to use a nude photo for the cover) entered the studio to put together an album showcasing their talents.
In the larger context of pop music history, this album served as their application for Fleetwood Mac.
Fleetwood Mac’s most famous incarnation by far is the form it took in the mid seventies led by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But the group put out NINE albums before those two joined. Bare Trees is one of them, and is notable for having a better album cover than the performances contained within.
Today, Rumours celebrates its thirty-sixth anniversary. And in those thirty-six years, it has been played and overplayed. Only in most cases, “overplayed” has a negative connotation.
It’s so strange to think that by the time the Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac began, the group had already recorded nine albums. Fleetwood Mac had always been a sort of amorphous collective that placed little importance on the lead singer in question, which isn’t surprising, considering the group’s very name was derived from the members of the rhythm section.
But here, with the addition of Buckingham and Nicks, the power of the frontmen begin to match the chops of the musicians that had always played masterfully behind (or despite) them. Continue reading