Fleetwood Mac has gone back on the road, partly to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their blockbuster album Rumours. On one of the first dates of the tour in Philadelphia April 6, the band introduced a new song called “Sad Angel” that may appear on a new EP that Lindsey Buckingham said is coming out “in a few days.”
Thanks to tyrant2525 for loan of the video.
Fleetwood Mac, around the time of ‘Rumours’
by Denny Angelle
Fleetwood Mac was one of the most successful and unique rock bands of the 1970s. After toiling for nearly a decade as a journeyman British blues-rock band, the Mac exploded into mainstream consciousness when they added American pop rockers Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the lineup.
The peak came in 1977 when Fleetwood Mac released the album Rumours, which yielded four Top 10 singles, sold more than 40 million copies and won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The band took almost a year to cut Rumours and while doing so lived a rock and roll soap opera marked by divorce, infidelity and constant drug use, all of which threatened to tear the band apart.
Ken Caillat
Buckingham and Nicks were no longer a couple, and they wrote thinly disguised songs about their failed relationship. Christine and John McVie were in the throes of their own divorce, as was drummer Mick Fleetwood. And all the while, the drugs and booze flowed freely.
Ken Caillat, as one of the producers of Rumours, had a ringside seat to the drama. He’s written a book, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album, that pulls back the curtain on the making of this masterpiece rock album. We caught up with him after he visited Austin to talk about his book at the Texas Book Festival.
30 Days Out: How did you come to write the book?
Caillat: It was a time and an event that means a lot to many people. It was extraordinary to be a part of this album. I’m one of the only people who can write about how this great album was made. It’s kind of my responsibility to tell the story, I wish somebody had done that with the Beatles. While we were making Rumours I wanted to try and jot it all down, and I have extensive records and track sheets of everything we did. Not only was I a producer, I was also a kind of documentarian, I knew the facts of everything we did and when we did it.
Caillat: Actually when I began writing the book I had the intention of going to the band and getting their perspective. So I started trying to set up the interviews with the band, telling them I wanted to make sure it’s 100 percent correct and accurate. And after a while I got this phone call … They declined! They said they don’t help people, that’s not what they do.
30 Days Out: What does that mean?
Caillat: You got me!
30 Days Out: We really like the way you did it, sticking only to your point of view. You really didn’t need the band, right?
Caillat: Well, I am sure there was something they could have enlightened me on … the type of guitar strings they used, or some trick they did that I didn’t know about. I made a rule I wasn’t going to speculate on what they did when they went home. What I knew, what I saw, that’s what I wrote about. It would have been cool to have some of the intrigue that went on, that I only heard about. For example with Christine (McVie) … John (McVie) kept sniffing around the hotel, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Christine had to hide in Stevie’s room.
30 Days Out: We get the impression from the book that Christine was sort of your favorite person in the band.
Caillat: Um, you know, sort of, but not necessarily. She was constant, she could be (unreasonable) at times, but most of the time you could just talk to her. Mick and the others, it wasn’t so easy. Sometimes you didn’t know what was going on and where you stood with them. If they were too high, you couldn’t talk to them.
30 Days Out: Were the members of Fleetwood Mac upset when they learned you were going to write this book?
Caillat: I don’t know … the funny thing is, I have done two DVDs about Rumours for two different companies at two different times. I interviewed the band for each one, and there was no problem. This time, though, after about two months of not getting any answers, I get a phone call saying the band has decided not to participate in my book. I think it was because Lindsey Buckingham may want to write his own book at some point. So he doesn’t want the band helping.
30 Days Out: You had a few problems with Lindsey down the road. How was he to work with?
Caillat: He was just a real nervous, intense guy. I used to say he’d walk in and suck the fun out of the room. There was an engineer who worked on the album after Mirage – Tango In The Night – the engineer read my book and called me up. He said ‘it’s so true. Whenever everyone walked out of the room and I was alone with Lindsey, it was very uncomfortable.’ You know he’s judging you, he’s thinking about something. He’s thinking that you are thinking something about him. At that point, while we were doing Rumours, he was a nervous nellie. He’s just like that: he’d come in in the morning, always rubbing his hands together. He kept a big tape box full of pot, and he was always rolling a joint. Nonstop, rolling a joint. One time I got into an argument with Lindsey in Reno at a casino … he starting yelling at this dealer. I said you don’t treat people like that, you are just a fucking asshole.
30 Days Out: But musically, he’s a genius …
Caillat: Absolutely, he’s a genius.
30 Days Out: When we look back at 1977 and Rumours, there really was nothing like that album or anything that even sounded like it at the time. When you were making that album, did you have a sense you were doing something really special?
The Mac won an armload of Grammy Awards for Rumours.
Caillat: Never got that idea. We were all so tired, we were exhausted. If you go to my website and listen to some of these songs in their original form, you’d probably say this is not very good. How those songs grew over 12 months to become these amazing things, it’s truly astonishing. We didn’t know!
Caillat: A friend of mine got to listen to Rumours when it was almost done. He said “I don’t hear a hit.” And we were totally devastated. It’s astonishing to me, that album had 10 radio hits out of the 11 songs. But at the time it came out we were so tired, working 15-18 hours a day on it for the good part of an entire year. I remember at one point driving into the studio in Hollywood, and I saw Christmas decorations on Hollywood Boulevard. And I said ‘Oh, is it Christmas again already?’
30 Days Out: There must have been incredible pressure from the record company to follow up their “white album” (Fleetwood Mac from 1975) with another hit.
Caillat: Just the opposite, no pressure. The record company was sitting back smoking big cigars, they weren’t in our face. I guarantee it would not be like that if we did the same record today. With a record already sliding down the charts, they’d come in and say who the hell are these new guys? We’re going to use our ‘genius’ which they don’t have to try and make it more commercial. They would ask, why don’t you make it more like Adele?
Caillat: My daughter (singer Colbie Caillat) is going through that now. On her second album the label had a whole team, they came in … and said you should try everything, do some hip hop, do some rap stuff. I said, ‘would you like it if we dyed her hair red and got her a boob job? Would you like that too?’
30 Days Out: With that kind of atmosphere, could you make another Rumours today?
Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks
Caillat: Sure! The thing that was amazing was that budgets were big then, and costs were relatively small. We were able to spend 12 months in the studio perfecting every little bit. Analog tape was our tool at the time, it rolled on a heavy reel, and you built a song from top to bottom. When it came time to rewind the tape it may take 2-3 minutes to rewind. While you’re doing it the artist sitting in the studio at the microphone, and you end up talking, you talk about what you did, you played this, I thought you were going to go here … you get this kind of conversation which doesn’t happen in today’s digital world. Now you instantaneously you go back to the top. I have to tell my engineer don’t press play every time, so we can have that time to communicate with each other.
30 Days Out: Rumours is about to come out in a 35th anniversary edition. Are you involved with that reissue?
Caillat: No. Why not? I don’t know, it always astounds me. I’m sure it’s the money. I would have done it for nothing! There was some of that in the first two years, but as time has passed I have really nothing to do with it anymore.
30 Days Out: Going beyond the scope of the book a bit, how did you get to Tusk (1979)? It was so different than Rumours.
Caillat: Yeah, well that’s Lindsey Buckingham. I had full intentions of improving our work on Rumours and making Tusk be Rumours II . Do better on everything. But the second or third day Lindsey came in, he had a bunch of home recordings all full of distortion and grunge. Punk was getting big then, and he was into all of that. He had this big hairdo during and after Rumours …, but now he had freaked out in the shower and cut all his hair off with scissors. It was really weird looking. He said OK, we’re going to do everything different. He made me take all the edge off the guitars, saying that’s how we are going to make this record. It wasn’t what I wanted. Tusk became something totally different, kind of experimental. I said to Lindsey, so you want a darker album? There was a lot of decadence at the time … a lot of drugs, excessive living. It was tough to work with Lindsey at that point. He was just a pain in the ass.
Ken Caillat, checking microphones in the studio back in the 1970s.
30 Days Out: Do you think you’ll write another book, maybe about Tusk and beyond?
Caillat: You’re the fourth guy to ask me that just today! I have all the information … I went through the tape vaults, all the scans of all the track sheets, instrumentation, date they were recorded. I’ve got all that … I was ready to go, ready to write a Tusk book. In fact, I got about a quarter of the way through. But I stopped because I’m not sure there’s a market for it. This book has only had modest success … for us to get another book out it’s gonna take somebody to come in and say we can do better with a second book. Rumours is a pleasant story, it has a happy ending. I don’t think books about Tusk and Mirage are gonna have happy endings.
30 Days Out: Tell us a little about working with John McVie.
Caillat: It’s weird, John was kind of like Jekyll and Hyde, he was the greatest guy in the world. So soft spoken, then all of a sudden he’d turn on you. Mostly he’d do that when he was drinking, he was a closet drinker. Ninety percent of the time he was just great. Great bass player. He was always complaining I never had the bass loud enough. He made me very conscious of the bass, so I’d leave it up in the mix. One time Gary Katz, Steely Dan’s producer, came in and said you have the best bass sound – how do you do it? I told him, bitching! Have your bass player complain to you all the time!
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, in the days before Fleetwood Mac.
30 Days Out: What about Stevie Nicks?
Caillat: Back then she was just the cutest little hippie chick. Adorable! She was funny, she had a cute giggle. She loved music, she only knew about three chords on the piano but she could make about 30 songs out of them. Her quirky side was she was always thinking about herself. I learned not to ask how she was doing that day. You’d spend 10 minutes just listening to her talk about herself.
Caillat: I always thought it was amazing, Lindsey and Stevie could never pass a mirror without looking at themselves. That’s just the kind of people they are. They are the kind of people who see a stage and want to be up there. They want the limelight. It’s kind of a double-edged sword … I’ve seen this sweet picture of Lindsey, taken right before Rumours, he’s sitting on the floor in an airport playing guitar. That guy’s gone. As they grew, as the Tusk album got really difficult for me, everybody became an asshole, really decadent, rather full of themselves. Not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s natural. But it wasn’t pleasant.
30 Days Out: How did it end with you and Fleetwood Mac?
Caillat: I had done Mirage (1982) and the live album, and they were gonna do Tango In The Night (1987). It was taking about a year to do and I just said, you know I’m gonna bow out this time. It ended great. I’m still friends with them, I think.
30 Days Out: So what’s next for you?
Caillat: I am starting a new label, Sleeping Giant records. Gonna be working with new artists, our main thrust will be artist development. And I’m going to continue working with my daughter Colbie. I can take no credit for her, she was born with this perfect voice and she loves to sing. She’s the nicest person in the world, she’d rather roll on the floor with the dogs and do just about anything else. And right now I’m working on on Spanish, Japanese and Portugese translations of Making Rumours. The audio book comes out in April, paperback comes out in April too. And I’m going to keep producing, all the time. Making the best music I can.
Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album web site (links to purchase)
YouTube: Fleetwood Mac playing “Go Your Own Way” in 1977
Gotta hand it to Rod Stewart – he’s a consummate entertainer. (Photo and Instagram by Art Meripol)
Have to admit – the prospects of a live rock show at the tail end of a busy week weren’t exactly appealing. But Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks, concluding their U.S. tour together at the Toyota Center on Thursday (8/9) won us over.
Ace photographer Art Meripol, in town on assignment, and I decided to forgo the regular cameras and fool around with our iPhones. In the process, the music drew us in.
Stevie Nicks, lookin’ good on the big screen.
Serving as opening act, Nicks came out smokin’ – her crack band, led by guitar whiz Waddy Wachtel, ripped out a rousing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” and we were off to the races. Four songs in she deployed “Dreams” by demurely admitting “I didn’t know this till recently … but this was Fleetwood Mac’s only No. 1 hit.” Hey babe, I learned that off the internet (Wikipedia is your friend). Stevie then doubled down with “Gold Dust Woman” from the monster Rumours (1977) and her solo hit “Stand Back.”
Following a long (maybe a little too long) story about visiting wounded veterans in Washington, we got “Soldier’s Angel,” inspired by those visits. Then, thankfully, “Rhiannon,” and to close it out, “Edge Of Seventeen” and “Landslide.” You gotta hand it to Stevie Nicks: of all the rocker chicks from the 1970s, she’s pretty much one of the few who have survived intact to remain interesting today.
And then we have Rod Stewart. We like to pick on the guy because he’s, well, Rod Stewart. But you gotta hand it to him – he’s a consummate entertainer.
In a roughly two-hour set Rod played 19 songs, 11 of which were cover versions. At least he didn’t dip into the Great American Songbook for them. He opened with the O Jays’ “Love Train” and hit his stride later with a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having A Party.”
But happily Stewart’s set was front-loaded with his biggest hits, including “Tonight’s The Night,” which came early in the set. Unfortunately, so did “Young Turks.” After that, though, Rod showed some slides of the kids and grandkids like a beaming dad then dedicated his rewrite of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” to all of ’em.
We used iPhones instead of cameras … and so did everyone else.
He invited out a group of local ladies called the Houston Strings to join him and members of his band at the front of the stage for his “Unplugged and Seated” portion of the show. Playing (mostly) acoustically, they offered shimmering versions of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” and Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut Is The Deepest.”
Then he pointed out how his record label screwed up way back: for the first single off Stewart’s landmark album Every Picture Tells A Story (1971), the label decided on “Reason To Believe.” The song they didn’t have much faith in, “Maggie May,” they stuck on the B-side. “Thankfully a DJ in Cleveland flipped it over and started playing it (“Maggie May”) on the radio,” said Stewart, “and that’s why we’re all here tonight!” Which is how he introduced “Reason To Believe.”
“Maggie May,” the monster hit, would close out the show after rockin’ out with Chuck Berry and Creedence covers, as well as “You’re In My Heart” and “Hot Legs.” Have to admit, though, we didn’t stay for the encore, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” which was a question the close-to-sold-out crowd answered a long time before.
YouTube: “The First Cut Is The Deepest” from the Toyota Center concert
Continuing our series of duets albums, ending next weekend: today we spin one of the most famous rock duet albums, Buckingham Nicks, the 1973 effort with superstars-to-be Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
Buckingham and Nicks were bandmates in the band Fritz, which formed in 1968 and got to be pretty popular around the San Francisco Bay Area. By the time the band broke up in 1972 Buckingham and Nicks were romantically involved, and they moved to Los Angeles to make it big in the music bidness.
Suits from Polydor heard the duo performing and they cobbled 
together Buckingham Nicks with a handful of studio tracks and cleaned up some demos to round it out. The LP kicks off with Nicks’ “Crying In the Night,” anchored by Lindsey’s acoustic strumming and vocal harmonies. “Without A Leg To Stand On,” a Buckingham composition, is a soft rocker with more chiming acoustic guitar; you can hear a strong Cat Stevens influence at work here, down to the idiosyncratic rhythmic stutter that Stevens used so well.
“Lola (My Love)” is a country-flavored stomp with some cool fingerpicking from Buckingham but it suppresses Nicks’ background vocals – it’s probably the weakest song on the album and winds up sounding like a Stephen Stills throwaway. Better are the Nicks songs “Races Are Run” and “Long Distance Winner,” which showcase her awesome voice. On “Winner,” as on the instrumental “Stephanie,” Buckingham unveils his intricate guitar picking style that would later highlight the music-box-like “Never Going Back Again.”
A few of the songs here, like the loping “Don’t Let Me Down Again” and Nicks’ gorgeous “Crystal,” would show up in the Fleetwood Mac repertoire. “Don’t Let Me Down Again” would be played in concert by the Mac, and it turned up on the Live LP from 1980. “Crystal,” which was written by Stevie but sung by Lindsey, would be re-recorded by Fleetwood Mac for the 1975 eponymous breakthrough. The song would of course be a highlight in concert and wouldn’t be recorded with Nicks herself on lead vocals until 1998, when she cut a version for the movie Practical Magic.
When the album was released in September of ’73 it turned out to be a commercial failure, probably lost in the forest of countless West Coast folk-pop troubadours popular at the time. The duo moved to Colorado and Buckingham played guitar in the Everly Brothers touring band, which also included Warren Zevon on piano.
Keith Olsen, who produced Buckingham Nicks, played some of it for drummer Mick Fleetwood, who was seeking a replacement for Bob Welch at the time. Impressed with Lindsey’s guitar skills, Fleetwood made an offer to Buckingham only, but Lindsey insisted that he and Stevie were a package deal. So Buckingham and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974 and in this case it would be totally appropriate to say “and the rest is history.”
One note about this album: it’s never been officially released on CD, although a number of labels have expressed interest at one point or another. It’s hard to find a decent copy burned off the original vinyl, but this came from the great, now defunct, blog The Research Garage by way of the equally great, but still alive, music blog Ngootb Redux.
Bonnie Raitt
It occurred to me, while compiling this exhaustive survey of the Warner Bros./Reprise Loss Leaders series, that we might be giving short shrift to the label’s female artists. Probably not, but this is a good excuse to listen to some more tracks from this great promotional series.
I know we’ve mentioned Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur – but we should start with them anyway because they’re the two ladies that the Loss Leaders went to the most often. Part of our Loss Leaders All-Star team, Muldaur appeared nine times in the series and Raitt eight. Another Reprise artist (with six appearances in the series) is Joni Mitchell, the Canadian darling of the hippie set and writer of the song “Woodstock,” most famously covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Emmylou Harris, with five appearances in the Loss Leaders series, is another perennial. Harris was actually discovered by then-Flying Burrito Brother (and ex-Byrd) Chris Hillman, who was so taken with her voice that he considered asking Harris to join the Burritos. But he recommended her instead to fellow Burrito Gram Parsons, who was seeking a backing vocalist for his first solo album. Working with Parsons, Emmylou learned a lot about country music and its deep tradition and history. When Parsons suddenly died in 1973, Emmylou was left without a mentor (and possibly a lover – nobody knows for sure). She began recording for Reprise in 1975 and went on to become a top country-rock performer. Here she is represented by “Ooh Las Vegas,” written by Gram Parsons.
Some recent birthdays for rock and rollers gives us a chance to post a handful of tunes for the weekend. Stevie Nicks, born May 26, is 61 years old; Levon Helm, also May 26, is 67; Hank Williams Jr. (Bocephus), also May 26, is 60; and the great John Fogerty, born May 28, is 64.
MP3: “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” by Hank Williams Jr.
MP3: “Stoned At The Jukebox” by Hank Williams Jr.
MP3: “White Dove” by Levon Helm
MP3: “Havana Moon” by Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars
MP3: “If Anyone Falls” by Stevie Nicks
MP3: “Stand Back” (Eli Escobar disco mix) by Stevie Nicks
MP3: “Almost Saturday Night” by John Fogerty
MP3: “Centerfield” (live) by John Fogerty w/Jerry Garcia
YouTube: Levon Helm making his new album Electric Dirt (out June 30)
Live albums are always pretty interesting, beyond the music. It’s like the artist wants to make some sort of statement – like, “Here’s a souvenir from my last tour.” (Rolling Stones). Or, “You know, these songs may be 40 years old but I can still make ’em sound pretty damn good.” (Paul McCartney). Or, “Hey, we’re still relevant … aren’t we?” (The Eagles). Here’s a handful of live recordings that manage to make pretty much all of those statements:
Live In London by Leonard Cohen – This 72-year-old songwriter and (sometimes) singer has never sounded better in this two-disc souvenir of a show in London’s O2 arena from last summer. His songs – especially the lyrics – are rivalled only by Dylan and like ol’ Bob, Leonard deftly turns his not-pretty voice into a powerfully expressive instrument. Cohen’s songs are cast in a musical framework that recalls German cabaret and Hollywood movies, similar to what Tom Waits has been doing the past few years. Cohen’s backing band is highly skilled and tasteful, they always hit their mark without taking the spotlight off the star. I must admit I enjoyed this album way more than I intended to; after all, this is moody non-rock that nonetheless hits hard and cuts deep. If you are a fan of mature, adult-oriented rock music, this is certainly a keeper.
MP3: “Sisters Of Mercy” by Leonard Cohen
The Soundstage Sessions by Stevie Nicks – The soundtrack for a DVD cut live in Chicago two years ago, this disc updates some of Nicks’ classics from both the Fleetwood Mac days and her solo days, and tosses in a new tune to boot. Nicks, currently on tour with the Mac, offers little reinterpretation (and quite a bit of post-production) on these curious remakes, wiped clean of any sign of the live audience. That kind of makes the music a little more sterile, and considering that Stevie’s voice isn’t the supple instrument it was in the past, makes it also a little more irritating. Still, the orchestral version of “Landslide” and a stripped-down “Sara” manage to shine, even if the rest of this is for hardcore fans only.
Last week we featured our opinion of the worst nude album covers. This week here are some of the best…This post contains nudity, all photos after the jump are NSFW.
“Whipped Cream & Other Delights” – Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass – Hands down the best cover of all time.
In the early 1970s, John Stewart was a leading, although unappreciated, practitioner of the country rock movement. This singer-songwriter with the booming voice actually got his big break when he replaced Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio in 1961. The Kingston Trio was one of the best-selling folk acts of the early ’60s, and Stewart toured and recorded with them until their breakup in 1967.
Stewart went solo and wrote songs for other people, most notably “Daydream Believer,” a big hit for the Monkees (and later, Anne Murray). In the early ’70s he signed with RCA and in 1973 recorded Cannons In The Rain, critically acclaimed but not a hit. Wingless Angels, from 1975, followed a similar pattern.
No matter what you think about radio talk show host Don Imus (I happen to like him and listen to him daily) there is one thing you can’t deny…the guy does alot for kids with cancer and their families. He and his wife, Deidre, run the Imus Ranch in New Mexico, a working cattle ranch where kids with cancer can work with animals and get away from their illness for a little while. He has raised millions of dollars for the ranch in a number of different ways throughout the years and his latest fund-raising effort is the Imus Ranch Record.
30 Days Out 