Fleetwood Mac Highlights

 This year has already seen the deaths of a number of notable musicians and singers, including Lamont Dozier, Lata Mangeshkar, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gary Brooker of Procul Harum, Olivia Newton-John, Loretta Lynn, Coolio and more. But the one whose songs I felt the closest connection to is probably Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. So with her recent death, it seems like a good time to post a list of some of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs and songs that I consider to be among the highlights of their long, highly varied career.

While I actually only have a limited number of Fleetwood Mac albums in my collection, two of them, the eponymous Fleetwood Mac (1975) and especially Rumours (1977), are full of songs that I've listened to countless times, and most of the band's best known tracks from their subsequent albums are also very familiar to me, particularly those from Tango in the Night (1987), as that came out when I first started intensely listening to music, around the time I graduated from high school. In addition to a compilation covering the band's output from 1975 on, I have one from the early Peter Green era, and more recently I acquired the box set 25 Years - The Chain, which covers a wider range of their career. Other than founding members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Christine McVie (born Christine Perfect), who joined the band in 1970 after marrying John McVie (they divorced in 1976, not long before Rumours came out), was in the band for longer than anyone else up until her 15-year hiatus from the group beginning in 1998. She had become the band's chief songwriter and lead vocalist when, in late 1974, they were joined by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who subsequently shared writing and singing duties with McVie for the most successful era of the band's career. 

Having multiple talented songwriters, as many great bands such as the Beatles, Queen, Genesis, the Eagles and Buffalo Springfield have had, plus having more than one member capable of singing lead, as was also the case with most of these bands, makes a group's recordings sound more varied than they would otherwise, and Fleetwood Mac was no exception. Indeed, if their entire career is considered, they were among the most varied of all, though that was in part because of their constantly changing lineup. While drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie are the band's rhthymic heart and its only constant members and are in fact the people it is named for, they don't sing or do much songwriting. The band's primary songwriter when it was founded in Britain in 1967 was guitarist and vocalist Peter Green; in fact in the beginning it was sometimes billed as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green wrote a number of great songs in the band's early days, including "Black Magic Woman" (later a big hit for Santana), "Albatross", "Oh Well" and "The Green Manalishi", but drug use led to mental issues and he left the band in 1970. Guitarists Jeremy Spencer, who had been with the band since the beginning, and Danny Kirwan, who had joined in late 1968, took over songwriting duties, though the band also did covers, particularly blues songs, as they had on their albums with Green. Kirwan's "Dragonfly" was the most notable track from this period.

Christine McVie, who had been making appearances with the band since May 1969 when she was still known as Christine Perfect, officially joined in late 1970. Spencer suddenly quit to join a religious group in early 1971, and while Green was recruited to fill in temporarily, Spencer's permanent replacement was American guitarist and singer Bob Welch, and he and McVie joined Kirwan as the band's chief songwriters. But Kirwan had alcohol problems and started to fight with the others, and Fleetwood fired him in late 1972. Subsequently they added guitarist Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker, though Walker only lasted one album and Weston for two. Other musicians played with the band without becoming full members. Welch and McVie were the band's main writers in this period, with key tracks including Welch's "Hypnotized" and McVie's "Heroes Are Hard to Find". 

By now the band, despite their British origins, were based in California. Fleetwood invited guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham and his partner, vocalist Stevie Nicks to join the band at the end of 1974, while Welch left for a solo career. It was this lineup of Fleetwood, the two McVies, Buckingham and Nicks that recorded the hugely successful 1975 album Fleetwood Mac and then, despite the breaking up of the McVies' marriage and Buckingham and Nicks's relationship (not to mention Fleetwood's divorce from his wife), they recorded and released Rumours, which came out in early 1977 and became one of the best selling albums of all time. Subsequent albums by this lineup, 1979's Tusk, 1982's Mirage and 1987's Tango in the Night may not have been quite as consistent as the first two, but they still had a lot of great material, and overall this period is generally considered the band's peak. Buckingham quit before the tour for Tango in the Night, and over the subsequent years the band's lineup went back to being highly fluid, with key members such as Nicks and Christine McVie sometimes leaving and returning and the band adding various other members such as Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, though the studio albums released in this period fared poorly both critically and commercially. 

The Rumours era lineup reunited in 1997 and recorded and released the successful concert album The Dance. But Christine McVie quit in 1998 and she only played on a few tracks on what is to date the band's last studio album, 2003's Say You Will, which was dominated by Buckingham and Nicks, as was the 2013 EP that remains the most recent release of new material under the band's name. McVie rejoined the band for live performances in 2014, and she and Buckingham released an album of new songs together in 2017, with contributions from Fleetwood and John McVie. But in 2018, Buckingham was forced out of the band after conflicts with Nicks, and replaced with guitarist Mike Campbell (formerly of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) and vocalist/guitarist Neil Finn of Crowded House. This new lineup toured together very successfully but had not released any studio recordings by the time of Christine McVie's death on November 30 of this year (other key members of the band who have died in recent years include Peter Green, who died in 2020, and Danny Kirwan, who died in 2018), though in July 2021 Neil Finn released a charity single which featured Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, which as far as I can discover seems to be the last studio recording to feature multiple members of Fleetwood Mac.

As noted above, I can't by any means claim a comprehensive familiarity with all of Fleetwood Mac's recorded output, and truly dedicated fans will no doubt say I left a lot of great songs out of the following list. For that matter, I myself may come to consider it lacking after I have the opportunity to listen more extensively to the aforementioned box set and to later material that I haven't gotten around to checking out. But while the list may be missing a lot, what I can be sure of is that the songs I've included are all worth a listen by all music fans.

Black Magic Woman (Green)

Love That Burns (Green/Adams)

Albatross (Green)

Man of the World (Green)

Oh Well Parts 1 & 2 (Green)

The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown) (Green)

Dragonfly (Kirwan)

Sentimental Lady (Welch)

Hypnotized (Welch)

Heroes Are Hard to Find (McVie)

Monday Morning (Buckingham)

Rhiannon (Nicks)

Over My Head (McVie)

Say You Love Me (McVie)

Landslide (Nicks)

World Turning (McVie/Buckingham)

I'm So Afraid (Buckingham)

Second Hand News (Buckingham)

Dreams (Nicks)

Never Going Back Again (Buckingham)

Don't Stop (McVie)

Go Your Own Way (Buckingham)

Songbird (McVie)

The Chain (Buckingham/Fleetwood/McVie/McVie/Nicks)

You Make Loving Fun (McVie)

I Don't Want to Know (Nicks)

Silver Springs (Nicks)

Think About Me (McVie)

Sara (Nicks)

What Makes You Think You're the One (Buckingham)

Storms (Nicks)

Sisters of the Moon (Nicks)

Tusk (Buckingham)

Gypsy (Nicks)

Hold Me (McVie/Patton)

Big Love (Buckingham)

Seven Wonders (Nicks/Stewart)

Everywhere (McVie)

Little Lies (McVie/Quintela)

As Long As You Follow (McVie/Quintela)

No Questions Asked (Nicks)

Paper Doll (W: Nicks M: Nicks/Vito/Heron)

Peacekeeper (Buckingham)

Celebrating the Birthdays of Two Musical Greats

 The past few weeks have seen major birthday milestones for two musicians who were key members of two of the biggest bands in popular music history - bands that also happen to be two of my favorites. What's more, these two musicians share a number of characteristics, both in terms of their approaches to music and in the way that, despite receiving widespread praise and admiration, they are sometimes slightly (and unfairly) overshadowed by deceased former bandmates. 

Paul McCartney, who became famous as one of the Beatles, turned 80 on June 18. I wrote a brief retrospective of his career in Chinese that I posted on Facebook to commemorate the occasion, though I was far from the only one to acknowledge it (one of the more notable public tributes for McCartney's birthday was by Sean Lennon, son of his former Beatles bandmate John, who posted a cover of "Here, There and Everywhere"). I wrote a far more extensive retrospective here on my blog on the occasion of McCartney's 70th birthday. However, it really should be updated, as in the intervening decade, McCartney has remained amazingly prolific for a man of his age, releasing three albums of new songs, New, Egypt Station and McCartney III, all strong contenders for the list I included in that retrospective of "Paul McCartney’s Best Post-Beatles Studio Albums". If I was still narrowing it down to ten albums, New would displace Flowers in the Dirt and Egypt Station might displace Venus and Mars, Run Devil Run or Electric Arguments (though those are all quite good as well, so it'd be a tough call). Another demonstration of his continuing musical versatility came in 2012, when he collaborated with the three remaining members of Nirvana on the screaming rocker "Cut Me Some Slack". 

There is no question that Paul McCartney is one of the most talented songwriters in popular music history. In fact a strong argument could be made that as a writer of melody in particular, he is among the greatest in any genre of music, up there with people like Mozart. Bob Dylan, also one of the greatest songwriters of the past century, once acknowledged that he was in "awe" of the ease with which McCartney came up with original melodies, and another of the greats, Paul Simon, has expressed similar sentiments. Despite this, there is still a tendency among a few critics, fans, and less aware members of the general public to idolize the late John Lennon over McCartney, a phenomenon I address at greater length in the blog post referenced above. You're still far more likely to see a T-shirt or poster with a picture of Lennon than McCartney. However, I get the impression that by now most people who have more than a passing knowledge of pop music recognize McCartney's genius. In any case, there's no comparing the two's solo careers at this point, as McCartney's has gone on for more than four decades longer and has been by far more prolific. 

A more recent birthday was that of Brian May of Queen, who turned 75 on July 19. As I did with the members of the Beatles, I wrote retrospectives of all the members of Queen a decade ago, including one on May when he turned 65. May has not been particularly prolific in terms of new music recently, as he has yet to release a solo album this century, though he has written and released a number of new songs, including several he did with singer Kerry Ellis and the song "New Horizons" commemorating the space probe of the same name. But he has remained impressively active on many other fronts, touring with Queen bandmate Roger Taylor and singer Adam Lambert (I saw them myself when they came to Taiwan a number of years ago); playing guitar for numerous artists, one of the most prominent examples being Lady Gaga, on what I consider her best song, "You and I"; various endeavors in the fields of science, space exploration and stereophotography, including publishing the book Queen in 3-D featuring his stereoscopic photos of the groups, and animal rights activism, something he shares with McCartney, with both of them speaking out strongly against fox hunting in Britain. 

One thing that May shares with McCartney is a meticulous approach to arrangement, something that can be seen most clearly on songs like "Good Company", which May painstakingly assembled from numerous guitar overdubs to create a backing track that sounded like a trad jazz band. They also share an obvious affinity for melody. But also like McCartney, he has at times been overshadowed by a former bandmate who died decades ago, in his case Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury. It is true that in addition to his incredible vocals, amazing showmanship, and impressive piano playing, Mercury was Queen's most prolific composer, writing the largest share of their songs, including many of their biggest hits. But in the band's golden years in the 1970s, May wrote as much of the band's material as Mercury, with Taylor and bassist John Deacon writing much less, and while in the 1980s Mercury and May's songwriting dominance ended, with all four members more or less writing equal amounts, May made major writing contributions to all the group's albums. May didn't write as many big hit singles as Mercury, but he did write such hits as "We Will Rock You", "Save Me", "Hammer to Fall", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "I Want It All", as well as many great album tracks like "'39", "The Prophet's Song", "Tie Your Mother Down", "It's Late", and "Dead on Time". "'39" in particular is brilliant, probably the only song by a major rock band to portray the effects of time dilation as outlined in Einstein's theory of relativity. May was also responsible for some of Queen's most lyrically thought-provoking songs, such as "Put Out the Fire" and the abovementioned "Hammer to Fall" and "'39". But Mercury's death, like Lennon's, has removed him to the pantheon of dead rock gods alongside people like Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin, so inevitably his bandmates get a lot less attention. Not that May seems to mind particularly. Still, it's worth remembering that, just as Paul McCartney was as much responsible for the Beatles' greatness as John Lennon, Brian May and his guitar were as essential a part of Queen's sound as Freddie Mercury's voice. Not to mention, being both the holder of a PhD in astrophysics and the writer of iconic songs like "We Will Rock You" and "Hammer to Fall" is an achievement that few could ever hope to emulate.

So best wishes to both McCartney and May, as well as to other musical greats who have recently celebrated birthdays, such as Brian Wilson (80) and McCartney's fellow Beatle Ringo Starr (82). I hope they'll be around to make music for many more years.