Fleetwood Mac- Has the band aged well with music fans?*

Not a band I've ever liked very much. To the extent that I do, I like live stuff from the Peter Green era, and Tusk.

That's pretty much it.

 

Depends on the album. For example, Rumours sounds fresh.

 

Woah, didn´t know that! Which song was that?

 

I gave up on the band when Bob Welch left. The sound became too slick, and the music less interesting, after that.

Danny Kirwan's leaving was the beginning of the end for me, although I do enjoy much of Bob Welch's music with the band. Shame that Bob Weston didn't last too long, although understandable why not. Having said that, in view of the shenanigans that went on in later years, Weston seems to have been treated pretty harshly.

 

Dreams and Albatross, respectively.

 

Totally disagree - as does Stevie Nicks. She said that before they made their final decision about whether to join the band, she got ahold of all their albums to see if she could find a reason for B/N to join the band that made any musical sense, and she said she found it in the "mysticism" of the band that she said was always just there, regardless of who was in the band at the time, and she felt she could add to that tradition. It makes sense to me especially if she meant for example (using the more well known songs):

Albatross/Hypnotized/Rhiannon

Do you really think those three sound (or feel) as different as the Four Seasons, Uriah Heep and the Art of Noise?

 

Slight correction. They were selling records for the period between Kiln House and Heroes, but far more in the U.S., than the U.K. and Europe. And they would steadily chart better with each release, despite any hit singles. After Green left, it was if the U.K. and Europe ignored them.

 

To me, they are more like a family of bands rather than just one band. But that thought may just be a reflection of how I got into the music of Fleetwood Mac: by discovering some of their members' solo music first.

And the two members I started out my journey into this band with are Billy Burnette and Lindsey Buckingham. I found Burnette's name as a guest artist and songwriter in the booklet of a Roy Orbison CD and searched my way forward from there, accidentally finding a newly released album by Lindsey Buckingham in a store. A sticker that says it's by an ex-Fleetwood Mac member sparked my curiosity enough to give it a listen and "Out Of the Cradle" definitely was a good start. "Coming Home" by Billy Burnette was next. Then, I think I found a cutout of "Behind the Mask" which is undeservedly overlooked by the general public. And Stevie Nicks' "Street Angel" was next. It was only after "The Dance" live show came out that I got interested in the old band, though "Blues For Greeny" by Gary Moore had made me become aware of one Peter Greenbaum.

Mike Campbell is a nice choice for a new guitarist but I find the choice of Neil Finn to be a bit bewildering. After all, Mick Fleetwood had brought in Dave Mason before, and that turned out to be not a good fit.

 

The first two albums with Buckingham and Nicks are eternal classics. The rest of their career pales in comparison, though I prefer the latter day attempts to recapture that lightning in a bottle to either the experiments of Tusk, the yet another UK blues band years. The middle peripd stuff post Green pre-Buckingham Nicks I have never even heard, something I have in common with most of the fans of their early or late eras.

 

I'm out after "Tusk"

But they were great up until then, IMO, starting with the Peter Green Blues years all the way through (with a couple of clinkers, like "Penguin").

 

Yes, that run from 1975 to 1987 was the exception. They probably didn't expect in their wildest dreams to have a record as successful as Rumours.

 

Per another thread, the Buckingham-Nicks era LPs sell as fast as they're brought into used record stores. They're one of the "Big Eight" catalog acts who keep stores afloat, meaning that era of the band has reached Beatles/Rolling Stones/Led Zeppelin status. Can't age better than that.

 

Yeah I like every era of the band except after Rumors, its a downhill slide. I do love some songs like Gypsy and Everywhere but they always seem to be trying too hard to make hits.

 

Yes, and I'd bet anything--not just hypothetically, but I'd literally make this bet for any amount of money, that if I were to take a bunch of people who aren't already familiar with the band--we'd have to screen the test subjects to make sure that they're not familiar with the band first--and I were to play them a bunch of material from a bunch of different artists (that they're not already familiar with), where the objective for the test subjects would be to say, given many different pairings of songs, and an understanding that some will be by the same artist, "Are A and B by the same artist or different artists?" That almost everyone would guess that all of the Fleetwood Mac examples from different eras--so we play "Long Grey Mare" followed by "Future Games", "This Is the Rock" followed by "Second Hand News", etc--are different artists.

I'd also make a side bet for any amount of money that if we asked the test subjects to describe the music they're listening to, no one would use the word "mysticism" in their description.

To some extent, by the way, I've already done the above experiment informally with many different artists, including Fleetwood Mac. My current wife has been one of my test subjects, as she grew up in a different country, in a very different culture, so there's a lot of stuff that she wasn't at all familiar with that people her age who had grown up in the U.S. would be familiar with.

 

OK, then - How about Dreams and Tusk which ARE undoubtedly the exact same band (aren't they)? And only one album apart! They sound far more different from each other than my earlier example of Albatross/Hypnotized/Rhiannon do! How many would pass your experiment there?

 

for years I thought Penguin was lame but how wrong I was. Ditch the middle 2 songs that sound like a different band and you have wonderful Bob and Christine. It's bliss.

 

If you think about it, how many that are unfamiliar with the band would think they were different bands if you played a Lindsey song then played a Stevie song?

 

I didn't argue that the band always sounds like the same band during the same era.

I said that they sound like completely different bands during different eras. That doesn't imply that they can't sound like completely different bands during the same era, too. Sometimes they do.

That they can sound like a completely different band during the same era does nothing to support an argument that they do NOT sound like completely different bands during different eras.

 

When i was a young pup i thought Don't Stop was Status Quo ... it seems silly now, but i honestly thought that.

 

I enjoy the peter green era, albatross and oh well are absolute classics. It was years before i knew that black magic woman was a fleetwood mac song.
I was unaware of the welch era until i got a compile in the 90's (?) ... sounds good, but i have so many musical interests and very limited funds, so it may be a while til i get those albums.
I love fleetwood mac, rumours, tusk, mirage and i personally thought say you will was a fantastic album.

 

...and neither I (nor Stevie) said that every single song sounds mystical (but enough do over enough different lineups over a long enough period of time) to form a thread which she recognized.

But it does imply that they can't sound similar across different eras on some songs? That seems to be very much what you were/are saying!

Unless you wish to take back your "Four Seasons, Uriah Heep and the Art of Noise" comment?

 

And I didn't say that you said that.

No it doesn't. Not that I'm agreeing or disagreeing that that might be the case, but what I said does not imply that.

Anyway, if you're really serious about disagreeing with me, take the bet. It would be worth setting up the experiment for, say $500k or a million dollars, wouldn't it? If you're certain you'd win, you've got nothing to lose.

 

Albatross/Hypnotized/Rhiannon
With a little smoothing Split Enz's
I Got You fits right in

 

To be allowed to disagree with you I have to do what now?!

 

I think you're taking his last comment too literally. I agree with @Terrapin Station in theory there