Go Your Own Way
24 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in 70's Music Tags: Fleetwood Mac
1977 was the year of punk. But while The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stranglers, Patti Smith, The Damned and the rest were burning up the tabloids in New York and London, most folks were still listening to Fleetwood Mac. Punk made a revolution, but like most artistic revolutions, it was confined to a few main centers of civilization and its influence took years to diffuse into mainstream culture. Sid Vicious is who the history books remember, but he wasn’t affecting anyone in Oklahoma during his lifespan. In the broader world, 1977 belonged to the Fleetwood Macs – crowd pleasing middlebrow rock bands who didn’t suck exactly (well, a lot of them sucked but the Mac didn’t) but weren’t very exciting or innovative either. Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band under Peter Green, but by ’77 Green was in a loony bin for shooting the messenger (literally) and Mac’s blues roots were practically indiscernible. But bashing Fleetwood Mac for the crime of not being punk is unfair. Though they pale in comparison to the innovative and game-changing (but little bought) works released that year by Brian Eno, Blondie, David Bowie, Sex Pistols or Ian Dury just to name a few, Rumours and its attending hit singles represented the best of rock’s mainstream. There was, as there still is and always will be, a wide disconnect between artistically significant and best selling music. Beside chart-toppers like Andy Gibb, Barry Manilow and The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac were obviously in the lead. Their music was not too hard, not too loud, but still recognizably rock, and they set themselves above the rest, especially on Rumours, with the raw emotion that seeped through the slick production and catchy melodies. The personal costs of the band members all being married to each other, and complete drug fiends, came out in songs of heartbreak, anger and regret. It was the internal turmoil (and the drug abuse that cost Stevie Nicks parts of her nose) evident all over Rumours that made that album so memorable, and why it remains a classic.
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