published in Rolling Stone, November 7, 1974
(by Cameron Crowe)
Los Angeles - Even amid their legal action against former manager Clifford Davis, Fleetwood Mac maintains a low profile. The group has had few hit singles or magazine cover stories in a quiet, seven-year career, yet their concert appearances draw a steady stream of loyal followers and at least seven albums have sold in excess of 200,000 copies.
Sitting in the living room of John and Christine McVie's modest Laurel Canyon home, Fleetwood Mac (current lineup: Bob Welch, guitar and vocals; John McVie, bass; Christine McVie, keyboards and vocals; Mick Fleetwood, drums) is about as visually mild off-stage as they are on. There is little about their faded Levi's and J.C. Penney shirts that even hints at rock & roll.
"I guess it's just not our nature to have an image," Welch, the band's only non-Englishman, concedes. "At some point you just have to realize that you may never be Elton John. But then again, the point isn't to sell a record to every man, woman and child on earth. Point is to have a career, do what you're doing and do it well. Fleetwood Mac has done just that."
For the past year, though, much of the band's time has been spent in law offices, locking horns with ex-manager Davis. According to Fleetwood, Davis approached the road-weary musicians last year about yet another nationwide tour. Met with rejection, he assembled a new Fleetwood Mac and - claiming full rights to the name - booked a tour.
"We were all on holiday when we found out what had happened," Fleetwood says. "Before the bogus band played too many dates, we had to physically get together and take legal advice. The impression Clifford had given was that he had every legal right to do what he did. We very soon found out, apart from morally having no excuse, there was no legal right."
The band went to court and also to the studio. They emerged from the former with a restraining order that put a halt to the pseudo-Mac, and from the latter with their 12th album, Heroes Are Hard To Find. Still outstanding, though, is a final legal determination on ownership of the name.
The band agrees they have already won an important victory. "When things like this have happened," Fleetwood says, "many bands haven't had the stamina to see it through. It's very easy to say, 'God, it's just not worth it.' I'm sure Clifford never felt for one moment that we would stick this out. We manage ourselves now."
So, Fleetwood Mac is on the road again, for the first time in a year. "Ironically, this is gonna be our vacation," Fleetwood says, grinning. "It's like we've forgotten what all the hassles were about.... We should have a lot of fund."
Mick Fleetwood, along with John McVie, an original member, remembers the early club days when it was Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and the quartet also included double lead guitarists Green and Jeremy Spencer.
Their first album, Fleetwood Mac, topped the English LP charts, and a string of medium-sized British hit singles followed, including the original "Black Magic Woman." Soon after, guitarist Danny Kirwan joined the group as a third lead, and a month later they cut their only million-selling 45, an instrumental called "Albatross."
The band produced four more albums - English Rose, Mr. Wonderful, Fleetwood Mac in Chicago and Then Play On, their debut LP for Warner Bros. - before getting a taste of musical chairs in May 1970. Peter Green quit the band and began work on an instrumental solo album. It was titled, prophetically, The End of the Game; Green subsequently disappeared from the music business. For a replacement, the band added John McVie's wife, the former Christine Perfect of Chicken Shack. Leaderless, they recorded the much acclaimed Kiln House. From there, it was off to America.
Spencer departed in 1971 - simply disappeared from his Los Angeles hotel room, later turning up in the ranks of the Children of God, a religious cult. Welch, a Californian who came from a background of Las Vegas showbands, filled the slot.
Fleetwood Mac's next albums, Future Games and Bare Trees, displayed a brighter style and pretty melodies. Not long after Bare Trees, however, Danny Kirwan amicably left to pursue a solo career and was replaced by former John Baldry guitarist Bob Weston. The five-piece band lasted for two albums, Mystery To Me and Penguin (with the brief inclusion of ex-Savoy Brown singer Dave "Tell Mama" Walker on the latter). Now, with the release of Heroes Are Hard To Find, Weston is gone too.
But the real Fleetwood Mac is accenting the future - and right now that's the tour, a 43-date swing that ends December 1st - with yet another addition, Doug Graves on keyboards. "We can't complain," Fleetwood says. "This band has always been able to work when we wanted to."
The Tour Setlist:
01. Coming Home
02. The Green Manalishi
03. Spare Me A Little Of Your Love
04. Bad Loser
05. Sentimental Lady
06. Future Games
07. Bermuda Triangle
08. I'd Rather Go Blind
09. Why
10. Nightwatch (w/Mick's Drum Solo)
11. Homeward Bound
12. Angel
13. Oh Well
Encores:
14. Rattlesnake Shake
15. Hypnotized
(the above setlist is meant to give a general idea of what songs were played. the running order did change from show to show).
Fan Review of a Real Mac Show:
by John Jenkins, Dallas, Texas
I saw Fleetwood Mac with Bob Welch on the Heroes Are Hard To Find Tour in 1974 at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Fort Worth, Texas.
It was an absolutely incredible and unforgetable experience.The impact of this concert
- it was honestly the best show I had seen to that point and still probably rates
in the top 3 - was that the next day I was out buying up Fleetwood Mac records trying to
find all that I'd heard the night before.
By the time the first BN Tour rolled around 7 months later, I had the whole Mac discography,
knew all their songs, and my band was playing more of it than they could stand.
It's hard to describe the sound of that concert. It just grabbed me. It was the most sublime
mix of pop, hard rock, country blues, and even jazz that I had ever heard. I was surprised
that some of those songs were Fleetwood Mac.
I had heard them and heard of them and always thought "I need to give that band a good
listen" on this particular night , Fleetwood Mac was the "special guest" of the newly
reformed Jefferson Starship. The opening act was an Emerson,Lake, and Palmer clone
called Triumvirat. Triumvirat played a 45 minute set, then after a bit of stage changing
Fleetwood Mac came on and played for over two hours.
Christine came off as an incredible class act. Mick was shirtless and beardless behind
his drums and did the talking drum solo somewhere along the line - cant remember which song.
John McVie did a bass solo - I'm pretty sure it was during Rattlesnake Shake. Bob Welch's guitar
playing was beautiful and seamless. There was an extra guy on keyboards that night -- not the
same fella who appeared on the Don Kirshner show with them.
Welch engaged in a couple of long monologues - one during "Bermuda Triangle", and one during "Future
Games". He later claimed he wasn't much of a frontman, but that night he had the crowd in his palm ... amazing.
Fleetwood Mac stole the show from Jefferson Starship that night but Bob refused a second encore citing possible union violations.
He also apologized at length to the audience for the fake Mac debacle, saying all they could do to make it up was play their hearts out for us, and baby, that's just what they did.
Grace Slick and co. did themselves proud to be sure, their set was still more of an Airplane gig than anything. but they played till 3 a.m. and it was still Fleetwood Mac whose albums I started hunting the next day.
If you have seen the Kirshner video or heard the "Real Fleetwood Mac" promo that I've already refered to, you have some idea of the sound of the show I saw, but not its spirit. On Kirshner, it was obvious the band wasn't comfortable with the cameras. Welch, in particular, was a little stilted - his attempts at humor pinched. The "real" promo was a little closer musically, but at Tarrant County Convention Center in 1974, Fleetwood Mac was at ease, in control, and rockin steady. And they made at least one fan for life.
Fan Review of a Bogus Mac Show:
by Anonymous New York, NY
I saw the bogus Mac headline a gig with a brand new band called Kiss (yes that Kiss) and a band called Silverhead at the Academy of Music in New York City on January 26, 1974.
It was a long long long night with equipment and personnel delays galore. 3/4 of the nowhere-near-sold-out crowd had taken up Academy management's offer of a refund an hour before before whatever it was that billed itself as Fleetwood Mac took the stage.
Silverhead was embarrassingly awful. DesBarres took off his shirt and entered the audience, not just down the Academy catwalks but actually into the aisles exhorting people to clap, and people were booing lustily "you suck" right into his face. He looked shocked and hurt and I felt sorry for him.
There was then a long delay before Kiss came on. We had no idea who or what they were; this was one of their first NY appearances. And then there they were, full make-up and outfits, with this huge pyrotechnic show-- it just totally blew everyone's heads off-- it could not have been more unexpected and man, did they rock! One of those rare moments where the clouds part and the finger comes down and you walk away wondering what the fuck did I just witness?
And then the loooooong wait. At least a couple of hours. And it was raining so you couldn't go outside. The crowd never really got rambunctious though. For a while people were still all jazzed by that Kiss thing we had just seen, and then the adrenaline and the drugs and just general interest in the enetrtainment event all wore off and many in the crowd started snoozing.
Management would get on the p.a. every so often and promise the show would be starting shortly, but the band's gear had been stolen, or lost, or some similar bullshit, and then they had to go find the musicians who had supposedly wandered off into the NY night while waiting for the equipment. And eventually they just offered a full refund for those who wanted to leave. Me and my buddies hung out though with maybe a hundred other hardy stoned teenagers. And we didn't even really know or care much about Fleetwood Mac; all we had heard was that they were this legendary british blues outfit and since Clapton wasn't touring in those days we figured maybe this was the poor man's version. Of course we didn't know that Peter Green was no longer in the band and that it was the bogus band.
Anyhow, they eventually took the stage saying their singer/guitar was sick and somebody else as well-- might have been the drummer? They apologized profusely for the delay and promised that though they had no vocals they would "boogie" as long as they'd let them hold the stage. (Which in those days was past dawn if they wanted-- Hot Tuna would regularly bring the sun up at the Academy.) They didn't. I don't remember much of their show except that it wasn't enough reason to have waited the whole goddamned night for it...
However to this day I tell kids how I saw Kiss when no one knew who they were and that they were great...
*The Don Kirschner Video:
01. Green Manalishi
02. Spare Me A Little Of Your Love
03. Bermuda Triangle w/ monologue
04. Black Magic Woman
05. Rattlesnake Shake
*This show was filmed in August 1974 at the Long Beach Auditorium Center Theatre in Long Beach, California -- where the entire season of Don Kirshner Rock Concert was taped that year. The above tracks were the only ones that appeared on the video. At the actual taping of the show the band performed the entire "Will The Real Fleetwood Mac Please Stand Up?" set list.
"Will The Real Fleetwood Mac Please Stand Up?" Studio Recording:
01. Green Manalishi
02. Angel
03. Spare Me A Little Of Your Love
04. Sentimental Lady (false start)
05. Sentimental Lady/Future Games
06. Bermuda Triangle
07. Why
08. Believe Me
09. Black Magic Woman
10. Oh Well
11. Cliff Davis Blooz (band introductions over a one chord jam)
12. Rattlesnake Shake
13. Hypnotized
14. Mystery To Me
Interview With John and Christine
Click HERE to get a Legsclusive LegClip of John and Christine (when they were still married) kidding around in a 1974 interview about Fleetwood Mac being the next Beatles...
(the interview took place in a hotel room in Pennsylvania and was conducted by a local radio reporter)
Sources:
Press Reviews/Memorabilia/Ticket Scans
Campbell
Joel Kolsrud
John Jenkins
Richard Thomas
Rob Farrish
Steve Denison
Peter Taylor
Explore The 1974 Tour Then Play On
