Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
It seems that we like the Mac over here at Cover Me. This is our third Full Album Fleetwood Mac feature, following on from Rumours and Tusk, the other exemplars of this most acclaimed iteration of the ever-evolving band. Sure, loads of us (myself included) adore the 60’s into 70’s UK white-boy blues band, but c’mon–only a real curmudgeon would deny the greater pulling power of the Buckingham-Nicks Mark 1 years. Not that this pair, accomplished songwriters both, were the only pull; Christine McVie continued to add value with a constant drip feed of classics. And, looking back, given the “other” music breaking through in 1975, the so-called year zero of punk rock, how was it that this epitome of smooth found (and still finds) such purchase?
The story is well-trodden. A blues band down on their luck, reeling from the loss of all their most potent forces, and of several replacements of lesser merit, come close to throwing in the towel. Mick Fleetwood, drumming mainstay from the start, chances on Lindsey Buckingham, offers him a gig with the band. Buckingham said yes, but only if his girlfriend could also be recruited. What could go wrong? Well, the relationship of Buckingham and Nicks, as well as that of John and Christine McVie, were both going rapidly south. Fleetwood was also divorcing his wife (not a band member). Luckily the rot didn’t really hit until 1975’s eponymous LP had been made and released to no small success. Mind you, the mayhem didn’t stop the follow-up, Rumours, from doing better still, and the various co-sanguinous shenanigans thereafter making Tusk the critics’ favorite. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. This piece is to celebrate that brief window, possibly, of relationship harmony, maritally and otherwise. Possibly.
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