Changing successes, changing casts, dramas, high -heights, crashes: You could make a television series out of this career. In 1967, Fleetwood Mac started as a classic blues band of British design mentioned by Peter Green. They quickly switch to a more comprehensive reading species of the Rock’n’Roll to finally become one of the largest bands in the world in the mid-1970s.
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What you need
Fleetwood Mac (1975)
The tenth album from Fleetwood Mac should be the first to be really essential? For the sake of the lovely order: If you are interested in Sixties-Bluesrock British construction, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac (1968) is certainly a very good record. And via the way from there to here, until 1975, you should read everything you can get your hands on. But this album, which is not without reason, has a title as if it were a debut, is the first masterpiece. The band, still quite fresh in the United States, has the most important change of personnel on their career (and it is not poor in changes of staff): Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in December 1974. The guitarist, whom the group recommends her producer Keith Olsen, is only available in a double pack: Lindsey Buckingham gets his girlfriend (and musical partner) Stevie Nicks on board. With “Rhiannon” it sings the best song on the album, Buckingham also contributes a few highlights. The pieces of the new merges seamlessly with those of Christine Mcvie, in “World Turning”, a tribute to Peter Green. The British band has become one that in no way sounds American, but California.
Five and a half stars
Rumors (1977)
The Opus Magnum, maybe not the best, but the largest record of the 1970s. 40 million buyers, ten million of them in the first month after his publication, not only cannot be wrong, but also witness emotional bomb crater on this album. The McVies? Divorced! Buckingham and Nicks? In the crisis. The stately quantities of cocaine that were snabilized during the recordings are not necessarily helped with such problems, but they gave the music to the megalomania that continues to make the plate. Regardless of whether the brisk Buckingham titles such as “Second Hand News” and “Go Your Own Way” or majestic piano material such as “Songbird”, whether an ass cooler Schleicher like “Dreams” or an ever-boy anthem like “Don’t Stop”, which was still 15 years later as a campaign anthem of the later US President Bill Clinton one Adequate use was found: Everything is right on this album. And there we have not yet spoken about “The Chain”, the only song of the album, which is jointly written by all of the band’s relationship problems.
Six stars
Tusk (1979)
This double album, the “Rolling Stone” wrote at the time, passed the 1970s “with a long, melancholic sigh”. The magazine moved parallels to the white album of the Beatles, although this statement was padded with a wide variety of “Aufs”. In fact, Stringenz is not one of the properties that can be awarded to this album. However, it comes with an immense variety of ideas. Where the opener, Christine McVies “Over & Over” still does the path of the previous albums, Lindsey Buckingham in particular moves joyfully through a variety of ideas on the following four pages. In songs like “The Ledge” he plays almost scratchy, quite trained rock’n’roll and in the title track with a 120-member Marching Band and also invents the anti-folk with “Save Me a Place”. The recordings were over one million dollars, at the time it was outrageous. Where did all the money go? Unclear. Was that worth that? Absolutely.
Six stars
Mirage (1982)
The fog of Tusk has disappeared, instead Lindsey Buckingham and theirs take their rumor sound and springs with all the means of production that the 80s have to offer. Sometimes a certain bloodless is added to the album, you can also blush your nose with regard to the lyrics. But guys, that’s not the band! That is the decade. And only a few songs can be found from the Laurel Canyon traces and Aor-Rock better transferred to the new time than “That’s Alright” or “Wish You Were here”.
Five and a half stars
Which does not harm
Then Play on (1969)
The percussion in the opener “Coming Your Way” shows in the right direction: Fleetwood Mac sounds for the first time – well, maybe not the first time, but the first time. With their third album they do not yet leave the blues of the first two albums, but add all the varieties of rock music that offered time. Guitarist Danny Kirwan may be the figure that shapes this album the most; The two highlights of the album: the soft “When You Say” and the “Rattlesnake Shake”, which is not replicating to the blues, but only used as a springboard. Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac after this album.
Four stars
Heroes Are Hard to Find (1974)
The band’s first album recorded in the USA – and the first to reach the American charts. The changes in the sound that previously characterized the albums seem to be closed; The world does not yet know that Bob will leave which the group is left. The Seventies rock, which shapes the album, sometimes looks generic, sometimes it totally fiber. But in all lengths there are pearls such as the finely rhythmic “Born Enchanter” with its cow bell and the various keys crossing in wild order, the folk rock number “She’s Changing Me” or the appropriate rocking “Silver Heels”.
Four stars
Tango in the Night (1987)
After the recordings, Lindsey Buckingham goes. Seven songs on the album come from him, they are good, but they are not even the best. This position can take a number written by Sandy Stewart (and supposedly only a little bit of Stevie Nicks): “Seven Wonders” shows Nicks as a mature singer, the voice snod -like, but with a self -confidence that makes the lines “i’ll never live to match the beauty again” appear interesting ambivalent – especially since the following “everywhere” of Christine Mcvie exudes the opposite mood pretty much.
Four and a half stars
Behind The Mask (1990)
Lindsey Buckingham is replaced by two musicians. Billy Burette and Rick Vito fill the gap routinely. The result is still music that shows for the first time in 15 years. Regardless of whether it is a slim adult contemporary rock numbers such as “Skies the Limit” or apparently pithy rocker like “Stand On The Rock”: you scratch the naturally luxurious production here, it will be a bit thin. The ladies save the album via the home straight: Stevie Nicks’ “Affairs of the Heart” is a power pop song committed between Synthies and Americana, the title track written and sung by Christine McVie is a wonderfully opulent piece of studio pop.
Three and a half stars
HANDS OFF
Kiln House (1970)
Peter Green leaves the band after three albums, which must first be oriented. An important step on the way to the Fleetwood Mac, which will record three of the best albums of the decade in the 1970s: For the first time, we hear Christine McVie, who will soon be a permanent member. Overall, the following applies: playful but moderately aged skirt.
Two and a half stars
Time (1995)
On the first album after five years, Lindsey Buckingham drops over again. We hear Mick Fleetwood in “Thesis Strange Times”, the soulful but less interesting spoken word end of the album. In between: generic rock pop that puts the emphasis on handmade.
Three stars
Solo Mac
18 band members gave themselves the jack plugs at Fleetwood Mac over the years. There are correspondingly many solo albums. Much of it sounds more of a distance, but we would like to make some recommendations: Bob Welch published six solo albums until 1983. French Kiss (1977, four stars) is the most joy-just because of disco nokeepers such as “Ebony Eyes” and “Hot Love, Cold World”.
Christine Mcvie is to be mentioned twice: First of all, there is the clear debut album, which is still anchored in 60s under her maiden name Christine Perfect (1970, four stars). The second album Christine Mcvie (1984, three and a half stars) comes up with interesting guests such as Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and, surprise, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham. After all, Buckingham Nicks (1973, four and a half stars), the album, was essential before the two became Fleetwood Mac.
If you want to revive the old days: with Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac (four stars), the live recycling of the London All-Star concerts from 2020 recently appeared.