How were Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac as paradigm-shifting as punk?

"If after punk there was postpunk, how come after Fleetwood Mac's Rumours there was no post-Rumours? Rumours came out in 1977 just like punk did, and it sold more copies, and rock critics liked it. And it was at least as innovative as punk: With that blues-based rhythm section and glossy production and raggedy harmonies descended from the Beach Boys and Fairport Convention, it proved that sometimes soft rock can rock harder than hard rock."

Chuck Eddy: Review of One 2 One: Imagine It (A&M) and Fiona: Squeeze (Geffen), Spin August 1992, p. 85.

Xgau:

Tango in the Night [Warner Bros., 1987]
"Fifteen years ago, when their secret weapon was someone named Bob Welch, they made slick, spacy, steady-bottomed pop that was a little ahead of the times commercially."

"I never met anybody who didn't like Rumours. It got played a lot around my house in the year of "Anarchy in the UK" and "White Riot...""

Lester Bangs: "Stevie Nicks: Lilith or Bimbo?" Village Voice November 25, 1981. Reprinted in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste : A Lester Bangs Reader, p. 86.

Ok that should be enough to establish that 1. Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac has been mentioned in the same breath as punk by some rather august minds and thus a comparison between the two shouldn't be too far-fetched and 2. Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac predicted if not instilled changes in certain sectors of English-singing popular music.

So did FM shift some musical paradigms the way punk did? Which musicians obviously started a band because they heard Rumours and not Never Mind The Bollocks? If they were ahead of the times commercially, when and with what bands did the times commercially catch up? Is post-Rumours merely Tusk and thus kinda post-punky anyway? And so on.

Oops thread title should be "How was...."

Note also: Greil Marcus' Tusk essay, which does posit FM as a punk band.

"Which musicians obviously started a band because they heard both Rumours and Never Mind The Bollocks?" might also be a good question.

One way to discuss this might be via late Abba (probably post-Arrival but definitely the last two albums). Not sure one could detect direct FM influences but the affinities are there: a more mature, streamlined sound not far from Adult Contemporary; he said-she said sturm und drang in the lyrics; Rumours-style breakups behind the scenes; etc.

All this came about because Donna Rouge and I were chatzing about FM and he brought up that he was listening to Maggie Reilly: "Tears In The Rain" (1992):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkWiYNsnPd0

which sounds Fleetwood Macky (the Mr. thought it was Fleetwood Mac) and late Abba-esque.

And then all this reminded me of xhuxk's review of Colourhaus: Water to the Soul in Spin which is where I thought that first quote came from mainly because Colourhaus had a FM/Stevie Nicks vibe. But in both reviews he mentions Roxette, definitely Abba spawn. So maybe by the time of Roxette, Colourhaus, etc., the lines between FM and Abba had become irretrievably blurred...

Here's Colourhaus: "Colour Me You" (over Baywatch sexiness):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUYOBnx5ihk

And here's their best song, "Oxygen (Nosferatu - The Seduction)."

Which musicians obviously started a band because they heard Rumours and not Never Mind The Bollocks?

Quarterflash, maybe? (I have no idea why they started a band, actually, but they're certainly a possibility.)

Also, I don't think anybody ever called me "august" before. Thanks!

Also, Little Big Town (obviously), though they took a good quarter century after Rumours to get started.

The Corrs :-(

does l.a. mellow gold fit in here? FM seems a lot more present and prescient than punk in the last ten years, maybe it just took a while for everyone else to catch up.

I don't know that the Jayhawks started b/c they heard Rumours but Sound of Lies and Smile are two extremely FM-y albums; see also Whiskeytown's last album. I say that b/c of the female harmonies for both bands, which is what sticks most out at me as being FM-y.

"Which musicians obviously started a band because they heard both Rumours and Never Mind The Bollocks?" might also be a good question."

duh, chuck, def leppard!

true story: i was actually listening to punk + fleetwood mac in 1978!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgnOJXIvu6s

"Which musicians obviously started a band because they heard both Rumours and Never Mind The Bollocks?" might also be a good question.

Shiina Ringo.

hmm, i'd say that FM's influence pretty much permeated the collective (American) pop unconsciousness back in the day. so i don't really think their impact can be so easily gauged directly--i.e., the Ramones/Pistols envisioning a new wrinkle in ye olde rock fabric--on whatever individual artists may have claimed some kind of aesthetic association with 'em since. the Mac was just there, man. always. afaic, Rumours defined rock star life as people actually wanted to experience it in their own lives (romance). NVTBHTSP, on the other hand, idealized the possibility of youth rebellion in the wake of more or less crushing teen-age boredom--just happened that kids with guitars found it much easier to mimic punk's musical insurrection than FM's (duh). also, the damn urchin probably couldn't readily relate to coke-huffing millionaires maybe? just ask Courtney.

Well, not saying I necessarily disagree with that, but you certainly don't have to relate to Fleetwood Mac's lives (or even know anything about their lives) to relate to their songs, and sound.

Courtney Love's obviously the big Pistols/FM hybridizer, though. Weird that it took so long for her to be mentioned. Other possibilites I was thinking of: Axl Rose, Redd Kross, X, Liz Phair, the Donnas, Sheryl Crow, Pink, Shakira, Warrant.

d'oh, lilith faire to thread.

And the Dixie Chicks. And maybe Miranda Lambert (though she might be too young to know who the Sex Pistols are.) And Jon Bon Jovi.

http://www.musicobsession.com/Pictures/s/e/seaweed251318.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcrdeRoJs9E

where does Alanis fit into this?

Yeah, her too, I bet. And Sonic Youth. And Cinderella. And Madonna.

What about Fleetwood Mac?

them too.

sonic youth are a perfect example, tho. what with Kim's so. calif roots mediating the distance between Thurston's ny-noise cred and Lee's jam-band tendencies and all. plus she co-produced Hole's debut album.

haha, the difference, rather.

or somethin' like it... *hic*

And okay, duh, not Rumours era exactly, but still; this is presumably the only punk rock standard originally done by Fleetwood Mac, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk5Jku_NNW4

Also worth listening to, because why not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJ4gHOdixU

Youtube must have 20 different punk bands (though unfortunately not the Count Bishops, who did it better than anybody else) covering "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In."

in the guardian today: "are hawkwind the most influential british group ever?"

i see "rumours-era" has been as loosely defined as "punk" on this thread.

in the guardian today: "are hawkwind the most influential british group ever?"
i'm assuming the answer is a resounding "no"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB19kSIrFNc

in the guardian today: "are hawkwind the most influential british group ever?"
i'm assuming the answer is a resounding "no"?

― tylerw, Friday, August 28, 2009 9:42 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think they might not even have phrased it as a question! there was nothing in the article about them being influential, though, it was mainly just about how one of them lives on a farm and is quite a nice dude

anyway we should get the guy that wrote that onto this 'rumours' question is my point

I'd say Womack & Womack's Love Wars, the first three X albums, and Shoot Out the Lights use the same material as Rumours: redacted folk and blues and a sprinkle of R&B on angry sex-pop.

The FM/Sex Pistols fusion question derailed the thread a tad (which is fine...never heard those Rezillos/Rockets songs). But I thought we'd be talking more about Heart (which xhuxk mentions in that review) and Toto (now there's a group of musicians who I bet heard Rumours or the 1975 self-titled and started a band).

And did Stevie Nicks begat Kate Bush and thus the wood sprite wing of popular music (Tori, Sarah MacLachlan, gad! Loreena McKennit, etc.)?

Don't forget Kristin Hersh...

They're fellow travelers, methinks.

Toto (now there's a group of musicians who I bet heard Rumours or the 1975 self-titled and started a band).

No, they went out and bought new mikes.

A lot of already established musicians did indeed start a new band after hearing "Rumours". Or, their old band changed their style into a more streamlined AOR.

like which

Well, I would say Toto is a typical example. Plus Chicago, Yes, Genesis and Supertramp would all become more streamlined and less adventurous.

yeah I don't buy that

genesis went from making music that really doesn't sound like fleetwood mac to making shorter songs that also really don't sound like fleetwood mac because they heard rumours and decided pop songs were alright after all?

I always attributed most of those prog bands tightening up in the early '80s (Rush and Moody Blues and Queen too) more to new wave than to Fleetwood Mac, but what do I know.

Btw, this might tick Kevin off, but I'm also not necessarily convinced that what made punk rock good or interesting is that it "shifted paradigms," assuming indeed it did actually shift any.

No that doesn't tick me off. Not sure it shifted paradigms either. Or it did only for certain groups of people as with any genre. But Simon Reynolds wrote an entire book on post-punk. Where's the book on post-Rumours (not saying there isn't one; just asking)?

I like what Ioannis said above - it may just be that FM's influence was so pervasive that it's difficult to trace their sound in subsequent music.

As a listener, particularly a young listener who heard Fleetwood Mac way out of time (I accessed Rumours through my Mother's own listening habits, in fact), what I heard was music about creating and uncreating relationships - which spoke to a comment I made on another thread where I always heard Fleetwood Mac more as a commune that made music, or a family that made music. Whereas where a lot of the singer-songwriter traditions that pre-dated Fleetwood Mac that I was inaugurated into (Dylan, Mitchell, Young, Browne, etc) felt much more independent. Dylan's relationships are always happening off-screen, and he's reflecting them to us solo now on the album. But on Rumours the relationship appears to be occurring in real time here and now, and some of the bitterness comes from that -- we're not just hearing a kiss-off song, we're witnessing a kiss-off, and here's how you know it's happening now: Lindsey is kissing off Stevie BUT LOOK, Stevie is STILL HERE in the song! She hasn't left!

And in punk music, which I was inaugurated into later on my own, there were similar dynamics. Whatever the fractures and relationship breaks, they always appeared to be happening in the moment -- you were witnessing the disaster as it happened. Anyway, this is possible the relationship for me as a listener, but I was listening to all these bands way out of times (Fleetwood Mac + Sex Pistols both decades later than the impact), so my experience could be totally anachronistic. But if it isn't; it seems like there's this kind of familial dynamic, or social relationship performance.

zo my gaw:

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "influenced by fleetwood mac's Rumours". (0.31 seconds)
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1.
The Roots: Phrenology review | CD reviews | Music - Times Online
... so the Roots can claim this album was influenced by Fleetwood Mac's Rumours without realising, we assume, that it's about as cool a reference point as ...

looool

I had to click through to check if Chuck wrote that review.

I think X is possibly the best example of this kinda thing--angry sexual tension rock with pretty harmonies?

yes, Dan, they did.

other country stars in the Rumours vein: (obviously) the Dixie Chicks, maybe Sugarland? I don't know...

While I've met no one who hates Rumours, I would never trust anyone who doesn't at least like it.

other country stars in the Rumours vein

Definitely Bering Strait, three-guy/two-girl band from Russia whose debut album hit #17 of the country chart five years back, and had a decent cover of "You Make Lovin' Fun" on it. Possibly Lady Antebellum now, and some younger bands like Jypsi or Glorianna or Coldwater Jane.

Rumours was a paradigm shift for, er, Fleetwood Mac

The band went through a bunch of paradigm shifts. At one point their manager with the connivance of Mick Fleetwood, who later chickened out, put a bunch of ringers on the road who weren't discovered until a few shows in on a tour. The band of ringers was Stretch, an obscure Brit hard rock band, hired to imitate Bob Weston and Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac. Strange story, and it almost sunk 'em permanently.

Fleetwood Mac came an album after the re-emergence, which didn't do so well. It was the first with Buckingham-Nicks, and it sold very well, setting the stage for Rumours. When I was a freshman in college, Fleetwood Mac was getting play on every floor of the dorm.

Here's the wiki thing on it. It neglects to mention Mick Fleetwood's role in the affair, which Stretch later put into a song called "Why Did You Do It," which was a semi-hit in Europe. As the guys that wuld be Stretch saw it, they -thought- they were joining a Fleetwood Mac plagued by personnel departures.

In what would be one of the most bizarre events in rock history, the band's manager, Clifford Davis, claimed that he owned the name Fleetwood Mac and put out a "fake Mac". Nobody in the "fake Mac" was ever officially in the real band, although some of them later acted as Danny Kirwan's studio band. Fans were told that Bob Welch and John McVie had quit the group, and that Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie would be joining the band at a later date, after getting some rest. Fleetwood Mac's road manager, John Courage, worked one show before he realised that the line being used was a lie. Courage ended up hiding the real Fleetwood Mac's equipment, which helped shorten the tour by the fake band. But the lawsuit that followed put the real Fleetwood Mac out of commission for almost a year

omg - that is awesome!

Anecdotes like that show Mick Fleetwood is a "survivor" in the most risible sense: he'll do anything, anything at all to keep the project going.

I read somewhere that S. Reynolds also made the comparison

Here it is:

A soft-rock masterpiece (gorgeous melodicism charged with the emotional carnage wreaked by the inter-band tangle of break-ups and infidelities), Rumours was also an unprecedented blockbuster, selling a staggering 21 million copies worldwide. In America (where FM were just made for FM radio), the LP was even huger: 31 weeks at Numero Uno in the Billboard Charts (that's two-thirds of a YEAR!) and total sales that, at 14 million, still make it America's second best-selling LP ever. In the USA, Rumours was what happened instead of punk; even in Britain, where FM radio barely existed, it was the album in every suburban hi-fi cabinet, right next to Dark Side Of The Moon.

http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2007/10/fleetwood-mac-tusk-from-unknown.html

I think there was a trend in the mid-'70s of disco-inspired rhythms being incorporated into pop-rock. ABBA's 1974 global smash "Waterloo" was an early example. The Bee Gees went disco for the first time in 1975. This helped disco cross over to a mainstream audience. More dance-inspired, uptempo beats started to crop up in pop-rock music. In 1976, besides "Rumours", Electric Light Orchestra had a hit with "Livin' Thing" which is a similar blend of disco-rhythms and Beatles-esque harmonies. So what "Rumours" was doing with the California soft-rock style was similar to what was happening in other rock variants around that time.

hmm anyone up for helping me hear the disco element in Rumours? kinda missed that on my first 75 zillion listens.

I'm just thinking of the more up-tempo tracks like "Go Your Own Way", "Don't Stop", and "Second-Hand News" (which according to Wikipedia was inspired by Buckingham hearing the Bee Gees' disco hit "Jive Talkin"). I hear some disco shuffle in those rhythms.

not to be a pedant but the disco beat by definition does not shuffle

Not sure what you mean. Surely there's an element of shuffle or swing in a lot of disco music.

four on the floor = no shuffle. shuffle beat by definition is an unequal emphasis on beats of the same duration (i.e., emphasizing the one and the three beat in a four beat sequence)

the basic disco beat emphasizes all four beats equally

But the four-on-the-floor drum beat is usually combined with other elements that are swung rhythmically (uneven durations) in lots of disco songs.

I don't think swing or shuffle is so much a question of emphasis as of duration. Four on the floor means all four beats are emphasized equally, unlike rock beats where the 2nd and 4th or 1st and 3rd are accented. This doesn't really have anything to do with swing or shuffle.

disco routinely incorporated syncopated elements (primarily of a caribbean/afro-cuban naure) that were more about dividing the standard 4/4 beat into varying 16th note patterns. but it doesn't change the fact that the underlying beat is not a shuffle.

where's Jordan? surely we can get one of ILM's resident drummers to settle this

verrrrrry rudimentary definition:

rock = 4/4
disco = off-beat, where the beat is on the bass-drum (I guess similar to classic country)?

ok, i just re-listened and i can ~kinda~ see how you can loosely (ie, c.eddy-ly) define "don't stop" and "2nd hand news" as disco-inspired rhythmically, but "go your own way" is a straight up 4/4 rock.

The drummer may insist there's no shuffle in disco - but I'm thinking more of the way other instruments play off the steady drum beat. For instance the "triple step" rhythmic feel of "Don't Stop" has uneven rhythms played on top of a steady even rhythm (3 beats of uneven duration played against 2 even ones).

oh hi.

i listened to "don't stop" and it's absolutely a shuffle. 4/4, with triplet subdivisions between the quarter notes, accented like this: ONE and UH TWO and UH THREE and UH FOUR and UH.

as for disco, i don't think of it as ever being explicitly triplet-based or using shuffle grooves, but it can still swing within that 4/4, duple-meter context (and swinging always at least references the triplet at some level of the beat).

incidentally, i was just listening to this, which has to be in the top 5 funkiest shuffles ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRMTaeoQw2Y

I don't think the swing feel is part of disco per se - just something that was sometimes implied particularly in '70s disco, which to my ears distinguishes it from later '80s dance music.

"The Hustle" was a popular '70s disco dance which involved dancing in a swing rhythm against the steady 4/4 disco pulse.

Also I think perhaps when rock bands adopted rhythmic ideas from disco in the '70s, it was more of that syncopation that is more noticeable, because they didn't take the 4 on the floor itself, but rather the trappings.

Also, this may be a bit of speculation at this point, but I suspect that another element rock may have taken from disco in the mid-70s was a somewhat faster tempo. It would be interesting to see what typical BPMs were for disco vs. rock in the early to mid-70s.

"You Make Loving Fun" seems to be the song on Rumours which doesn't exactly sound like disco but seems to have the most latent disco potential...

(actually, I'm not sure what I mean, except that I think that maybe instead of pining away for Stevie Nicks like punk, it's possible that disco was actually trying to nail Christine McVie)

Well, of course! She's the only one of the bunch who's not a recovering alky.

I think maybe John McVie is the most underrated of the Macsters. His bass playing is huge on "Rumours".

^love the bass-playing on "Dreams"

Yeah, it's great - really makes the song.

"Rumours was to the U.S. what punk was to the U.K."

it was funny reading that hotel california book about the whole elektra/asylum/laurel canyon era and the shot heard round the world for EVERYONE out there from the eagles guys and jackson and linda and everyone in between was sweet baby james! that was the album they all wanted to make and was the template for the whole cali sound. it was their sex pistols moment.

"Steamroller Blues" is kind of a jam.

i was primed and ready as early as 1974 to embrace the buck/nicks mac line-up. linda was my goddess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9FMwzgY-k

and so, so hott

linda rondstadt seems like such a nice killer lady in "hotel california".. far too sweet to be hanging around those depraved unwashed eagles boys

far too SMART, you mean.

yeah that too

linda, and surprisingly, jackson browne were pretty much the only people who came out of that book unscathed.

frey and stills though, man, they were like the ultimate evil.

which Hotel California book are you referring to, scott?

oh wait: the Hoskyns book.

http://altefritz.com/Images/linda.jpg

que linda

Hey, look! It's our once and future governor. You shoulda captioned that skot.

I hadda read Mick Fleetwood's autobiography once. The only worse was Bill Wyman's. But anyway, the only thing I remember about it because it was so icky was Fleetwood retelling this tale of how he'd started this telephone romance with a fan who'd written him a letter. And he became very smitten with her, he alleged, seemingly on the basis of her telephone voice and what she told him. And he kept wanting to meet her and she kept putting it off. And he became more sexually obsessed with her and when she finally consented to meet him he was bummed because she turned out to be a fat girl. So he wrote that he had been wronged and tried to scold her into admitting she had tricked him. Unsuccessfully.

I have a hard time imagining why anyone would publish a story about themselves like that unless
that person has an IQ of about 70, has lucked into vast fame and fortune by being in the right place with the right people at the right times, and became used to being surrounded by people who never said "boo" to whatever stupid thing entered his mind.

Doesn't stop me from liking Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac though.

Ten possible reasons.

Marcello, that's fantastic. Although I still don't own the 2004 edition with the restored "Silver Springs," it's true that an inessential gap has been filled.

I recently tried to supplement my itunes-bought copy of Rumours with an itunes-bought copy of Silver Springs, which is only available on a Stevie Nicks best-of. The problem is that the version on the Nicks comp sounds so much better than the version of Rumours that I have.

The two-disc 2002 "Very Best of Fleetwood Mac" has a (remixed?) version of "Silver Springs" on it, as well as a nice selection of Peter Green stuff and random rarities/alternates.

I downloaded my version from that comp.

so when is the hollywood biopic about FM and the making and success of RUMOURS gonna happen???