Light On Dark Water

Fleetwood Mac: Go Your Own Way

Weekend Music

Well, the music by married couples, or bands including married couples, theme has pretty much run its course. I’m down to couples who weren’t happily married and got divorced long ago, and/or whose music I’m not that crazy about. I’m afraid I never liked Fleetwood Mac a great deal, at least in their most commercially successful period. They were very capable (great rhythm section), and I didn’t actively dislike them, but hearing their songs a few times on the radio was enough.

But I always thought this song was a killer. It’s almost cheating a bit to use it, because the married couple were the bass player, John McVie, and the keyboard player, Christine McVie, and this song features other people–another couple, actually, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, but I don’t think they were ever married. But I like it a whole lot better than some of their bigger hits, e.g. “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”. Yuck. I never did care for it, and then when the Clintons used it as their inaugural theme song, my view of both was confirmed: bland ’70s pop for establishment liberals.

This track has got a real edge, though. Love the drums in the verses.


 

 

Maclin Horton

25 responses to “Fleetwood Mac: Go Your Own Way”

  1. Daniel Nichols

    The best Fleetwood Mac music was before their commercial success, back when Danny Kirwin and Peter Green were in the band, the stuff from the late 60s and early 70s…

    Reply
  2. Mac

    I haven’t heard much of that earlier stuff but suspect I might agree. That was a very different band.

    Reply
  3. Paul

    Are The Gordons bigger in Holland than at home?

    Reply
  4. Mac

    I’ve never heard of them so I guess they aren’t really huge in the U.S.

    Reply
  5. Mac

    I just watched the video. I must say I’m surprised that they’re popular in Holland.

    Reply
  6. Paul

    Well, Little House on the Prairie was one of the longest-running series on Dutch television . . .

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  7. Mac

    So, the Dutch are interested in other things besides smoking marijuana, shooting heroin, and visiting sex shops? 🙂 That seems to be about all we ever hear about them over here. Aside from the occasional Muslim fanatic killing or threatening somebody… News reports can give one a wildly distorted view of the world.

    Reply
  8. Paul

    There’s more to the Netherlands than Amsterdam, just as there’s more to the US than Los Angeles (or Las Vegas).
    Here’s the wikipedia page about one segment of the Dutch equivalent of PBS (and here’s another segment).

    Reply
  9. Mac

    Needless to say (I guess) such things would not be allowed here. Right-wingers may complain about NPR/PBS, but that’s nothing compared to the outcry that would ensue if those networks carried overtly evangelical broadcasting.
    As a southerner, I’m very well acquainted with inaccurate regional stereotyping. I once heard a Californian tell an Indian (from India) that he must on no account travel in the American south, because he would be killed. Not might be harassed or even in danger if he crossed the wrong people, just “would be killed.” And the guy was no darker-skinned than the average Italian. I think I laughed out loud.

    Reply
  10. Daniel Nichols

    Hey Mac, I just posted two early Fleetwood Mac tunes on Facebook, one by Peter Green and one by Danny Kirwin. Didn’t I send you some tapes of this stuff once?

    Reply
  11. Mac

    Yes, I think you did, but I can’t remember for sure. I know there was something from a Peter Green solo album but am not sure about F.M.
    I still have most of those tapes, btw. I was listening to probably my favorite of all the other day, the one with Firesign Theater, X, U2, and others, thinking that if it would fit on a cd I would make you a copy because you probably don’t have that stuff anymore, at least not in this nicely selected and sequenced package. Of course the sound isn’t too great.
    I could send you an mp3. Or do you still have a cassette player? I keep wanting to get rid of mine but I have too much on cassette and it’s too time-consuming to convert it all to digital.

    Reply
  12. Daniel Nichols

    I think there is still a cassette player somewhere around here.
    Did you like the FM tunes I posted on FB?

    Reply
  13. Mac

    I haven’t listened to them. I tend to pass on YT videos because so often they don’t play smoothly for me, and I find the stops and starts maddening. I’ll give those a try later, though: I’m working late and the students will be gone, so maybe the network won’t be too slow.

    Reply
  14. Paul

    It’s the flip-side of the very Dutch “live-and-let-live” attitude: if you don’t want to watch evangelicalism, you can always change the channel.

    Reply
  15. Mac

    As you probably known, we have plenty of evangelicalism on tv. But not on the “public”, i.e. partly govt subsidized, outlets. What’s so different here, I think, is the slightly crazed antipathy to the state funding religious activity of any kind. Most Christians as well as secularists feel that way, and it’s an old American tradition. But in recent years it’s moved from the simple idea that the two should be separate to the idea that religion is a dangerous thing that must be kept in its place by the state. In effect, religion is penalized in a situation like NPR/PBS: you can advocate for any position there (in principle) as long as it’s not founded on religous convictions.

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  16. Rob G

    Mac, re: Youtube videos — I learned a little trick not long ago to help with all the pausing and what-not (you may already know it). While the video is playing at the beginning hit the pause button on the “player” and let the video download a while before you hit play. In many cases the reason the pauses occur is that the playback is happening faster than the download. If you let the latter progress a ways before playback you eliminate that particular problem.
    I’ve always liked GYOW — one of their better songs, IMO. Also partial to ‘Gypsy’ (great video, and one of SN’s best vocal performances) ‘Tusk’, and ‘The Chain.’ And some of Lindsey’s solo stuff has been pretty good.

    Reply
  17. Mac

    I do know about that, but I’m frequently too impatient to do it.:-) And sometimes even that doesn’t work, especially at work–I think we have streaming video throttled way back. Like right now: I remembering liking “Tusk” when it was on the radio, so I’m trying to listen to a YT of it, and I just get the little circling dots, whether on pause or play, with no red-bar download progress happening at all. Annoying.
    I meant to mention that I always like Buckingham’s guitar work.

    Reply
  18. Francesca

    This really takes me back. I can remember when it was on the radio all the time. On a less happy note, I suggested we use ‘love lit’ as a translation for a compound German word, and explained that I could remember an awful song containing the lines ‘with your love light shining…’ I looked it up, and I hadn’t remembered quite how hideous the song is. It is called ‘Hold me Close’ by David Essex. That’s the thing with the radio – it imprints the vilest phrases on one’s memory, as well as good songs like this.

    Reply
  19. Mac

    I’m all too miserably familiar with that phenomenon, and therefore will make no attempt to hear that David Essex song, which I don’t recognize by name.

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  20. Francesca

    Essex was, as I remembered today, the British equivalent of David Cassidy. He never made it in the States, but was huge here in the early 1970s. Don’t listen to it.

    Reply
  21. Mac

    I think he was a one-hit wonder in the late ’70s with a song probably called “Rock On”–at least that was the primary lyrical content. It stood out because it had a weird synthy sound.

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  22. Mac

    And now I’ve got “Rock On” stuck in my head. Which tempts me to link to it on YouTube (haven’t looked but it’s probably there) so that others could share my experience. But that would be very wrong.

    Reply
  23. Paul

    The name “David Essex” did sound vaguely familiar. I don’t know about his music, but his life is certainly a bit odd.

    Reply
  24. Mac

    At least the early part. I guess the fame-and-afterwards part is pretty typical.

    Reply
  25. Rob G

    Soap star Michael Damian had a hit with a remake of “Rock On” in the late 80s or early 90s. As a kid I had the 45 of the original–I was about 12, so I’m thinking the song was ’72/’73. I remember liking the “cool” sound of it more than the song itself, which I thought kind of bland.

    Reply

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