Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography by Mick Fleetwood & Anthony Bozza

Author:Mick Fleetwood & Anthony Bozza [Fleetwood, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts, Biography & Autobiography / Composers & Musicians, Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE ‘WHITE’ ALBUM

Out at their beach-side apartment in Malibu, Christine started writing songs for what would become our album. She had an old, worn-in Hohner electric piano set up so that she’d get a view of the Pacific Ocean out the window. That’s where she wrote ‘Say You Love Me’ and ‘Over My Head’, as well as ‘Warm Ways’ and ‘Sugar Daddy’.

In one day, I heard Chris’s demos as well as Stevie and Lindsey’s, basically the bones of our debut album. I was completely floored. ‘I’m So Afraid’ was a track that Lindsey had been labouring over for four years; he’d got the harmony of the guitar parts so in tune they were a virtual orchestra unto themselves. ‘Monday Morning’, ‘Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’ were show stoppers, even as rough sketches recorded on Lindsey’s four-track.

We worked on all of those songs as a group for a few weeks until they became fully realised. Each day the energy built and the excitement grew because it was like being in a boot camp where everyone was so focused that results happened very quickly. Lindsey and Christine were two musicians who fell in with each other immediately; it was a departure for him, because he’d been used to working only with a poet. Whereas a lot of what Lindsey did for Stevie was interpretation, building musical soundscapes for the stories she told so beautifully in her lyrics, Chris’s songwriting came from the blues and got right to the point. Lindsey took that and ran. It was the yin to the yang–and that doesn’t count his own songs. Watching him work his way through all of it was inspiring; I hadn’t felt that way since Peter Green had been at the helm, and I know John felt the same. It was wonderfully overwhelming; watching Stevie dance around the studio as she worked out her vocal parts, one thought kept pounding through my head: there wasn’t an audience alive that wouldn’t respond to her when we hit the road.

I’d dedicated myself to carrying the band across the finish line, but it now gave me a fanatical zeal. In just two months, by February 1975, we’d all agreed that we were ready to record. We moved into Sound City and signed Keith Olsen on as our producer. We recorded all of our demos, plus two new songs we decided to do once we’d got going. The first was a cover, ‘Blue Letter’, by the 1960s country-rockers the Curtis Brothers. The idea came to us literally on the spot; the Curtis Brothers were recording demos at Sound City and when we heard them play the song we decided to give it a go. The other last-minute add was a cover as well, ‘World Turning’, our reinterpretation of Peter Green’s original.

As much as we were excited to work together, there were growing pains. Lindsey had a long list of ideas as to how things should be done and how they should sound. He can play any instrument I’ve

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