From the back of Future Games; I could not afford an ornithologist, so I can only say with ~75% accuracy that that is a penguin and not John McVie
One of he earliest songs I can remember really getting into was Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Hypnotized,’ and as an adult that has been something I’ve been able to explore a bit more—YouTube and live versions weren’t so easy to find back when before the ubiquity of the internet, after all. It’s also allowed me to learn a bit more about the unique and eccentric man behind the track, Bob Welch.
Welch’s time in Fleetwood Mac came after Peter Green and prior to the commercial juggernaut of the Buckingham-Nicks era. And while 'Classic Mac' on occasion would revisit tracks from earlier in the band’s history—primarily ‘Oh, Well,’ which Buckingham perfectly evokes the snickering, mocking tone of on Fleetwood Mac Live—I read once online where Welch had made a remark that Welch got the impression Buckingham didn’t care much for his more psychedelic-influenced rock. I know ‘Hypnotized’ seems to dip out of live set-lists not too long after recordings like Who’s the New Girl?, something I always took to be a sign that Buckingham shifted away from them, especially as Rumors brought their newer incarnation the most successful sales to date (hell, the biggest winner of Green-era Fleetwood Mac was probably Santana covering ‘Black Magic Woman,’ or Judas Priest to a much-smaller scale with their cover of ‘The Green Manalishi’).
It also, if what I recently learned about Welch often opening for Fleetwood Mac during their era of commercial success and big stadium events, could just be that there was no reason to cover the track twice. I also had always assumed Welch was just kinda a run-of-the-mill type, one of those guys who somehow wound up in California seeking fame and fortune and, well, no, not at all: turns out the guy was from a studio family, with his father a screenwriter and producer who helped put on the 25th Annual Academy Awards and his mother a singer and actress who was associated with Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. Not small credentials of some hayseed blown afar by an errant wind, those!
Welch instead came to the band back in their England days—he’d intended to attend the Sorbonne, ended up mostly hanging around smoking hash, then returned a few years later to try his hand with the trio Head West. A bit more (or less?) romantic of a background than Zevon’s time drinking and playing western and country songs in an Irish bar, collecting the stories that’d turn into infamous Roland, but you take what you get—in Welch’s case, he headed north to England and auditioned for Fleetwood Mac at their old house called Benifold. Back at the time, they lived there as a group—Welch became rhythm guitarist under lead Danny Kirwan, who if I recall from one of Fleetwood’s books, essentially lived in the attic on a diet of beer. While Welch respected Kirwan (and he's a damn good guitarist with some beautiful tracks), he was also quite difficult, apparently, and the pair butted heads—ultimately culminating in an 'incident' or 'fight' backstage but which strikes me very much as signs of a mental breakdown. Kirwan was sacked from the band and likely never got treatment to help him, from the little I gathered).
You can find pictures of Benifold online, the old home in England the band lived in. At least at one point, it was for sale and interior pictures were up. Pretty cool; here is one shot from one of Mick Fleetwood’s books; 'Hypnotized' comes to mind about “that lawn, which is wide, a least half of a playing field…”
For a quick run-through, while on this lovely image: ‘Hypnotized’ dabbles into a lot of, ah, odd stuff. Non-scientific, aliens, magic, that sorta thing: stuff I consider fun in fiction, and maybe an interesting metaphor in that context if you enjoy some Jungian psychology, but which Welch, well, I'll vaguely point in the direction of the Minister who said of William Blake that his crack was one that let the light in (head crack, not plumber’s or rock).
Anyway, in another bit of the song he describes "a place down in Mexico… where a man can fly over mountains and hills,” which is a reference to the fraud-urned-cult-leader Carlos Caaneda. I’ve mentioned Castaneda in passing before; his original book The Teachings of Don Juan is interesting enough as fiction (I believe someone once traced his library history to how what he’d drawn from where to fake this for his degree). As this series expanded, he grew in fame and began his own cult with an ‘inner circle’ of women and—well, we’ve all seen those videos where the pizza delivery guy brings extra sausage or Karl Hungus needs to fix the cable? You know where this is going. I am being facetious, Castaneda was a real gnarly fella and Amy Wallace’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, while it took me a long time to get through, details it all. There's also this article which gives some of the details, is more accesible, and a quicker read.
Another verse references a forest road I read was in North Carolina? [Update: Source] (S/O Thomas Wolfe) and, a bit like Oregon’s Crater Lake, had the very peculiar feature of looking almost as if someone had pressed a marble there and left a perfect half-spherical imprint [not in the above source, but I believe I read the marble comparison somewhere else]. “And if any man’s hand ever made that land…” This could be BS, as well, because I’ve also seen it claimed the track references the bizarre Pascagoula Incident—which is incredibly implausible, considering the album was released four days after the incident was first reported to the police. Seems unlikely that a sory would’ve gotten that much wide circulation in such a short time in the early 70s, even if you were into weird psychedelic circles—especially since I'd imagine the records were already being printed and packaged by then.
Mystery to Me also includes one of Christine McVie’s best and most-underrated tracks, 'Why.' Of note on the album art: John McVie's cameo (only 25% sure that's him).
Starting with Welch’s penultimate album with the band is a bit of a disservice, but oh well: his first was Future Games, and the title track here is a great jam. Live recordings of it (including a great one from my home area station, still hosting the Men’s Room, KISW) include Welch letting the audience know the song was written “high up in the mountains… the mountains of your mind,” as (Christine McVie?) giggles and the dreamy, ethereal vibe the song conjures up leaves no doubt about that. Already clocking in at a nice, moderate joint-size of about 7 minutes, concert versions would go up to 10-12 minutes, so you had plenty of time to really enjoy hat blunt.
Bare Trees is a bit more, well, bare to an extent (though still an underrated album), and the subject matter is comparatively grim: while charming on its surface, Kirwan’s lyrics on the track ‘Dust’ captures that classic British melancholy: “When the white flame in us is gone/And we that lost the world’s delight/Stiffen in darkness…”—a contrast heightened by it following ‘Sunny Side of Heaven,’ and also fitting Kirwan’s cryptic output on Future Games with ‘Woman of 1000 Years’ and ‘Sands of Time,’ which ties the title track for outstanding on the album.
‘The Ghost’ is our classic, mystic, ethereal Welch track, but Bare Tree demands our attention focus instead on one of Welch’s signature tracks: ‘Sentimental Lady.’
From the melodious, extended instrumentation to the altered lyrics, this is not the version the world will become much more familiar with in a few years. Of note in the shift is the dropping of the second verse and most significantly: “Cause we live in a world/When paintings have no color, word don’t rhyme...”
The retained line (“Cause we live in a time when meaning falls in splinters from our lives…”) is great, of course, but the more commercially successful rerecording of ‘Sentimental Lady’ from French Kiss definitely has a bit of a ‘Love Song’ and ‘Love Song (Radio Edit)’ vibe. Or, I suppose in the case of French Kiss, ‘the Skeevy Guy Camped Out Behind the Porn Shoot’ Vibe.
1977's Grammy for 'Album I Thought Was a Porno'
Penguin, the subsequent album and one lasting manifestation of John McVie’s thing for penguins—I shit you not, the entire reason the band uses penguin icons is cause he [at least used to] enjoy taking pictures of penguins at zoos and is a bit bashful—has a trifecta of Welch songs: ‘Revelation’ (not bad, but not stellar), ‘Night Watch’ (outstanding) and ‘Bright Fire’ (outstanding). I seem to recall Fleetwood writing this album off a bit in one of his memoirs, but it’s actually pretty solid and Christine McVie has some underrated tracks on there, too, like ‘Dissatisfied,’ which has a cool=ass riff.
Mystery to Me we’ve covered, though it’s (love it or hate it, I love it) album artwork deserves a shoutout. A bit of the laid-back nature of the production also comes through: if memory serves, ‘Forever’ was written on-the-fly cause there were a few minutes left on the album, the band decided people would want something so they might as well fill it up, and they just jammed while Bob improvved off-the-cuff lyrics of what was going on outside.
A bit like ‘Macarthur Park,’ I suppose—or, ugh, Lynrd Skynrd, who apparently spontaneously came up with lyrics. Though, can’t say that surprises me—it does all sound like dumb shit you’d hear from high school dropouts; kind of Zevon to so eloquently mock-eulogize them in ‘Play It All Nigh Long’: “Grandpa pissed his pants again… Sweet home Alabama, play that dead band’s song!”
In contrast to Mystery to Me, here is Kiln House, a pre-Welch album that Christine McVie provided the album artwork for (post-Green, pre-Welch, when Jeremy Spencer was still in the band—fuckin' weirdo went off and joined the pedophile cult Children of God.
Welch’s final album, Heroes are Hard to Find, is outstanding and, with he exception of the title track (sorry, Christine), is arguably the best album of his tenure with the band. 'Coming Home’ starts off with an eerie, indecipherable message (or, at least, I can’t figure out the whole thing being said, beyond “any possible reason to destroy…” maybe audio from some old movie playing on a TV?) and on through to ‘Safe Harbour,’ you’ve got a green album—other than the cover art of Mick in panties, so congrats to the guy cursed with that on his ‘I’m Into That’ bingo card, I guess. ’Bermuda Triangle,’ which Welch would expand into an elaborate yarn during concerts (and which, I believe, the much more down-to-earth and skeptical Christine McVie would understandably roll her eyes at—I, too, roll my eyes at bits like, “and their minds got blowed”).
I’ve heard claims of a live recording of Stevie Nicks performing Welch’s version of ‘Angel’—quite different from her same-titled-track on Tusk, but no luck ever hearing it.
For live performances form this era, the best you’re going to get is the Record Plant, Sausalito—and, well, the title’s self-explanatory. 'Hypnotized' has different crediting here (but I recognize the track), and the full recording for KSAN indicates the Record Plant as place of origin as well.
From whatever, I presume embarrassing, anecdote Welch won’t tell about ‘Sentimental Lady’ before his voice cracks and he sheepishly explains he “only slept about 45 minutes last night…” to seeming a bit bewildered by the format, you get some of the best of both Mystery to Me and Heroes Are Hard to Find. Some concerts from around this time have some modifications: one I have labeled as Hempstead NY but which references a different city at one point includes a rough recording of ‘Coming Home’ and ‘Nightwatch,’ but unless you’re really down to get out into the weeds (or, rather, bust into the weed), you’re probably not going to enjoy spending the time and effort it’d take to scorounge them up. Though the rcording I have where you can hear someone else getting busted by the cops while the guy stuffs whatever he's using to record in his pocket for a muffled chunk of time before going back to recording is classic.
Even this doesn't do Welch, a very underrated musician, much justice: his solo career saw French Kiss (where, unfortunately, he likely peaked), his time with Paris (the band, not the city), parying with Guns and Roses and the ensuing detox that required, and on to his success in sobriety as well as his tragic passing—a very underappreciated, unknown man—which is a real shame. Even while doing some of the reading to double-check my own facts, I found a lot of contradictions or places where people were just downright wrong (see: that recording listing 'Hypnotized' as performed in October, 1975—almost a year after his departure and the joining of Buckingham-Nicks.
Welch was essential in shifting Fleetwood from the blues of Green, the oddity of Spencer, and onto the soft-rock, sort of mystic vibe that was popularized by Stevie Nicks after being polished up by Lindsey Buckingham. Among many shames, it's that he's not more well-known, got shafted on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and we, as an audience, never got a Fleetwood Mac album bridging the gap between Heroes are Hard to Find and Fleetwood Mac (The White Album) with Welch/Buckingham and McVie/Nicks for two pairs of male/female songwriters.
Other fun notes:
—Green’s final single with the band was ‘The Green Manalishi’—Welch seemed to lean on he color green as well, as with "green magnesium fire" in the track 'Bright Fire.' I find it interesting that, in contrast, on their self-titled album, Buckingham-Nicks have lyrics discussing blue or white in connection with fire: "Not unlike the blue-white fire, you burn brightly in spite of yourself... I come running down to you, but you're too hot to touch." I find this creative contrast interesting.
—Buckingham's in-studio approach has at times been described as "scorched earth" with 'The Chain' being an example: the only track credited to all members of the band, he sorta ripped chunks of other projects I got the impression from reading about the making of—I believe Stevie, in particular, had a treasured idea she wanted to work on and basically got, "Great, if you love it that much, it means you'll work harder to make sure we get this track right."
——In Buckingham's defense, he appears to approach his own work similarly: Say You Will, I've seen it argued, is in large part tracks intended for the 'original' Gift of Screws album that he ripped from his solo work and 'gave' to the band. 'Make Me A Mask,' released on one Fleetwood Mac box set I believe, is a solo track originally intended for Out of the Cradle that he also 'gave' to the band to help spice up sales when he couldn't slot it in (personally, I see the difficulty, but I feel like around the 'Street of Dreams' bit of the album, it fits thematically and musically).
—Given some of the comments I've read over the years, I can't help but wonder if hanging out with Welch was a bit like smoking weed with, like, Fox.Mulder or Giorgio Tsoukalos: sometimes kinda funny and sometimes you just want to say, "Dude, you're alright to hang out with but you've got to cut it with this aliens bullshit because Ghostbusters isn't a documentary, no matter what Dan Aykroyd tells you."
—On the aspect of a four-songwriter FM: I have to wonder how well Buckingham and Welch got along. There are some signs to the negative—Welch's suspicion he didn't care for his music style, him not being on Live From the Roxy, an album that's basically 'Classic Mac Live w/Bob Instead of Lindsey'—but on the flip-side to indicate they got along, they must've crossed paths while Welch was an opener and stuff, Buckingham helped Welch with the guitar work on he retooled 'Sentimental Lady' from French Kiss (1977) which came out ~7 months after Rumours. Welch also appears in the music video for Buckingham's (arguably signature solo track) 'Trouble' (he's the non-tinted glasses guy who begins the video, I believe; Mick's in there too, but nobody needs help being pointed to a man who spent most of his life seemingly taking fashion advice from the monster under the bed every child fears).
——Either way, Welch probably could've been a really cool addition to Tusk or Tango, to think of two albums in particular that could've more easily been more in-sync with his psychedelic sound, I think.
—When I first searched his name, the engine pulled up an AI headline to the effect of "Bob Welch: An Inspiration in the Studio and the Stadium" meshing the musician and the baseball player I know nothing about—this makes me a little more comfortable that there's at least a few more years before AI puts writers out of jobs.
Comments
Post a Comment