THE MAC ATTACH

Rip It Up, Issue 33, 1 April 1980, Page 8

THE MAC ATTACH

i ivini 1 '*"' arm' ml-' ” v iiMV> , n The Wellington press conference " for Fleetwood Mac is held in the Summit Room, thirty-one storeys up in the Williams Building. Every time I look out the window I feel ill, and have to pass up the free grog. Four band members appear; Fleetwood, Nicks, McVie and McVie. The scratching of Buckingham is a major disappointment, considering the attention attracted by his contribution to Tusk. A great deal has changed in the world since Mac were last in New Zealand, and Buckingham seems the one chiefly responsible for any reflection of this in the band’s music. A little over two years ago, Fleetwood Mac played Western Springs at the height of the phenomenal success of the Rumours album. The punk-wave was still out-group chic in those days, and Mac’s gold-strike seemed part.of a benefit season of comebacks by hoary old veterans. (Frampton, the Bee Gees et al). In the last summer of the old wave, Rumours sold something like fifteen million copies. QUESTION TIME

The inevitable questions are all asked about Tusk and the pressures on the band in producing it. How did it feel trying to live up to the success of Rumours? Did the band feel pressured by the knowledge of the hopes being pinned on them to help revive an ailing American recording industry? Weren’t they under pressure to produce something more quickly? Wouldn’t it have made more sense commercially to have made a single album? Mick Fleetwood, musician and businessman, fields such questions politely and patiently, only occasionally betraying boredom. Press conferences are part of the job, and treated accordingly.

The band were aware of all these factors, he says, but did not feel acutely pressured. They made up their own minds about what to do and how to do it. They are satisfied with Tusk as the product of their labours. Yes, they hope the public accepts it, but are not about to give up in despair if it doesn’t. The record industry can find its own salvation, Fleetwood Mac are looking after their own. TUSK Tusk was recorded at the Village Recorder’s studio D in Los Angeles. Recording took from September 1978 to June 1979. Fleetwood Mac spend a long time in the studio and Mick Fleetwood is only half joking when he says that had the band bought the studio, it would have proved cheaper than hiring it for so long.

In an effort to cut the amount of studio time, the band rehearsed material for a couple of weeks beforehand. The ploy did not work. According to Fleetwood, only one track appeared on the album as rehearsed. The rest were arranged in the studio, or built up around Buckingham’s home-made tapes. It is an expensive way to work. The album is reputed to have cost a cool million to record. Fleetwood is blase. It was the band’s money, he says, and they were happy to spend it to produce the record they wanted to make. The object of all the time was not perfect sound reproduction, so’much as to allow experimentation to find "the right sound’’. Fleetwood is as unimpressed as the rest of the civilised world with California sttidio-perfection recording. The band’s more abstract approach to the studio is, he is at pains to point out, a team thing, and credit is constantly given to engineer/producers Richard Doshut and Ken Caillat, and the absent Buckingham. It was a joint effort a description which might be extended to much of the Fleetwood Mac operation. Fleetwood describes many of the band’s entourage as "friends with jobs.” JUST SONGS "Thank you Helen, I wish I were in Troy”, John McVie writes on a record cover for a young lady. Fortified with numerous "trouble vodkas and orange” he talks freely about his years in the business. Having travelled from the purist blues-booming of Mayall’s Bluesbreakers to the chart-topping pop of the current Mac, McVie is familiar with accusa-

tions of selling out. "It’s all just songs,” he protests. He regards critics with some hostility, and becomes heated on the subject of critical hatchet jobs. Purists he observes with the sort of amusement one might expect from someone who has been there, but since learnt the error of his ways. He laughs heartily as he recalls the angry reaction of his fellow blues musicians to the studio experiments of the Beatles. He seems to enjoy the irony of now finding himself on the receiving end of the same backlash. The world of music goes round in circles, he claims, and the only things which change are the lyrics.

THE SHOW It was a cold night at Athletic Park, too cold for anything really to. be fun. Then there was the usual interminable, shoulder-toshoulder battle to get into the ground through an inadequate number of gates. By the time the music began, half the punters were suffering from exhaustion and exposure. J,:' Opening act, Street Talk seemed to have psyched themselves out before they started. They adopted /. a sarcastically . apologetic attitude towards the crowd, but still played well enough to deserve a better response than they got.

Fleetwood Mac started strongly, and then faded, just when one would have expected the show to peak. The majority of the old hits from Fleetwood Mac and Rumours were placed early in the set, leaving the new Tusk material to carry the show. From then, the level of audience excitement just seemed to slowly fade. Lyndsay Buckingham, performing energetically, shouldered the major burden of carrying the battle, but just failed to manage it. The new material, with a few exceptions, didn’t seem quite as strong as the old songs. Some of Buckingham’s songs, in particular, were pretty inconsequential. By and large, the band performed extremely well, but faced with a shivering audience, which seemed to consist largely of young people, not regular concert-goers, who didn’t quite know what to expect, the show never took off as an event. Don Mackay