The one musician Mick Fleetwood said everyone should love: “Genius magical touch”
Throughout every generation of rock and roll history, Mick Fleetwood has been one of the few who could say that he’s seen it all.
Outside of the millions of hangups that he got into when working with Fleetwood Mac, the sheer amount of hours that he has put into jamming with John McVie practically turned him into a machine every single time he got up on that stage. He knew all the ins and outs of what made rock and roll sound so good back in the day, but even if you weren’t a fan of his, there are more than a few artists that were pretty much unobjectionable from the first time they started making music.
Granted, there is always going to be an acquired taste when it comes to any kind of music. For all the great tunes that The Beatles made, there are bound to be millions of people who think that the Fab Four are one of the worst things to happen to rock and roll and should be looked at as a relic of the past. Most of those people would be wrong by this humble author’s estimation, but it’s not like Fleetwood hasn’t dealt with that kind of ridicule when working with ‘The Mac’ back in the day.
I mean, the band’s transition into one of the greatest hitmaking machines of the 1970s wasn’t exactly subtle, and there were bound to be early Peter Green fans shaking their heads, wondering where everything went wrong. It was a valid question, but there was no other way for them to move forward than to get someone else, and after Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were the perfect pair of songwriters they needed.
Both of them may have been a little more volatile towards each other once Rumours began, but the attention to detail that they put into their songs was absolutely perfect. Buckingham was looking to make the kind of records that would last forever, and if everyone was marching behind him for the next few years, that meant studying songs the same way that the guitarist studied old Beach Boys records.
Because when you listen to what Brian Wilson did, it’s hard to even nail down the perfection on every record. He had mapped out what pop music was always meant to sound like, and even if not every one of the songs managed to get to the top of the charts, the perfection that runs throughout Pet Sounds is the kind of songwriting expertise that every rock and roll fan wishes they could have had back in the day.
So when Wilson passed away, that magic wasn’t lost on Fleetwood, saying, “Anyone with a musical bone in their body must be grateful for Brian Wilson’s genius magical touch !! And greatly saddened of this major worldly loss!!” But that didn’t mean that was always perfect behind the scenes for Fleetwood trying to match the kind of genius he heard on those old Beach Boys.
Compared to the Wrecking Crew, he wasn’t exactly Hal Blaine behind the kit, but some of the naivete Fleetwood had with Buckingham’s wacky ideas ended up serving them perfectly. It’s not easy playing as sparse as he did on the opening to ‘Go Your Own Way’, but hearing the entire song in context, it’s hard to think of any other drummer who could have pulled off those kinds of earthy hits before the chorus comes in.
But more than anything, Wilson taught every single fan that being a musician wasn’t about being great at only one instrument. It was about listening to everyone in the band, and sometimes all you needed to do was listen to solve the hardest problems that someone throws at you.
