[Not technically an Aspen Story, nor a true review, nonetheless, here it is …]
“That might have been one of the best nights of my life.” Annie’s email summarized her long-awaited visit to the Tacoma Dome, to see Fleetwood Mac (sans Christine McVie) in concert. She’s such a fan, she named her recently adopted kitty “Steve”, after Ms. Nicks.
It’s been nearly 40 years since Cheryl and I saw Fleetwood at the Universal Amphitheater, August, 1976. We had a 6 concert package that summer, and saw John Denver, Jesse Colin Young/Emmylou Harris, Loggins & Messina, among others. The next year,, we went back and caught Heart, Waylon Jennings/Jessi Colter, Randy Newman, Natalie Cole, and Jackson Browne.
In 1976, Fleetwood Mac was riding the wave of a triple storm. Their first album in that incarnation (Mick Fleetwood, John & Christine McVie, Nicks, and Lindsey Buckingham) had gone mega platinum, selling something like 5,000,000 copies that year, featuring 4 straight number top ten hits. Over My Head, Rhiannon, and Say You Love Me. Their appeal spread across the spectrum, from folkies to rockers to hippies and beyond. Radio stations were playing ALL the tracks from that first “Tall Man/Short Man” collection, not just the official singles. Monday Morning, Warm Ways, Blue Letter, Crystal, Landslide … as my friend Paul said, “What is this, Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits?” when he purused the album after I’d put it on the turntable one weekend.
In addition to the massive record sales and broad air coverage, the band presaged the arrival of Women in Rock. Their three big hits were written and sung by the women in the band, Nick’s Rhiannon (about a Welsh witch), with keyboardist Christine McVie on the other two.
By all rights they should have been playing in a stadium that month, but because the success had come after the Universal contracts were signed, we got to see them in outdoor intimacy (maybe 6,000 “seats”). Cheryl and I felt very lucky to see that show so close up, as we knew the next time they came around, we’re talking LA Forum or an even bigger venue, sure to dampen the experience.
Watching Stevie swirl around with her tambourine and trailing floor length fringe; watching Lindsey fight with his guitar, bobbing up and down under a huge halo of his frizzy WASP Afro; catching the maniacal gleam if Mick Fleetwood’s grin as he slammed across his drum set; and getting mesmerized by Christine McVie’s Perfect voice (that was her maiden name, Christine Perfect), delivered without expression while she picked her way across the Yamaha keyboard … all that was a peak experiences for two 27 year olds who were in love with music that year. I know exactly what my rocker daughter Annie meant in her email – she’s a bassist in “Chastity Belt”, and hopefully had some love for John McVie, the Forgotten Mac in Fleetwood Mac.
In those days, we were still used to rapid fire album release. The Beatles had put out 8 LPs in their first two years in America, and kept it up with two a year for the rest of their career together. So after we’d gulped down that first Fleetwood collection, we became hungry for the next, and rumours flew as to when it would appear, and what would be on it.
That following winter, I teamed up with several other Ob-Gyn residents to rent a Mammoth Mountain ski cabin for the season. We each expected to go up at least one weekend a month (all our schedules would allow) and have boisterous parties, letting off steam from 80-100 hour weeks, driving six hours all night, skiing two days, then driving home Sunday evening. The road took us up the Eastern flank of the Sierras, through a dry high plains desert with stark crystal skies at night. Desolate, far from any towns after the first two hours leaving the LA Basin, it was a great place to simply cruise at 80 mph, listen to the faraway AM radio stations, and dream of fresh snow and crackling fires.
But that winter, we learned about La Nina/El Nino. I’m not a meterologist, but apparently every few years, the waters off the coast of northern Chile flip flop their temperature, wrecking havoc on weather patterns throughout the western hemisphere. 1976/77 turned out to be the driest winter on record. Mammoth did not have any snowmaking at that time, and December was a simple disaster. I don‘t think the lifts opened up at all until January, and then the skiing was marginal to non-existent. Weeks rolled into months, and no one had gone up to the cabin by the end of January. It simply was not worth the 12 hour round trip for the frustration of sitting around under a blue sky, staring at the dried grass, covered with pine cones and needles, not snow.
The last couple of weeks in January, enough snow did make it through the La Nina blockage to allow for some shussing, but it was still the kind which required a high tolerance for rocks and ice underfoot. Nonetheless, Cheryl and I took off the last weekend in January, to try our luck. We never made it to the top of the mountain, but we did get to enjoy a bit of sliding on the lower slopes, and to explore the A-frame we were spending $600 on for the season. If we’d gone up the 7-8 times we’d hoped, it would have been a reasonable expense. As it was, it became an early lesson in just how fickle and weather dependent a skiing addiction can be.
Still, any skiing is better than none, and I felt energized on the ride home. The weather had reverted to the unending cloudless days which typified the winter. While the skiing sucked, we were rendered speechless by the night vista of stars above, ragged ridgeline off to the right, and the Great Basin stretching endlessly to the left through Nevada into Utah.
Remember, back in those days, outside of a city, only an AM radio stations from somewhere far away were the only source of music. No iPhone, CD, cassette, or even 8 track. Just trust to luck that the all night DJ might play something to transport you another 3 or 4 miles down the road.
Round about midnight, we got a fuzzy signal coming in which promised a “new release, coming out tomorrow, off their long-awaited follow-up album.” We didn’t catch the band or song title, but with the first high-pitched bass line, followed quickly by a sweep of tautly strung steel string guitar chords and a driving drum beat, I knew this MUST be Fleetwood Mac. Then Lindsey Buckingham moaned, “Loving you, isn’t the right thing to do…” and we were ON. I turned the knob all the way to the right, pushing the tinny speakers past their fuzz point. It didn’t matter, as the signal kept dopplering in and out, fading closer and farther away as only a long distance AM signal can.
I shouted over the buzzing to a startled Cheryl, “This must be the new Fleetwood Mac!” Lindsey kept whining about “Packing up, shacking up … You can Go your own way (Go your own way); you can call it another lonely day …”, finally aiming towards the climax with that fuzz in his ax, Fleetwood and McVie driving the bass and drums harder and harder, Chrissie and Stevie soaring high above his tenor with their harmonies, eventually reaching to the very short end of his guitar neck towards the final powerful, swoop back down the scale and the repetition of the chorus in the fade out.
Exhausted, I looked forward to the promise of another ten songs waiting in the bins at the Wherehouse or Tower records when I got home. Rumours would go on to sell 40,000,000 copies, one of the top ten albums of all time. And I would go on to have at 4 more decades of skiable snow, loving every fresh fallen flake. Even the no snow years (like the last two) are better than no years at all.