https://www.cluas.com/indie-music RSS feeds for CLUAS Irish Indie Music 60 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Home/ID/581/Book-review-The-Definitive-History-of-Fleetwood-Mac-by-Mike-Evans#Comments 0 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=36&ModuleID=728&ArticleID=581 https://www.cluas.com:443/indie-music/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=581&PortalID=0&TabID=36 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Home/ID/581/Book-review-The-Definitive-History-of-Fleetwood-Mac-by-Mike-Evans Review Snapshot: Complicated relationships, disappearing band members and some of the best music of the 1970s - a thrilling tale well told in one of the most entertaining rock biographies of recent years. The CLUAS Verdict? 9.5 out of 10 Full Review: When Lindsey Buckingham stood on stage at Dublin's O2 in 2009 and proclaimed that Fleetwood Mac has had a complicated history, he wasn’t lying. Now, in 'The Definitive History of Fleetwood Mac', author Mike Evans covers it all superbly in every detail, including their many tangled love affairs and romances that even Hollywood wouldn’t dare to make a movie about. So let’s get this straight. Buckingham and Nicks were lovers and Christine married John. Mick married Jenny (Patti Boyd’s sister) and Christine had an affair with band member Bob Weston (who passed away in 2012). Mick divorced and remarried Jenny within four months, and Christine dated their lighting director. Jenny slept with Mick’s former room-mate while John dated Peter Green’s ex Sandra. Buckingham had a fling with Christine, before Nicks dated Don Henley, and Mick, at the same time as he was seeing her best friend Sara. John and Christine divorced, Mick married Sara, and then John married his secretary, in Christine’s house. Nicks married her late friend’s husband for 3 months before dating her producer, while Christine dated Dennis Wilson before marrying and divorcing Eddy. Got all that? Their musical career was just as complicated, with various incarnations of the group before they would reach mega stardom. From the early blues days when Peter Green called his band Fleetwood Mac (before McVie was even a member) author Evans takes us through the drug-filled days of the '60s and into the '70s when Green would eventually get sick of fame and fortune and leave the group. Jeremy Spencer would do the same in extraordinary circumstances - nipping out of his hotel to buy a magazine and never returning, thanks to the intrusion of the Children of God. From cancelled tour dates to a fake group using the name (while the real Fleetwood Mac sorted themselves out) it’s all here and it’s evident that Mick was the man who kept the band together at all times even when it looked like they would break up for good. It’s history now how Mick stumbled across a song called ‘Frozen Love’ in an L.A. studio and insisted straight away that he wanted that guitarist; enter Buckingham and his partner Stevie Nicks.  From that 10th different line-up of the group, producing their 10th album in 1975, this was the start of superstardom when their self-titled album would hit no. 1 in the U.S. and sell over 5 million copies, while 'Rumours' would make FM radio in 1977 stand for ‘Fleetwood Mac radio’. As the band moved into the '80s they all tried new things including several solo albums, which is covered in great detail here, with complete track listings and credits. There’s even a fascinating story of a fight between Nicks and Buckingham where the latter slapped her and pushed her against his car, but somehow they always resolved their issues for the sake of the band, and Bill Clinton’s inauguration had the 'Rumours' line-up back together again, leading to a live DVD in the '90s and the album ‘Say You Will' in 2003. There’s so much more in here besides it being a hardcover coffee table book. What 'Rumours' was originally going to be called, how Buckingham was left 10k by an aunt he didn’t know and Peter Green demanding (courtesy of a rifle) that his manager stop sending him royalties. This really is a movie script waiting to be produced and I wouldn’t be surprised if Fleetwood played himself in it. Evans makes this story interesting all the way through. He never lets up with interesting fact after fact, and will have you absorbed from the beginning. I've heard the term "couldn't put the book down" and that certainly applies here. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt with his proof reading as there are a couple of mistakes, where Buckingham is credited with writing 'Dreams' and Nicks credited to writing 'Songbird, but that's small fry in a book of this magnitude. What comes out of this book is that music comes first for every band member, and that’s why their 'Unleashed' tour in 2009 was without an album as they felt maybe they should get to know each other again before going back into the studio. So, I’m sure there’s a new album in there somewhere, and perhaps a 50th  anniversary tour planned for 2017. Just like this book, that’s something we’ve all got to witness. Mick Lynch Read Mick's reviews of Fleetwood Mac's Dublin shows in 2003 and 2009, a veritable CLUAS archive of the Mac's recent Irish visits. Mick Lynch Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:59:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:581 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Home/ID/572/Book-review-Nile-Rodgers--Le-Freak#Comments 1 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=36&ModuleID=728&ArticleID=572 https://www.cluas.com:443/indie-music/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=572&PortalID=0&TabID=36 https://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Home/ID/572/Book-review-Nile-Rodgers--Le-Freak Nile Rodgers is a lucky man. Not in terms of his successful musical career as a songwriter and producer, or the long list of people he’s worked with, but lucky in fact that he’s lived to tell the tale, and what a story it is. The man that we all know invented disco with Chic, and who went on to work with Bowie, Madonna, and Diana Ross (to name but three) has lived an extraordinary life, which is well documented in his autobiography, ‘Le Freak’. From the age of seven this New York native witnessed his parents injecting themselves on a daily basis, had constant asthma attacks, plus the fact that his mother was always leaving him with another relative, as he said himself “I felt I wasn’t good enough to keep”. Add to this the fact that his grandmother was raped and became pregnant as a result, while the school caretaker was abusing the children around him. To be a survivor he would have to look after himself, so he skipped school and befriended a wino who’d write sick notes for him. His father had been left at the altar by his mother, turning his dad into a bum on the streets - ironically, Nile would run into him, as he says “not once, but twice, 10 years apart in a city of 8 million people”. Moving back to California, Nile started glue-sniffing and lost his virginity, while his mother would be raped by an obsessed admirer. Despite all this, it was music he wanted to pursue, and getting that first guitar for Christmas changed everything. Once his mother's boyfriend tuned it that he could play 'A Day In The Life', he never looked back. As he says himself: “I strummed and a perfect G-major chord rang out... then strummed an E minor and dropped to the seventh. There are no words to accurately describe what this felt like”. This is why he ran away from home at 14 with his guitar, eventually joining the Sesame Street theatrical road show (a '70s version of Glee, perhaps). Not long after his dad died, Nile turned professional. He jammed with Hendrix and found the last chord (their musical nirvana), played coffee commercials, and performed on stage with Screaming Jay Hawkins at the Apollo (a funny story). While working as a session musician he would meet his soul-mate Bernard Edwards, and the rest as they say is CHIC-tory. Replicating Kiss’s anonymity and Roxy Music’s musical diversity, and ensuring every one of their songs had that D.H.M. (deep hidden meaning) they cleverly got studio time by paying an elevator operator 10 bucks to let them in when everyone was gone home. But it’s fascinating to hear their story from New Year’s Eve 1977 when they failed to gain entry to a Grace Jones party. They went home pissed off, wrote their biggest hit ‘Le Freak’, and 12 million copies and 30 years later the doorman would Facebook Nile to apologise for not letting him in. Who’s laughing now? On the success of that, Edwards would walk into a car showroom and asked “which one of these cars goes with a brown tie” before eventually buying two, as Nile says “unbalancing their carefully styled showroom”. There are tonnes of these stories sprinkled between the cocaine habits that almost cost him his life on many occasions. There’s the time he ended up in the same emergency room as Andy Warhol, how he saw a famous female movie star being shagged in the balcony of Studio 54, Sister Sledge asking him to change the lyrics of ‘He’s The Greatest Dancer’, Diana Ross blaming them for trying to ruin her career (only months before that song would top the charts), what tattoo Bowie has on his lower leg, how Duran Duran’s record company didn’t like ‘The Reflex’ or why he walked out on Madonna, and wouldn’t shag her. Bowie wanted “hits” and Nile provided them, provoking Bowie to later credit him in a speech “Nile Rodgers, the only man who could make me start a song with a chorus” (Let’s Dance). While success was everywhere for him, over 100 of his friends and associated were dying and in February 1991 he would have died himself, only for he accidently pushed the wrong floor number in the lift. He’s certainly used up most of those nine lives, and would go on to work with Michael Jackson (who revealed to him a year in advance that his marriage to Lisa-Marie was heading for the divorce courts long before the media had a clue of it). Thankfully he would be there when his great friend Edwards died in a Tokyo hotel, but Nile insists that his family sit down every year for Thanksgiving and thrash out all these stories. This year it’s Nile turn to discuss his recent cancer scare, and hopefully he’ll be around for many years to come. This book is a fascinating and absorbing read from start to finish. Good times.  Mick Lynch mick Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:38:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:572