Casual music fans might only know Fleetwood Mac in terms of the lineup that formed once Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band. But diehard backers of the group know that their career was marked by many lineup changes.
In fact, their last foray into the Top 40 in the United States came from a newly formed lineup. But it featured the songwriting and performing strengths of one of the group’s stalwart members.
Mac Attack
When Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, they dramatically changed the group’s style. Where once Mac had focused on blues rock, the songwriting tendencies of the new members pushed the band into pop-rock territory, where they thrived for over a decade.
But the stormy relationship between Nicks and Buckingham turned out to be a double-edged sword. Once a couple, they fell out and often struggled to maintain cordiality in the midst of the band setting. On the one hand, their tortured history together often led to powerful songs. But it also meant that the Mac sometimes needed long hiatus periods so that the air could clear.,
One such period came between the albums Mirage in 1982 and Tango In The Night in 1987. The latter album only came about when the other members begged Buckingham to turn what was meant to be a solo record into a Fleetwood Mac joint. Tango In The Night proved to be one of the band’s biggest hits. But it also led to a huge blowup that would tear asunder the most popular lineup in band history.
The Last ‘Tango’ with Lindsey
Even as Tango In The Night was still in the midst of spinning out hit singles, Fleetwood Mac was falling apart. The sticking point was Buckingham’s unwillingness to tour behind the album. After much back and forth, he finally announced at a band meeting that he was leaving the group.
Undeterred, the remaining quartet quickly hired guitarists Rick Vito and Billy Burnette to take Buckingham’s place and went out on the tour anyway. In 1988, the two new members participated for the first time in the studio on a pair of tracks for a greatest hits compilation. Next up: a new Fleetwood Mac album.
Behind The Mask was recorded in 1989. Vito and Burnette took an active role in its creation. Each received songwriting credits and also sang lead on certain tracks. But for the lead single, the group went back to their longest-tenured member outside of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, the pair for whom the band was named. They chose “Save Me”, sung and co-written by Christine McVie.
Christine’s Creation
McVie wrote “Save Me” with Eddy Quintela. It falls into line with a number of her other Mac classics, in that it depicts an unquenchable desire for someone who might not be in the best interests of the narrator. Vito provides a guitar solo that’s perhaps a bit showier than what Buckingham might have delivered.
But the bottom line is that those Fleetwood Mac vocal harmonies still sounded as sharp as ever on the track, even with some new participants. “Save Me” worked its way to No. 33 in the US charts in 1990.
That would turn out to be the last Fleetwood Mac hit of that stature in America. A live version of “Landslide” just missed the Top 40 in 1998, stopping at No. 15. By that time, Buckingham was back in the fold, just another chapter in the soap opera saga of this legendary band.
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