angel

[previous posts in this series of close readings of selections from Fleetwood Mac's TUSK - "Over and Over," "Save Me a Place," "Sara", "What Makes You Think You're The One," "Storms," "Sisters of the Moon"]

ANGEL

fleetwood mac - angel

"Angel" follows "Sisters of the Moon" (though I think maybe it's the start of the 2nd LP on the vinyl version?) and, for the first minute or so, it seems like the jaunty, country-rock, and kind of terrible polar opposite of the dark, witchily awesome post-punk of "Sisters" - as I believe Holly has remarked in the past, the cheesy sound of those first few bars can kind of keep you from taking this song seriously at first

yet! it is really fucking serious, as Stevie herself says in the video at the end of this post. the song inexorably, and indeed with painful, profound beauty, is drawn back to the same themes of nihilism and self-destruction as "Sisters," but instead of occult, Lynchian imagery, Stevie's verses anchor us in the the all-too-recognizable world of everyday heartbreak and loss, looking back to an irretrievable past -

sometimes the most beautiful thing
the most innocent thing
and many of those dreams
pass us by
keep passing me by

the second verse in particular is utterly devastating, familiar, and real -

I still look up
when you walk in the room
I've the same wide eyes
now they tell the story
I try not to reach out
when you turn around to say hello
and we both pretend
I'm no great pretender

yet, instead of this memory of love and innocence fading away, into the past, Stevie, hauntingly beautifully and basically crypto-suicidally wills herself into a ghostly future in the chorus:

so I close my eyes softly,
'till I become that part of the wind
that we all long for sometime

and to those that I love
like a ghost through a fog
like a charmed hour and a haunted song
and the angel, angel of my dreams

the line about becoming "that part of the wind that we all long for sometime" just fucking floors me every time, and God knows that I thought of it often throughout the painful month of June, I don't know if I've ever heard anything so poetic and sad and true in my whole life -

and the titular Angel, looming, wordless in the fog, so much like Stevie's dark "Sister" at the top of the stairs in the previous song - and also sooo much like the Sister, the Ghost-Angel is revealed as Stevie's own doppelganger, "that girl was me... just like a ghost through the fog" etc. but while the Angel is ostensibly good, very good, an incarnation of the innocent and beautiful things in Stevie's life where the Sister was a manifestation of the darkness, it leads her to the same personal abyss, a transcendent nothingness, those fucking winds we've discussed in several contexts in this series.

and as elsewhere, the parallels to the Twin Peaks mythology are unmistakable - if the Sister lives in the Black Lodge, the Angel lives in the White Lodge, and, as shown by the appearance of Laura Palmer's literal angel in the Black Lodge at the end of Fire Walk With Me, the two places may be "one and the same." for more on the Stevie Nicks/Laura Palmer connection and a video of the insanely heartwrenching scene with Laura and her angel, please see my previous post, also titled "Sisters of the Moon"

this is the awesome and ultra-compelling contradiction (or non-contradiction) at the heart of Stevie Nicks' profound appeal - the sunny blonde California surfer girl with the beautiful voice and wild heart (and a hopeless attraction to some of the douchiest guys in rock history) is simultaneously the gothy, scorned hag, a kind of 'white witch' in the words of one Josh Cheon. this song and this footage of its recording from the awesome yet sadly brief Fleetwood Mac "Tusk" documentary really gets to the heart of the matter - the interview with Stevie early on where she describes the song's genesis is utterly priceless, hilarious and self-serious and true, and the unearthly passion, crooked teeth, and crazy outfit she's wearing when she sings "like a ghost through the fog" makes for kind of an ultimate Stevie-y Stevie moment -

"I wanted to write a rock and roll song, so it started out being much sillier than it came out. It didn't end up being silly at all. It ended up being very serious."

storms

given the long-awaited and hoped-for shift in the weather away from the sun and towards the rain, and given Jeff & Caitlin's & Emilio & most of the living room's departure from 502land
this weekend, leaving a constant reminder of the mangled home lives that await us all, it is obviously time to get back to

STORMS

[previous installments of my blogging of highlights from Fleetwood Mac's TUSK - "Over and Over," "Save Me a Place," "Sara", "What Makes You Think You're The One," and the special feature "Sisters of the Moon - Laura Palmer and Stevie Nicks"]

fleetwood mac - storms
fleetwood mac - storms (demo)

(you should probably download both of these, tbh. everything here applies at least as much to the demo, which also includes this awesome, halfway through-the-second-verse drum entrance, Stevie's own defiant heartbeat materialized in Mick's genius arrangements)

"Storms" was already pretty much my/the TUSK anthem before all this house stuff hit, and my relationship with the song has only deepened and intensified since. if you are going to download one fucking song from this whole series, you are fucking heartless (and/or happily engaged in some kind of long-term relationship and don't want to think about this kind of dark shit), but you might as well make it this one. on an album full of songs about the complex agonies of doomed, addictive relationships and compulsively morbid heartbreak, "Storms" goes further than any in giving us an almost unbearably intimate window into the heaviest, bio-emotional micro-steps that the irreparable 'wild heart' takes to separate itself from and cauterize these wounds -

every night that goes between
I feel a little less
as you slowly go away from me
this is only another test

every night you do not come
your softness fades away
did I ever really care that much?
is there anything left to say?

no, Stevie, you're summing it up real succinct-like. and has there ever been a more straightforwardly eloquent, devastating expression of the sadness that no mere eye-tears can express, of the anguish that runneth over any corporeal cup, and of the dark, suicidal thoughts and deadly calls that naturally follow, than this quasi-chorus?

every hour of fear I spent
my body tries to cry

living through each empty night
a deadly call inside

the second verse is similarly heavy, if more cryptic, other than the too-true, too-real line about "I haven't felt this way I feel / since many a year ago." skipping ahead to the third 'verse', a kind of genius half-verse that structurally reminds me of the immortal Bacharach/David/Warwick "Make It Easy On Yourself," Stevie leads us to the REAL chorus, for the first and last time. I don't know if I'm just totally under her spell or what, but I can't get over how these seemingly generically-hippie-ish lyrics are transformed into devastatingly powerful, elemental, defiant truth when sung in Nicks's quaveringly passionate tones -

so I try to say good-bye, my friend
I'd like to leave you with something warm
but never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm

always been a storm
always been a storm
I have always been a storm

yes. yes. yes.

- AND THEN the gorgeous coda, which subtly shifts us from minor-key turbulence to wistful major tones and a quietly emerging percussive undertow, courtesy of typically-understated genius Mick Fleetwood - which, intriguingly, suggest to me at least that maybe Stevie's actually managed to sail away on that blue calm sea, looking back on the tumult and heartbreak she suffered on that disappearing shore... as if! we're like a third done with this shit and it's going to get way darker, for reals, before there's any light. but - how can any human heart not be moved by this elegiac tone, the implicit, heartbroken farewell of "I loved you from the start"

we were frail...
she said every night he will break your heart
I should have known from the first,
I would be the broken hearted

I loved you from the start...

what makes you think you're the one

OK, let's try and get back to 'normal' here -

[previous installments of my blogging of highlights from Fleetwood Mac's TUSK - "Over and Over," "Save Me a Place," "Sara"]

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONE

fleetwood mac - what makes you think you're the one

like most of the Lindsey Buckingham-led tracks on TUSK, "What Makes You Think You're the One" starts off kind of abruptly and loudly, making it at first listen (OK, first dozen listens) kind of an unwelcome interruption between the twin Stevie Nicks-led peaks of "Sara" and "Storms." also like most of the Buckingham tracks, once you get past that initial cold water shock, there's a lot here -

first of all, though, it needs to be said - this is an absolute monster drum part and performance by Mick Fleetwood, simple quarter notes that switch between a snare and bass drum played equally relentlessly and hard as fuck. Fleetwood's brutally minimal rhythmic foundation here is the perfect wingman for Buckingham's harshness, hammering home his dream-shattering message (below) with every hit

as Alison points out in her recent comment, it's helpful for us MP3 listeners to understand this as the first song of side B of the first record of the double LP set, and consequently a pointed response to the mellow hopefulness of the Christine McVie side A opener "Over & Over," which asks, albeit cautiously, "could it be me? could it really really be?" - a hopefulness which is disavowed as soon as it's expressed, as Christine reminds herself resignedly that she's asked this question "over and over."

here, Buckingham offers the cynical rejoinder of someone who's been asked the question over and over, mocking the naivete of his partner's belief in the supernatural, mystical powers of love to transcend the inevitable pettiness and sadness of the world

what makes you think you're the one
who can laugh without cryin?
what makes you think you're the one
who can live without dying?

the chorus further demystifies, excluding the possibility of any special, unseen value created by or exclusive to their relationship. it can also be read in a kind of harsh, mocking way - the provisional and ultimately ordinary nature of their relationship is plain to see to everyone, except, implicitly, his partner

every little thing is there to see
every little bit of you and me

however, as with "save me a place," Buckingham admirably elevates all of this above the straightforward denigration of his partner's hopes by turning the camera around to capture his own inadequacies and inconstancy in the second verse:

what makes you think I'm the one
who'll be there when you're callin?
what makes you think I'm the one
who will catch you when you're fallin?

the point is hammered home further in the last verse,

what makes you think I'm the one
who will love you forever?
everything you do has been done
and it won't last forever

so true, yet so harshly, plainly put! if this is the kind of cynical, romance-weary guy Stevie and Christine have been shacking up with - and it is! - it's no wonder their wounded femininity hits back so fucking hard, as we'll see with tonight's tomorrow's post on "Storms."

the breakup

the coincidence of my Fleetwood Mac/TUSK obsession and the prolonged, bitter, crying-every-damned-day heartbreak I am feeling wrt the imminent loss of my home and my 502 fam and the lovingly textured life I've made for myself here is taking my experience of the album, and my situation here, to new and maybe kind of weird places. suddenly, I too am living with a doomed love, torn between the desire to solidify my memories, savor the remaining happy moments, to cling to a dream destined to be extinguished, and my anger at having all these positive things suddenly recast in shades of such negativity and sadness; the need to channel that anger outwards and, failing that, inwards; the obsessive need to revisit the scene of suffering, to repeatedly pick at the emotional scabs before they can heal.

I wanted to make a note of this up front to enhance the truth content of this ongoing bloshery for the close readers of this blosh, but also to kind of keep it out of the individual song posts, which deserve better.

that said, the synergy of the emotional content for me is intense and maybe a little embarassing - it's been a minute since I've gone through one of these heartbreakathons, I hope it isn't too fucked up of me to be experiencing these feelings over the loss of a relationship with like a "thing" instead of a person, but,

1- a home is not just a "thing," it's a locus and mediator of specific social as well as logistical and Chinese delivery-related relationships etc, all of which will be irrevocably altered and/or lost

2- as I remarked to Steve during one of the more somber minutes of the Timbaland power hour Friday, a big part of the sting of a romantic heartbreak is the sudden catastrophic loss of ego that comes from losing someone that was a major part of your identity, both your own self-conception as well as your social identity (and value!). as Chris noted at the same power hour - and I swear to G I am gonna put in more of an effort to not derail power hours or other festivities with my bummer burden in the weeks to come - he has never really known me other than when I was living at this house, which is definitely true for him - I remember vividly the crazy night we first bro'd down, when I had first moved in, on Lily's birthday in late May 2003 (I am so sorry Lily I can't remember if it's the 24th, 25th, or 26th), back when the walls were pale yellow and I just had a mattress in the corner, and Jeff, who has since become such an integral part of the house after an initial failed attempt (the universe has a way of course-correcting etc), came by with Chris and Jon Posen, 40s and late nite Morrissey riffs! - and is definitely true for so many other of my closest friends. 5 years is a long time, especially in New York. it's like when I busted up my face at that show a couple years ago and looked at the stitches under my lip and chin and realized that I'd never look quite the same, but while minor facial scars are kind of cool, this just totally fucking sucks

I'll probably have to get a new blosh, too. I am pretty sure it is going to be called The Blue Room

sara

(for the rest of the week, the Lodge will be blogged or maybe not blogged from an undisclosed location near the Atlantic Ocean in the US south, where I will be busy working and/or celebrating the imminent marriage of all-star 502 alumni Peter and Heather and/or eating quality bbq.)

SARA

fleetwood mac - sara (single edit)
fleetwood mac - sara (demo)

the more I listen to FM the more I've learned to appreciate the various talents of its non-Stevie Nicks members, but I think it's fair and probably non-controversial to say that Stevie's unique voice - half coquettish California girl, half bitter old witch - is kind of the main attraction, you know?  brief internet searching reveals "Sara" to be the #2 all-time favorite Fleetwood Mac song in some online poll, and there's a lot of questions about who exactly Sara is and whatever happened to the 16-minute long demo etc.  I can't really speak to any of that stuff and while I don't necessarily not care, the importance of the historical 'facts' of the song kind of pale when compared to the indisputable vibe facts - this song is maybe the purest distillation of both the heady magic of Nicks as well as maybe the emotional heart of the Tusk experience - and made all the more thrilling b/c it's the first lead vocal for Nicks on the album and it's kind of deep into it at track #5, kicking in with that instantly compelling chord sequence immediately after the mellow warmth of 'save me a place.'

re: Stevie Nicks.  before I really understood what FM was I thought of Stevie Nicks as kind of this silly old hippie chick that wore a ridiculously lacy, quasi-mystical wardrobe, but you know what I would definitely wear really lacy clothes too if I was Stevie Nicks and got to sing the lines in this one about "undoing...  the laces...  undoing the laces."  so awesome.  back then I did not understand that Stevie Nicks actually CAN cast spells with her voice and words, channelling the elements as well as raw feminine emotional energy in a way that is both incredibly alluring and deeply terrifying 

wait a minute baby
stay with me awhile
you said you'd give me light
but you never told me 'bout the fire

one of the theories re: who is "Sara" that Holly mentioned in her Tusk post is that Sara is Stevie's aborted baby that was fathered by Don Henley (!?).  I can't be bothered to fact check this but I will say that the first couple dozen times I heard this I thought the line was "you said you'd give me life / but you never told me 'bout the fire" and I was like "holy shit, she is giving voice to her aborted daughter singing to her from fucking hell!!!"  this is an awesome way to think of it admittedly, but the more correct-seeming lyric with her getting light but then burned by the fire etc is also pure lyrics-as-total-fucking-poetry, and it reminds me of Janet Jackson on the intro to "That's the Way Love Goes" ('like a moth to a flame,' etc), which is a pretty nice fucking bonus vibe to tap into here if you ask me -

also obv note the next line for its similar vibe of elemental potency, enhanced by the incantory, spell-like circularity and repetition -

drowning in the sea of love 
where everyone would love to drown

you could maybe criticize some of the lyrics here as kind of vague and hippieish to be honest, and the song is 'just' a kind of relatively unchanging, if gorgeous and driving, backdrop to Stevie's nonlinear vocal riffs - but I get goosebumps and kind of bite my lip every fucking time she begins that verse, 

and he was just like a great dark wing
within the wings of a storm
I think I had met my match
he was singing
and undoing
the laces

RAW MAGIC!!!  the extended demo version is pretty mandatory, not just b/c it is 8 minutes long instead of just 4 minutes, not just because it has a couple of awesome lines that I sing to myself all the time lately ("I stay home at night / all the time"), but for the utterly, mind-blowingly perfect and revealing way she starts it - "I wanna be a star... I don't wanna be a cleaning lady!" that's where the trouble begins - that star is the light, that star's the fire

re: the production of "Sara" and Tusk.  basic internet research reveals that Tusk was one of the first albums to use digital mixing!  and Sara maybe more than any track really glistens in a way that sounds exactly what a state-of-the-art rock album in 1979 should sound like - still full of the humanity and darkness of the '70s but with an icy, coked-out lacquer of crisp reverb and lush delays straight out of the imminent '80s that establishes this kind of atmospheric and emotional distance between us and Stevie's cold, burning heart.  listen to the infinite-seeming space in the beginning, and how the typically relentless drums and bass suddenly pull you in closer - but not really close.  listen to that ghostly, luminescent choir rising slowly up behind her in the second verse, those shimmering, echoing little guitar filigrees falling over the chorus like Stevie's undone laces...

this is the emotional core of Tusk - beautiful moments preserved like flies in aspic, perfect and inaccessible, dead and ready to be pulled apart

save me a place

with all due respect to the Lindsey Buckingham-led interesting and kind of good forays into post-punk on this album, it's not really what we're here for - skipping ahead to -

SAVE ME A PLACE

fleetwood mac - save me a place

"save me a place," the fourth, also Buckingham-led song on the album, starts with a lyric I can really fucking relate to right now

don't know why I have to work
don't know why I can't play

oh man don't even get me started on that shit right now. anyway, the kind of folksy strumminess of this one was a turnoff at first, I admit, but by 0:30 suddenly you're enveloped in this beautifully lush, 3 (4?) part FM choir, irresistibly calling on you to

saaaaave me a place
I'll come running if you loooooove me today

and how could you not? these choruses are some of the most beautiful, warmly tender moments on this album which, I promise you, is about to get increasingly chilly and conflicted and bitter and really fucking Stevie Nicksish in a minute. like the chorus of "over & over," this gives us one more chance to really connect with the intimacy and love that's still part of these difficult relationships even as it reminds us how flawed they are. where has Lindsey gone, so that you have to save him a place? where is he running from? as the next verse makes clear, he is filled with (typical male etc whatever) ambivalence towards commitment, staying in place -

don't know why I have to go
don't know why I can't stay
guess I want to be alone
and guess I need to be amazed

despite the fact that this is an acoustic strummy folk song, the arrangement and performance, in their subtle way, convey the same determination as more muscular FM songs - because despite the quiet, europhic sweetness of that chorus, Lindsey is definitely leaving, his mysterious internal dude-compass propelling him away in search of vague amazements as relentlessly as Mick Fleetwood's typically sensitive-yet-hard-hitting percussion. he'll come running back, he promises. we'll see

over & over

they call the first song on Fleetwood Mac's stunning and utterly obsessable 1979 album TUSK "Over & Over" because it reminds you that you have been listening to the album over and over and over for the past week and a half

really almost nothing else, as my possibly-suffering housemates will attest. thanks again to Holly for passing this on, it's clearly the Twin Peaks/Julee Cruise of my late winter/early spring 2008, and possibly the greatest album since the "Singles" soundtrack - as such, it will also receive the one-track-at-a-time, close-read treatment that it richly deserves. I'm not going to do every track, but I am going to do all the ones that really matter to me right now, which should cover the next couple weeks of posting for serious

OVER & OVER

fleetwood mac - over & over

I gotta admit, "Over & Over" didn't really register my first few times through TUSK, I kept getting derailed listening to "Sara" and "Storms" on repeat for hours at a time etc. with Christine McVie's typically mellow vocals, the easy-going melody, lazy tempo, etc it is kind of an 'odd' but in retrospect ODDviously perfect way to open an album full of so much darkness and emotional tumult.

this is an album about flawed yet inescapable relationships - as noted in Holly's useful introductory notes, pretty much everyone in the band was sleeping with each other and doing a lot of drugs and dealing with the catastrophic success of "rumours" and writing songs about each other, etc. the songs are full of multiple, often conflicting voices and desires, unanswered questions, naive hopes mixed with heartbroken cynicism, spun in unbreakable circles. and "Over & Over" lays it all out, in McVie's verses and their pleading questions

"could you ever need me? and would you know how? don't waste our time, tell me now"

"don't turn me away, and don't let me down - what can I do to keep you around?"

etc - that so quickly slide into the hopefully rising chorus:

"could it be me? could it really really be?"

before she suddenly, exasperatedly realizes that she's been here before, and had these same hopes dashed, "over and over" ("and over and over and over and over")

- yet the whole song, in its relative warmth and mellowness, kind of conveys that cautious, yet desperately-wanting-to-believe optimism of the "could it be me?", when you kind of know better but still think that maybe this time will be different, which makes it such an appropriate start to the album, a quick taste of the sweetness with clear forboding of the bitterness and sourness to come

ftr, thanks should probably be given to Alison in Sweden PhDista for encouraging me to give this song a closer look in the first place, it wasn't originally going to be blogged but, as usual, she's got a sharp eye for high-quality emotional details, esp when it comes to the Mac. credit also goes to Alison for popping my FM cherry way back on her summer of '01 mixtape, featuring "Silver Springs," which kind of blew me away (and then bitterly haunted me for months after our appropriately intense breakup, thanks!)