I was a big Fleetwood Mac since I was a child, mostly due to the ubiquity of Rumours in our house. If there had been a favorite album of mine as a young boy, this was probably it. I obsessed over that copy of ours (which I still have, although it's virtually unplayable due to the scratches on the vinyl). Tusk (which I loved and still even more than Rumours) followed by the Live album after that. But I was hungry for more Fleetwood Mac and in 1981, Lindsey Buckingham released his first solo album Law and Order. My mother, on a work trip to the Australia, brought it back for me (I dutifully wrote down names of albums in her little black notebook to bring back whenever she went abroad).
Although I loved a couple of tracks, I was somewhat underwhelmed by Law and Order as a whole, puzzled more by the sound of it than the songs themselves. They had a slight '50s vibe, combined with what I thought was 'new wave' with sprinkled bits of the Beach Boys. But there was one song, which totally matched the magic of Fleetwood Mac, "Trouble," and in fact if Fleetwood Mac had released it at the time, it would have been a massive hit. It's no accident that Mick Fleetwood played on it, although it turns out that Buckingham merely looped a 4-second loop of Fleetwood playing through the whole song. It's the kind of 3-minute slice of sheer pop heaven that I've always loved to find in music. The transcendence of Abba, the Beatles, Big Star, 10cc, the Beach Boys, all wrapped in Top 40 sheen. So lovely, so beautiful. And like most of Fleetwood Mac, it still pulls me heart strings as much as it did in 1981.
Although I loved a couple of tracks, I was somewhat underwhelmed by Law and Order as a whole, puzzled more by the sound of it than the songs themselves. They had a slight '50s vibe, combined with what I thought was 'new wave' with sprinkled bits of the Beach Boys. But there was one song, which totally matched the magic of Fleetwood Mac, "Trouble," and in fact if Fleetwood Mac had released it at the time, it would have been a massive hit. It's no accident that Mick Fleetwood played on it, although it turns out that Buckingham merely looped a 4-second loop of Fleetwood playing through the whole song. It's the kind of 3-minute slice of sheer pop heaven that I've always loved to find in music. The transcendence of Abba, the Beatles, Big Star, 10cc, the Beach Boys, all wrapped in Top 40 sheen. So lovely, so beautiful. And like most of Fleetwood Mac, it still pulls me heart strings as much as it did in 1981.
