Fleetwood Mac's 1982 "comeback" album MIRAGE

Agree OP- It sounds very modern for an album made in 1982. Its elegant actually

[R1] It's exquisitely produced, with guitar work from another dimension. The outro on Gypsy alone is so breathtaking the album would have been famous without the FM imprint. But then listen to the outro on Only Over You - it is just as impressive but played at a different tempo to achieve other effects.

"Elegant" is a great word to describe the album overall.

It wasn't a comeback. They never went anywhere.

It's a good album, but my opinion of it would be higher had it been released after Rumors. Artistically, it is a big step backward from their best, and most creative album, Tusk.

The cover art is stunning - the best of their career. Hurrell caught their dynamic. The sumptuous, bold and shimmering Mirage deserves its due in the FM canon.

R5 you must love the album to keep commenting

The funny thing to me is that, based on their respective covers, they should have named this album Tango in the Night and the next one Mirage.

It was a nice album, but it's really noy anywhere as cohesive as Rumours or Fleetwood Mac were before it. Granted, it's also not the drug soaked yet occasionally brilliant mess that was TUSK, either.

But "Hold Me" will remain one of my favorite songs forever. It always takes me back to that summer.

Me too, R8.

[R5] That's the idea, darling.

It's fine. But I can think of 50 more elegant albums.

Side 1 of Mirage ranks with the best of the best.

It's pretty good, but of the five studio albums made by the classic FM lineup, this is my least favorite. A handful of great songs but there's something a little bloodless about the whole thing.

This isn’t their best at all, and actually the follow-up album was better

Wasn’t that the album that Stevie could not participate in much because she was in rehab for her benzo addiction? And yet she managed to create “Gypsy” one of the most exquisitely beautiful songs of the 20th century?

At the time, I didn’t question why Stevie was walking around in the desert in that video but wasn’t singing, But she was really struggling during this album, having replaced one addiction with another. Funny though how in my youthful innocence I didn’t give it a second thought. It actually seems sweet, in retrospect, that they gave her such a glamorous role in the video, considering she wasn’t involved in the song. Maybe it was a cynical marketing move, in the sense that they knew she was beloved, and eye candy, and the fans needed to see her to sell the album. But it’s still cool how they did what they could to maintain her place in the band.

This band’s saga is endlessly fascinating to me. Also, Lindsay was never more gorgeous than in the video for “Hold Me.”

R15 no. It was the follow up album, Tango In The Night. She was in rehab during its production and only lent her vocals to a few songs

Hugely helped by the acting talent of Stevie Nicks, the band was able to ease into the 1980's with a series of memorable videos - the earliest and best was GYPSY - from Mirage - there's no denying that this video isn't a big part of the mystique...

Mirage was a big hit and somehow people forget it. Strange.

It's rather disapointing coming after Tusk, which I think is their masterpiece. I like Eyes of The World, Only Over You, and Gypsy though.

R17. Yes a huge part of Stevie's talent is not her song/melody writing, which is rather limited, but her stage craft and acting. Just compare the 'Gypsy' music video to 'Hold Me'. Christine is stiff as a board and Lindsey Buckingham could not lip sync for his life. Stevie steals the show by simply sitting there with a red dress. She's not even singing in this song. Sadly her looks dropped off quite a bit by 83-84 as she got quite bloated from drugs and alcohol. She could have had a decent career as an actress.

And I despise the delusional old goat now, but I I stand by that Stevie was at her vocal peak from 1981-1983. It was all downhill 1985 and after.

I think she had a good year or more after the Tusk tour where she got to rest her voice after shredding her cords on the Rumours/Tusk tours.

I think Stevie's deep vibrato was otherworldly in that 81-83 timeframe. It almost didn't sound human (in a good way) Love her during that era!

R15 Gypsy had been cooking since '79 but probably '78. She first brought the song to Tom Petty for her solo album but he didn't know what to do with the song because it lacks a chorus. There's a lot going on in the final version of the song: the lush vocal harmonies, the chime like tack piano, the hypnotic drum beat, and most importantly the pearly arpeggio guitar fills that act as a chorus. It's just really good sounding pop from a band at the top of their game instrumentally, but it's not an artistic peak at all. There is a commercial sheen to Mirage that is a bit too candy floss and artificial. That sped up guitar solo on gypsy is amazing but Mirage gives me a toothache.

Mirage was recorded under much duress, mostly Stevie’s. She had to pull herself away from her first solo tour to get to France. There are some shimmering Gems on this record: Straight Back, Hold Me, Only Over You.

[quote]Mirage was a big hit and somehow people forget it. Strange.

Mick Fleetwood is too busy shoving "Rumours" down our throats each time it reaches a milestone; I think now it's up to what, six remastered re-releases?

R24 not his fault the general public connect to Rumors and it’s songs. He isn’t why it went to number one again this last year with teens.

R25 It's obscene how many re-releases and remasters of Rumours there are. People have the memories of fruit flies and will shell out money for every version. Some people just like being scammed or treated as stupid. Then again, 75 million people voted for Trump. so it's not that surprising.

[quote] "he didn't know what to do with the song because it lacks a chorus"

R22, I thought the chorus of Gypsy was "you see you're a Gypsy/you see you're a Gypsy/ ooooh oh, aaaah aaaaaaah"?

I never thought there was an article “a” before gypsy in that song. I thought it was “you see you’re gypsy” like something separate from but internal, like a Jungian shadow. It’s about the inner child, isn’t it?

Sorry, I meant, “you see your gypsy,” bloody auto-correct.

The Magritte inspired video for "Hold Me"

They all look worn out as fuck to me in that video. Christine transformed after she got her amazing facelift. Lindsey is just too much of a cunt for me to even want to look at him. The goat one looks like she's still on some benzo bender. The only one showing some life is Mick and not even that much considering what he can put out when he is really "on".

[R31] Yet I'd say that Stevie looks her all-time best in that close-up on the couch in the red dress. Perfect light and angle for her and it shows off her flawless skin and glistening eyes.

[R26], is that any reason to be so unkind to fruitflies?

R31 According to a documentary piece on Christine the BBC did a few years ago John was drunk the entire filming and even punched the director. Christine and Mick weren't talking and he thought she was being a bitch. Because it was Mick Fleetwood's birthday they bought him a giant dick sized cake which he cut with a sword. Stevie already had her Elvis sized entourage of paid stooges(drug mules) so she was high out if her fucking mind.

I love the second side, every song is great. Straight Back, Oh Diane, Eyes of the World - fabulous. God bless Hurrell, the man knew how to take a picture.

They've always acted like a bunch of teenagers. Ridiculous at their ages.

Wow, whenever Hold Me, it takes me back to just out of the closet, rooming with three other guys, hanging out at home and watching MTV when it was taking off.

My god Christine has Cane Face. Never liked her voice, her face, or most of her songs.

Luckily, Stevie revealed herself to be an egomaniac on par with some of the worst egomaniacs of modern times, so I now despise her.

This band now gives me the permanent creeps after I learned what they are all really like.

Stevie's just a self-absorbed egomaniac, like lots of big divas are/were. I wouldn't like to know her personally, but she's pretty harmless. Davis, Dietrich, Crawford, Garland etc. were all the same.

R38 I hear you. For me, their music transcend their personalities. I didn't even get into Mac until a couple years ago, too, so it's all a bit abstract and floaty and removed from time and space for me. I just know that they were insanely talented, and I know that they were gold star narcissists and addicts, all of them. But that is ancient history.

R40- Ancient history?? Check out the last 3 years! I actually didn't realize that I was done with them until the latest shenanigans. Fuck em.

More of Lindsey's terrible lip syncing

R42 I actually am CRAZY about this performance. I watch it all the time when I need to just laugh for a minute. Because Lindsey is just so OUT OF HIS DAMN MIND in the clip. He's sleep-deprived and literally coked out of his mind. It's a great watch.

R39 Stevie's whole M.O was to sleep with a bunch of guys in the music industry (many of them married) to get them to do her bidding and make them fight over her. You're right that many leading ladies did the same but none of them were so open about it as Stevie is. I remember reading Mick Fleetwood's first bio and thinking how pathetic he was talking about her. You'd think she farted rainbows. He would eat her shit through a straw happily. He follows her around the world like a sad little puppy because she threw him pussy a couple times. She slept with two guys in Fleetwood Mac and two guys in The Eagles. That ain't a coincidence. Hey if I had a pussy I'd do the same, but just calling a spade a spade here. I've worked with a few bands before and some of them have a strict "no attractive women in the band" (piggish if you ask me) rule exactly because they don't want a woman coming between them.

Mirage still sounds fresh if you listen to a lot of new music, precisely because a remix of Only Over You spawned an entire genre called Vaporwave.

[quote] Stevie's whole M.O was to sleep with a bunch of guys in the music industry (many of them married) to get them to do her bidding and make them fight over her.

Good for her, it beats working!

R46. I know. I would do the same. She openly admits to it. But some of her fans try to paint her as some genius songwriting auteur which is just downright hilarious. That sample of "Edge of 17" that Destiny's Child used? Her guitarist Waddy Watchell lifted it from a Police song. Stevie had no idea it was stolen until halfway through recording it. She then had an *ahem* "word" with Andy Summers and she was cleared to use it. If I were to die and be reincarnated, I'd want to be reborn as an attractive white woman in the boomer era. Yeah I'm a hella jealous bitch.

Stevie's antics are actually quite harmless compared to many others. Esp. the men of her era. Lindsey, Don Henley and Glen Frey were absolute pigs.

It's funny to think how many of the guys from back then would be cancelled to hell and back in today's world.

"Gypsy" knocked me out and I was only 12 years old. I loved almost every song -- "Only Over You," "Hold Me", "Book Of Love", " That's Alright." It is definitely a classic.

R47, which Police song?

Nevermind..."Bring on the Night"

R48. Stevie stayed around because they were talented and they would help her. Mick Fleetwood was probably the grossest in that band. I've heard stories about him having sex escapades with raw meat and young groupies. Also let's not pretend Ms. Nicks was an absolute rose. This is a woman who drugged her friend to prove a point. Rock stars are not nice people, that includes female rock stars.

I used to work at a venue. Bjork is fucking insane and likes to verbally and physically berate people. Stevie Nicks is incredibly stupid, needy, and lets her dogs pee everywhere. Thom Yorke cheats on whoever he is with with barely legal teens. Gene Simmons is the biggest asshole I have ever met.

R53 Ooh that was a demitasse of spicy chai tea! I'd love to hear more. Thom Yorke...always wondered if he was a cheat.

R54. Thom Yorke left the mother of his children while she way dying from cancer. He was cheating on his much younger girlfriend, the one he left his common law wife for, with even younger groupies.

Stevie still hits the pipe and the bottle on occasion and people tip toe on ice around her. Christine McVie is particularly careful around her and is keen to avoid her and her posse of now elderly mall goth stoners. Stevie can pull this diva stuff because it's bathroom time for people when Christine sings a song. She got rid of Lindsey who was the number 2 draw and she and they know the rest of the band is disposable at this point. She's got the remaining members of FM by the balls and it's her band now. It's her lording over the Brits like a queen bee. This is all stuff I've heard through the grape vine from drunken managers and promoters.

Why would they fly all the way to France to record 1 album?

R55 Aghghghg ! That's EXACTLY what I feared you were going to say, dammit! Aghghg! Kill it with fire!

R55 The young girlfriend was the Italian academic or something like that, right? He should be thanking his lucky stars that anyone would tolerate him as a lifestyle. I cannot believe he neglected or abandoned his dying wife (although a part of me assumed he probably did). I was hoping that he was some saintly widower, moving on for the sake of his own sanity and for the kids. Yeah, nope.

R58 R59 Thom Yorke uses that sad art boy image to score, but that's not surprising given how many other sad boy rock stars are creeps. Similarly, Bjork's quirky girl image is a front. She's a mean drunk but her staff are nice. Stevie Nicks is mercenary as hell and probably has the largest posse I've ever seen. No one dares talk to Ms. Nicks directly unless given explicit direction to do so. I've never encountered Barbara Streisand but 've heard through people that she's very nice but a space cadet.

R57 They recorded at the Chateau d'Herouville because Mick Fleetwood had to reside a certain amount of time in France to evade US taxes. They were doing him a favor.

R5 is trolling, right?

It's a good job of it. The "cover art is stunning" line gave me a spit take on my screen.

Does anyone know if vodka can hurt a screen?

R52. I've never heard the drugging her friend story. I tried googling but cant find anything. Details?

[R56] Word on another thread is that Christine (who turns 78 this year!) is done with the band. She wasn't happy with the firing of Lindsey and I'm sure Stevie's antics grew tiresome quickly on the last epic, money-grab tour. Lucky for them that they could cash out one last time before Covid. I'd rather see the band finally done with than watch another embarrassing Lindsey-less incarnation. Enough.

R64- Amen

Christine sounded like a GARBAGE DUMP of a friend as far as Lindsey was concerned. With her clock stopping face, she could at least try to be a good person.

I really despise them all. To be that greedy and egotistic when you are nearing 80 years old- I am talking all of them.

I find them too detestable now, but they have some good songs. I was always more the Stevie fan- but not anymore.

I became very much team Lindsey, but in the end, the truth usually is somewhere in the middle.

[R63] Taken from something called "Far Out" magazine, August 2020 (although the story's been around for a long time). I believe the "Glenn" referenced is Glenn Parrish.

"By 1993, the dosage of Kloponin was still increasing and Nicks was beginning to see a spiralling pattern of more prescriptions leading her further and further into a state of irreconcilable depression. She notes that her family and friend were all worried about her. None more so than her personal assistant and friend, Glenn. The pair decided to test out the effects of the drug on Glenn to see just how damaging they may be. Nicks remarks, “I said, it won’t kill you, because it hasn’t killed me, but I just want to see what you think.”

Glenn proceeds to take the beefed-up dosage of medicine. As he tries to put up a stereo he is stopped within 30 minutes of taking the first set of pills: “He said, ‘I can’t fix the stereo and I don’t think I can drive home.’ And I said, ‘Well, good — just stay there, because I’m studying you.’ And he was almost hallucinating. It was bad.” It emboldened Nicks to begin to take control of her life once again, for the first time in many years.

The singer picked up the phone to her shrink and told him the situation she was, for the first time, witnessing and not experiencing. She told the psychiatrists that Glenn had taken the pills prescribed for Nicks. She picks up: “The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Are you trying to kill him?’ And the next words out of my mouth were, ‘Are you trying to kill me?'”

R66 Whoa. That's heavy. Poor Glenn!

I do wonder if Stevie has been entirely drug-free for the past twenty-odd years or however long she's claimed to be sober. I wouldn't be surprised if she still takes pills sometimes.

Stevie's 'I'm a prude lady' shtick is so funny. You don't cheat on your partners constantly, have 4 abortions, bang every rock star you come across, do mountains of drugs, put coke up your ass, get hooked on prescription drugs, and continue to smoke and drink into your 70s and then call yourself a prude. I mean Joe Walsh is the love of her life and dude was into hardcore S&M.

Stevie quit smoking many years ago.

Shit...

R69 Stevie just seems like a repulsive person with major arrested development, narcissism, and whatever else.

R70 she still smokes pot

I loved the 24 Karat Gold concert that came out a little while ago. But I was astonished at how she didn't do band introductions at any point - some of these folks have been with her for decades too.

R74 It's the Stevie Nicks show - she doesn't need to thank anyone, if anything they should be thanking her. She is the star darling.

Stevie's neck is huge on the cover art. I'm surprised she approved that. I wonder if they called her Stevie Necks.

Can't Go Back, Love In Store and Eyes of the World are great. Here's a video of Stevie serenading the make up artist to the guitar riff of Can't Go Back with the lyrics for Wild Heart. She wanted the riff for that song. At the :20 you can hear her say "this is the one"

R77 An instrumental version of Can't Go Back is on the Deluxe version of Mirage. Someone someday will track down the isolated vocals of Wild Heart and simulate a studio version of that live performance.

EYES OF THE WORLD was even better live. If the studio version, good as if is, had had this energy and pace it could have been a big hit.

R79 That might be the only song off Mirage that sounds better live. Mirage is as much a studio artifice as Tango in the Night. Gypsy never really sounded great live.

Oh no a "studio artifice!" Music snobs ruin music.

This thread is hilarious. I wasn't even born in 1982. But I know that Fleetwood Mac would be nothing without the voice of Stevie Nicks. I suspect she figured that out too. The end.

They were going for another Rumours but that didn't work out. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk are their best work.

The album Buckingham heavy and I never cared much for his songs.

R82 She was the Jim Morrison of the band. Charisma and voice, but not a whole lot of talent.

R81 I like the sound. It's studio production sounds very modern and ahead of it's time. They just weren't able to recreate the sound live with the tech they had back then. Stevie Nicks cannot hit a lot of those high notes in Gypsy. The tape sounds sped up in parts.

One thing I've notice is that Buckingham saved his best guitarwork for Christine McVie's songs.

Tusk and Rumours took a little over a year to record. Tango in the Night took 18 months to record. Mirage only took 3 months to record. It could have been so much better.

Fleetwood Mac made a mistake by not releasing Eyes of the World as a rockabilly Christmas song.

Mirage is when they started mining old material and using co-writers.

No, Tango in the Night was the group's "comeback"!

Don't you have to have a dud album and underperforming singles to need a comeback? Mirage was #1 for 5 weeks and had 3 singles in the top 20. Yes, there was 5 years in between albums, but they weren't down and out. The same can be said for Mirage. Tusk reached #4 and 3 top 20 singles.

R92 Fleetwood Mac didn't have a dud album until Buckingham left. But even 'Behind the Mask' charted in the UK. I call it a dud because that album produced no 'classic' songs that people remember.

Behind the Mask is a surprisingly terrific album. Billy Burnette was a fantastic addition to the band and this is really his and McVie's album. And they proved FM did not need Buckingham or Nicks to make a great listen. Nicks is here but just barely, and her few songs are the least memorable. I'm sorry they dumped Burnette and Vito, but I understand it. They got the chance to get the big lineup back and they took it.

I disagree R93. I hear Gypsy on the radio constantly to this day and the mystical witchery lyrics encapsulates Stevie Nicks. After Dreams and Rhiannon, I'd say it's the next most remembered Nicks songs from FM.

I love Gypsy. I like Stevie's solo piano demo. And I love the final version that Lindsey produced, with the exotic bells (not sure if that's a guitar or piano) over the verses and the sparkling glittering guitar solo at the end. I also heard a demo that she made with Tom Petty, and I hated it.

R94 Behind the Mask is terrible. It proved that Fleetwood Mac needed a Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Bob Welch, or Lindsey Buckingham. Billy Burnette and Rick Vito were proficient guitarists but they were not elite guitarists. Most importantly they were not creative enough, they didn't have grand visions for albums like the previous guitarists, particularly Kirwan and Buckingham. Don't even get me started in Dave Mason. Behind the Mask is almost a parody of AOR. It's wallpaper, it's white noise, it's a slow painless death.

Also Fleetwood Mac just needed a crazy, egomaniacal, self destructive guitarist to light a fire underneath the rather conservative British Blooz rhythm section. All of them up to and including Lindsey were nutso, Rick and Billy were just too sane and easy to get a long with to make a proper album.

R96 I don't even know why Stevie even attempts to play piano in demos. She's usually just hitting single notes at the beginning of a new vocal phrase, using the same 2-3 notes.

Lindsey sounds very constipated on Hold Me. Actually the whole song reminds me of constipation.

Tell me about it.

You're only supposed to be on Klonopin for 4 weeks. She was on it for 8 years.

8 years? That's not very long.

Hold Me is a weird pop song. It simultaneously sounds boring and strange.

What was the deal with Nicks adopting kids and giving them back? Is that an urban legend?

R105 she married her recently deceased best friend's husband and then divorced him after 3 months to go on tour with Joe Walsh. The dead best friend died from cancer not long after giving birth. The reasoning she gives is that she wanted to "get that baby".

[R104] Like so many other FM songs from the Buckingham era, Lindsey transformed a simple ditty - in this case a pleasant blues shuffle - into something idiosyncratic and wonderful, as typified by how the song "comes apart" before the finish with the piano melody tapering into a few out-of-tune notes before the song kicks in again with the blistering end-solo. This is real talent and it can't be taught.

Here's the demo with the backing track before the song went to another level -

Bumping this

[Quote] but a space cadet.

The Bond composer David Arnold had an appointment to meet Streisand with a view to recording her for his Bond Themes covers album. She must have forgotten on the day as she was dressed like a bag lady and pretended to be the housekeeper. She requested that Arnold come back the next day.

R109 when has Babs ever not dressed like a bag lady?