R.I.P.Christine McVie and other musicians 2022

 What strikes me now about the Fleetwood Mac records of the mid 1970s is how clean the sound was.  The instruments had distinct separation and pop, the lead voices and backup harmonies balanced and flowed, there was no excess or noise. There was no rush or frenzy. Yet somehow this produced an irresistible  momentum over a tasty beat, and unleashed the emotional force of the music and lyrics.  This music rang like a bell.  It was cleansing, but at the same time, it startled you and grabbed your attention and emotion.  In the context of the mid-1970s, it was also hopeful.

 I noticed this at the time—after all, I had been paid to make that kind of observation for years leading up to this moment—but the emotion and physical energy generated by the songs were primary.  I just felt it.

 It was a magic lineup musically: Mick Fleetwood’s drums, John McVie’s bass, Lindsay Buckingham’s unique guitar and Christine McVie’s keyboards.  Buckingham was a vocalist and songwriter, but the voices unique in pop music at that time belonged to Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie—very different from each other but both distinctive.      

 As is well known now, their lives were messy in many ways (I once stayed in a Santa Monica apartment where a few weeks before, Stevie Nicks conducted a secret tryst with—I believe it was—a Beach Boy) but their music was precise.  You could listen to it with admiration and awe, if you could keep yourself from moving.  Their uplifting brilliance was all the greater for being so widely shared.  These records sold millions and there was always at least one of their songs on the radio. 

At the center of it all was Christine McVie.  Her keyboards anchored the music, and her songwriting defined the group.  Nicks and Buckingham were flashier, but she wrote and sang more of the hits.  She had an elegant blues-based sense of playing and writing (as Christine Perfect—her real unmarried name—she’d been the mainstay of the 1960s blues band Chicken Shack—and of course Fleetwood Mac had started as a blues band) and a genius for musical hooks.  Her singing style was simple and subtle, never strained, yet it carried these songs to the heights.

 The band predictably imploded by the 80s, though it made several near-perfect albums in the 70s.  It reformed when unexpectedly, the Bill Clinton/Al Gore campaign chose McVie’s song “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” as their theme/fight song for the 1992 election, and the band came back together for an Inaugural concert. They were again a great band in the late 90s. Eventually McVie left the band again and stopped making music, but then she rejoined and the songs kept coming.  They were and are irresistible.

  It’s probably clear from the first entries in this series, but I’m primarily honoring artists and others who touched my life.  The time limits to that are most obvious with music.  The music that moved me and may well still move me was first generated in the 20^th century and before.  I stopped listening to much that was new as the hip hop and rap era took hold, and I still hear almost no contemporary pop music (the best of which tends to suggest to me a watered-down variation on artists that came before. I’m probably wrong, but there you are.) 

 Musicians associated with the 1950s:

Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the original rock and rollers, a weird guy and crazed performer it was impossible not to watch. Ronnie Spector (the Ronettes), Fred Parris (the Five Satins), Bobby Hendricks (the Drifters), bandleader and novelty musician Gloria Parker.

 Songwriters Paul Vance (Perry Como’s hit “Catch A Falling Star”), Sonny West (Buddy Holly’s “Oh Boy!”) and country songwriter Dallas Frazier.

 

 Bobby Rydell was the best singer among the Philadelphia Italians crooners promoted by Dick Clark in the late 50s/pre-Beatles 60s. He had a string of hits, and a big screen role in Bye, Bye Birdie.  I bought his 45s and saw him live at the Allegheny County Fair, partly because some girls in school thought I looked like him, an impression I encouraged with my pompadour, until I went full JFK.

 Musicians who broke through in the 1960s:

Loretta Lynn

Country great Loretta Lynn, singer (Ian and Sylvia) and songwriter (Four Strong Winds) Ian Tyson, rocker Ronnie Hawkins, Dino Danelli (The Rascals), Kim Simmonds (Savoy Brown), Don Wilson (the Ventures), Rosa Hawkins (the Dixie Cups), Gary Brooker (Procol Harum), folksinger Judy Henske and Broadway singer Robert Morris.

 Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis had a 60s hit with “The In Crowd.”

 Bob Neuwirth hung out with Dylan (in the film Don’t Look Back he tells him that Donovan is a better guitarist) and co-wrote Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz song with Janis and poet Michael McClure.

Judith Durham

 Composer Tom Springfield (“Another You” and “Georgy Girl”) and the lead singer of the Seekers that turned these songs into hits, Judith Durham.

 Composers Montey Norman (the Bond Theme), Lamont Dozier (“You Can’t Hurry Love”), Lenny Lipton (“Puff the Magic Dragon”), and Ivy Jo Hunter (“Dancin in the Street.”)

 Impressarios of two major 60s events: James Rado (co-creator of Hair!) and Michael Lang (co-creator of the Woodstock festival.)

 From the 1970s:

Pop singer Olivia Newton-John, Meat Loaf, folksingers Paul Siebel and Mary McCaslin, country and western singer Mickey Gilley.

 Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream), Warren Bernhardt (Steely Dan), Calvin Simon (Parliament-Funkadelic), Dick Halligan (Blood, Sweat and Tears), Nathaniel Ian Wynters (the Wailers.)  Songwriter Jon Lind.

 

From the 1980s and 90s:

 Irene Cara (“Fame”), Naomi Judd (the Judds), and Andy Fletcher (Depeche Mode).

Composers Vangelis, Angelo Badalmenti, Lucy Simon and Shirley Elkhard.

 

Pharoah Sanders

Also passing in 2022 were jazz and R&B artists Pharoah Sanders, Taylor Hawkins, James Mtume, Bobbie Long ‘Beegie’ Adair, Michael Henderson, Jessica Williams, Barbara Morrison, Jessie Powell, Janet Thurlow, Joyce Sims, Geraldine Hunt, Barbara Thompson, salsa singer and songwriter Hector Tricoche, samba singer Elza Soares, calypso singer Kenny J.  May they all rest in peace.  The music lingers on.