When Christine McVie passed away on Nov. 30, 2022, the tributes poured in from around the world.  Deservedly so.  We pay our respects to the legendary Christine Perfect the way we do best– by taking an in-depth look at one of her biggest hits from the classic “Rumours” album, along with an overview of Fleetwood Mac’s tortured history.

Also in this episode, I recommend the “Fakewood Mac” episode of the Rock And/Or Roll Podcast— my favorite podcast.  I highly recommend you check out this episode:
 https://rockandorrollpodcast.blogspot.com/2020/04/raor-308-fakewood-mac.html

“You Make Loving Fun” (Christine McVie)  Copyright 1976 Fleetwood Mac Music, USA – BMG Music Publishing Limited

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TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m Brad Page, your host here on the Pantheon Network, where each episode, I pick one of my favorite songs and we listen to it together, listening for all the little moments, those special touches that make it a great song. No musical skill or knowledge is required. All you need is a love of music and you’ll fit right in here.

At the time of this recording, it’s been a little over a month since the passing of Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac. There have been plenty of tributes to Christine; she deserves every one of them. And we’re going to pay tribute in the way that we do best– by doing some serious listening to one of her classic songs. This is “You Make Loving Fun” by Fleetwood Mac.

[Music]

The history of Fleetwood Mac is about as convoluted as a band history can get, and we don’t have time to go over every detail, but the history is important. So, some kind of overview is warranted, centering around Christine.

So, let’s start in 1968, where one of the hot new guitarists on the scene, Peter Green, left John Myall’s Bluesbreakers and started a new band, eventually taking the Bluesbreakers drummer and bass player, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie with him. He named this new band Fleetwood Mac, after the drummer and bassist, and soon they were joined by a second guitarist, Jeremy Spencer. Together, they recorded some of the seminal works of the British blues bands.

[Music]

In 1968, they recorded their second album called “Mr. Wonderful”. There were a few guest musicians on this album, including a young keyboard player named Christine Perfect.

[Music]

Christine Perfect was born in Birmingham, England in 1943. Her father, Cyril Perfect, was a violinist in the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Her mother, Beatrice, was a psychic. Christine started making music young, playing along to Everly Brothers records. And after graduating from art college, she joined the band Chicken Shack. Chicken Shack was signed to the same record label as Fleetwood Mac, Blue Horizon. Christine recorded two albums with Chicken Shack, and they had one hit in the UK with “I’d Rather Go Blind” featuring Christine on lead vocal.

[Music]

Christine left Chicken Shack in 1969 and released her first solo album in 1970. Here’s a track from the Christine Perfect album.

[Music]

Christine and Fleetwood Mac’s bass player John McVie had been seeing each other, and by this time, had gotten married. They spent the first year or so of their marriage away from each other, as each of them were on the road with different bands.

Back in the Fleetwood Mac camp, a third guitar player had joined Fleetwood Mac. His name was Danny Kirwan. The interplay between Kirwan and Peter Green was really something special, but it didn’t last. By 1970, Peter Green had left Fleetwood Mac; mental illness had taken its toll, and Peter Green would never really recover.

If you’d like to learn more about Peter Green and explore this era of Fleetwood Mac further, go back and listen to episode 67 of this podcast, where we dig into the legendary track “The Green Manalishi”.

So, Peter Green had left and Fleetwood Mac was without their star player, but Mick Fleetwood held the band together. They retreated to Southern England and recorded their fourth album, “Kiln House”. Christine once again made a guest appearance on this album, though she’s uncredited. She even drew the cover art for this album. But after the release of the album, she officially joined Fleetwood Mac as a full time member. Here’s a song from “Kiln House”, It’s a Danny Kirwan song called “Station Man”, with Christine on electric piano.

[Music]

The chaos continued, though, when Jeremy Spencer quit the band. He left and joined a religious cult and never came back. Once again, the band was forced to reinvent itself.

They recruited a new guitarist-vocalist-songwriter named Bob Welsh. They recorded and released their next album, “Future Games”, in 1971. “Future Games” was the first album to feature both Bob Welch and Christine as a full-time credited band member. Christine wrote two of the songs on “Future Games”. Here’s one of them, this one’s called “Morning Rain”.

[Music]

“Bare Trees” was released in 1972. This one featured the song “Sentimental Lady”, which Bob Welch would later rerecord and release as a solo hit. It also includes the song “Spare Me a Little of Your Love”, which features a great vocal by Christine.

[Music]

Things still wouldn’t settle down for Fleetwood Mac. Christine and John McVie’s marriage was on the rocks, and now Danny Kirwan was showing signs of self-destructive behavior. One night, Kirwan refused to go on stage and instead heckled the band from the audience. Mick Fleetwood had no choice but to fire him. Another key member of the band gone.

Kirwan would spend the remainder of his life wrestling with addiction, homelessness, and mental illness.

Two new members were brought into the band: vocalist Dave Walker from Savoy Brown, and guitarist Bob Weston. This lineup released the album “Penguin” in 1973. But this lineup didn’t last long, either. Dave Walker was out after only one album. Here’s one of Christine’s songs from the “Penguin” album. This one’s called “Remember Me”.

[Music]

Now back down to a five piece, they released their next album, “Mystery To Me”, in October 1973. This album includes the song “Hypnotized”.

[Music]

Things seem to be going OK for the band when they set out on a US. tour, but when Mick Fleetwood found out that Bob Weston was having an affair with his wife, Mick had enough. He fired Bob Weston, and told the rest of the band he needed to take a break and just couldn’t finish the tour. And thus began one of the most bizarre events in rock history.

While the band was on a break and scattered around the world, Fleetwood Mac’s manager put together his own version of the band– with no actual Fleetwood Mac members, just a bunch of nobodies, and sent them out on the road as Fleetwood Mac. It’s really a story you’ve got to hear. My podcasting friend Brian Cramp did an excellent episode on his podcast about this whole fiasco. You should really listen to that show; it’s episode number 308 of the “Rock And/Or Roll” podcast. That episode’s called “Fakewood Mac”. Check it out. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

So, by the beginning of 1974, things were as bad as they would ever get for Fleetwood Mac. Their record company was about to give up on them, they were being sued by their manager, and that whole “Fakewood Mac” tour just ruined their reputation. The band relocated to Los Angeles and went back into the studio as a four piece. Bob Welsh, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. And they recorded the album “Heroes Are Hard To Find”, their 9th album, released in September 1974. Christine wrote four songs on “Heroes Are Hard To Find”, including the title cut and this one, called “Prove Your Love”.

[Music]

By the end of 1974, Bob Welsh had left the band. Fleetwood Mac had lost five guitar players and one singer in the last four years.

Meanwhile, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were kicking around Los Angeles after leaving the San Francisco band Fritz and embarking on a career as a duo. They were working with producer Keith Olsen at Sound City Studio in Van Nuys. Olsen got them a record deal and they released their first album, “Buckingham Nicks”, in 1974. But the album received little promotion. It didn’t sell, and Buckingham Nicks were unceremoniously dropped by their record label.

Mick Fleetwood was still keeping Fleetwood Mac alive and was looking for a studio to start their next record. A friend suggested Sound City, so Mick went to check it out. He met with Keith Olson at the studio, and Keith, as an example of the studio’s capabilities, he played the Buckingham Nicks album for Fleetwood. And Mick Fleetwood was impressed with what he heard.

Eventually, Buckingham and Nicks were asked to join Fleetwood Mac, and after some soul searching, they decided to give it a shot. And that is the short story of how the version of Fleetwood Mac we all know and love got together. The longer story– and there is a longer story– well, that you can read all about that yourself.

So, in January 1975, the new lineup of Fleetwood Mac went into Sound City studios to record their first album together, which they simply named “Fleetwood Mac”. It took a while, but the album eventually made it to number one by September 1976, after 58 weeks of climbing the charts.

[Music]

You would think that things ought to be great for the band, but things were rough on a personal level. John and Christine had already split up; Lindsay and Stevie were calling it quits, and Mick was getting a divorce. By the time they headed back into the studio to make their next record, it was an emotional minefield. And all of that turmoil is famously reflected in the songs.

The album that would become “Rumours” took over six months to complete. It was recorded at a number of studios, including the Sausalito Record Plant, Wally Heider in LA, and Sound City in Van Nuys; the album was mixed at Sound City and at the LA Record Plant.

Much has been said about Lindsay Buckingham’s obsessions with getting everything perfect, but Christine McVie was just as dedicated. Recording engineer Chris Morris said Christine spent every minute of every day there, she was one of the hardest working women he’d ever worked with.

“Rumours” is chock-full of great songs and big hits. We’re going to take a deep dive into “You Make Loving Fun”. It’s easy to think of this song as a slight pop song, compared to some of the more adventurous tracks on the album, like “The Chain” or “Gold Dust Woman”. But “You Make Loving Fun” is an extremely well-crafted song. 3 minutes and 34 seconds of crafty songwriting, tight performances and recording perfection.

It was written by Christine McVie, produced by the band, along with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashutt, and with Lindsay Buckingham contributing a lot to the arrangement. So, let’s get into it.

Mick Fleetwood counts the song in with three hits on his hi-hat and then a drum hit on the four, and we’re off.

Christine McVie is playing two keyboard parts here. There’s a Fender Rhodes electric piano, it’s panned a little bit to the right, and a Honer clavinet, more or less in the middle. This clavinet is probably the most prominent element of the song. It’s what gives the song its groove. And that clavinet is fed through a wah-wah pedal, which was actually manipulated by Mick Fleetwood. He was laying on the floor, rocking it back and forth while Christine played the part. Listen to the way she weaves those two keyboard parts together.

[Music]

You can also hear some simple percussion parts there that are a little less obvious in the final mix. Let’s pick it back up at the top.

Lindsay Buckingham is playing some short little guitar licks that he’s going to continue to throw in throughout the song. There’s also another guitar part deeper in the mix. We’ll listen to that a little later. Let’s move on to the first verse.

[Music]

Fleetwood Mac fans know the story behind this song: Christine and John’s marriage was over. John had his girlfriends, and Christine was going out with Curry Grant– who just happened to be the band’s lighting director– and she wrote this song for him. Think about the emotions swirling around Christine and John and Curry while this song was being recorded. And that’s just one of the complex relationships around this band. This whole album is infused with that. Let’s listen to Christine’s vocal track.

[Music]

I’ve always liked this part right here. I mentioned Lindsay Buckingham’s other guitar part earlier. Here’s a little bit of what he’s doing in the background. It’s very simple, but it has to be because the keyboard parts are so full. There’s no room for a busy guitar part. The song just doesn’t need it. And part of Lindsay’s genius, like all great guitar players, is to know what to play and what not to play. And even when not to play at all. You barely notice this part is even there but it’s all part of the big picture.

So let’s listen to this verse again, this time without the vocal so we can hear just the instrumental track.

That brings us to the bridge, which I think is pretty magical. The verses have kind of a funky feel to them, especially with that clavinet. But the bridge drops in with this really dreamy feel, like a headrush. It’s that “head in the clouds” blissful feeling, which is a great match for the lyrics.

[Music]

Those layered backing vocals really make that dreamy feel. Let’s listen to the vocal tracks.

[Music]

Mick Fleetwood is playing kind of an interesting pattern on his tom drums here. Again, it’s another simple part, but it’s where he places the fills. That’s not exactly where I would expect them.

[Music]

And that leads us into a guitar solo by Lindsay Buckingham. Just one verse, one bridge and then a solo. There’s no second verse or chorus here. Just right into the solo. Not a typical arrangement, but this is a great guitar solo. Sounds like he’s doubled the guitar parts and panned one to each side. There’s some echo on the parts as well.

[Music]

The end of the solo takes us back to the bridge. Now notice that we’re what, halfway through the song, and we still haven’t heard the chorus yet.

[Music]

Now, we’ve already taken a look at the vocal parts and the drum track during the bridge. So this time, let’s hear Lindsay’s guitar parts. I really love what he’s doing here. See how he changes up the part for the second half of the bridge:

[Music]

One more thing that I want to listen to before we move on is John McVie’s bass part on the bridge. McVie is not a flashy or busy player. He’s just a rock solid in the groove player. But I like this part.

[Music]

For this last verse, let’s listen to how the bass and the drums are locked in together for a simple, driving rhythm that almost has a disco feel to it. This was 1977 after all.

[Music]

Lindsay plays some tasty little guitar parts during this verse. Let’s go back and just hear his guitar there. It’s after this last verse that we finally get to the chorus. The chorus doesn’t appear until the very end of the song. It’s very unusual for a pop song.

The chorus starts on the same chord as the bridge, but simplifies it, cycling through a simple I-V-IV chord progression. Those are chord changes you’ve heard in a million songs. But it’s what Fleetwood Mac adds to it, and layers on top, that makes this special.

[Music]

Let’s listen to Lindsay’s guitar again, because what he’s playing here is more like guitar orchestration rather than soloing.

[Music]

Now let’s go back and hear how that fits in with all the other parts in the final mix.

[Music]

Let’s check out those great layered vocal parts here, too.

[Music]

Let’s check out those last few guitar licks Lindsay gets in at the end.

[Music]

We’ll go back and wrap it up with that final fade out.

{Music]

“You Make Loving Fun” by Fleetwood Mac.

Christine McVie didn’t have the immediate eye-catching and marketable image the way that Stevie Nicks did. And she wasn’t perceived as the genius, a Brian Wilso- like visionary, as Lindsay Buckingham was. I think she was often overshadowed in the press, by the fans, and on stage by the other two. And her role in the band wasn’t always an easy one.

But she was an essential songwriter in the band. She wrote some of their biggest hits. “Don’t Stop”, “Songbird”, “Over My Head”, “Say You Love Me”, “Think About Me”, “Hold Me”. She wrote those songs. She was a critical part of the Fleetwood Mac magic. And as far as I’m concerned, the band was never as good when she wasn’t in it.

A lot of musicians have been lost over the last few years. One of the things I try to do on this show is to remind people of who they were, and just do my small part to keep their memory alive. Losing Christine was a big loss, but one thing I think we can all safely say is that Fleetwood Mac is in no danger of being forgotten anytime soon. Right now, they’re still hugely popular and they’ve been rediscovered by a whole new audience. That’s a testament to the lasting beauty and power of their music. And Christine is a big, big part of that. This songbird is gone, but the music lives on.

I used a number of resources to put this episode together. I wanted to mention a couple of them. The “Rumours” episode of the “Classic Albums” TV show, which is absolutely worth watching; and the book “Never Break the Chain” by Kath Carroll, which is a good history of Fleetwood Mac in general. And it really goes deep on the making of both the “Fleetwood Mac” and the “Rumours” albums. I really recommend both the show and that book. Check them out.

Thanks for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. New episodes are released on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so we’ll be back soon with another new show. Until then, you can catch up on all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. You can also hear us on virtually every podcast service: Google, Apple, Amazon, Stitcher, Spotify you name it, we’re there.

You can post reviews or comments on Facebook or on Podchaser or wherever you listen to the show. And if you’d like to support the show, the best thing you can do is to tell a friend about it, because word of mouth is the most valuable thing for any podcast.

On behalf of everyone here on the Pantheon Podcast Network, I thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode on Fleetwood Mac and “You Make Loving Fun”.

Let’s kick off our first episode of 2023 with a look back 50 years to 1973. I’m joined on this episode by Andrew Grant Jackson, author of 1973: Rock At The Crossroads for a discussion of the music and history of the year that was 1973.

Andrew Grant Jackson is the author of 1973: Rock at the Crossroads, 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers, Where’s Ringo? and Where’s Elvis? He’s written for Rolling Stone, Slate, Yahoo!, PopMatters, and Please Kill Me. He directed and co-wrote the feature film The Discontents starring Perry King and Amy Madigan. He lives in Los Angeles.

Jackson’s websites:

www.facebook.com/1973book

www.facebook.com/1965book

www.facebook.com/solobeatlebook

www.facebook.com/whereselvisbook

www.1965book.com

www.solobeatles.com

— This show is part of the Pantheon podcast network — THE place for music junkies, geeks, nerds, diehards and fans!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everybody. This is the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page, and welcome to our first show of 2023. I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look back 50 years ago, to the year 1973, and see what was happening in music, and in the broader American cultural landscape, 50 years ago.

Some of you may remember a while back, I did an episode on the year 1965. That show was inspired by a book written by Andrew Grant Jackson on 1965. Well, Andrew also wrote a book about 1973. It’s called “1973 – Rock At The Crossroads”. And so I thought, if I’m going to do a show about 1973, I should invite Andrew to join me. So here’s my conversation with Andrew about the music that made history 50 years ago – in 1973.

BRAD: Andrew Grant Jackson. welcome to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about 1973. We’re heading into 2023, so it’s a perfect time to look back 50 years ago. You literally wrote the book on 1973. It’s called “1973 – Rock At The Crossroads”. So I couldn’t have anyone better on the show, I think, to talk about 50 years ago, this year. So, let’s get right into it first. Why do you think 1973 was such a crucial year in rock history?

ANDREW: I like to think of it as the year that rock peaked and then began to die, but then was reborn, because on the one hand, it was the last blockbuster year where all these 60’s giants released classics at the same time. And then you had these veterans, who had been kind of toiling on the outskirts for a decade, who suddenly shot to the front. And then you had this amazing crop of these new superstars who released their debut album at the same time.

It was the year that radio programmers figured out how to synthesize AM Top 40 with FM progressive rock. And they created “album-oriented rock”. And then it began this period where, even though there’s obviously so much great classic rock, it started pushing anybody out who wasn’t arena rock or yacht rock or disco for a time. And so the seeds were planted there for stagnation. But then underneath the radar, there were all these new movements that started to percolate that would eventually rise up and rejuvenate popular music. So, it was just a chaotic, fascinating year on so many fronts to take a look at.

BRAD: Yeah. So let’s start talking about some of these records that came out in 1973.

ANDREW: We had the former Beatles, “Band On The Run” came out. And the Stones, they did “Goats Head Soup”, which at the time was dismissed as the beginning of their decline from like the peak, but I think it’s a very unique album in their canon, and I think it’s still a great album.

BRAD: Yeah, “Goats Head Soup” is one of my favorite Stones records. I think that’s a great record and a really underappreciated album.

[Music]

ANDREW: And Dylan, he did “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” that year. And Zeppelin did “Houses of the Holy”, The Who did “Quadrophenia”, Marvin Gaye “Let’s Get It On”, Stevie Wonder “Innervisions”. James Brown had a bunch of great stuff. Even Elvis, you know, he had his peak in terms of audience with the “Aloha from Hawaii” special. So, yeah, all those guys were still cranking on all cylinders there.

BRAD: The who released “Quadrophenia”, as you mentioned. Pete Townsend has, I think, more than once said that in his opinion, “Quadrophenia”, is the last great who album. I love a lot of the stuff that came after that, but I think it’s their peak record in many ways.

[Music]

Speaker E: Yeah, he was like looking back at ten years earlier, like the mod thing. It was like there was a lot of nostalgia going on that year, like “Happy Days” and “American Graffiti” and everything. And he was looking back at their early days, and definitely their last ambitious concept album after that, right?

BRAD: Yeah, “Quadrophenia” was their last real concept piece after that. You have “Who By Numbers” and “Who Are You”, “Face Dances”, “It’s Hard”, but none of those, they’re not a concept or a story or a rock opera or anything like that. But yeah, “Quadrophenia”, I mean, that alone makes 1973 worthwhile.

But yeah, on the soul and R&B front, you’ve got Marvin Gaye; Stevie Wonder is in his imperial period here, where he just can do no wrong, he’s putting out classic album after classic album and this is right in the midst of that.

[Music]

BRAD: What did James Brown put out in 1973?

ANDREW: Yeah, James Brown had a really interesting year, because he got a lot of blowback because he had supported Nixon, the year before in the elections

BRAD: Right.

ANDREW: Because, you know, you always wanted to get closer to power that could make legislative change. But also he had all these radio stations and tax issues going on, so, who knows, maybe that was his prime motivation, hoping to get some help with some of his issues, but for a while, people were protesting against him. But he had a lot of great stuff, like, he was doing all these soundtracks like “Black Caesar” and “Slaughter’s Big Ripoff”, “The Payback”, he did that one that year.

[Music]

BRASD: And then we had some other artists that really hit their peak at this time, probably nobody bigger than Pink Floyd with “Dark Side of the Moon”. I mean, is there any more classic album than “Dark Side of the Moon”?  That came out in ’73.

ANDREW: Yeah. And then it was on the charts for I forget, like 500 weeks or something like that.

[Music]

ANDREW: You know, a lot of people thought especially, “Brain Damage”, on that song, he was writing about Sid Barrett, their former member who became an acid casualty. But I guess he was actually– Roger Waters– was writing about himself; he had some moments himself where he thought he had some flashes of mental illness,. and it kind of freaked him out. That’s probably, if you had to pick, of the albums, I guess that would probably be the one that everybody would pick.

BRAD: It’s certainly the one that’s had the most long-term impact.

ANDREW: Right.

BRAD: And then Elton John is kind of in his imperial phase, too.

ANDREW: Yeah

BRAD: He puts out “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” in 1973.

[Music]

ANDREW: That year, that was when Reggae really started being embraced by the English guys. And a lot of people, like the Stones and Cat Stevens, went down to Jamaica to record and Elton John tried it, but they recorded maybe the first take or the roots of “Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting”, but they were so freaked out, like, the recording studio was kind of guarded with guns and barbed wire and it had been pretty brutal. Unfortunately, the women who were in the Stones camp had been assaulted, sexually assaulted there. So, Elton John was kind of like, tried at Jamaica, but then he left and they went back to their favorite place in France.

[Music]

BRAD: You mentioned reggae. This is the year of Bob Marley and the Wailers too, right?

ANDREW: Yeah, he had, two great albums that year, “Catch A Fire” and “Burning”. And “Burning” had “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Get Up, Stand Up” on it.

[Music]

ANDREW: It’s so interesting, this is just one thing I love about ‘73 was, in that year, he played a bunch of shows at Max’s Kansas City, which the hippest of the hip clubs & bars in New York.

BRAD: Right.

ANDREW: And he was like opening for Springsteen, or then Springsteen would open for him, and then Billy Joel was like opening for Waylon Jennings, you know, just so bizarre how all these titans who seem so distinct to us now, they were just overlapping with each other, coming up back then.

BRAD: Yeah, well, talking about Springsteen and Billy Joel, they’re just a few of the artists that put out their first records in 1973. So, let’s kind of take a look at that list: Springsteen releases “Greetings From Asbury Park”.

ANDREW: And then later the same year, he comes out with “The Wild, The Innocent & The East Street Shuffle”. He was really cooking, too.

BRAD: And this is not unique to 1973, but it’s an amazing thing that, throughout the 60’s and the 70’s, the rate at which artists were churning out records– 2 a year is not unusual, it’s the norm. Name almost any band in throughout the 60’s and 70’s and they’ve come out with at least two records a year. And a lot of these records have gone on to be classics, and just amazes me that anyone’s lucky to have one classic record in their catalog, you know– and these bands are doing, they’re coming out with two records a year of brilliance. It’s just amazing to me. And on top of that, they’re touring, so it’s not like they have a lot of luxury and time to make these records. But somehow, they’re able to just produce, year after year, great records, multiple records per year. It just amazes me. And now, artists go three, four years between records.

ANDREW: Yeah.

BRAD: Queen released their first album in 1973.

[Music]

ANDREW: Aerosmith and the New York Dolls and Lynyrd Skynyrd. You know, those were, along with Springsteen and Billy Joel, there’s like six of the biggest debuts in one year.

BRAD: Yeah, I mean, you have a record like the first New York Dolls album, which didn’t really sell that much, but incredibly influential record.

[Music]

BRAD: Like you said, Lynyrd Skynyrd puts out their first album. So, it’s really kind of the start of southern rock in a lot of ways.

ANDREW: Yeah, the Marshall Tucker Band came out that year and then, ZZ Top, with “LaGrange” came out, and the Alman Brothers had “Rambling Man” that year, too.

BRAD: Yeah. So it was definitely a high point for the Southern Rock sound. You’ve also got some, I think, overlooked records, like, well, I mentioned the New York Dolls record, it’s commercially overlooked. But Lou Reed released “Berlin”, which is my favorite Lou Reed record… I think, was not a successful record at the time, but in retrospect, I think it’s…

ANDREW: Yeah, it’s funny with that album, because it has this reputation as being the most depressing album of all time, because he had broken up with his wife,

[Music]

ANDREW: But that year he had had probably his commercial peak, because Bowie produced his previous album, “Transformer”, which had “Walk On the Wild Side”, which that tune got pretty high up on the charts.

BRAD: In ‘73, talking about Bowie, Bowie had quite a year. He released “Aladdin Sane”.

[Music]

ANDREW: After he released “Ziggy Stardust’ the previous year, then they toured the US, where, it was funny, they didn’t really make a big splash, except they started really coming through, and Glam was strangely big in Rust Belt towns like Detroit and Cleveland. So on “Aladdin Sane” he has “Panic In Detroit”, it’s a great tune, which was inspired by a lot of the stories you heard from like the MC5 and the Stooges.

[Music]

ANDREW: In the UK, it was like it was Bowie-mania then, but he, at the peak of it, after his run of shows in July, he announced that the Spiders From Mars were breaking up. But they did one last covers album. He did another, like you’re talking about, artists do like two albums a year; he did “Pinups”, which was like a collection of his favorite cover songs and stuff.

[Music]

BRAD: 1973 was a big year for women in rock– and I’m talking about rock, not pop. Fanny was a rock band, a full-on great rock and roll band that just never got their due.

[Music]

BRAD: Susie Quattro was making records, Linda Ronstadt was breaking through. So you had some pretty significant female artists working in 1973 and releasing important records then as well.

ANDREW: And in one of my favorite albums of that year, Joni Mitchell recorded “Court And Spark” all through ’73, but it didn’t come out until January 1, ‘74. But it was like an amazing year for just women’s rights; you had Roe versus Wade then…

BRAD: Interesting, here we are, 50 years later, and that’s never been as hot a topic since then as it is today.

ANDFREW: Yeah

BRAD: You had bands like Grand Funk Railroad, which are kind of a, I don’t know, that wouldn’t say they’re forgotten, but they released “We’re an American Band”, which was their biggest record. They were a huge band in the early ‘70’s.

ANDREW: Which Rundgren, Todd Rundgren produced that one, right?

BRAD: Yeah, that’s another record that Todd worked on.

ANDREW: They were kind of the band, like, that Detroit had all these guys like the MC5 that were just a little too raw and punk or protopunk. But they were the ones that kind of, I mean, they were legitimate, they were real just guys from Flint, Michigan. They weren’t phony or whatever, but they just, for some reason, were a little less edgy and were able to play Shea Stadium, you know?

BRAD: Right. They were selling Beatles level tickets. They were huge. People forget how big Grand Funk Railroad was at the time.

[Music]

BRAD: Let’s talk a little bit about the change in radio, which you mentioned up top. But that really is an important aspect of what was going on in the 70’s and really changed the whole business, the way music was marketed and everything becomes much more siloed by the end of the decade.

ANDREW: Yeah, at the time there was AM Top 40, which was actually very eclectic. They would play everybody from Beatles to Motown to like, Frank Sinatra and “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree”, and then you had progressive FM where the DJs would play these 20-minute tracks, whatever they want. But a lot of the songs that seemed too long to be singles started compelling people to buy albums, like “Stairway to Heaven”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. And these people started thinking about, well why don’t we combine playing the long, hard rock stuff that’s popular, but with formatted things where we tell the DJ what to play, and so… because there was a guy named Ron Jacobs, who was like a program director in, I think, Southern California, who they started sending people to supermarkets to do this demographic research on what albums did these young white kids want to hear? Because the advertisers wanted the young white kids, because, I guess, they blew the most money, whatever, right?

So, they really started trying to format everything to match that demographic. And there was a guy named Mike Harrison who started writing this column called “Album Oriented Rock” and this radio and records trade magazine. And so it really started coalescing into these tight playlists that the disc jockeys were told what to do, instead of having freedom to do whatever. But that format was very profitable and it kind of took off. But what was interesting was, like in 73, they had 27 number one hits on Billboard, and ten of them were by black artists. But by the end of the decade, the first years of the 80’s, they’d only had, like, two by black artists or three. Like, one year was just Lionel Richie and “Ebony and Ivory”. So, anybody who didn’t fit those demographics that the advertisers wanted to sell to the young white kids just kind of got closed out by the end of the decade.

BRAD: Yeah, that just got less and less and less as time went on, and things became way more formatted and segregated and you just didn’t mix. And so the Motown stuff just didn’t get played next to the rock acts anymore, which I think ultimately was just detrimental to the music in general.

ANDREW: Yeah, one thing that really started picking up steam in ‘73 was disco.

BRAD: Right.

ANDREW: But in Manhattan, a lot of the clubs that would become the famous discos opened, and then, a lot of the singles that would become huge the following year, like “The Sound of Philadelphia” and “Rock the Boat” and “Rock Your Baby” and “Love’s Theme”, those all were released this year. For a while, disco was very much from the street and just responding to what the people loved in the clubs, and where all the races were mixing, and sexualities and all that. But then when it became huge, then that got like formatted by the end of the decade, ‘till they killed it, just they rode it to the ground.

[Music]

BRAD: At the same time as you have disco making its first big moves, you also have the early seeds of punk. We already talked about New York Dolls, but a lot of that started around the same time, too, the first seeds of what would become punk. And you talk about that in the book.

ANDREW: Yeah, there are a lot of interesting things with punk, but just the New York Dolls aspect of it; the thing I love is that, in New York at that time, you had to play covers, you had to be a cover band, or else there was only a couple of places to play, like Max’s Kansas City, and then CBGB’s opened up at the end of ‘73, and there was this place in Queens called Coventry, which what I just love is that the New York Dolls were playing there, and the guys watching them were the guys from The Ramones and the guys from Kiss.

BRAD: Right.

ANDREW: So it was interesting, the two kind of paths that the New York Dolls kind of birthed.  You know, what was interesting about punk, too, that I love: punk and heavy metal, Like those concepts that, now that we look at music through were both really kind of pounded home through these rock journalists. Because journalists like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs had been talking about punk in reference to these guys from the 60’s like The Seeds that maybe had one classic garage-band hit and then kind of never really broke through. And then Lenny Kaye, who became Patty Smith’s guitarist, was commissioned by Electra Records to do a compilation of all those kind of classic songs.

BRAD: Yeah, the “Nuggets” compilation album, which we’ve actually featured on this show recently. One of my favorite records. But I love that early protopunk garage rock psychedelic stuff. It’s great.

ANDREW: Yeah, it’s really interesting that Lester Banks in particular was really using the term punk, all the time. He had so many citations of that word in, like, ‘72, ‘73, ‘74. And then with heavy metal, there was a journalist called Mike Saunders who kind of seemed like he was noticing that Lester Bangs was really pounding this term punk into everybody’s head, and so he started pounding this term heavy metal, which William Burroughs used it in one of his books, and then it was “Born To Be Wild”, the song by Steppenwolf. But he just started referring to Sabbath and Zeppelin and everybody as heavy metal. So, it’s kind of like these journalists, it’s interesting seeing them form that year, because they would include bands that you wouldn’t think of any of those genres when they were using them, those days. But gradually those concepts started taking hold.

BRAD: Yeah. When these guys first talk about it, it’s fairly loose– you could describe Black Sabbath and Grand Funk Railroad as heavy metal.

ANDREW: Right.

Speaker D: But of course, then that gets sort of corporatized, and then gets sliced even further to the point where you’ve got “death metal” and “black metal” and “hair metal”, and we slice the pie thinner and thinner, which is a pet peeve of mine; I hate it when we do that because I think it’s limiting.

ANDREW: Yeah, it’s weird because, on the one hand, when you’re a kid in the record store, some of those labels are helpfu,l because you go to the heavy metal section or the punk section. And then when you tune into radio stations, just a heavy metal radio station or whatever, but it just calcifies, I guess, and, like you say, starts segregating and getting too dogmatic or something.

BRAD: Right, right. Some of the other cultural things or things going on in the culture outside of the music, but, of course, affecting the music: You’ve got the end of the Vietnam War.

ANDREW: Yeah, Vietnam ended. The last Vietnam soldier came home, or left Vietnam, on March 29. And there’s that famous picture of, uh, the “burst of joy” photo of that lieutenant coming home and his little kids are running toward him on the runway. And, it’s funny, there were a lot of, kind of deep cuts going on that were still referencing Vietnam, like “Search and Destroy” on the Stooges album.

[Music]

ANDREW: New York Dolls had the song “Vietnamese Baby” and Funkadelic had this tune “March to the Witch’s Castle” about soldiers coming home and becoming junkies.

[Music]

ANDREW: “Back to the world”, Curtis Mayfield had it. So there was a lot of reflection of Vietnam going on in the culture. And then before Nixon could really benefit from that, I guess, Watergate really took off.

BRAD: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that’s another big political event. I’m not aware of that many songs about Watergate, but I think it just sort of put the exclamation point at the end of a lot of people’s feelings about politics and the government and whatnot.

ANDREW: It’s funny, too, that year, speaking of having hearings and all that stuff, tying it in today with the hearings about January 6 and Trump and all that; that year was like a formative year for Trump, because the Department of Justice brought a suit against him and his father, Fred Trump, because they were one of the biggest developers and landlords in New York, and they were not letting African Americans be in their apartments. And so the Department of Justice brought this huge suit against them, which landed on the front page of The New York Times and was kind of like a bellwether case. And Donald Trump actually went out and he found Roy Cohn, who was McCarthy’s right hand man. Cohn gave him a lot of his techniques that Trump would perfect, like never admit anything, just double down. If someone attacks you, attack them back. And they never admitted to the racism or discrimination, but they eventually settled, but they never admitted to it or whatever.

BRAD: The gay liberation movement kind of starts around this time, too.

ANDREW: Well, you had both the political events and then you had the musical events that kind of encouraged people fighting for gay rights. But that year, in December, the American Psychiatric Association finally voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which today that sounds absurd. And then Lance Loud was kind of the first out for personality on the, it was like the first reality show, right?

BRAD: The Loud family. I forget the name of the show.

ANDREW: The American family.

BRAD: That’s right. American family.

ANDREW: And Rocky Horror started performing in London that year. So it was definitely a great year for all those elements. And then Glam Rock in general was peaking with, we had Sweet with “Ballroom Blitz”. And T-Rex was really, he had “20th Century Boy” going. And Roxy Music. That was a big year for Roxy Music, because Eno left the band that year.

[Music]

BRAD: An interesting thing that was going on in the wider political or economic conditions that directly affected the music business was the oil crisis. Because, of course, it takes oil to make plastics to press records, and that had a big impact.

ANDREW: Yeah, the vinyl shortage really, I think, kicked off in ‘74 because OPEC happened. I mean, oil embargo happened in ’73, but really took hold. And I guess the albums became a lot thinner and breakable more and they uh, put the industry into a recession at 74.

Speaker D: I remember specifically, I think it was RCA Records, but I remember there was one of the record labels that came up with a new name for their records, like “Flexi Something”, and you’d take the records out of the sleeve and they would practically flop over, they were so thin, and they were so prone to getting warped, to becoming warped, because they were pressing them as thin as they could possibly press them to save money. But it produced a lot of pretty poor records.

ANDREW: And the other big influence with the oil crisis was it kind of sparked the moment that incoming inequality started to expand again. Because since World War II, middle class workers and the corporate managers and CEOs, their incomes were coming closer together. I think they called it the “great compression”. And middle-class workers had this kind of stunning rise in their standard of living. But then ‘73 was the year that, when you compare average hourly earnings, when you factor in inflation, it peaked that year and it started going down. And so that was really a pivotal year where, for middle class people; we kind of started going backwards a little bit.

And there was another movement we didn’t really touch on too much yet, but Country really had a lot of interesting effects, in kind of these three movements, where you had like the “outlaw country” movement. Then you had “country rock” and then you had “southern rock”. I guess we touched on them a little bit.

BRAD: Well, yeah, we didn’t really talk about Country, but kind of the center of Country music was always held pretty tight in Nashville, but this is where you start to see what they call the “Bakersville Sound”, coming out of California, and Southern Rock, Country Rock. But yeah, talk a little bit about some of that.

ANDREW: Well, it’s interesting. I don’t know how much Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, who were like the main “outlaw country” guys, Kris Kristofferson. But Kristofferson was kind of in his own world, where he was partly influenced by Dylan and he was working in Nashville and Country, but he kind of went to his own rules and had a lot of rock influence. And Willie Nelson and Waylon liked that; they really started putting up a fight to do things their way, and just have their touring bands play on their actual albums, and then produce it how they wanted and write what they wanted. And they really finally broke through and took control, and they started releasing the outlaw country classic albums.

[Music]

ANDREW: And Country rock, you’re talking about the western Bakersfield the thing, you had the folk music guys in LA, who were very influenced by the Bakersfield sound’ and so you had like the Eagles and it was funny– they too, had their own struggles, because Glen Frey and Don Henley, they started writing stuff that was mellow, like “Tequila Sunrise” and “Desperado” that year. But Glenn Frey had come from Detroit, where he had been sort of in Bob Seeger’s scene, and he wanted to bring more of his rock stuff to it. But, ironically, their producer, Glyn Johns, produced them and he, of course, was like the rock producer extraordinaire of like, The Who and Zeppelin and the Beatles. But he told them, “you guys can’t rock– trust me, I’ve been with Zeppelin and The Who. You guys can’t rock.” And he was trying to keep them in that mellow zone. So they finally broke with him. And even Linda Rodstadt, she was very close with the Eagles, and she, actually Neil Young brought her on tour with him to open for him. And it was kind of a baptism of fire for her, because all these kind of rock guys would throw stuff at her, but she just had to yell back at them. And she wanted to be a bit more rocky, too, but they kept trying to pigeonhole her. It’s always these label people, who are very concerned with pigeonholing people into the demographic they think can sell, and so they get uptight about them trying to go outside their lines and stuff.

BRAD: There was also the continued rise of the singer-songwriter movement. Acts coming out of Laurel Canyon and whatnot, right?

ANDREW: And kind of centered down the road from Laurel Canyon on Santa Monica Boulevard at the Troubadour Club, there were so many people working there that year that were great. You had Tom Waits, who kind of positioned himself as like the anti- smooth, slick, country rock troubadour person. And Billy Joel. I don’t know if it was his debut album, but the “Piano Man” album, it was about his whole trek, because he used to be in a two-man band with another guy, but then he fell in love with the guy’s wife, and then she went with Billy and became his wife for most of the 70’s. He did this album, “Piano Man”, which was almost, I wouldn’t call it a concept album, but has so many great forgotten Billy Joel songs. And it’s about his trip across the west to Los Angeles, where then he was playing the Troubadour and then the Piano Bar there. And Jim Croce was one of my favorites, he had, I think, two albums that year, and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” was like the second-biggest hit of the year. And then he had, of course, the plane crash on September 20.

Bob Seeger, he did all these great albums that didn’t ever really break through until he had “Night Moves” a couple of years later.

[Music]

ANDREW: You know, Zeppelin just had a big year with “Houses of the Holy”. It didn’t have the monumental anthem like “Stairway to Heaven” on it, you know, sometimes people don’t put it up there with Zeppelin’s greatest stuff.

BRAD: No, but it’s got “The Rain Song”, which is an amazing piece of music; it’s got “No Quarter”, which is one of their best songs; “Song Remains The Same”, which is a Zeppelin classic… I mean, it’s a weird sounding record, the production on that has always seemed weird to me, but yeah, it’s a stone cold classic. No doubt.

[Music]

ANDREW: The other great thing that was amazing– this is another thing where you can argue that it was ‘73, but Neil Young recorded “Tonight’s The Night”, even though it wasn’t released for a couple of years later. And that was pretty much done live in the studio, super raw. That’s considered one of his best albums.

BRAD: Yeah. And it is raw, both recording wise and just emotionally. It’s very raw.

ANDREW: Yeah. Two of his, I think, like a band member from Crazy Horse and a Roadie had both OD’d.

BRAD: Yeah, right. Both victims of drug addiction and overdose. Yeah, recorded in ’73, didn’t come out ‘till ‘74. But I’ll allow it.

[Music]

BRAD: We talked about the beginnings of disco, the beginnings of punk; another thing that was gestating at this time was the earliest sounds of hip-hop.

ANDREW: Right, yeah. There was a guy in the Bronx, this DJ Cool Herc, he made his debut in August as a DJ at a party that was in the rec room of the apartment he lived at in the Bronx, on Sedwick Avenue. His family was from Jamaica. And in Jamaica, they had this tradition where the DJs would get these big trucks and these big sound systems, and they would blast the music out, like thousands of people would pay to come listen to the DJs play, and they would start doing their own “toasting”, they called it, on top of them, where they would do their little raps over the instrumental versions. And so, all that was kind of in the back of DJ Cool Herc’s mind. And they started his first show at his sister’s plate, or at his sister’s party in the apartment. But then, I think it was the following year, that he started doing block parties where they would plug in stuff into the lamp posts in the parks, and they would start playing and they would start using a lot of the instrumental disco tracks and the funk tracks that were big in this year. And they would focus in on the beats. And eventually, that was the genre that would take over from Rock as the best-selling genre. I mean, it’s still strong in the indie level, but on a cultural mega level, it’s definitely receded.

BRAD: For better or worse, Rock does not have the stature, I guess, or the commercial appeal that it did back when we were youngsters. But if I was to put the best spin on it, I would say that’s really where Rock is best– when it’s got some rebellion to it, when it’s on the outside looking in, rather than being the “in thing”, at least for the integrity of the music, for whatever that’s worth. But no, you don’t get hit rock records today. The day of rock topping the charts is over, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing for the music.

Speaker E: I did a book on the year 1965…

Speaker D: I read that book and that inspired me to do an episode of my show on 1965. So that, and your book was a source material for that. So, of course, when came time to do 1973, you were the go-to guy. Um, that book is great.

ANDREW: Thank you. And then my publishers actually came to me with the idea for ‘73. And when I looked at ‘73, I was kind of stunned with just the quality of so much music. Just like how it explodes out in every direction. It’s just a very amorphous year, but I think that’s what makes it fascinating because it’s almost hard to wrap your brain around that year. It’s just such a crazy year.

BRAD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, any year that brought you “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Houses of the Holy”, “Quadrophenia”, “Let’s Get It On”, “Band on the Run”; that saw the first elements of punk and disco and hip-hop and reggae… It’s absolutely a significant year for rock, and more than just rock.

ANDREW: And you even have techno, like, Kraftwork was this year– they ditched the live drums and they just started focusing on drum machines. Yeah, that’s even starting up this year.

BRAD: Yeah. Incredible.

ANDREW: Crazy.

BRAD: Yeah. Well, Andrew Grant Jackson, thank you so much for coming on the show. I love the “1965” book, I love “1973 – Rock at the Crossroads”. I highly recommend both of those books to anyone listening to the show. Check them out, they’re fascinating reads. And I thank you for coming on the show and doing this with me. Thank you so much, Andrew.

ANDREW: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

BRAD: Thanks a lot.

And thank you for listening to my conversation with Andrew Grant Jackson. And there’s even more music from 1973 that we didn’t touch on. If you’d like to dig deeper into 1973, a great place to start is Andrew’s Facebook page for the book. It’s at facebook.com/1973book. There’s even a link there to a playlist of songs from 1973 that you can listen to. And of course, there’s the book itself, which I highly recommend. It’s called “1973 – Rock at the crossroads”. And Andrew is also the author of the fantastic book on 1965, that book is called “1965 – The Most Revolutionary Year In Music”, as well as a few other books. I’ll put some links in the show notes for all of his books.

I will be back in about two weeks with another new episode. You can catch up on all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. Please leave a review or send us feedback.

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