A lot of people think the legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac began with Nicks and Buckingham. On the contrary. It one time it featured singer/songwriter/guitarist Bob Welch and lead guitarist, the certifiable Peter Green. After Green finally went over the edge, he was replaced by Bob Weston. Here are lead singer Welch, Weston, John and Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood performing the band's biggest pre-Nicks and Buckingham hit, Hypnotized, in 1973, a song referring to the dream writings of Carlos Casteneda.
I remember a talk about North
Carolina and a strange, strange pond
You see the sides were like glass
In the thick of a forest without a road
And if any man's hand ever made that land
Then I think it would've showed
That "strange, strange pond" in NC is Lake Drummond in the heart of the Great Dismal Swamp. About 20 miles south from Braveheart's home. And the late Bob Welch (August 31, 1945 – June 7, 2012) was right ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9CXnn_Y_pw
//Braveheart
I can't resist this.....
from producer Keith Olson....an old friend of my father's.....the Buckingham/Nicks legend
After growing up in South Dakota and Minnesota, Olsen said he studied music at the University of Minnesota. In the 1960s, the classically trained musician played bass for several acts and was in the band Music Machine, which had a top 20 hit with “Talk Talk.”
But too many scary incidents on the road made him reconsider his career as a musician.
“It was rough back in the ’60s,” he said. “Planes were safe — private planes were not.”
While still with Music Machine, he met with an old college friend, Curt Boettcher, and started producing. The duo was later hired by Clive Davis, president of CBS Records, and they worked on projects by artists such as The Byrds and Simon&Garfunkel. The two eventually went their separate ways, though, and Olsen was on his own as a producer and engineer.
He began his own production company—Pogologo — and one of his first clients was a duo named Buckingham Nicks. Originally with a Bay Area band named Fritz, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks — a romantic and musical couple — recorded a self-titled album that Olsen produced in 1973
Buckingham Nicks didn’t make a lot of money — which explains why Nicks cleaned Olsen’s house for cash—but that record was the first step toward the creation of a rock superband.
When Mick Fleetwood, the drummer for Fleetwood Mac, approached Olsen about producing the band’s next album, Olsen offered Fleetwood a demonstration of some work he’d done.
“He just wanted to hear what the studio could sound like,” Olsen said. “So I played him ‘Buckingham Nicks.’ ”
Fleetwood agreed to work with Olsen. But before the project could begin, the band’s singer, Bob Welch, quit. Remembering that Buckingham Nicks album, Fleetwood called Olsen and asked, “Could you see if Lindsey would join my band?”
“I said, ‘You have to take two,’ ”
Olsen remembered. “They’re inseparable. The only way that you’ll get Lindsey is by taking Stevie.”
Fleetwood agreed, but that left it up to Olsen to convince Buckingham and Nicks to join a new band — even though Fleetwood Mac was a British blues band and Buckingham Nicks was a pop rock duo.
“They were ready to start recording a second Buckingham Nicks record,” he said. “They were just starting to write it, and they were sure that Buckingham Nicks as a duo could make it.”
While the duo had talent, Olsen knew they needed help.
“I needed a good drummer, bass player and keyboard player to fill out Buckingham Nicks,” Olsen said.
So on a New Year’s Eve, he cajoled the couple until 3 a.m., finally convincing them that joining Fleetwood Mac was a good idea.
“I just thought it was a really great opportunity for Stevie and Lindsey to be a part of the Fleetwood Mac name,” he said. “Because that name had 220,000 fans. And now there were going to be 220,000 people listening to Buckingham Nicks”
Of course, it turned out to be much bigger than that. The newly aligned band’s first album, produced by Olsen, became a No. 1 hit, selling 5 million copies.
