WARNER BROS. WILL reissue Fleetwood Mac‘s landmark late Seventies albums

Fleetwood Mac Dust Off Demos

Expanded reissues of late Seventies albums due in March

BY COLIN DEVENISH

January 28, 2004

Rolling Stone Magazine

WARNER BROS. WILL reissue Fleetwood Mac‘s landmark late Seventies albums Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk on March 23rd.

The expanded version of Fleetwood Mac, originally released in 1975 and the first to feature Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, will include a previously unreleased jam, along with four alternate takes of album cuts. Both Rumours (1977) and Tusk (1979) will come with a full disc of unreleased demos and outtakes.

Rumours, which has sold more than 19 million copies, has become almost as famous for its creators’ feuding as its blockbuster hits. “All of those problems and all of those drugs, and all of the fun and all of the craziness, all made for writing all those songs,” says Nicks in the liner notes. “If we’d been a big healthy great group of guys and gals, none of those great songs would’ve been written.”

The roughs and outtakes on the discs offer a behind-the-scenes peak at the group’s sometimes fractured songwriting process, which gave “The Chain” its name.

“It started out as one song in Sausalito,” Buckingham told Rolling Stone. “We decided it needed a bridge, so we cut a bridge and edited it into the rest of the song. We didn’t get a vocal and left it for a long time in a bunch of pieces. It almost went off the album. Then we listened back and decided we liked the bridge, but didn’t like the rest of the song. So I wrote verses for that bridge, which was originally not in the songs and edited those in. We saved the ending. The ending was the only thing left from the original track. We ended up calling it ‘The Chain’ because it was a bunch of pieces.”

Fleetwood Mac outtakes:

• Jam #2
• Say You Love Me (Single Version)
• Rhiannon (Single Version)
• Over My Head (Single Version)
• Blue Letter (Single Version)

Rumours demos and outtakes:

• Second Hand News
• Dreams
• Brushes (Never Going Back Again)
• Don’t Stop
• Go Your Own Way
• Songbird
• Silver Springs
• You Make Loving Fun
• Gold Dust Woman #1
• Oh Daddy
• Think About It
• Never Going Back Again
• Planets of the Universe
• Butter Cookie (Keep Me There)
• Gold Dust Woman
• Doesn’t Anything Last
• Mic The Screecher
• For Duster (The Blues)

Tusk demos and outtakes:

• One More Time (Over and Over)
• Can’t Walk Out of Here (The Ledge)
• Think About Me
• Sara
• Lindsey’s Song #1 (I Know I’m Not Wrong)
• Storms
• Lindsey’s Song #2 (That’s All for Everyone)
• Sisters of the Moon
• Out on the Road (That’s Enough for Me)
• Brown Eyes
• Never Make Me Cry
• Song #1 (I Know I’m Not Wrong)
• Honey Hi
• Beautiful Child
• Song #3 (Walk a Thin Line)
• Come On Baby (Never Forget)
• Song #1 (I Know I’m Not Wrong)
• Kiss and Run
• Farmer’s Daughter
• Think About Me (Single Version)
• Sisters of the Moon (Single Version)