“We’re doing pop rock now,” Olsen countered. But bassist John McVie questioned if it was the right direction for Fleetwood Mac to take, given their background. Buckingham’s upbeat “Monday Morning,” the album’s opener, seemed designed to accomplish both things. It was, however, time for a change if the group wanted to remain relevant in the eyes of rock fans, as well as stay financially afloat in a fast-moving industry. Olsen died last year at age 74.ģ) Pop Rock, A ‘Much Faster Way to the Bank’įleetwood Mac had long-since established themselves as an impressive blues-rock band, thanks to the soulful talent of former member Peter Green.
In the following decades, he would produce an array of albums from bands including the Grateful Dead, Foreigner, Santana, Heart, Bad Company, Whitesnake and dozens more. I liked the theoretical aspects of it.” The gig with Fleetwood Mac led Olsen further down the path to studio greatness. “I was a bad acoustic guitar player, a bad piano player, a bad bass player … anything I could get my hands on that I could play and learn a little bit about,” he admitted in a 2012 interview. His background, in fact, wasn’t in rock at all: Olsen was a cellist by training. Olsen only had a handful of LP credits to his name when work began on Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood “was standing there grooving to this searing guitar solo and he needed a guitar player,” Buckingham told Uncut in 2003. Buckingham insisted that he’d join as a package deal with Nicks, or not at all. Impressed with the guitar work on their song “Frozen Love,” Fleetwood invited Buckingham to come on board – alone. Olsen played an album he had engineered two years prior, Buckingham and Nicks’ self-titled debut. Somewhat desperate (the band’s last album, Heroes Are Hard to Find, hadn’t done quite as well in sales as they had hoped), Fleetwood went to see producer Keith Olsen at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles. In December 1974, Mick Fleetwood was seeking a new guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, who had recently relocated from the U.K. Here are 10 interesting facts about how they did it. With a nearly clean slate, Fleetwood Mac reintroduce itself on this 10th studio album. Much of the drama that would plague the band had yet to arrive. Nevertheless, the end result featured several of Fleetwood Mac’s most memorable songs, many of them written by the women of the group – including Christine McVie‘s catchy “Say You Love Me” and Nicks’ haunting “Rhiannon,” both remained in their live-performance rotation for decades. Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend/songwriting partner Stevie Nicks found themselves in the right place at the right time: The departure of guitarist Bob Welch at the end of 1974 necessitated an immediate replacement – and within a few months, the most enduring (but not necessarily least tumultuous) Fleetwood Mac lineup had come to fruition.Īs the new group entered the studio for recording sessions in early 1975, there were still plenty of kinks to work out. Fleetwood Mac‘s 1975 self-titled release was not a debut album but with new members and a new musical direction, it could just as well have been.