Product: Classic Albums: Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1997)
Rating: 4.0
Good Documentary About a Soap Opera Set to Music
How would you like it if you were breaking up with a spouse or lover, but while you were doing it, you were forced to spend fifteen hours a day with that person for a solid year? Oh and by the way... your former love would be writing publicly about the whole experience! That's pretty much the dilemma the members of the music group, Fleetwood Mac experienced, while making one of the biggest selling rock albums to come out of the 1970s. The history of this album's creation is explored in this episode of Rhino's Classic Albums series documentary, "Fleetwood Mac Rumors". This is an episode of a series, where performers, writers and producers analyze and talk about a classic album they helped create. In this case we get imput from producer Keith Olsen and all the members of the 'Rumors era' Fleetwood Mac.The documentary is excellent in giving us access to vintage film clips and beautiful stills of the band from the mid to late '70s.More importantly the members of the band give detailed stories and explanations of the real life 'soap opera' behind the album's songs. Some of them were funny (the band diving for a huge bag of fake cocaine, that was droped to the floor) or sad (how Christine McVie could barely talk to her former husband, while making the album).The viewer also gets to follow Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood and Producer, Ken Olsen into the original studio and listen to the recordings being broken down by their musical and vocal tracks. We get to hear the intricacies of Mick Fleetwood's expansive drumming style and how John McVie's bass led each song. The tracks also show what an underated guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham really is and the beauty in the stand alone harmonies of Stevie Knicks & Christine McVie. But my favorite part of the documentary is Christine McVie's live performance of the tune "Songbird" at the very same auditorium she used to record it over twenty five years ago. Watching her perform this lovely, but heartbreaking song still sends shivers down my spine! If you are fan of Fleetwood Mac or just plain old rock n' roll in general, then this DVD is not to to be missed! Highly recommended!