FLEETWOOD BAC

Deterred by the price of tickets to see Fleetwood Mac at Wembley Stadium this summer (£300+), but encouraged by the price (£18), and proximity, of Fleetwood Bac at St John’s Church in Farncombe, near Godalming, Mrs C and I set off in atrocious weather last night to spend about three hours in their company.

         The church, and the gig really was in a church, not an adjoining parish hall, was packed, which might have caused its incumbent priest, had he been there, to cast a rueful glance at the crowd and offer a prayer to the almighty that ‘standing room only’ might also apply for matins on Sunday mornings. The behaviour of the congregation was decidedly unchurchlike, however, especially towards the end of a fairly generous two-and-a-half-hour set that included 24 songs from the F Mac canon, drawn largely from seventies Mac era but with a nod towards Peter Green’s Mac and Stevie Nicks’ solo catalogue.

         Fleetwood Bac boast on their website that they are the UK’s first and most authentic FM tribute show, endorsed by Mick Fleetwood himself and also Bob Brunning*, who played bass in a very early line-up and wrote a book about them, one edition of which, called Rumours And Lies, I published when overseeing Omnibus Press. To this end the Bac perform in character throughout their show, and their real identities remain concealed even on their website. So as well as looking and dressing the part, in monochrome outfits as per the covers of Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977), ‘Stevie’ becomes a slightly scatter-brained Californian airhead, ‘Christine’ a nicely-spoken, sensible English rose, ‘Lindsey’ a moody-looking study in concentration, ‘Mick’ a rather lugubrious ghoul, and ‘John’ a silent, anonymous workhorse. The girls’ appearance is accurate too, their hair-dos a perfect match, with ‘Stevie’ a tad on a curvy side and ‘Christine’ slim and poised, constantly flicking her blonde bangs aside in the manner of the real Ms McVie. ‘Lindsey’s’ hair, on the other hand, resembled a carelessly-barbered dreadlock wig and perhaps needs reconsidering, especially in view of Buckingham’s more mature latter-day look.

         There was no stage, only a drum riser a few inches off the ground, so the view from anywhere beyond the first few rows of seats – no pews – was poor and ‘Mick’ remained pretty much obscured throughout. ‘Lindsey’ played electric and acoustic guitars on the right, ‘Christine’ stood at a portable keyboard on the left with ‘John’ behind her and ‘Stevie’ sang and danced in the middle in front of ‘Mick’, her floor-length black outfit and shawls suggesting the mysteries of Ms Nicks’ enigmatic mindset.

         They opened up with ‘You Make Loving Fun’ and it was immediately apparent that the Bac’s mimicking skills were of a high order. The girls’ vocals were spot-on, the backing let down only by the drums which lacked the snap of the real Mac and sounded at times a bit like someone hitting a biscuit tin, a flaw I put down to the building’s acoustics or inadequate miking. The bass was sturdy and very deep, the guitar on point, if a little shrill at times, and the keyboard wash as good as the real thing. ‘Dreams’ followed, then ‘Say You Love Me’, both executed with due diligence, and then it was time to dig deeper for ‘Albatross’ and ‘Oh Well Part 1’. The former was blemished by the guitar tone, with far too much piercing treble tarnishing Peter Green’s stately, subtle masterpiece, but the latter was executed well and better suited to the occasion. A few older punters even joined in, not giving the answer you wanted me to.

         These excursions into the depths of Fleetwood Mac gave individual members opportunities to scurry off stage but unlike other tribute acts I’ve seen there were no changes of costumes, apart from ‘Stevie’s’ shawls, and she was up next to float pleasantly through ‘Sarah’ before ‘Christine’ took over for ‘Little Lies’ and a solo turn on ‘Songbird’, definitely a highlight of the evening. “This is the time when everybody leaves the band,” she announced to a few wry chuckles, and her rendition was just as lovely as Ms McVie, prompting some tuneful singing along and far and away the biggest ovation of the evening thus far. Not to be outdone ‘Stevie’ returned with ‘Lyndsey’ picking acoustic for ‘Landslide’, perfectly capturing the rasp that Ms Nicks has developed over the years.

         The girls left the boys to themselves for a blues trio-style ‘Need Your Love So Bad’, but although the crowd appreciated ‘Lindsay’s’ blues rock workout, his soloing lacked the delicacy of Peter Green’s understated approach. Then again, to duplicate the mastery of Green’s unique talent – instinctively knowing that what you leave out is an important as what you play – has eluded many guitarists whose CV far exceeds playing in a tribute act. The first half closed with ‘Rooms On Fire’, a hit for Stevie alone in 1989 and the first of two solo Nicks songs played – the other was ‘Edge Of 17’ – followed by a spot-on ‘Gold Dust Woman’.

         After an overlong interval Fleetwood Bac returned with ‘Big Love’, the ending of which, on record at least, seems suspiciously inappropriate for a place of worship, but the Bac tempered it somewhat, perhaps wary of wrath from above. It seemed to me as if ‘Lindsey’s’ vocal mike needed upping a bit, a fault that persisted throughout the second half. At times his vocals were barely audible, especially compared to the girls. ‘7 Wonders’ was followed by another excursion into the past, ‘The Green Manalishi’, those portentous chords and a rave-up solo drawing appreciative applause from the blokes in the audience.

         The contrast between the two Fleetwood Macs – and I date the shift to the arrival of Buckingham and Nicks – enable Fleetwood Bac to switch moods abruptly, so the lilting ‘Gypsy’, like ‘Sarah’ earlier in the set, seemed like another band entirely. Again ‘Stevie’ sang perfectly, as did ‘Christine’ on the cheerful ‘Everywhere’ and the rather melancholy ‘Oh Daddy’, a sequence I would have swopped around in the light of what followed.

         What did follow was the ebullient home stretch. ‘Don’t Stop’ was a crowd-pleasing singalong, everyone standing now; ‘Tusk’ a rhythmic incitement to dance with a drum solo that was, thankfully, brief; and ‘The Chain’ a moody slow-starter with the Formula One bass riff rumbling from somewhere in the crypt and damnation descending as the congregation sang about keeping us together.

         The encores, inevitably, were ‘Rhiannon’, with ‘Stevie’ suitably witchy in her black top hat, and ‘Go Your Own Way’, again a bit spoiled by ‘Lindsey’s’ vocals being largely unheard but once the girls joined in all was well. If the band’s enthusiasm and the crowd’s devil-may-care community singing reduced this finale to a bit of a mish-mash at this point it didn’t really matter – by the end no one gave a monkey’s whether it was the Bac or the Mac, which is how it should be.

A picture from their website, not last night's gig

         As I wrote in a post in 2014 about a David Bowie tribute show, there are some in my line of work who take a rather condescending view of tribute acts but I am not among them. Most of those who gathered at St John’s Church in Farncombe last night are unlikely ever to see the real Fleetwood Mac, or even afford to, but the pleasure they all took from this show nullifies any derision that purists might feel towards what is, after all, a shameless but nevertheless skilful facsimile. I take the view that Fleetwood Bac and their ilk are not only giving people a good time but keeping the genuine article’s music before the public and serving to remind them of the depth of their catalogue, in this case Peter Green’s FM included, and that can only be a good thing.

---

* Bob Brunning, with whom I became friendly through publishing his book, died in 2011.

THE BEATLES - Tribute Band in St Ives

I have neglected the blog in the past week because my life has taken on a different pattern, and I need a bit of time to adjust. Tomorrow we are off to Venice for a few days to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, and because this is a mini-holiday I got to thinking about one of my earliest posts, one I did before Just Backdated was launched and I used to post things on Facebook. This is from September 2013, when Lisa and I were spending a week in St Ives in Corwall and we stumbled on a Beatles tribute band…

Across the harbour, as we neared the pub, it sounded like ‘The Night Before’, the song from Help!, not the most obvious choice for a covers band, but when we got closer they were playing ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ from the first album, and then ‘We Can Work It Out’. When that switched to ‘You Can’t Do That’ Lisa and I had to go inside, and sure enough, on a Tuesday night in late September, a local Beatles act called Not The Beatles was going through the routine – Beatlemania era songs followed by Sgt Pepper era followed by White album/Abbey Road era, complete with appropriate gear, costumes and between song patter – in the Lifeboat pub on the shorefront in St Ives. They weren’t the best tribute band I’d ever seen but that didn’t matter as much as what they played and the good humour with which the songs were delivered. The pub was heaving full, all ages, from teens to grannies, and everyone stood to watch, having the time of their lives, and I guessed that although the time of many of those lives would have been the sixties, a good proportion had been born after John died, and less than half could remember the time when The Beatles ruled the world.

In amongst the crowd, all sweaty and mad for it, we watched and listened. They reeled off all the songs you would expect, the well known (‘Paperback’, ‘Tripper’, ‘Submarine’) and some you wouldn’t have (‘I Need You’, ‘Hide Your Love Away’, ‘I Should Have Known Better’) and everyone in this pub sang along, word perfect, to every single song, at the tops of their voices. During ‘Submarine’, sung of course by Ringo, four or five girls at the front, in their twenties, held hands and formed a line, clearing the floor as they line-danced back and forth towards and away from the group. Paul, violin bass to hand, grinned while John with his black Rikki leered, just as you would expect him to do.

After 20 minutes or so we left to get some air and I had a pint of Guinness in another pub down the road, still overlooking the harbour, and then we walked back to where they were playing. This time it was ‘Lucy’, followed by ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Get Back’ and then my favourite, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, which was received like the number one hit it ought to have been, and after ‘Obla Di’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ came ‘Yesterday’, community-sung like a hymn to which everyone seemed to know all the words like they’d sang it in school, and then we left the pub again and sat on a bench overlooking the water and listened as they headed up the home straight, ‘All My Loving’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Jude’ and, as I predicted, ‘Twist And Shout’. We’d caught maybe half the entire set, probably missing the early stuff, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Hold Your Hand’ and some mid-period, which was a shame but then again we’d no idea we’d stumble on the Fabs in the first place.

If ever proof was needed that The Beatles are universally adored, here it was: big bald men with tattoos, younger lads with their girls in low-neck dresses, white-haired men with their wives of 30 years or more, older ladies for whom these songs brought back a time when they would have screamed their heads off at them, likely lads and sexy girls on the pull, tipsy holidaymakers up for it, middle-aged couples enjoying the moment, even the odd dog, and me and Lisa, perhaps more critical than most – “That guitar tone isn’t right,” I said at one point. “Shut up,” said Lisa, grinning – and all of us in rapture to what surely has now become the national songbook, the Beatles’ songbook, loved now and forever by everyone of all ages from the tip of Cornwall to everywhere else.

Shake it up baby now...

LAUNCHING DEAR BOY

Looking a bit like the cat that’s got the cream in my Pete Townshend t-shirt (a gift from US Who fan Pam Woodward), here I am with Tony Fletcher on September 6, 1998, at the Astoria Theatre in London, which 11 years later was demolished to make way for a Crossrail station. The occasion was the launch of Dear Boy, Tony’s mega-successful biography of Keith Moon which we had decided to launch at a Who Fan Convention there that day. It was the day before the 20^th anniversary of Keith’s death, as we had calculated, and in many ways the Convention served as a tribute to the great drummer.

         Tony’s book was actually due to be published the following day, so those fans who bought a copy were able to get it a day early. American fans, however, were able to get it several months early as the US edition wasn’t published there until the following year and many of them bought more than one copy, especially as Tony was on hand to sign them, as was Kitty Moon, Keith’s mum, who also turned up, and Lesley, Keith’s sister.

        

In all we sold 400 copies of Dear Boy that day, a fantastic result, and a precursor to the book’s ongoing success. The empty boxes that contained books earlier in the day speak for themselves. To date the Omnibus Press edition has sold over 70,000 copies in various editions, including a German translation. I have no idea how many it has sold in the US where it was called Moon: The Life & Death of A Rock Legend and is currently published by an imprint of Harper Collins.

        

Paul Kemp, drumming with Who's Who

One other thing I remember about that Convention was watching the Who tribute band Who’s Who in the evening, sitting next to Lesley who was gobsmacked by the resemblance of Paul Kemp, their drummer, to the real thing, not just physically but in the way he played. Dougal Butler was with us too, and all three of us thought we were seeing a strange apparition, that Keith really had returned for a couple of hours to grace us with his spectral presence. Indeed, I thought I saw a tear in Lesley’s eye.   
The photograph of Tony and I was sent to me by Alan McKendree who lives in Austin, Texas, and in his accompanying letter he writes: “I got my copy of Dear Boy autographed by Tony, Kit Moon and Lesley Moon that day. I read it with much pleasure and on that 1998 trip had an opportunity to see some of the sites it mentions – the Oldfield, Railway Inn (RIP), Wembley, the various tube stops. It really made the story come to life, to have a mental picture of the key locales.”

         Thanks Alan. 

ABSOLUTE BOWIE - Serious Moonlight in Sutton

In what is becoming a trend but not yet a habit, my son Sam treated me to a tribute act night out as a birthday present, just as he did last Christmas when we went to the Half Moon in Putney to see John Campbell do his Jimi Hendrix act with his group Are You Experienced. Last night it was Absolute Bowie at Sutton Football Club’s social club, which becomes The Boom Boom Club when they present rock, which is often and which regularly puts on tribute acts.

Absolute Bowie do not identify themselves, and instead go under assumed names connected with Bowie, with Halloween Jack on vocals, Mick Ransom (sic) on guitar and the like, but ‘Jack’ has an uncanny ability to sing and prance about in ways that echo the real thing, and the whole show benefited from the boundless enthusiasm that all five musicians put into their show. Their love of David was evident from the opening notes of the opening number ‘Time’ to the closing encore ‘Heroes’. By this time the crowd of 150 or so was showing the same kind of excitement the man himself generated at Live Aid, all arms waving, feet dancing and singing along at the tops of their voices. Heroes indeed.

The show was divided into two halves, the first a Ziggy presentation and the second songs from post-Diamond Dogs with the singer first in Thin White Duke mould and later in a silvery suit and glittery tie. Carrot topped and wearing a Japanese style white silk outfit, ‘Ziggy’ sang all the songs you would expect – ‘Changes’, ‘Man Who Sold The World’, Ziggy Stardust’, ‘Sufragette City’, ‘Queen Bitch’ etc – all the while flirting with his guitarist, who was wearing a long blonde wig, and the stocky bass player who was sturdy, efficient and cool but looked a tad uncomfortable in his black wig with blonde streaks. At one point Ziggy knelt on the floor to echo Mick Rock’s famous shot of David licking Ronno’s guitar strings, and for ‘Moonage Daydream’ he placed a twinkling light in his mouth to create a rather unsettling but nevertheless very dramatic effect. He also affected some of David’s mime moves, like opening a troublesome sliding door or fanning his arms like a bird in flight, and toyed with a mask on a stick. The first half closed with ‘Starman’, and there was much arms-around-the-shoulders action a la David’s famous appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1972.

After a 20-minute break the band returned, changed now into more regular outfits and looking a bit relieved, especially the bass player who’d swapped his wig for a pork pie hat. Led by the keyboard player, they made a fearsome racket that eventually transformed into the riff from ‘Station To Station’ and on bounded the singer in black pants, black waistcoat and white shirt, his hair now blonde and fluffy. All that was missing was the packet of Gitanes but health and safety no doubt rules that sort of thing out these days. This David always had a distinctive way of holding himself, straight-backed, slightly angular dance moves, his arms bent at the elbow and hands just below shoulder level, almost as if he was sparring, a grin on his face as he glanced slyly at the band. All this was on the nail as the ensemble moved through ‘Golden Years’, ‘TVC15’, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ and ‘Ashes To Ashes’ which featured a terrific guitar solo, all escalating vibrato and heavy metal flash. It helped that all bar the drummer sang, so the sound was fat and full, the effect at times verging on the choirlike.

The show proper ended with a suitably spiky ‘Let’s Dance’, but they came back for a stab at ‘Diamond Dogs’, introduced with the recitation from the album, then it was into ‘Space Oddity’, with ‘David’ strumming a 12-string, ‘Rebel Rebel, all hot tramps and torn dresses, and, finally and inevitably, ‘Heroes’ which the singer dedicated to his daughter who was apparently celebrating her 19^th birthday. They’d been at it for over two hours, played 23 songs and entertained Sutton's Bowie community royally – and all for £12.

There are some in my profession who take a rather disdainful attitude towards tribute acts but I am not amongst them. My son is 19 and unlikely ever to see the real David Bowie, and I would imagine that most of the crowd in Sutton Football Club probably never saw him either, but the pleasure they all took from this show negates any scorn that some might feel at what is, after all, a shameless imitation. I take the view that Absolute Bowie and their ilk are keeping David’s music before the public and serving to remind us of the depth of his catalogue, the broad nature of his songwriting styles and, last but by no means least, what a fantastic stage performer Bowie really was. And that can only be a good thing.

(I downloaded the image from Absolute Bowie’s website where it is credited to Raven Photography.)