That's right, I'm not quite done with the middle-period Mac (and not with David Lynch either, but that's another matter...stay tuned), so here what is easily the best album of those uncertain middle years I recently covered. And yet, and yet, Bare Trees could have been better, pushing the album from really good into greatness territory. But egos and band politics prevented that from happening, years before the Lindsey & Stevie soap opera started. Those things were always in play in the Mac, fitting for a band who had already lost two guitar players, including the founder of the band, under odd circumstances and were just about to lose a third one (and soon afterwards a fourth, and then a fifth). If you think about it, being a guitar player in Fleetwod Mac is like being a drummer in Spinal Tap. With less early and odd deaths, thankfully, but still, the band's penchant from 1969 onwards for losing their guitar players in rapid and often utterly weird fashion was quite the sight: drug-related burn out, being recruited to a religious sect while going out to buy a magazine, fired for being a drunken asshole one too many times, fired for cuckolding the drummer, quit due to the proverbial musical differences. If you look at the list only two of these would seem like normal circumstances, and that's already relative due to being in a rock'n'roll context. I guess It's fine then that the band proudly upheld their tradition, when Lindsey Buckingham got fired in 2018 for smirking. But I digress.
Back to Bare Trees, masterpiece of middle period Mac, yet sabotaged for no good reason. hat am I talking about? "Trinity", that is what I'm talking about. If you downloaded A Period Of Transition then you've already heard this outtake from Bare Trees: Great, memorable melody, awesome guitar riffs, typically emotive vocal from Danny Kirwan. So, with all the qualites that the track has, why wasn't it on the album? It's pure conjuncture, and no one will probably readily admit to it, but I think petty politics got in the way of making the album better. Unlike the Rumours scenario and the controversial - at least to Stevie Nicks - decision to leave off "Silver Springs", this wasn't a question of time constraints and exceeding vinyl length. As a matter of fact, Bare Trees' original LP release showed a weird imbalance, with side b being more than five minutes longer than side a. Guess which great four-minute-and-change track could have thus found a place on the a-side?
Danny Kirwan was firing on all cylinders going into the Bare Trees sessions, and the record stands as the best testament to his talents. I've already talked about the brillance of "Dust" in my Period Of Transition write-up, but that's not to discount the beauty of "Child Of Mine", the beautiful reverie of "Sunny Side Of Heaven", the driving title track or "Danny's Chant" which starts with a honest to goodness heavy metal riff before settling into a more relaxed groove and Kirwan's wordless vocalizing.
What's more, the other two composing members of Fleetwood Mac more than held up their part of the bargain. Bob Welch contributes what I personally think is his best Mac song, "The Ghost" and "Sentimental Lady", which is less maudlin then the full sort rock remake he cut as a solo single a ouple of years later. Cristine McVie also brought two sprightly, lovely songs to the sessions, so that even when the number of their contributions was dwarfed by Kirwan's, the quality wasn't.
Add to all these "Trinity" and you've got a small masterpiece by itself. And yet, for the band, something didn't add up, notably Kirwan's writing credits. Having already half of the album's songs to himself, the inclusion of Trinity would have given him six and essentially made the album look like a Kirwan solo venture with occasional cameos from Chistine McVie and Bob Welsh. I think this is the single reason why the song was kept off the album. What makes this especially hard to accept is that while a great song lay dormant in the vaults for twenty years, Mick Fleetwood had no problem 'redressing the balance' by including what is essentially a stoner's humour one-note joke, disguising his voice to impersonate an old lady reciting poetry, instead of having the real Mrs. Scarott reading her poem which probably would have only been marginally better. Either way, thanks, Mick, but no thanks. So, this version of Bare Trees obviously gets rid of Mick's 'Mrs. Scarott' crap that never should have made the album and reinstates "Trinity" to its rightful place.
Bare Trees was the end for Danny Kirwan in Fleetwood Mac, as he was, as mentioned above, being fired for being a drunk and belligerent asshole one too many times, and unfortunately it was also the end for him as a composer of great songs. For whatever reasons - his encroacing alcoholism, the lack of competition, real and imagined, from within the Mac - his solo albums never came close to aspiring to the quality of compositions he did for Fleetwood Mac, often choosing much simpler strutures and banal lyrics. So let this reconfigured version of Bare Trees then stand as the testimonial to Danny Kirwan's underappreciated genius, more than ably assisted by the rest of the band. The trees on the cover might be bare, but the Mac's treasure trove of good songs was overflowing here.
Bare Trees, less bare than before
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This was one I missed during high school...although we had a copy of Kiln House that we played to death, so why I never got a copy of this one is mystery. By the way...not related to this LP...but I recently found out that the Beatles guitar tone on "Sun King" was intended to ape the tone from "Albatross."
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't surprise me at all. "Albatross" is a beauty, and Danny Kirwan's first maor contribution to the band, helping Peter Green finish the song, which Jeremy Spencer was unable to do...
DeleteBoy this was a great record when it came out. Totally flew under the radar but the run from Then Play On through Bare Trees was exceptional. Do you have a Then Play On upgrade on the horizon?
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