Desperately Happy: The Ballad Of Danny Kirwan

"It's better to burn out than to fade away". 

Neil Young's (in)famous line from "My My Hey Hey" that was used in such diverse things as a memorable line of Clancy Brown's Kurgan in Highlander and the suicide note of Kurt Cobain. But is that really only a binary option? Because Danny Kirwan, Fleetwod Mac's creative savior in a time of great unrest, proved that that is not necessarily so: Danny Kirwan burned bright - oh so bright so early - then burned out, then took a long time to fade away. 

But fade away he did, with folks who aren't really versed in Fleetwod Mac (i.e. those who first bought Rumous because it had all the cool hits on the radio on it) probably drawing a blank when you mention his name. He left traces, for sure, of a often understated brillance, but these came during the Mac's transitional period when they were chugging along despite several setbacks, commercially and otherwise, bringing out record after record to respectable but-no-more-than-that sales in the UK and polite ignorance in the U.S. while making it a habit of losing their frontmen and guitar players. Of course Kirwan would soon be in that illustrious and in some ways astonishing list. Let me quote myself for a second here from my write-up to Bare Trees:

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.

Kirwan is number three on that unlikey list, though being a drunken asshole doesn't entirely cover the story. He has never officially been diagnosed as ill, and his abuse of alcohol from an early age, made worse by the incessant touring with the Mac didn't hellp things one bit, but it's fair to assume that today Kirwan would be diagnosed with depression, or any of its related forms,which combined with his encroaching alcoholism spelled the znd for him in the Mac, and soon as a creative spirit.

Like Barrett, for a longer time but with even less of public interest, Kirwan continued in the music industry, but if no one bought his three solo records in the 1970's, Kirwan was - unlike Barret - forgotten. Then again, no one ever recorded an album or an extended suite in his memory: Shine On You Unhappy Alcoholic! Actually no one did a damn thing about Danny Kirwan, neither in Fleetwood Mac, nor elsewhere. He was a malcontent and was gone, and the Mac were high on platinum sales and cocaine. He also doesn't have a cult album like The Madcap Laughs, or a cult following of any kind. Well, a really small cult: As The Josh Joplin group would sing: Fifty fans can't be wrong, or can they?

To also be fair: Kirwan doesn't have a The Madcap Laughs because his solo platters weren't testament to a broken brillance, or mirrors into an increasingly disturbed mind. They were sort of - just there. Looking at Kirwan's solo tracks, it's obvious that the (self-imposed) pressure and competitiveness in Fleetwood Mac might've finally consumed him, but it stoked and fueled Kirwan's creative fire. He easily did his best work when with the Mac, and whatever major creative flow he had going in the Mac years, and especially during the Bare Trees period, was gone, and could not be retrieved when he was let go of the band. Compared to the high standard he set for himself when with the Mac, his solo career across three albums is a major disappointment. The songs became simpler in structure and more banal in content. As Kirwan's heart and soul grew darker, the songs grew lighter and slighter. Desperately happy, or maybe happily desperate.

But there is still a huge amount of enjoyment to be had, on a lighter, breezier level than the often deadly serious, philosophica or brooding songs of the Mac years. His reggae cover of "Let It Be" for example will not compete with the original, but doesn't have to, it's a charming little trifle here. His glam rock song "Ram Jam City" stays a lot of fun. None of the tracks from his three solo albums approach the majesty of his work in the Mac - Kirwan's first accomplishment was helping Peter Green finish "Albartross", without mentioning the slight psychedelia in his increasingly complex mini-epics like "Woman Of A 1.000 Years".

I love this picture of Danny Kirwan. On most pics he's so serious, but this pic capyures him on the happy side of the desperately happy divide...

The One Buck Record of the day splits the difference between the best of Kirwan's solo work and selected highlights from his work in the Mac. Some overlap with A Period of Transition exists, but why wouldn't you want to have several places to stumble upon great songs like "trinity", "Dusr" or "Jewel-Eyed Judy"? Danny Kirwan was one of the best guitar players of his generation, an often adventurous composer and arranger and a musician, whose top notch work really was top notch. The man slowly faded away, spending the last 35 years of his life in and out of homeless shelters and care facilities, but at least we still have the music. And that will not fade away. If this little sampler of Kirwan's music can do its part in that, then all the better.  

Let's hear it for Danny Kirwan, ladies and gentlemen...