The Come Together ensemble pay homage to the classic Fleetwood Mac Rumours album, faithfully reproducing it with a loving remastering polish.
In its own way it is the equivalent of the Rolling Stones fagged out, drug-soaked, jaded but beatifically uplifted and inspired masterpiece Exile on Main Street.
That one little phrase encapsulates the history of American popular music more than she may know. Rock’n’roll music is basically Black Gospel and R’n’B as Elvis Presley also explained.
Fleetwood Mac started as a Blues Rock band in the latter Sixties. The famous engine room of Mick Fleetwood drums, and John McVie bass were founders. The superior pop that eventually blossomed get its pull, its heart and soul from a Blues core.
What made the group legendary was their mercurial genius and troubled soul. His name was Peter Green, and he may have been the best guitarist in that period that saw Clapton, Beck, Page, Richard Thompson and Jimi Hendrix.
You heard that right. B. B. King said at the time, he was the guitarist that scared him the most, the one that shook his soul. He was envisioning Robert Johnson, whom King did see as a youngster.
It is both a little shock and a great emotional straight right-hand opening punch, to start with Albatross. The molten liquid glass guitar tones cast a benediction on the music that follows.
They do a few more deep catalogue Greeny’s Blues numbers tonight, to my eternal gratitude. Being an obsessive of the early Mac myself. I can understand the loud murmurings and mystified air from many in the audience around me over this, some of it quite vocal.
Go back home and hunt it out. It will be good for your soul, just as much as the album you came for.
Rumours was an album which had an incredibly fraught gestation, as much as the aforementioned Exiles. Marriage and relationship breakdowns, massive drug and alcohol indulgence, emotional breakdowns, money hosed down the drain in studio excesses.
Out of the extreme pressure crucible of all this mayhem and falling apart, the musicians were able to craft an everlasting pearl, the sum of which was far greater than its individual parts.
All three singers appear for Everywhere. Mel Parsons takes the lead, with Julia Deans (Fur Patrol) and Swann backing. Parsons has the slightly deeper voice and does the Christine McVie songs for the night. She is Perfect!
She also nails Say You Love Me and the band recreates this identical to the original.
A couple of Peter Green deep catalogue cult classics. Need Your Love So Bad comes from Little Willie John, an artist equally as important as Ray Charles in the evolution of R’n’B to Soul. Another tortured soul who died in prison, the results of drug abuse. Sung by Mulholland.
Man Of the World has sublime Blues guitar interplay and is sung by Adams.
Swann elevates Silver Springs and guitar tones are reminiscent of the great David Linley.
Big Love improves the original with the guitar interplay throwing up Eastern melodies. Mulholland sings lead vocals.
The second act is dedicated to the Rumours, and it is a perfect as the album we all know, given a little remaster polish.
The audience downstairs gets up to dance and revel.
Songbird. One of the best tonight is hearing Deans take flight here. Blue-eyed Soul as fine as you will hear anywhere, and she transforms it close to Gospel. Accompanied solely with piano.
Jordan does get to sing Go Your Own Way, and daughter Annie Jordan is invited up to play bass.
The rhythmic drive of Fleetwood and McVie is at the heart of these songs. You hear this all night from Deverick and Hall. They lead from the front but are never obtrusive, the equal of originals.
Don’t Stop features that engine room. Parsons shines on lead vocals.
Powerful primal and tribal thumps on The Chain. The guitars overheat in a molten breakdown.
Oh Well off the Then Play On album, is freewheeling Detroit style Rock’n’roll from the first Mac.
Tusk takes it out with its drum thunder. The three women help on tom-toms.
Come Together play Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and it is all you could wish for, and we got to hear the deep roots of a great band.
