Fleetwood Mac by Fleetwood Mac (1975).

This was the first album by the "classic" Fleetwood Mac lineup that included Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

Like any human being in America in the mid-1970s, I was familiar with the AM radio hits such as "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me." But in 1978 (by which time Rumours, this lineup's second album, had gone mega-platinum) I took a road trip with some friends with a cassette tape of this first album. Ever since, these songs have had a wonderful association in my memory with the California coast between Santa Barbara and Cambria. There's a definite 1970s California feel to this album, a departure from the heavier blues sound Fleetwood Mac had featured before Buckingham/Nicks joined them.

In the 1970s, southern California had a huge influence on pop music. In the early decade Crosby, Stills and Nash (occasionally adding Neil Young), Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, the Eagles, America, and Joni Mitchell defined a sound that was eclectic, soft and accessible, and enduring. By 1975 Fleetwood Mac had taken the most popular elements of these sounds and distilled them into this album.

I find this album to be a unique combination of pop calculation and true genius. I still find it impossible to separate this enormous commercial hit, which must have been heard by tens of millions of people, from my own very personal experience. My high school English class drove to Cambria to see the Hearst Castle. On the way each of us brought cassette tapes. I, not having a tape player of my own at home, relied on my friend Erik for a tape of this album, one by Steeleye Span, and some Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. Erik’s tapes proved very popular with the car, and we heard a lot of them as we drove there and back. It no longer matters to me what others think of these songs, to me they are on an endless loop between LA and the Hearst Castle.

Many of the cuts on this album are very good songs. “Monday Morning” is a terrific opener, shouted by Lindsey Buckingham. “Blue Letter” is also quite hip. When I arrived at college in 1979 I met a woman who could play this song on guitar. She foolishly thought I was good enough to follow her. If I’d been that good, she might have married me.

My favorite is “Warm Ways.” This Christine McVie song is languorous, with lyrics that make you imagine lying in bed next to your lover. The arrangement is also lovely, especially the guitars. Buckingham puts slide guitars through much of the song, creating an ethereal atmosphere. At the very end of the song an acoustic guitar appears, playing a nice phrase. The acoustic guitar is quite a change. It’s as if whoever was in that bed had a stroke of awareness and had something to say.

I don’t much like “Sugar Daddy,” a Christine McVie song that always reminds me of another clunker on Rumours, “Oh Daddy.” Both songs come late in the record, and I always feel as if the band is out of good stuff by now and they’re hoping I’m too dazzled to notice. Each album finishes with a pretentious song to refresh the palate and make me appreciate McVie’s songs—on this recording it’s “I’m So Afraid” by Buckingham. I used this song in a college video I made in a production class. That video epitomizes pretension, so this song’s presence there is justified.

But I don’t mean any disrespect to Christine McVie. She wrote “Say You Love Me” and (from Rumours) “You Make Loving Fun.” Those are great pop tunes. I can smile at “Sugar Daddy” because it reminds me of knowing that the end of this album is near as the car threads Highway 1 north, but apart from that it has few virtues.

I can’t really judge this album objectively, but why should I?