Mirage is the thirteenth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 2 July 1982 by Warner Bros. Records.[12] This studio effort's soft rock sound stood in stark contrast to its more experimental predecessor, 1979's Tusk. Mirage yielded several singles: "Hold Me" (which peaked at number four on the US Billboard Pop Chart, remaining there for seven weeks), "Gypsy" (number 12 US Pop Chart), "Love in Store" (number 22 US Pop Chart), "Oh Diane" (number nine in the UK), and "Can't Go Back" (number 83 in the UK).
Background
After the completion of the worldwide Tusk Tour, the band took a year-long hiatus. During this time, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and Lindsey Buckingham had each started solo careers, with Nicks achieving a multi-platinum, number-one success with 1981's Bella Donna.[13]Ken Caillat, who reprised his role as producer after working with the band on Rumours and Tusk, remembered that there was a sense of rivalry between Nicks and Buckingham over the commercial trajectory of their solo careers.[14]
Unlike the band's previous four albums, Fleetwood wanted the band to record Mirage outside of Los Angeles; he also sought to eschew the experimentation found on Tusk and instead replicate the commercial appeal of Rumours.[15] To achieve this, Caillat scouted for potential studios and came across Le Château in Hérouville, France. The band agreed to record at the facility, although Caillat said that certain members, particularly Nicks and Buckingham, were difficult to work with. The band hired a chef to cook meals for them, but Caillat said that Buckingham and Nicks would complain about the food and the lack of television. In an attempt to appease them, Caillat brought the two video machines with baseball games taped by one of his friends in Los Angeles.[16]
Recording and composition
In a 1981 interview with BAM magazine, Nicks reported that her original three submissions for Mirage were "That's Alright" (with the working title "It's Alright"), "If You Were My Love", and "Smile at You", although she said that Buckingham encouraged her to replace the latter song with a different composition. Nicks agreed with Buckingham, stating that "It's kind of a bitter song and that's really not where any of us are at right now, even thought it's a wonderful song. My songs don't take long to record, so it shouldn't be a problem."[17] "Smile at You" later appeared on Fleetwood Mac's 2003 album, Say You Will.[18]
The Nicks-penned "Gypsy" was the second single from the album and was accompanied by a video directed by Russell Mulcahy. Nicks wrote "Gypsy" in 1979 and considered it for her Bella Donna solo album, but she ultimately saved it for Mirage.[19] Of the other two compositions from Nicks on the album, "That's Alright", which was one of the three songs she originally submitted for inclusion on Mirage, dated back to the Buckingham Nicks days of 1974, while "Straight Back" was written in the winter of 1981. "Straight Back" referred to her separation from then-lover, producer Jimmy Iovine and the disruption she experienced to her newly established solo career in order to rejoin Fleetwood Mac for the 1982 project.[19]
Of Christine McVie's four compositions, three were written in collaboration with other writers: "Love in Store" with Jim Recor, ex-husband of Nicks' friend Sara Recor who later married Mick Fleetwood, "Hold Me" with singer-songwriter Robbie Patton whose second album she had recently produced and "Wish You Were Here" with lyrics from erstwhile John Mayall drummer Colin Allen. The other, "Only Over You", was credited "With thanks to Dennis Wilson for inspiration."[20] McVie had recently ended her relationship with Wilson, a member of the Beach Boys, who would die by drowning the following year.[21]
Three of Lindsey Buckingham's five contributions were written with co-producer Richard Dashut including the UK top-10 single "Oh Diane". Buckingham entered the studio with "Can't Go Back and "Eyes of the World", while his other three songs on the album were written shortly after his arrival in France.[22] On "Empire State", Buckingham played a 19th century lap harp gifted to him by Mick Fleetwood.[23] On "Book of Love", Buckingham sang all of the parts on the chorus and experimented with the tape speeds to achieve different vocal timbres. McVie remembered that Buckingham overdubbed some of the song's vocals to a slowed-down recording and later sped it up, with the end result resembling Nicks' voice.[24]
Buckingham assembled "Eyes of the World" in a piecemeal manner starting with a series of chords. He then spliced together additional musical passages,[25] including the chord progression of Pachebel's Canon and the acoustic guitar part from an instrumental composition on Buckingham Nicks.[26][27] In a 1981 interview with Record World, Buckingham said that there was an uptempo track on Mirage that he originally planned to include on his Law and Order solo album, but he rationalised that he "couldn't just save the best stuff" for Law and Order and thought that "anything that seemed particularly suited for Fleetwood Mac should be used." He described the song as a cross between "Go Your Own Way" and "Second Hand News".[28]
After the initial recording sessions at Château D’Hérouville, the band finished the album in California.[14] Nicks said that the band attempted to complete the album in multiple Los Angeles recording studios, but she was unsure how much work was conducted after they left Château D’Hérouville.[29] Caillat stated in 1982 interview that Nicks' involvement with Mirage was largely limited to the initial recording sessions at Château D’Hérouville and that her presence in the Los Angeles studios was limited to between ten and fifteen days.[24] Most of the recording sessions were attended by Caillat, Dashut, Buckingham, Fleetwood, and Christine McVie. Buckingham said that Fleetwood would provide feedback to the proceedings when he identified problems with the mix.[24]
Reception
In The Boston Phoenix, Ken Emerson wrote that "For all its pleasant tunefulness, Mirage (Warner Bros.) is not a retreat to the tried-and-true pop format of Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Neither, despite its avante-garde oddities, does it surrender to the incoherence of Tusk. Rather, it’s a winning synthesis of the best of both worlds. ... Mirage represents yet another metamorphosis; certainly Fleetwood Mac's most delightful album, it may also be the most rewarding."[30]Billboard commended the efforts of all three songwriters for "contributing their strongest songs yet." They said that the album demonstrated Buckingham's capabilities as an arranger, particularly in regards to the vocal harmonies, which they felt were evocative of the Beach Boys' best work.[31]
The album returned the group to the top of the US Billboard charts for the first time since their 1977 album Rumours, spending five weeks at number one. It spent a total of 18 weeks in the US top ten and has been certified double platinum for shipments in excess of two million copies in the US. It also reached number five in the UK where it has been certified platinum for shipping 300,000 copies, and number two in Australia.[32]
Deluxe edition
A deluxe edition of Mirage was released on 23 September 2016. This expanded reissue features a remaster of the original album, 13 live tracks, B-sides, outtakes, plus other songs that did not make the final cut. Some of these songs include "Goodbye Angel" and "Teen Beat", which were both released on 25 Years: The Chain, and "Smile at You", later released on Say You Will.[33] and "If You Were My Love" later released on Stevie Nicks' solo album 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault. The DVD-Audio disc contains both the 5.1 Surround and 24/96 Stereo Audio mixes of the original album.
Two of the final shows of the Mirage tour were filmed in Los Angeles in 1982. Originally released on VHS and CEDvideodisc in 1983, many tracks were edited out, with the loss of "Second Hand News", "Don't Stop", "Dreams", "Brown Eyes", "Oh Well", "Never Going Back Again", "Landslide", "Sara", and "Hold Me", reducing the 135 minute show to just 80 minutes on cassette. Three of these tracks, "Second Hand News," "Brown Eyes," and "Hold Me" would later be officially released on the expanded 1980 Fleetwood Mac Live album in 2021. The running order was also completely rearranged so that Nicks' "Gypsy" followed "The Chain", whilst "You Make Loving Fun" and "Blue Letter" were moved to the first half of the edited show.
The performance also includes what is often referred to as the "speaking in tongues" version of "Sisters of the Moon", in which Nicks delivers the song's coda in such intense gravelly vibratos that her words are rendered practically indecipherable.
The concert was not released on DVD until 2003, but this was limited to Brazil on the Studio Gaba label and featured an unmastered soundtrack.
In 2006 a better quality release was issued in Australia, with an added special feature comprising six Stevie Nicks solo promotional videos for some of her singles released between 1981 and 1986. This collection had previously been issued separately on VHS in 1986 under the title Stevie Nicks – I Can't Wait, and exclusively includes a live solo version of her top ten hit "Leather and Lace" (a duet with Don Henley), which was recorded on the final night of Nicks' 1981 Bella Donna tour. The clip was not included in the 9-track edit of Nicks' White Wing Dove live concert VHS release in 1982, and neither was it included in the DVD supplement to her 2008 retrospective Crystal Visions – The Very Best of Stevie Nicks. To date, this is the only DVD availability of this live performance.
In 2009, another DVD incarnation of the Mirage concert was released under the title Fleetwood Mac – In Performance by the Showline label on a region-free disc.
^Jerome, Jim; Buchalter, Gail; Evans, Hilary; Manna, Sal; Pilcher, Joseph & Rayl, Salley (16 January 1984). "Death of a Beach Boy". People Magazine. Archived from the original on 12 April 2015. Retrieved 30 July 2023.
^Fleetwood, Mick; Bozza, Anthony (October 2014). Play On: Now Then & Fleetwood Mac. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. p. 262. ISBN978-0-316-40342-9.
