If you know me even a little bit, then you know about my new writing project. Coming to a bookshop near you in 2027. Books take almost as long to bring out as a Fleetwood Mac album.
I said to someone the other day that most of my projects seem like total flukey coincidences and yet totally expected, both at the same time. I'm always working away on a new angle, or a new project, something that might or might not happen.
If only 10% of those things happen then I'm kept just busy enough without having to rush around. But when they do, it feels like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. Sunshine on a rainy day. Have you ever seen the rain coming down on a sunny day?
I've been a fan of Fleetwood Mac and F1 motor racing since 1985. The two are inseparable in memories of my childhood. The BBC chose the last part of The Chain in the late 1970s for their F1 music, not long after the world-crushing album Rumours was released. The band had been recording and mixing that album on the day I was born, in March 1976.
I can't remember which studio they were in at that moment as they used so many, but the Record Plant at 2200 Bridgeway, Sausalito, is the one most famously associated with the album. I have been preparing to write this book my whole life.
In 2009, work took me to Oakland. I got in touch with the then owners of the Record Plant, and they arranged a private tour for me. I couldn't believe it. I caught the train over there just after Obama was sworn in as President on January 20th.
The timber panelling inside the place is extensive and makes it feel like you're on a boat. I saw the recording booths, Studio A and Studio B. Some rooms were bigger than I imagined. The corridors were narrower and shorter than I expected somehow. There were various gold discs on the walls. Now which studio was it that had a razor blade lying in the thick carpet?
I stumbled outside, blinking in the sun. Someone was filming up the road on Humboldt Avenue, although I did not yet know it. A metallic maroon Corvette pulled up outside the studio. Amber Valletta wanted directions to her film set. I couldn't help her, so I told her about Rumours and the Record Plant instead. Later on, our paths crossed again: the police station had given the needed directions.
Several years earlier, in 2003, we had flown to Boston to see Fleetwood Mac on their Say You Will tour. We had no idea if they would ever come to Britain again, and it was now or never. Such a delicate array of egos could not be relied on to stick around long enough to complete a world tour.
We saw the band at Worcester, MA, and it was easily the best concert I had been to at the time. The fans were next level, and the atmosphere beat anything in England. I have never seen so many thousand imposters. There were many Stevies and Lindseys. I don't remember any Johns.
The band did make it to England that December. We caught up with them in Manchester, where some very obvious non-fans had made it into the premium seating area near the stage. This meant that, when one of the scallywags kicked off and started a pointless brawl, Lindsey could see. He stopped the band during the intro for Tusk, and the lights went on. The perps sheepishly made a beeline for the exit before they were thrown out.
This is another mad, crazy journey to something that now seems pre-ordained.
I had been trying to get an Americana book off the ground for the better part of four months. Would it be a coffee table photo book? Would it be more text-based? First it was the future of roots and Americana, looking at some up-and-comers. Then it was a history of the last century of Americana music. All the time you're trying to match something you want to write about with something a publisher can sell. And believe me, the last person who knows what might sell is a book publisher. Or an author. Nobody does actually. It's not that different with music or movies.
Every creative project is a piss on a live spark plug one way or another.
Now is a good time to look at why I thought for a second I could or should write a book about Fleetwood Mac, a band I have listened to at least weekly for around 40 years.
Before you can answer that question, you have to wonder why I thought I was qualified to write a music book at all.
Well, I have been practicing for a long time. The article below is from 2017, the year I saw Stevie play with Tom Petty for the final time in Hyde Park, London.
PAUL DETTMANN
Back then I did not have a publisher and I wrote on Medium. But I had started an online zeitgeist magazine in NYC with real pros called The Z Review and they pretty much treated me like I was a pro too.
When I started my profiles up again in February this year, my second profile was this one.
PAUL DETTMANN
I've written so much about Cyrena Wages, Queen of Memphis, but I still have a lot left to say. The most important thing to say here is that her appreciation of my words gradually built my confidence as a music journalist.
People like Zoee, Miller Campbell, Zandi Holup, Ali Angel, Sweet Megg, Caroline Cotto, Pearl Charles and so many others started leaving me messages saying how much they appreciated my words. But they all came afterwards. They were another consequence of Cyrena's encouragement and enthusiasm.
Someone once said that Cyrena had a knack for bringing together like-minded souls. Her friends are all creative, but they are active in different worlds. They are not all musicians by any stretch.
I first heard I would be doing this book last Thursday, and I had to wait until Monday to get the contract finalised so I could talk more openly. After my local friends and colleagues, I messaged Cyrena Wages on Thursday night, plus a couple of others whom I knew to be even bigger Fleetwood Mac fans than I.
Cheers Cyrena. It's all your fault!
