Straight Back (vocals, keys, hat only)

[Macfan4life]

I dont need convincing this song is brilliant but many of you Straight Back haters do. What a fantastic vocal and Chris and Lindsey's playing around each other really adds some mystery to this song. I love that 2 of Stevie's songs on Mirage had no chorus but damn she could still write a song back in those days. One of them still transformed into a great pop single like Sara did. Chris's playing on this is so dreamy and sets the perfect mood. Chris really providing maximum overdubs vocally on this song too.
Stevie singing about her solo career beginning and her having to go straight back to the Mac.
One of my all time favorite Stevie lines ever is: Fingers find the ivory keys and a song begins to begin like a wolf on the run. IMHO that's just as good as: They clouds never expects it when it rains but the sea changes colors but the sea does not change.
Emily Dickenson never wrote anything remotely as good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOeQvzEFD4o

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

I dont need convincing this song is brilliant but many of you Straight Back haters do. What a fantastic vocal and Chris and Lindsey's playing around each other really adds some mystery to this song. I love that 2 of Stevie's songs on Mirage had no chorus but damn she could still write a song back in those days. One of them still transformed into a great pop single like Sara did. Chris's playing on this is so dreamy and sets the perfect mood. Chris really providing maximum overdubs vocally on this song too.
Stevie singing about her solo career beginning and her having to go straight back to the Mac.
One of my all time favorite Stevie lines ever is: Fingers find the ivory keys and a song begins to begin like a wolf on the run. IMHO that's just as good as: They clouds never expects it when it rains but the sea changes colors but the sea does not change.
Emily Dickenson never wrote anything remotely as good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOeQvzEFD4o

I have always liked the song, especially the full band arrangement with the funky John/Mick groove....but man this version highlights what a totally limited "musician" Stevie is..... the whole song is like one droning, repetitive chord. Again, she could never, ever, ever do a one-woman show. Not only could she not hold up her end of playing her own accompaniment, but the audience would fall over from boredom....

PS: I know this isn't her playing, but what IS being played is what she wrote and brought to the band.... one chord over and over and over which Chris or Lindsey is banging over and over. He said once that many of her songs really should have been credited as co-writes, and this is yet another example. He doesn't just arrange whatever she brings to the band, he adds to it and totally writes the arrangements... And poor Christine has to find ways to noodle around the one note piano-plonking that she gets on Stevie's demos....

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

I have always liked the song, especially the full band arrangement with the funky John/Mick groove....but man this version highlights what a totally limited "musician" Stevie is..... the whole song is like one droning, repetitive chord. Again, she could never, ever, ever do a one-woman show. Not only could she not hold up her end of playing her own accompaniment, but the audience would fall over from boredom....

PS: I know this isn't her playing, but what IS being played is what she wrote and brought to the band.... one chord over and over and over which Chris or Lindsey is banging over and over. He said once that many of her songs really should have been credited as co-writes, and this is yet another example. He doesn't just arrange whatever she brings to the band, he adds to it and totally writes the arrangements... And poor Christine has to find ways to noodle around the one note piano-plonking that she gets on Stevie's demos....

I think that is unconsciously what I like about it. It is a fairly direct vocal track with Stevie showing off her pipes at the end. But the way the band (especially Chris) dressing it all up takes the song to a new level. Mirage was very "music box" like and this is a direct rock track with tons of overdubs. I think it call comes together rather well. Its interesting, Stevie brought mostly old tracks for Mirage except this. That psychotic angry version of Smile At You should have made Mirage over Oh Diane.
Its against the grain of Mirage and not very music box like. In many ways it was the perfect track to follow Empire State and be on the same side as Eyes of the World.

Vocals only. Chris's background vocals working over time. Her voice was at its peak. I can hear Bella Donna vocals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnYCQtpCbA

[bwboy]

I love this stripped down version a lot, probably because it sounds ‘new’ to me. I would love, instead of another release of Rumours, a release of songs like this one, with the vocals isolated. Hearing Christine’s vocals alone on Brown Eyes would be interesting.

[aleuzzi]

Hey, I like it stripped down like this. I have never been a fan of the finished version on the album. But this really sounds like classic Stevie circa 1978. I could imagine her duetting this with John Stewart.

[Mr Scarrott]

I've never quite been able to like this song. Like Angel she just seems to meander tediously in the same direction, if that isn't a bit of an oxymoron.

I thought she sings at the beginning "what chord shall I play" until I checked the lyrics. Very apt.. just the one, Stevie?

I get the feeling that if Mr B could have influenced the production of the song it might have been a lot better.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by Mr Scarrott

I've never quite been able to like this song. Like Angel she just seems to meander tediously in the same direction, if that isn't a bit of an oxymoron.

I thought she sings at the beginning "what chord shall I play" until I checked the lyrics. Very apt.. just the one, Stevie?

I get the feeling that if Mr B could have influenced the production of the song it might have been a lot better.

Dreams was never over, it's just that one chord went away....

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by Mr Scarrott

I thought she sings at the beginning "what chord shall I play" until I checked the lyrics. Very apt.. just the one, Stevie?

Now, to be fair, she knows TWO chords. F and G.

Quite the decision she had to make...

[Mr Scarrott]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

Now, to be fair, she knows TWO chords. F and G.

Quite the decision she had to make...

A bit of magic can come from just two chords (even though Dreams does have more than that), but repeating the trick is difficult...

I forget where I read it but there was one review of Straight Back which said it was so woolly you could lag your central heating with it. That image has stuck with me.

[David]

Originally Posted by Mr Scarrott

A bit of magic can come from just two chords (even though Dreams does have more than that), but repeating the trick is difficult...

I forget where I read it but there was one review of Straight Back which said it was so woolly you could lag your central heating with it. That image has stuck with me.

Hehheheh. Yep. It’s the kind of song that, if it weren’t Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, wouldn’t interest me at all. It’s all her tumble of imagery (whether it’s apt or not) and her personal mythology that’s so thick and tortured, it can mean absolutely anything. That deliberate vagueness has never delighted me, whether it’s “Stairway to Heaven” or “Straight Back” or listening to a schizophrenic speak.

But it all just sounds right. There’s no accounting for why. Bernstein used to say that Beethoven was the composer of inevitability — that magical sense of knowing which note should follow the previous note, or which chord the previous chord, as if it were metaphysically inevitable the way his music advanced. On a much lower scale, you could say the same thing about Fleetwood.