Songoftheday 8/15/12 - So I'm back to the velvet underground...

Fleetwood Mac - "Gypsy"

from the album Mirage (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (three weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is by veteran blues-turned-California-rock legends Fleetwood Mac. The group first came together in the late sixties under drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Peter Green, who both were in blues-rock king John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. After bringing on fellow BB bandmate John McVie, they released their self-titled first album in 1968 (a top-10 LP in Britain), and a couple months later put out a stand-alone single, "Black Magic Woman", which became their first British top-40 hit (and later a big pop hit for Santana). A year later, with the addition of another guitarist, Danny Kirwin, and after a second UK top-10 album (Mr. Wonderful), another standalone single, "Albatross", became a #1 single in both England and the Netherlands. Also in 1969, the band released "Oh Well", which was included in the re-released American version of their third album Then Play On, gave them their first US pop hit (#55), and again topped the chart in Holland.

The early seventies found Fleetwood Mac exchanging members, as both Green and Kerwin left the group to be replaced by guitarist/singer Bob Welch and John's wife Christine. After Welch left a few years (and a whole lot of drama) later, the group recruited Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the lineup in 1974. The following year, their second "self-titled" album was released, and became a pop smash, becoming their first US #1 record, and spinning off three top-20 singles like Christine's "Say You Love Me" and Stevie's "Rhiannon".

After the success of that album, the Mac's dynamics were put through the blender, with the both McVie's and Fleetwood's marriages as well as the Buckingham/Nicks personal relationship ending, and the emotional artistic release of all this was enshrined on their 1977 album Rumours, which was so universally revered by both critics and fans that it's become one of the biggest-selling and most highly touted albums of all time. Four top-10 singles from that album were released, with the first Lindsey's "Go Your Own Way", scoring their first top-10 single, and Stevie's "Dreams" topping the pop singles chart in the US for the first time.

By the time of 1982's Mirage album, both Stevie and Lindsey had released successful solo albums, and their first single, Christine's "Hold Me" was a big hit. The followup, "Gypsy" was Stevie Nicks' highlight of the record, and one of her most personal and complex, incorporating themes from her earlier failed relationship with Lindsey, as well as the loss of her very close friend Robin Anderson, who had died of leukemia in 1981. The music video filmed for the song by Aussie Russell Mulcahy (who did Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes") was among the most expensive for that time, and MTV gave the channel's first "world premiere" to the clip in the summer of 1982.

While the song missed the US pop top-10, it did manage to hit those heights on both the rock (#4) and adult-contemporary (#9) chart. And though surprisingly it didn't even make the top-40 in Britain, the single became their third #1 record in Canada. And certainly the track helped Mirage be their second #1 album in America.

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The song remains my favorite Nicks-led single by the Mac, and was incorporated into mashup king Girl Talk's "Let Me See You" in 2009..(check a minute and a quarter in)..(NFSW)

And just this year, in a tribute album to the band, indie-electro act Gardens & Villa recorded a spacey version of the song...

Fun fact: "Gypsy" was co-produced by the band with Ken Caillat, whose daughter Colbie is now a soft-rock hitmaker.

Up tomorrow: Sandy Olsson goes into cardiac arrest.