Play it again: In and out of the muso mind

03 March 2015 - 02:01 By Andrew Donaldson
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The rock memoir hit a purple patch with the publication in 2004 of Bob Dylan's acclaimed Chronicles, Volume One and over the past decade we have been graced with wildly entertaining autobiographies from Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Anthony Kiedis, Patti Smith and Morrissey, among others.

These were books that managed to reach audiences outside the traditionally niche market of music fans and consequently dominated the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.

That said, it is difficult to imagine the two titles here - Mick Fleetwood's Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac and Carlos Santana's The Universal Tone - striking a note with anyone other than their most devoted followers.

Of the two, the latter is perhaps the better - if only because Santana's life has been more interesting than Fleetwood's. His Mexican childhood was rough. His father, a musician, had tried to make his wife drink an abortifacient tea when she became pregnant with Carlos, but a housekeeper switched teas without his knowledge. He was sexually assaulted when he was 10 by an American tourist who had befriended his family. By the time he was 15, he was playing in Tijuana strip club bands.

Shortly afterwards he moved to San Francisco, where he fashioned his trademark blend of Latin-fused rock, blues and African rhythms and put together the group that bore his name.

He had an ardent supporter in rock impresario Bill Graham, who managed to get Santana on the bill at Woodstock - quite a feat considering the group had yet to release an album and would have been unknown to that festival's audience. That remarkable performance, captured on film, is now the stuff of legend - but it's surprising to learn how out of his mind he was on stage. The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia had dosed him with mescaline and he watched his guitar turning into a snake as he played.

"The rest of the show is a blur - really a blur," he writes. He vowed never to trip again during a performance, but does admit: "Hallucinogens had a lot to do with the Santana sound."

Although cocaine would become their drug of choice, hallucinogens also indirectly fashioned Fleetwood Mac's sound. They were a modestly successful UK-based blues-rock group in the late 1960s but kind of lost their way when their founder, guitarist Peter Green, had an acid-induced mental collapse and abandoned the group.

After muddling about for a few years, the group relocated to Los Angeles, where they recruited vocalist Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsay Buckingham to complete their most familiar lineup.

Their best albums - 1975's Fleetwood Mac, 1977's Rumours and 1979's Tusk - were made on cocaine. The tours to promote them were fuelled on cocaine. Their intake was prodigious.

Drummer Fleetwood - "the King of Toot" - once tried to work out how much of the drug he'd snorted in his life - and, assuming 3g or 4g a day for 20 years, came up with a solid 10km line.

There's nothing new in this, of course. Fleetwood himself chronicled much of this in 1991 with Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures with Fleetwood Mac

So why "Play On"? Well, a new Fleetwood Mac album is on its way, and a major tour.

  • 'Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography' by Mick Fleetwood & Anthony Bozza (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • 'The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light' by Carlos Santana, with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller (Orion)
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