Back in the mid-70s, I was drawn to a song that hypnotized me with its uncanny triplet drumming, its magical lyrics painting images of mysterious things flying by windows across a big yard, and the prospect of an alien constructing a lake in North Carolina and so on. The song, called (appropriately enough) “Hypnotized,” was included on the 1973 Fleetwood Mac album “Mystery to Me.”
It was one of those songs that I rarely heard at the time, and I’m certain I wasn’t even sure who the artist was. Back in those days, if you heard a song that intrigued you, it was either at a friend’s, perhaps at a record store if you hung out long enough, or on the radio. That’s all you had.
When I moved to The Dalles in 1975 to take my first radio job, I quickly ran into a handful of exquisitely cool people with whom I immediately connected. One of them had the album, and as we sat around and imbibed all of those substances that gave us that illegal smile, the song came on. I was taken in. I was hypnotized.
I remember standing up and insisting I look at the album cover to figure this all out. I discovered that Bob Welch had written the song. The band at the time consisted of Welch, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, and Bob Weston. It would be one of five albums that Bob Welch was a part of Fleetwood Mac: Future Games (1971), Bare Trees (1972), Penguin (1973), Mystery to Me (1973) and Heroes Are Hard to Find (1974). They’re all stunning ‘outside the norms’ albums for the day, but to my mind, Mystery to Me was the best of the lot, although it took me decades to come to that conclusion.
As a teenager and in my early 20s, I had just come out of a decade of music discovery that started with the British Invasion (Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds, The Who, Herman’s Hermits, The Searchers and many others), but transitioned about 1969 and 1970 into Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream, CSN, Jethro Tull, Santana, and others. I loved them all, and my ears were tuned into whatever new music found its way to me. Of course, being a radio station music director was, to me, the best job in the world. It was a great way to get exposed to new sounds.
I didn’t know much about Fleetwood Mac until Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined up in 1974 to record the Fleetwood Mac album, which really made my ears perk up. Of course, that was followed by the Zillion-selling Rumours album, which changed everything.
By then, the old members of the band were mostly forgotten by the record-buying public: Jeremy Spencer, Peter Green, Bob Weston, and, to a degree, Bob Welch. A few years after leaving Fleetwood Mac, Bob released his first solo album, French Kiss. I was then Music Director at my second job, and we played the hits of the day and whatever else that pushed the boundaries, that I could slip in after dark.
French Kiss spawned a couple of hit singles, including “Ebony Eyes,” which opened with a cool and memorable guitar riff (hitting #14 on Billboard), and an old Fleetwood Mac song, “Sentimental Lady,” which hit #8.
Good stuff. Bob released five more albums between 1979 and 1983, each charting lower than the previous album. The final, “Eye Contact,” failed to even hit the Billboard Top 200 album list.
After leaving Fleetwood Mac, he remained close to Mick Fleetwood, who managed his career into the 80s. But money problems and some legal stuff forced a lawsuit by Welch, which was settled in the 90s. The whole affair is detailed on Welch’s Wikipedia page, and it’s worth a read.
Bob Welch committed suicide in 2012, three months after undergoing spinal surgery. Reports say he was in considerable pain, and the word is that he left a nine-page suicide note and love letter to his wife.
To me, Welch's career in the 1970s and 80s music world was fascinating. During his career, he wrote and released some stunning music.
Here’s a playlist of some of my faves: