Slip Your Hand Inside My Glove

Growing up as I did in the 1970s, it was nearly impossible to escape the blockbuster album Rumours, songs from which got played into the ground on FM radio for years after the album’s release—especially the Stevie Nicks songs. Consequently, I was never that big a Fleetwood Mac fan. And even though Stevie’s songs are proving to be really good for selling cranberry juice, I never particularly cared for her voice. Or most of her songs. (Just my opinion!! Don’t @ me, Gossamer Spinners! (Which I assume is what Stevie Nicks fans are called since spinning in gossamer dresses seems to be her jam.))

via GIPHY

I always liked Lindsey Buckingham's songs, though. Even more than his songs, I like his style(s) of guitar-playing. I think he's one of the most underrated guitarists in rock. Few seem to acknowledge his guitar-playing chops, despite his skill and virtuosity. For example, he, for some reason, did not make the original Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists and he’s only number 100 on the latest iteration, a ranking that feels ridiculously low.

"Hold Me", from the 1982 album Mirage, is not a Buckingham song, but I've been fascinated by one of its guitar parts for some time, possibly because, musical naif that I am, it took me quite a while to realize that the sound that intrigued me was being made by a guitar. I feel somewhat less chagrined by this now because when I pointed the guitar part in question out to a friend who is a much savvier music-lover and a far better guitar player than I (see below, where my playing skills are honestly evaluated and found to be sorely lacking), he agreed it is a guitar but he, too, thought at first it was something else—in his case, a cowbell. (Because you can never have too much cowbell.)

“Hold Me” is a good song, with evocative lyrics, a catchy melody, and (typical for Fleetwood Mac) impeccable harmonies and flawless production values. When it came out as a single in 1982, it peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts in the US but, for some reason I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand, it failed to chart in the UK.

It's a Christine McVie song, which I did not realize until I looked it up a few years ago; there are two voices singing lead on it and, to my ear, Buckingham's is the more prominent, and I therefore incorrectly assumed it was his song, that he’d composed it. But even though Buckingham didn't write it, to me, it is still his song because of that guitar part. It’s not present right away; this being a McVie song, the first instrument you hear is her piano, which is also nicely and melodically played. The guitar part I'm referring to comes in (or first becomes audible to me) at around the 45 second mark of the video above. It consists of a kind of "tock-tock-tock" sound; I guess I always knew it was there, but until relatively recently, it never sufficiently intruded itself on my conscious mind for me to go: “Huh. Just what instrument is making that sound?” I had probably subconsciously assumed it was some light percussion instrument—a block or something. Assuming I’d thought about it at all.

But after I keyed on it for some reason or other, possibly because it was more noticeable when heard with earbuds (this is one of the oft-noted benefits of listening to music through earphones or earbuds: it’s a lot easier to isolate and appreciate individual instruments and sounds), it finally dawned on me that this was a guitar, one of at least three guitar parts in the song. (There's also a 12-string acoustic guitar being played, which is prominently isolated for a few strums at the 2:33 mark; and a more conventional-sounding lead electric guitar part.) Evidently, throughout just about the whole song, Buckingham is producing this tock-y rhythmic sound by (this is pure conjecture on my part) finger-picking harmonics and intentionally deadening the strings. You can still hear that they are distinct notes, but they don't sound like they're being played on a guitar; at first blush, they don't even sound like notes, at least not to my naïve ear.

This makes for a pretty unique sound, though it is far from prominent in the song; it's just one of many musical things going on. And in fact, the only reason I was able to confirm that this is what Buckingham was doing was because, just after the musical break, at roughly the 2:38 mark, the tock-y guitar part comes back in; at the 2:54 mark you can hear a few unmistakably "guitar-y" notes escaping from the tock-y guitar, i.e., Buckingham is not fully deadening the sound; and then at the 3:03 mark Buckingham segues straight from the "tocks" to a distinctly guitar-y wail, giving up on the "tocks" for the remainder of the song.

I play the guitar, but not well. (←This is what rhetoricians call “an understatement”.) I have no idea how hard that style of playing is; the most I can say about it is it is far beyond my humble capabilities. But I find it to be inventive and entrancing and, now that I have noticed it, it is often the thing I notice most about "Hold Me" and, hence, why I continue to count “Hold Me” as a Lindsey Buckingham song.

So it seems Donovan was right when he sang that old Buddhist kōan “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” When you listen to “Hold Me”, or any song, you hear it and typically appreciate it for its entirety: the instruments, the rhythm, the harmony of the vocals, the melody, etc., all taken as an integral whole. (You see the mountain.) Then maybe you notice a facet of the song you’d never noticed before, like a slightly-buried “tock-y” sound, and you key on that, almost, perhaps, to the exclusion of everything else about the song; you’re hearing that only, suppressing all the other constituent parts. (You notice, to keep to our analogy, a particularly dramatic outcropping of rocks on the mountain.) And you gain an appreciation for the effort and artistry that went into that isolated detail of the whole^[1]. And eventually you allow it to integrate itself back into the aural wholeness of the song. And it’s still the same song, but also new. You see it better; you hear it better. You hear it in its entirety again, but now you truly appreciate its gestalt. First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then...there is.

“Hold Me” is far from the only Fleetwood Mac song that I think is made notable, if not outright spectacular, by the deft guitar work of Lindsey Buckingham.

[“Hold Me” was first released as a single forty years ago, in June of 1982.]

Selected Works by Fleetwood Mac Available at MCLS

Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac [cd] The self-titled 1975 album, remastered in 2018. The 1975 mix is available too, both on cd and streaming on hoopla.

Fleetwood Mac. Mirage (Deluxe Edition) Available for streaming on hoopla.

Fleetwood Mac. Rumours [cd] The mega-seller from 1977 album; also available for streaming on hoopla.

Fleetwood, Mick. Fleetwood: Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac, the Autobiography Fleetwood tells the full and candid story of his life as one of music's greatest drummers and bandleaders, the cofounder of the deeply loved supergroup that bears his name and that of his bandmate and lifelong friend John McVie.

^[1] The Hulu series McCartney 3, 2, 1—which I cannot recommend highly enough—features moments when producer Rick Rubin isolates various instruments (usually Paul’s bass line) and other sounds on Beatle songs and he and McCartney discuss them in isolation from the rest of the song. My favorite was when Rubin isolated a particular background harmony on the Lennon Beatle song “Dear Prudence” and emphasized just how unnaturally long they (presumably John, Paul, and George) held the notes. (Listen to how long the background voices hold the harmony on the word “child” here.) I’m sure I am not the only listener who “heard” this many times while listening to “Dear Prudence” but never truly noticed how extraordinary it is until Rubin isolated it and commented on it.

- by Tom G., Hopewell Branch