Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way"
Not so long ago I was maligned and defamed—by one of my best and oldest friends, no less, and to my children. It was summertime, Mike was over, and we were passing an otherwise pleasant evening eating dinner on my back porch. I stepped away for just a moment, to take my plate into the kitchen. Minutes earlier I had said something less than complimentary about I think it was Elton John, and just as I moved out of earshot, Mike aired his complaint: your father is so narrow-minded about music.
These shots were fired in my home.
To be fair to Mike, this was 100% fair comment, back when he and I first met in our freshman year in college. I had very clear, specific, and correct ideas of what good rock music was, what it sounded like, who played it, and what they looked like. The short version was, if it wasn’t ’80s or ’90s alt-rock, it sucked. But circling back now to be fair to me, I had arrived on campus with great expectations. For years I had been looking forward to stepping clear of the New Kids on the Block, Bell Biv Devoe, and other bullshit that had blighted so many high-school dances. In college, now, there would be college rock. And college rock was synonymous with—or least overlapped significantly with—alternative rock. Finally, I would be in my element.
And what did I get instead, on Day One? Some red-haired kid from the Caribbean loading Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell into my CD player. “You have to listen to this,” he was saying. This wasn’t Mike. It was his roommate, Glenn. But Mike was in the room, having crossed the hall with Glenn and their other roommate Richard, to make introductions. Mike noted the look of horror/ distaste on my face, and in the months that followed, he heard a whole hell of a lot of what I thought about Meat Loaf and the hundred other classic rock acts he and Glenn were so eager to put into the rotation.
Entryway 2 of the dormitory in 1915 Hall was a diversity project, to say the least. Looking back on that year, we imagine the housing administrators for Butler College cackling and rubbing their hands together as they loaded up these four triple rooms. In my suite: (1) me, a suburban kid from the Midwest, half-Italian, sarcastic, wanna-be artsy and then-Republican; (2) Dave, a gregarious and gigantic defensive lineman from South Jersey; and (3) Roger, 16 years old, a second-generation Chinese-American engineering student with a wild streak. Across the hall: (1) Richard, Third of His Name, blonde son of a Texas businessman, disclaiming that the cowboy boots he was wearing were in fact something different called “Red Wings” (uh … okay); (2) Glenn, an Al Pacino-infatuated Philly-Curaçaoan who spoke an obscure language called Papiamentu; and (3) Mike, insufferable Bostonian and classical Northeastern liberal elite. Upstairs left: (1) a white conservative baseball player named Andy; (2) a stoner prep school kid whose name I forget; and (3) Pete, boisterous second-gen Mexican-American from East Bakersfield, California. Upstairs right: (1) Ken, a ripped Filipino football player, son of an anesthesiologist, who banged his head on everything he saw; (2) Ambitious Student Government Kid who wore a bike helmet everywhere—possibly because of Ken; and (3) a Chinese international student who largely kept to himself.
Glenn, Mike, Richard, and Pete are very close friends of mine to this day. I haven’t seen Ken, Dave, Roger, or Andy in a while, but I would like to.
It’s fair to say that the core group of eight or nine of us in Entryway 2 had just enough in common to keep the dormitory from burning to the ground. Most of our shared interests were activated by hormones: interest in girls, jockeying for dominance in any number of arenas, including wing-eating (I was surprisingly competitive), shit-talking (likewise), video gaming on the NES and Sega Genesis, and sports. Beer was a common focus for most of the group, if not for me. We’d come into alignment to raid the study breaks hosting at Wu Hall, hatching plans to abscond with full trays of the free food on offer—bagels, Hoagie Haven sandwiches, the aforementioned buffalo wings—to take back to our rooms.
But whatever we got up to, we were constantly reminded of how different we were, in our backgrounds, core beliefs, and tastes. We argued extensively about politics, about whose hometown was a backwater or urban hellhole. Battle lines were drawn over questions of regional dialect: the proper generic term for fizzy drinks, for example, or whether you stood “on” or “in” line.
As much as anything else, though, we argued about music. This was a big one for me. At that time—more than now, it seems, based on what I see with my kids—musical taste was a core component of your identity. In this respect I knew exactly who I was, and the Meat Loaf Incident had thrown me completely into shock. Mike’s Allman Brothers CDs were half again as troubling. Really, though: the problem was campus-wide. At the clubs on Prospect Street, Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits 1974-1978 was playing on constant repeat. ARE YOU KIDDING? Did the 1980s not happen? It seemed like every night out there came a point when some James Spader lookalike villain would put “Free Bird” or “American Pie” on the jukebox. A rousing drunken singalong would follow, triggering my limbic system. You could only assign so much of the fault to alcohol here: the people here actually knew all the verses.
Through all this I had a lot to say, and I said it: to the perpetrators directly, putting myself from time to time at moderate physical risk (e.g., with lacrosse players at the Cap & Gown Club), but more often on long-distance calls to my gang back in Ohio. It’s a musical hellscape here. I honestly don’t know what’s going on. But—and here’s the turn—I also began to acculturate to my surroundings. Cracked my mind open just a little bit. I was able to concede, for example, that “Jessica” (Apple Music, Spotify) was actually a pretty great song. Roger got me into Black Sabbath.
The Boys of 1915 moved my way, too. Dave came back from fall break excitedly waving a Squeeze cassette at me. You gotta like Squeeze, right? Given all that other new wave stuff you’re into? I didn’t like Squeeze at all, but I appreciated the gesture. Dave tried again with Elvis Costello, and heck yeah: I did get into that. One night Mike came home from a long night out bellowing “Sit Down” (Apple Music, Spotify) by James at the top of his lungs: across the yard, into the hallway, down into the bathroom, back up into the hallway, and into his room. That was him heading in my direction, and I took note of it. Somebody swiped a Maxell copy of Camper Van Beethoven’s first album from one of the clubs. We all got into that record together.
By the fall of sophomore year we were enough in agreement to see They Might Be Giants live at Trenton City Gardens and a triple bill of James, the Soup Dragons, and the Tom Tom Club in NYC. At some point Mike went home for break, plugged into Boston’s red-hot alt-rock scene, and came back to school with Letters to Cleo and the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones under his arm. No doubt his first intention was to restate his case for the cultural superiority of Massachusetts over the rest of the country—we heard this non-stop in those days—but he was also building bridges.
Ultimately in that first year we all had to live together. Something had to be playing over the stereo while we wolfed down our Wawa chili cheese dogs and shouted at Bo Jackson’s doings on the Nintendo.
We found common ground, and each of us expanded his horizons just a little … so that over time they might expand a ton.
Which brings me to “Go Your Own Way” (Apple Music, Spotify). I could have picked any number of songs—including one or two from Meat Loaf—to illustrate the point here, which is that my playlists are regularly populated with artists and genres I would have regarded as anathema, as The Enemy, in my stricter days. Today I am challenging myself to pick a most extreme and outrageous example, a band that would register as a combination punch-in-the-gut/ kick-in-the-nuts to 1990s Me, and the answer I’ve come up with is Fleetwood Mac.
Everything about Fleetwood Mac was objectionable to 1990s Me. The seventies were horrific, generally, and yacht rock was the worst product of the decade. Then here comes Bill Clinton brandishing a saxophone with “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” playing over the PA. Barf. But thirty years later, having worked backward through punk and post-punk into classic rock and psychedelia, with recommendations from Mike and Glenn and others lighting my way, I’m older and wiser. I’ve decided I’ll take good music from anywhere, whether or not it aligns with my hyper-attuned sense of cool. I’ve got Juice Newton on my iPod. “Queen of Hearts” (Apple Music, Spotify) is the shit. Fight me.
Mike and I share records these days—we each pick out a handful we think the other should like, and we make an exchange. It’s a bit like Battleship: a few hits amid many misses. I send Love, Funkadelic, Os Mutantes, and Blondie over, and Blondie sticks. He sends Mumford & Sons, Anderson.Paak, the Band, and Elton John over. Mumford & Sons sticks.
We have our areas of overlap, but there remain areas of bitter disagreement. It was in this very context—where I’m telling him no: I don’t like Elton John, or Joni Mitchell, or most anything Stevie Nicks does—that Mike hung 1990s Me around Current Me’s neck. In my home, in front of my children. This was, of course, slanderous. I can get into all kinds of music. I just don’t like Elton John, or Joni Mitchell, or most anything from Stevie Nicks.1
There’s no better vehicle for unpacking the <like>/ <don’t-like> proposition than Rumours. I played it all the way through a few months ago, and I found that I love love love all the odd-numbered tracks and hate hate hate the even-numbered tracks. The way this band so effortlessly alternates between spot-on, perfect: thank you! and good God that’s sandpaper on my cerebellum is, frankly, unbelievable.
To be sure, the extent to which I’m into any of these songs corresponds pretty neatly with the extent of Lindsey Buckingham’s involvement in the track. And if we can push Stevie’s vocals into the background, all the better. On that score, I can really get into “Secondhand News” (Apple Music, Spotify) “Never Going Back Again” (Apple Music, Spotify), “Go Your Own Way,” “The Chain” (Apple Music, Spotify), and—Stevie notwithstanding—“Gold Dust Woman” (Apple Music, Spotify). Whereas “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Song Bird,” and “You Make Loving Fun” can step the hell clear of my headphones, because whether or not they’re objectively good and important, I can’t freaking stand them.
The point being, you don’t have to like everything. You can go your own way. Just don’t be stubborn about it. And I’m not. Really, Mike: I’m not.
Even with Stevie I’ve been able to make some headway. See, e.g., “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (Apple Music, Spotify); “Edge of Seventeen” (Apple Music, Spotify).