CASE HISTORY NO. 099: BOB WELCH

It ain’t cool to be into mystic stuff anymore. Know what I mean? Like nobody asks you your sign or talks about all that spiritual claptrap that flourished in the 60’s. I mean, can you imagine finding out that Johnny Rotten is a disciple of Guru Mahara Ji or that Joey Ramone takes off his wig and turns into a Hare Krishna? Unlikely; but you’d better believe that Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin and George Harrison aren’t the only pop stars still interested in highs that aren’t drug-induced. Sammy Hagar was doing songs about close encounters of the third kind—and their spiritual implications —when Spielberg was still making flicks about over-sized fish. Hagar was in Montrose when Bob Welch was still a member of Fleetwood Mac. Today they’re each into solo careers and share a producer, John Carter; a label, Capitol; and some very interesting perspectives on what life is all about.

When I took Hagar’s suggestion and met Welch, I picked right up on the subtle hints he weaves into his conversation. He’d be talking about being in this rock band or about living in the big old Fleetwood mansion or about working with Soupy Sales’ kid in Paris and all of a sudden he would throw in a sly reference to some psychic experiment or drop a thinly-veiled astrological reference. Then he watches how—or if, ’cause he says most people don’t— you react.

“I can watch in someone’s eyes and see if they pick up on what I’m talking about or not,” he explains. If they don’t —and he says he just did a 120 interview promo tour for his new album and CREEM was the first to get his gist (thanks Sammy; we owe ya one) — well then you can rap about the Sadat initiative, the history of Fleetwood Mac, making a gold record, forming a band, forming another band, living abroad, how it feels to have a Top Ten single, the music bizzzzzzzz... Of course these days you can talk about Star Wars and Close Encounters, too—you know, sort of ease into talking about the wacko stuff without seeming like an out-and-out kook.

Let’s face it, if you start babbling about extra-terrestrials and strange psychic forces, a lot of people are gonna get the idea you’re one loony dude. When Welch left Fleetwood in ’75, after a four-year stint, he formed a band called Paris. He had the habit of throwing weird books into the audience while he was performing, arcane-type books with funny little messages in ’em, like “If you were born February 5, 1962, get in touch with me care of Capitol Records.” The rest of the band didn’t exactly go for this stuff. Most people don’t these days. But that’s OK with Welch, too. He is, after all, thriving in the everyday dimensions as well. (Check out his pretty new solo LP, French Kiss, which is already gold, or his smash single, “Sentimental Lady.”)

“A guy’s gotta get up in the morning and make a living,” he admits candidly —a man in touch with his...karma, if you’ll pardon the 60’s-ism. He happens to make his living by writing great pop tunes. If you think the album sounds a little like Fleetwood Mac, you get an A for sharpness. Welch played guitar and wrote songs for the Big Mac on five albums—Future Games, Bare Trees (from which “Sentimental Lady” has been culled), Penguin, Mystery To Me, and Heroes Are Hard To Find. As if that weren’t enough to account for the familiar sounding pop-Mac-ishism of French Kiss, consider that “Sentimental Lady” was produced by Welch’s Fleetwood replacement, Lindsey Buckingham, who also plays on the number, as do Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood. (Mick also happens to be Welch’s manager.)

Welch himself seems to be a pretty free-thinking sort of guy. He grew up in the City of Lost Angels and went to live in Paris right after high school in 1963, “To go to the Sorbonne, supposedly,” he smiles. “But I was actually sneaking off to cafes a lot and smoking hashish.” He returned to America after awhile, went to UCLA for a year, only to drop out and join a soul band. They called themselves Ivory Hudson and the Harlequins—five black guys and two white guys. “I was one of the white guys,” he explained.

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They played black clubs around L. A. and gained a degree of local notoriety. After a while, some rich German industrialist/hotelier whisked the band off to Europe to perform at the playspots of the idle rich—St. Tropez, Geneva, Paris, the Italian Riviera. When the band broke up in ’69, Welch and three of the guys formed a funk trio, Head West, and played around Europe. They even put out a French album before they broke up in ’71. After that, Welch was a. kind of stranded expatriate in P&ris, doing some gigs, writing some songs, doing a little el-cheapo production work for some Italian club bands. Then a nice thing happened to him. A pleasant coincidence led him to the U.K. where he met Fleetwood Mac, recently Jeremy Spenc6r-less. Fleetwood at the time was a band that had done alright, had had some hits, still put out moderately successful albums and did moderately successful tours, but didn’t really look tike it was going anywhere too fast. A mutqal friend arranged for Welch to come over to their place.

“They had a great big 16-room old house south of London and I went over there and met everybody and just sort of hung out. Everybody lived in the house—the whole band, the road crew—one of those trips. We just hung around for months. It was almost a semi-hippie, communal situation. For the first few months all we did was socialize—just drink tea and talk about how weird the world was, a lot of that. Ultimately we just started playing. They were looking for Someone who wrote and we all got along well and I sort of wound up in the band. I thought I was going to be hired to do it like Peter Green—‘fere’s our hits—play ’em like this!’—that kinda thing. But I immediately was right in on the flow of things, writing and stuff,”

They’d go out and tour and it was a big drag a lot—real hard work and just breaking even, no big recognition or anything. Then some maniac manager put out another band called Fleetwood Mac and they had to go through a long, exhausting law suit, which sapped Welch of all his strength. “I was so fried that I practically couldn’t put my shoes on, let alone write a song. I was ju§t frazzled.”

He left the band in January, ’75. The next album was Fleetwood Mac with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the one that made them the biggest thing since sliced bread. But Welch says he hasn’t had any misgivings about leaving the band. After a rest, he put together a hard rock band, Paris, with former Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and drummer Hunt Sales, ex of Rundgren’s Utopia, now with the Ig. The whole thing with Paris never quite jelled. They were plagued with management difficulties from the outset. Paris managed to get two albums out before the project fizzled. Capitol decided to stick with Welch, which turned out to be a most propitious move.

Not counting “Sentimental Lady,” Welch did all the instrumental and vocal work on French Kiss, except for the drumming, which was covered by Alvin Taylor, a studio expert who’s played with everyone from Barry White and Leo Sayer to George Harrison. Welch wrote all the tunes, of course, He writes accessible little pop songs. No big deal. No big deal, unless you listen carefully. He can’t seem to resist the temptation to throw in little bits of esoterica now and then. I mean, it’s so soft-rock, so easy-listening, so perfect for housewives, that the subtle little messages he sticks in kind of slip right by you. Listen to “Danchiva” for example. Sounds ljke a pretty little love song. It also happens to be a lyrical interpretation of classical Hindu philosophy.

Welch is like that. He’ll slip in something about the Bermuda Triangle amid all the sweet little silliness and those who pick up on where he’s at, pick it up. Those who don’t... Well, they’re buying the records pretty fast and you gotta figure they’re getting something out of ’em.

And, by the way, Wel^h asked us to mention that if you w&re born on February 5, 1962, drop him a line c/o Capitol Records (if you know why he’s interested).